Daddy In Charge Page 9

  The man grunted as he swiveled in his chair to face a computer. It was an ancient thing; a throwback from a decade ago. As he worked the keyboard he fished a cigarette from his pocket and wedged it into the corner of his mouth.

  I stood in the silence and thickening tendrils of smoke and concentrated on my breathing and settling my nerves. I felt like I was moments away from a heart attack.

  “Look,” the Russian man waved me to his desk. He turned the monitor around so I could see the screen. He pressed a button to enact a funds transfer and the screen changed to display a green tick in the bottom left corner.

  I checked my phone, logging out of my bank’s website, refreshing the browser and then logging back in.

  There was an alert on the screen.

  You have received funds.

  The amount of $175,000 USD from….

  I swallowed a whimpered gasp as giddy breathless relief overwhelmed me.

  The Russian looked solemn. “Da?”

  “Da,” I sobbed.

  He nodded his head and called through the door in a loud voice, words I didn’t understand. Ming came into the office.

  The Russian man spoke to Ming for several seconds and the oriental woman became translator.

  “Now you have been paid, you must complete the rest of the agreed transaction,” Ming said in precise careful repetition. “You will be taken to room 203 upstairs in the hotel,” for some reason she felt it necessary to point at the office ceiling. “The man who purchased your virginity will come to that room. He will give you a code word. This is most important.”

  I was nodding numbly but now I forced myself to focus and pay attention. In the back of my mind my imagination was filling with ghoulish depraved scenes of some anonymous overweight Russian businessman with a mat of repugnant hair across his back, and a swollen gut. I cast the images aside and narrowed my eyes in concentration.

  “The man will have a code word,” Ming said again. “This is how you will know it is the man who has paid for your pussy.”

  I nodded. I felt impossibly tired. My eyes felt red raw from the cigarette smoke and exhaustion.

  “What is the code word?” I trembled.

  “Babushka,” Ming said.

  I repeated the word. “Babushka?”

  “Yes. Only the man who has purchased your virginity will know that word… and that is how you will know who you must give sex to. Understand?”

  I drew a deep shuddering breath of bleak resolve and then nodded somberly. “Yes. I understand.”

  Chapter 14

  Connie

  Ming escorted me into the hotel. There was no working elevator so we climbed two flights of creaking stairs. I had dumped the schoolgirl outfit in a trash can. I carried nothing but the clothes I had worn that morning and my purse.

  The second floor was dimly lit, the carpet worn into frayed brown furrows. There were windows facing out onto a busy street but the glass was thick with grime and strung with cobwebs. The air stank of stale sweat and from behind the paper-thin walls I could hear the televisions and shouted arguments of other guests.

  Ming stopped in front of room 203 and handed me the key.

  “When you get inside, prepare yourself,” she said with a mischievous wink. “Most men who buy girls like you are in big hurry. They cannot wait to fuck and so do not enjoy the girl properly. It should not take long for it to be done. When you have earned your money, you can go.”

  I dropped onto the bed and the mattress sagged beneath me. I wept fitfully.

  I think most dreamy-eyed girls plan the night they lose their virginity and the day of their wedding. I had… and this wasn’t anything like the romantic misty fantasies I had imagined.

  I cast a forlorn look around the room; it was small and dingy. The wallpaper was a throwback to the 70’s, faded and peeling at the corners, and the ceiling was watermarked and stained the color of parchment paper. The bed was a narrow iron-framed monstrosity, with patches of rust on the metalwork of the bedhead. I bounced my weight on the mattress and the whole bed shook and squeaked.

  Behind a paint-peeling internal door, I could see the white porcelain bowl of a toilet. I didn’t get off the bed to investigate. Instead I began to unbutton my blouse with slow trembling dread. I folded it neatly and placed it on the bedside table beside a lamp that didn’t work.

  Emotionally I was a broiling mess of crashing feelings. At the forefront of my thoughts was the impending dread of what was about to happen to me and how abhorrent the man who bought my body would be. Below that was a stabbing layer of guilt I felt at my subterfuge and deceit. I was a fundamentally honest person, and the lies I had been forced to tell Mitch dug like burrs in the fabric of my conscience. If he ever found out that I had deceived him in such a way… the fear of the consequences started a fresh spasm of shudders.

  Below it all was a weightless kind of relief. I had auctioned my virginity for one-hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand dollars. It was a vast amount of money – much more than my grandmother needed to save her bookstore and ensure its survival for years and years to come. I realized the windfall would give me the opportunity to study without the need for part-time work to support myself.

  But first I had to fuck a stranger.

  I heard footsteps approaching the door and I felt myself flinch tense. They were heavy steps, a deliberate tread echoing hollowly in the hallway. I felt my breath catch in my throat. I was sitting on the bed in just my skirt and bra. I saw my breasts heave as I inhaled and waited.

  The footsteps approached the door and then passed further along the hall. I shivered and relaxed.

