Wages of Sin

Chapter One “I don’t see her yet.” The speaker was a heavyset man in late middle age, his dark hair going gray at the temples. He was impeccably groomed, and his tailored suit fit him in a way that quietly advertised its expensiveness. “Are you even sure that she’ll be here?” his companion asked. He was younger and fitter and while his suit fit him well enough it was clearly off the rack. The two men sat at a small round table that overlooked the party below. Except for the stray older businessman seeking some easy young company for the night, the crowd below was young and glittering and noisy. A constant wave of chatter drifted up to the two men where they sat. “That b***h?” the older man laughed harshly. “Try to keep her away from something like this.” His arm swept out, taking in the scene. “She’ll be here, her and her little p***y posse, don’t you doubt it.” “You seem to be going to a lot of trouble just to smoke her out,” the other man observed. “You do realize that you’re paying me for my time whether she shows up or not.” “I know. I know. Don’t worry about that either. Almost any price would be worth it to see that b***h get what’s coming to her.” “About that. What did she do to get you so obsessive about revenge?” “Revenge?” the older man growled, frowning. His eyes were hard in his fleshy face. “Not revenge. Justice! Justice for what she did to my son!” “Of course,” the younger man nodded. “You don’t believe me?” the older man glared at him. “It doesn’t matter if I believe you or not,” the younger man shrugged. “It would help if you remembered that. You’re paying me to do a job, if I accept it. I don’t care what your reasons are for wanting the job done. I just care if you pay me.” The older man regained control of himself with a visible effort. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I keep forgetting that you’re a professional.” “I’d mind your tone of voice, if I were you,” the younger man said mildly. “I am a professional, and my skills are in great demand. I don’t have to take your job, no matter how well you’re paying me. There are plenty of others who want my services.” “Sorry,” the older man shrugged. He sounded less angry if no more sincere. It was clear that he was accustomed to getting his way, and not at all accustomed to being spoken to that manner. Grigori found it interesting to deal with such people, especially when they wanted something from him very, very badly, as this one did. He could bluster and try to bully Grigori into getting his way, but in the end Grigori had the ultimate power to grant or deny his wish. The older man knew it, and it must grate on him. Grigori smiled at the thought and sipped at his drink. He turned his attention to all the glittering golden youth below, trying to pick out the truly wealthy ones from the less-wealthy hangers-on. The wealthy ones had more of a carefree air about them, as if they believed that their lives of pleasure would simply go on forever. The hangers-on… well, those were mostly beautiful young women anxious to trade their looks and their nubile bodies for the security that marriage to a wealthy young man could bring. Grigori did not hate them. He had once, but now all he could feel was a certain contempt for their empty lives, their empty heads, and their almost certainly empty souls. They were his prey, and he did not even respect them as prey. They were too easy, to readily deceived and used and, in some cases, discarded. Still, they had provided him with a much more comfortable life than he would have had back in Rostov. He wondered if a wolf felt the same way towards sheep. “There she is!” his client sat up straighter, pointing. “There’s the b***h!” “Where?” Grigori asked. “And stop pointing, you fool. It attracts too much attention.” His client dropped his arm almost sheepishly. “Over there,” he nodded. “That tall blonde bitch.” Grigori scanned the vast room below and was hard put to find a young woman there who was not tall and blonde. “Where?” he asked. “Just tell me.” “Over there, by the fountain,” his client nodded. Grigori noted that his client’s eyes had grown even harder, and yet there was a dull flame behind them that suggested something more than mere hatred. “The one in the blue dress?” Grigori asked. The fountain was spouting white wine instead of water, and there were many people clustered near it. “No. To the left of her. She’s in a red dress, if you can call it a dress.” Grigori looked again, and spotted her. Once he had, he wondered how he could have missed her in the first place. She seemed exceptionally tall, and it wasn’t all due to the stiletto heels she was wearing. Her hair was platinum blonde, which meant that it might not be her natural color, but as he quickly assessed the rest of her the matter of hair color became much less important. Her dress draped over her figure suggestively all the way from her shoulders to her ankles. As she moved, he could see that it was slit up the sides almost to her hips, and cut very, very low in front and in back, so low, in fact, that he could think of no way in which she could possibly be wearing a bra. She did not seem to need one anyway. Her breasts appeared to be full and firm under the sheer covering of her dress, and every time she took a step he was treated to the sight of long, strong, shapely legs. It was not surprising that she immediately began attracting a lot