Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(36)
I smile, sticky and venomous, rather than come out of my chair at her and give in to the taunting because I know that’s what she wants.
Then I lean forward and stretch out my hand. “Lydia Delacourt, scum of the desert, White-trash-in-training, but good enough that I’m the one sleeping in Cesara’s bed, and you, are not—pleased to meet you.”
Callista’s nostrils flare.
A victorious grin dancing at my lips, I retract my hand I knew she’d never accept to begin with.
“Oh, come on,” Cesara says, trying to calm Callista’s internal raging, “you didn’t expect me to be alone forever, did you?”
“Alone is how I’d like to talk with you later”—Callista glances at me—“after the auction; I have some…business to discuss.”
Cesara nods. “All right,” she agrees. “I’ll find you after the last showing.”
Callista shoots me with one final look before walking away from the table, weaving through people standing, and other tables before making it to her own.
“I’m sure ‘business’ is code for ‘personal’?” I say, bitingly.
“Of course it is.” Cesara smiles, and her hand squeezes my thigh underneath the table. She leans toward my throat, sweeps her lips across my flesh, and then says against my ear, “You aren’t jealous, are you?”
“You know I am.”
“Well, don’t be,” she says breathily, her mouth on my neck. “Besides, I’ll be taking you with me when I meet with her; that’ll really piss her off.”
I pull away. “I hope you’re not using me to make her jealous.”
Cesara’s mouth pinches on one side, and she tilts her head. “That’s not at all what I’m doing”—she reaches out and touches my bottom lip with the pad of her thumb—“Lydia, you should know by now how I feel about you, how much you mean to me; I would never do anything to jeopardize what we have.”
“And what do we have, Cesara?” I soften my eyes, and tilt my head against her hand.
She smiles, and in it I sense both weakness and strength—the weakness is her falling for me; the strength is still that part of her resisting it.
“I think you know,” she says, still resisting; she leans in and kisses my lips. “There’s something I need to talk with you about after the auction, as well.”
“Oh?” I ask. “Business, or personal?”
She grins. “Both.”
After a few minutes, the disappointment I’ve had all evening in feeling no closer to Vonnegut than when I started, vanishes in an instant as a man, neither handsome nor unattractive but something in-between, walks into the theatre with six bodyguards, and exuding something no one else in the room has—rank. It’s as if everyone knows him, or at least knows of him, and he doesn’t need to put on a performance to make every person in the theatre turn their heads to look as he makes his way to his table next to the stage. And the looks he garners are the opposite of disgusted, offended, or shocked; the faces watching him are filled with respect, awe, and fear.
Once the man takes his seat, and his bodyguards take their positions around him and near the stage, the din of conversation picks up again, but to a different tune.
“Joaquin should’ve announced that he’d be here,” a man at a table to my left whispers to another. “A little warning would’ve been nice.”
“I would like to meet him,” says a woman behind me to another woman, “see for myself if the rumors are true; I’d risk a beating if he fucks as hard as he hits.”
“He’ll buy the best girl on that stage tonight,” says another man somewhere to my right. “There goes my damn evening.”
“I met him once,” says another woman. “I stood right in front of him with my husband, and he didn’t even look at me. Rude bastard.”
“Iosif Veselov, I take it?” I say to Cesara. The Russian buyer they warned me never to speak to unless he speaks to me first.
“In the flesh.” She’s gazing across the room at him; her face suddenly lights up with what looks like excitement “Definitely going to be an interesting night,” she says, still looking toward Iosif, her grin spreading.
Suddenly, the source of Cesara’s reaction makes its way to my brain as I hear Frances’ annoying voice carrying lightly through the crowd. I peer through the shuffling bodies all moving to their seats to see that Frances’ table is just one table behind Iosif’s. And I notice she is the only person in the room who doesn’t seem the slightest bit interested in this man. But is it just arrogance on Frances’ part? Or, is it something much worse? I don’t know, but I get the feeling it might be that Frances is oblivious to the danger Iosif poses to her. She’s not only a woman, but she’s a woman with a big mouth, and combative with buyers who outbid her, as she had shown on the first night. A part of me shares Cesara’s anticipation of the inevitable clash between the two, but the other part of me, the human part with a conscience is saying Oh shit, oh shit repeatedly inside my head.
Focus on Iosif, I tell myself, and I wonder why I was worried about Frances at all—she’s buying girls as slaves, and the bitch deserves whatever happens to her. Yeah, I don’t care about her. Do I?