  Then suddenly the door exploded back upon its hinges and two dark scowling men in long trench-coast burst into the room. I started to scream but one of the men came to the bed and clamped his hand tight across my mouth. My eyes went wide in panic and horror. I saw a gun in the hand of the man who was standing inside the doorway. I started to kick my legs. The man who had hold of me was whispering urgently in my ear.

  “Be still!” he hissed. “We are diplomatic staff. The hotel is about to be raided by the police. We must get you out of here!” He grabbed me by the shoulder and heaved me to my feet. Everything was a chaos of confusion and frantic noise. I felt myself being bundled towards the door of the room and then I saw the man with the gun snatch the cover off the bed and throw it over my head to hide me.

  “Quick!” one of the men said. “Get down the stairs. There’s a car waiting for you. It will take you back to your embassy.”

  I started to protest. I almost collapsed in frantic fear.

  What about the man who had paid for me?

  I hadn’t earned the money in my account until I gave him my virginity!

  What if the police found me in that seedy bedroom and arrested me for prostitution?

  Would I spend the rest of my life in a Moscow jail?

  I was swept down the stairs by the two men, one of them at each of my elbows. I heard their pounding steps and frantic curses and I ran with my head bowed, hidden by the bedcover, cringing and terrified.

  We reached the doors of the hotel and burst out onto the sidewalk. The bedcover was snatched from my head and I saw a dark car parked in the road with its engine revving and the back door open. The two men who had rescued me from the police raid were panting for breath.

  “Get in the car!” one of the men said. “The police will be here at any minute.

  I ran to the open door of the waiting vehicle. I couldn’t hear police sirens, but I doubted the Russian police would announce a raid in such a way. I flung myself into the back seat of the car and pulled the door shut. The car was already accelerating away into the dark Moscow night.

  I scampered into the corner of the seat, cringing with the fear of a hunted, terrified animal.

  What the hell would I do now?

  Mitch

  I stepped out of the shadows of the alleyway and watched the speeding car’s taillights glow red as it reached a corner, braked briefl
y, then accelerated away towards the American embassy.

  “Do you think Connie suspects anything?”

  “No,” Sergey Volostok had his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his overcoat. He stood beside me and sighed. “She has no idea.”

  I grunted and drew a deep breath of bitterly cold night air. “How much did the auction cost me?”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Sergey was mildly apologetic. “My man had competition from the son of the nightclub owner.”

  I shrugged. The money didn’t matter.

  Sergey was studying my face, trying to read my thoughts. It was a wasted effort. I honestly didn’t know exactly how I felt at that moment.

  “Was she given the code word?”

  “Yes. The Asian woman made sure of it.”

  I nodded then turned to Sergey and held out my hand.

  “Thank you, my friend,” I said with sincerity and emphasis. “You are a man that I and my government can trust. I will recommend the trade deal and the subsidy be approved by the President when I return to Washington. I hope that, someday, you and I will meet again.”

  Sergey’s face stayed impassive but I saw a lift of relief in his eyes. Through his fixed features he nodded his head in the direction of where the car had sped away into the night. “And what about the girl? What will you do?”

  I smiled thinly but didn’t answer.

  Chapter 15

  Connie

  The driver of the getaway car was a woman. She slowed to a halt on a street corner. In the distance, the lights haloed by fog, I could see the gates of the American embassy. The woman reached across to the front passenger seat and then turned so that she was facing me.

  She had classical Slavic features; the high cheekbones, hair swept severely back from her face, her skin pale in the ghostly night and her eyes dark as coal.

  “You cannot enter your embassy wearing just a bra,” she said.

  I stared back at her with big traumatized eyes. My thoughts were stilted and chittering. I was still swept up in the confusion and chaos. I sat huddled in a dark corner with my arms wrapped around me, my hair hanging tangled across my face.

  She handed me her coat. It was a dark full-length garment like the trench coats the men who had burst into the hotel room had been wearing. It smelled faintly of cheap perfume. I pulled the coat over my shoulders and wrapped it tight about me.

  “Thank you.”

  She drove sedately to the gates and I rummaged in my purse to show the guard my credentials. The car drove away into the night and I skulked into the embassy compound like a fugitive thief on the run from the law.

  When I reached my room, I sank down on the bed and let the waves of emotion crash over me. I was shaking in wild uncontrollable spasms. Humiliation, despair and misery lashed me like the howling force of a storm. I curled up into a ball with my knees pressed to my chest, and cried until I had no more tears to shed.

  What do I do now?

  I had endured the depravity and humiliation of being displayed and sold to a man, and I had been paid a vast sum of money in advance to give up my virginity. Now I had the money, but had not paid my debt.

  And tomorrow I was flying back to Washington!

  I thought back over the graphic, lurid events of the night and a fresh wave of shivers and spasms seized me.

  They won’t just forget the money.

  Jesus, Connie. This is the fucking Russian mafia you sold yourself to. They’re not just going to throw a quarter of a million dollars your way and not expect the payment you promised.

  Would the mafia think I had deliberately fled the hotel – reneged on their deal and stolen the money?

  Fuck!