of male attention. Her face was more than pretty enough, even without that body, to do that. With that body it drew wealthy young men like a bright light drew moths. “I see her,” he said to his client. “Are you quite certain that she is the one?” “No doubt in my mind at all,” his client replied grimly, his eyes devouring the young woman. “That’s the b***h that used my son as a toy and then humiliated him in front of a crowd, at a party just like this one. Do you think I could ever forget that…face?” “I suppose not,” Grigori shrugged. “She does appear to be memorable. She also seems to have some girlfriends with her.” “That’s what she calls her ‘p***y posse’. Bitches, all three of them.” “And do you wish them all to suffer?” Grigori looked at the blonde’s companions more closely. Both were tall, but not as tall as their friend. One was a brunette who might have appeared more striking if she were not so close to the blonde. The other had dark hair also. From this distance it appeared dark brown, with reddish highlights when the light struck it just right. That one had the face of a bored and tarnished angel. “I don’t give a s**t about them,” his client replied. “Without her they’re just a couple of cheap bimbos anyway. You can do whatever you want with them, or not, but I’m not paying for it.” “Understood,” Grigori nodded. He shifted his gaze back to the blonde. She truly was an extraordinarily attractive young woman. Everything about her radiated youth and vitality, which made her even sexier. He wished that he was close enough to get a better look at her eyes. That would give him a better assessment of her character, but even from here she did not seem to be unintelligent. She might present a serious challenge to his skills, but in the end she would break. They always did, sooner or later, begging to be allowed to please, begging to do things that would have angrily refused if asked not all that long ago. “Well?” his client asked. “Will you take the job?” “I will,” Grigori nodded. “But as I told you, I will do it only on my terms and in my own time.” “I understand,” his client said. “But I must get to see it all, from start to finish.” “Agreed,” Grigori said. “But that will also be on my terms. If you interfere in any way, I will have you removed…but I will still expect payment.” “Just so she suffers,” his client said. His voice dropped so that they would not be overheard, though no one was close to them where they sat. “I want to hear her scream. I want to hear her beg for mercy, and get none. I want to see her broken.” “I think that I can guarantee all of that,” Grigori chuckled. “And perhaps, at the very end, you might like to sample her charms yourself?” “What? No, I don’t care about that,” his client replied a little too quickly. Grigori smiled. *** Tanya reveled in all the attention she was getting. One big advantage to being young and smoking hot was that it gave her easy access to parties like this, even if she hadn’t been on the invitation list. When you looked like she did, nobody cared if you’d been invited or not. Even the most jaded bouncer would let her pass, assuming correctly that no one was going to complain. Well, no man would complain at least. She’d caught more than one nasty look from some of the other women here, and she reveled in that too, knowing that they realized that she was way, way out of their league. Handsome young men began orbiting around her, trying to get her attention. So did young men who were much less handsome, who were probably much more wealthy than their competitors. She had learned that that was often how it went. There was also one middle-aged man who seemed very interested in her. Those were harder to assess. He might be quite rich, and he might not. The older men grew, the more willing they were to lie about how well-off they were, and the better they were at it. That was the one minor disadvantage to being young and smoking hot: Having to sort through all the men coming at you and sorting the wheat from the chaff. But even if you chose wrong, there were always more men waiting for the chance to shower you with gifts in the hopes of getting you into their bed. If the gifts were generous enough, she was willing to grant a man her favors, at least for one night, but she never gave them anything more than straight s*x. She didn’t go in for any of the kinky stuff, and there was another problem that she often had to deal with. If a man gave you enough presents, he might start to think that he’d bought you, and insist on more than straight s*x. She always refused them. If, after a little while, they came crawling back, begging forgiveness with even more lavish gifts, she would sometimes accept their abject apologies. Sometimes she did not. It was always interesting to see their reactions when that happened. In any case, she never stayed with any one man for long. It was more fun to move on to her next conquest, and see what she could wring out of them. It was only fair, wasn’t it? Men had used women all through history. She was just balancing things out a little, and living quite well in the bargain. Right now, she was on the prowl for a new man. The lease on her darling little seaside apartment would be up at the end of the month, and there was no chance that Anton was going to renew it, not after the last little spat they’d had. She had more than enough money to pay the rent on it herself for