You Don't Own Me (The Russian Don 1)

Zane stands up and shakes the man’s hand and, to my great surprise, introduces them to me. The man’s name is Shane. Apparently he owns a club nearby called Eden. The woman is his wife and her name is Snow.

Shane sits down next to Zane, but his wife excuses herself to go to the Ladies.

‘You know what. I’ll join you,’ I say jumping up.

She smiles warmly at me and though we walk together we don’t try to talk until we get to the girl’s room. The music is so loud there’s no way we can hear each other talk. Once we’ve both used the facilities, we meet in front of the mirrors.

‘I love your dress,’ she tells me, stroking her lips with a lip gloss wand.

‘Thank you. I love everything about you.’

She smiles and puts the top back on her lip gloss. ‘So you’re American?’

‘Yup. That’s me. American. That’s not a British accent you’ve got going there.’

‘I’m half Indian,’ she explains, putting her lip gloss back into her purse and shutting it.

‘Um … how long have you known Zane?’ I know I sound desperate, but honestly I might never get another chance to speak to anyone else who knows Zane.

Her eyes catch mine in the mirror. She knows I’m fishing for information. ‘Not long.’

‘I see.’ Looks like she’s not going to play ball.

Then she changes her mind and turns to look at me. ‘However, my husband has known him for a lot longer, and once when we were going through a very bad period he told me the only person I must turn to if anything ever happened to him was Zane. That I could completely trust him. Even with my life.’

My eyes widen. ‘He said that?’

‘Mmmm … and my husband is not given to exaggeration. Now. Shall we go back and see what the men have got up to while the cats were away?’

I grin. ‘Yeah. Let’s do that.’

But as soon as we get out of the Ladies we find her cat is waiting outside.

‘Sorry, Dahlia,’ he says. ‘Something’s come up and I’m afraid we have to leave.’

‘We must do dinner soon,’ Snow says.

‘Yes, that would be nice,’ I say, but I know it will most likely never happen.

I make my way back to the VIP lounge and see one of those stunningly beautiful ten feet tall creatures that Stella told me Zane usually hooks up with almost lying on my cat’s lap. One of her long legs is slowly rubbing against his and she is staring into his eyes. I stand there frozen.

As if in slow motion, Zane turns his face away from hers and looks directly into my eyes. His expression is still. His eyes are veiled. Casually he pats the empty seat next to him. He wants me to share him with this Amazonian woman?

It’s just a test, Dahlia. He just wants to see how you’ll react.

Fucking sick bastard. I’ll show him how I react.

I force myself to smile sweetly before I turn around and walk away from them. I have money in my purse. I’ll take a taxi to Stella’s, and he can have that woman tonight. Actually, he can have her for the rest of the month. I’ll move out tomorrow. I am so angry my blood is bubbling and my heart is racing.

A hand curls around my upper arm.

‘You’re not going, are you, babe? You haven’t danced with me yet.’

I look up at the owner of the hand. He’s just one of those creeps who hangs around the dance floors of clubs making nuisances of themselves. Ordinarily, I would have brushed him off and not even politely, but it occurred to me that fuck it, I should have a dance. I deserve a dance. I haven’t had a dance since I hooked up with the Russian monster.

‘Yeah, I’ll dance with you,’ I say, and watch his eyes light up like twinkling fairy lights.

He pulls me towards the dance floor and immediately starts gyrating close to me. It hits me instantly that this has not been one of my better ideas. The guy is just such a creep his idea of a dance is to keep bumping into me and grabbing my buttocks in the guise of a dance move.

It happens so fast it’s like one moment I’m dancing with a hairy octopus and the next the octopus is lying flat on his back, out stone cold, on the green rain flashing floor. The women around me are screaming, and the crowd has parted like a scene from Moses. There is only Zane and me. Everything else is just noise and shapes. He stands there looking at me, looking like he is carved out of ice, his face motionless and completely expressionless.

He holds out his hand.

‘You don’t dance,’ I whisper, shocked by the casual violence.