  If they think that, they’ll hunt me down. Borders won’t stop them. They’ll come to America and they’ll find me. Maybe they can trace me through my account details… or Mitch. They could find me through him. He’s an important man, and if they find him… they find me.

  I felt myself on the edge of hysteria. The fear that hung over me was an entirely new dread.

  Would the Russian mafia kill me to exact their revenge, and to use my murder as a warning to every other girl who stood on that stage and offered her virginity?

  For an ice-cold moment I thought about going to Mitch and confessing. I could explain the circumstances and the events that led up to the auction. I could throw myself on his mercy and appeal for his protection. He had connections all the way up the hierarchy of the Russian government. He could explain, Maybe he could arrange to return the money to the man who had bid for me. Mitch was a fixer – he could make this go away. I was sure he could.

  But…

  How would I deal with the shame of that confession?

  I was in love with Mitch and if I told him what I had done…?

  I teetered like a drunkard into the bathroom and threw myself under a scalding hot shower. The water was like the agonized sting of a thousand needles. When I emerged from the bathroom my flesh was bright red, but I felt a little more settled. My nerves were still jangling, but in the back of my mind had formed another alternative plan.

  When I reached Washington I would call Nikolai, the Russian thug. I didn’t have the matchbook he had given me anymore, but I knew his number was still in the memory of my cell phone. I would call the Russian and explain what had happened. Through him I could arrange to return the money to the man in the crowd who had bid for my virginity.

  It was going to be all right. In a week from now, the whole sordid indecent event would just be a dark memory, and I could get on with my life.

  It would be all right.

  I just had to hold my composure for a few more days.

  Mitch

  When I returned to the embassy, it was past midnight. I should have been tired, but instead I was alert and processing a stream of unsettling thoughts and disconcerting questions.

  I inspected the gatehouse log and saw that Connie had returned thirty minutes earlier. The guard stood at attention. I gave him a nod and strode through the snow to the front doors of the main building.

  The Ambassador’s office was dark. I didn’t turn on the lights. Instead I went to the big desk and flicked on a small lamp. The glow cast a halo over the tabletop but left the rest of the large office in deep shadow. I dropped down into the expensive leather chair and the weariness came settling upon me at last.

  As my mind unwound I felt a stir of emotions that were unfamiliar to me. My thoughts turned inward and reflective.

  I’m an insular man; throughout the years since the death of my wife I had stood alone and blazed a trail of business success and political power. I had believed that women held no real attraction to me… but now I realized – with a sudden profound flash of insight – that it wasn’t true.

  Of course women attracted me… just not the kind of women that had orbited in the same circles of my influence.

  Every woman I encountered was either attached to the diplomatic staff, or she was part of the elite Washington social circle that frequented glittering functions and smiled with gay superficial politeness to the idle chatter that was the stuff of such gatherings. The women I encountered were all seeking social status on the coattails of the most influential men they could latch their claws into… and the shallowness of the women that sought such standing left me cold and disinterested.

  And then suddenly there was Connie.

  I had seen her too, as just a young ambitious girl who was determined to climb through the ranks of the diplomatic corps. Admittedly, she was committed and dedicated to her work – not trading on her physical attributes.

  But that also made her an ineligible subject for any desire I might feel… because I could never compromise the immorality of sleeping with someone on my personal staff. It was a line I refused to cross for I knew the complications of a sexual and emotional relationship in such a situation made the working environment hellishly difficult.

  But at least Connie was a real woman; not one of t
he phony army of wives and mistresses that populated the halls of power.

  And within her beauty and the undeniable sexual attraction of her, was both a danger and a threat.

  I let my mind linger on my secret stolen memories of Connie; those moments when masculine instinct had overridden my objectivity.

  I had seen the swell of her breasts beneath the sheer fabric of her blouse and the tantalizing shadow of the lace that contained them. And I had admired the narrow nip of her waist and then the flare of her hips when she had come into my office one morning wearing a tight tailored suit. And I had watched her secretly as she had worked at her desk, marveling in the youthful beauty of her, the dazzling wonder of her eyes and the soft tempting lure of her lips when she smiled.

  With shame at the perversity and treachery of my own body, I felt myself unable to contain the rise of raw desire. I felt myself harden, as my imagination seized upon the things I knew and carried them away on the wings of erotic fantasies.

  I pictured her naked on my bed, her hair awry, her body lightly tanned.

  She was naïve and had been left frustrated by fumbling boys, and now she was desperate for the secret understanding acquired by men as they matured. She lifted her arms to me as I came to her, naked, and her legs fell open in wanton invitation. I covered her body with mine and we began to move on the mattress, her breath panting and filled with new wonder and my own made ragged and thick with lust.

  It was a long time before I could loosen the grip of those dangerous fantasies and flee back to the reality and safety of the Ambassador’s office.

  I sighed and reached for the lamp switch.

  I had resolved nothing.

  All I knew was that I desired Connie Wyatt. Because now – after her attempts to sell her virginity – my impersonal professional impressions of her had been torn away, revealing a young sexual woman.