quite some time, but why should she? And anyway, where was the challenge in that? It was much more interesting, and much more enjoyable, to find a new man willing and eager to put her up in some elegant little love nest and visit her there whenever he could. She looked around to see how Lana and Cicely were doing. It was handy to have them around at times, but they always reminded her of those peculiar fish who fastened themselves onto sharks and fed on the scraps of the shark’s meals…what were they called? Oh, well, it wasn’t that important. Lana seemed to have caught the attention of a couple of older men. Cicely was laughing a bit too loudly at some joke one of the not-so-handsome young men had told her. *** “Just look at her,” Grigori’s client fumed as he watched the object of his obsession make her way through the partying crowd below. “I’ll bet she can guess someone’s net worth just by looking at him. She’s a predatory bitch.” Grigori watched the lovely young woman intently. He studied how she moved, how she posed when she was trying to attract the attention of some man, the expressions she wore, even how she tossed her head when she laughed. After some minutes of study, he realized that he was looking at a predatory b***h indeed. However spontaneous and unstudied she appeared, she knew at every moment exactly what she was doing, which was more than he could say for the men who came under her spell. He did not know what she was hunting for tonight, but she was definitely on the prowl. She piqued his interest now, even more than his client’s promised p*****t did. It took little effort to break a sheep. They accepted their own use and debasement with the same dull-eyed and dull-witted air that they lived their lives. Many of them made good slaves, simply because they had never been much more than that from the beginning. To break another predator, though, to take all control from them and reduce them, bit by bit, remorselessly, relentlessly, to a scared, pleading animal…that was a challenge that he always found irresistible. He had not had such a challenge since that beautiful adulteress over a year ago. A countess in her own right, she had taken great pleasure in cuckolding her husband, a count in his own right, at every opportunity, even rubbing his face in it when she could. He had enjoyed letting her seduce him. She had thought that he would simply be another of her conquests. He had also enjoyed teaching her who and what he actually was afterwards. The hardest part of that job, aside from breaking her, had been arranging her disappearance in such a way that no one would look for her. Leaving her smashed sports car at the bottom of a deep ravine, submerged in a river that heavy rains had turned into a raging torrent had been a simple enough idea. Everyone, including the police now assumed that her body had been swept away in the current. In fact, her lovely body was now in a secret harem in some more lawless part of the world, the prized property of a very wealthy and very fat sheik that preferred buggery above all other forms of intercourse. What the former countess Elena thought of her new station in life was immaterial. She no longer had any choices in the matter. “How seriously did this woman offend your son?” Grigori asked. His client glared at him. “What she did, exactly, and how she did it and where she did it is no concern of yours,” he growled. “I spent a lot of time and money covering it all up as best I could. What I will tell you is that he tried to commit suicide shortly afterwards, and damned near succeeded. He’s still undergoing therapy. The doctors think they can paste him back together again after a lot of very expensive treatment. They may be right. But he won’t ever be the same.” “I understand,” Grigori nodded. “I think I will be able to provide you with some satisfaction in this matter.” “I could have just had her killed, you know,” the client leaned close and spoke in a rasping whisper. “But that did not seem like enough.” “I understand that as well,” Grigori smiled. “Better that they be made to live, and wish every day that they were dead, no?” “Exactly.” “I will begin immediately,” Grigori said. “Though it may take some time to formulate and carry out my plans. What is the young woman’s name?” “Tanya.” His client spoke the name as if it was an obscenity. “Tanya James.” “Indeed?” Grigori raised an eyebrow and regarded his prey again. “I think that there is an American porno actress with the same name.” “What does that have to do with anything?” “Nothing,” Grigori shrugged. “It is just an interesting coincidence.” His attention was fully on the tall young blonde as he spoke. Yes, he recognized another predator when he saw one, but she was a fox who chose smaller and weaker prey than herself. He was a wolf, and he led a pack when he went hunting, and his pack had taken down larger prey than foxes. “All right,” his client said grumpily. “You’ve seen her now. I can’t bear to look at that b***h for another minute. I’m going to go. I assume that we have a deal?” “Oh, yes,” Grigori replied without taking his eyes off of his prey. “We do indeed have a deal, as you say.” “Good. Then I’ll leave all the rest in your hands. You will contact me?” “I will, but not for several days, at least. I will need some time to find out more about her and formulate my plans. I think I can promise you most satisfactory results.”