Chapter 260: His plaything

Don Konstantin did not go back to the mansion right away.

He left the lab with his jaw tight and his hand still curled into a fist. Kalisto’s words followed him down the hall like a smell that replaced him. Lose her mind again. Reap. Every step made him angrier.

He needed to let it out somewhere, and he knew just where to go. The lift took him down, down, into the red light.

The showroom was quiet. The bed stood in the center of the stage, and the glass boxes caught the glow and held it. Elena was gone from her pillar. Someone had already taken her away, and the floor still shone where she had been.

But Elena was not the one he came to see. At the far end of the room, a girl waited alone in a plain gray dress.

Aliya.

She stood up when she saw him. Her hair was tied back, and her face was bare and pale. There were faint shadows under her eyes. A few weeks ago she had worn silk and diamonds and sat in a chair that was not hers. Now she looked small.

My new plaything, he thought, and the idea almost made him smile.

He walked to a chair at the side of the room and sat down. He did not say a word. He only looked at her. Aliya did not need to be told what that look meant. She had learned quickly in this place.

Slowly, she crossed the floor. She lowered herself to her knees in front of him and kept her eyes on the tiles.

"Get to work," the Don said. His voice was flat and bored. It was an order he had given a hundred times to a hundred people.

Aliya understood. Her whole body understood, and it went stiff and cold. She lifted her hands and laid them on his thigh.

Then she hesitated. It was only a second. A small, shaky breath.

"I was thinking," she said, very quietly. "If I could just speak to my father. Please. If I could see him for a moment, I..."

She did not finish. "I thought I told you." The Don’s voice cut across the room like a whip.

"Not to speak. Not unless I ask you to."

Aliya flinched so hard that her hands came off him. "I, I only.."

"Did I ask you a question?"

"No, but I.."

"Enough!"

He stood up so fast that the chair scraped backward across the floor. Aliya stumbled and fell onto her hands. Her hair came loose, and her face turned white.

The Don stood over her, breathing hard. The moment was gone. Whatever he had come here to do, he did not want it now. Her voice had spoiled it, and every time he looked at her, he saw Capri’s smirk.

"Forget it," he said coldly. He pulled his jacket straight and brushed his cuffs. He did not look at her face.

"Your father is already dead." For a moment, Aliya did not move.

The words did not seem to make sense. They hung in the air without landing, like a sentence in another language. Her lips parted.

Then they landed.

Something deep in her chest dropped, all the way down, and kept falling. She stared at the Don’s polished shoes. She could not breathe. "What?" she whispered.

"I shot him myself this afternoon." He said it the way a man mentions he had lunch. "He is gone." Gone.

Her hands curled against the floor. Her father. The man who had carried her on his shoulders. The man who had taught her everything, even the cruel things. The man whose name had made her walk with her head up.

She had not even been allowed to see him. "And since you cannot even manage this simple thing," the Don went on, with a small, tired shake of his head, "maybe you will be of use tonight. In another way. You can serve."

Aliya’s head snapped up.

"Serve?" Her voice cracked. "No. No, please." The color drained from her face a second time.

"You promised me." She scrambled onto her knees. Tears were already running down her cheeks. "You promised I would never work in the showroom again. You promised. Please. I am sorry. I will do whatever you want, I will be quiet, I will not say a word, but please don’t send me back there!"

She reached for his sleeve. He stepped away before she could touch it.

"Not the showroom," the Don said. His eyes were cold and almost amused. "At my villa. Tonight. I’m throwing a dinner. You will help serve drinks."

Aliya stopped.

She stared up at him, breathing in short, ragged gasps. It took her a moment to understand. It was not the showroom. It was not the red light and the glass boxes.

It was worse in a different way.

She would be walking among the very people who had once kissed her cheek. The women who had admired her dresses. The men who had raised glasses to her father. They would all see her in a gray apron with a tray in her hands.

And she would be serving at their table.

"You will do it quietly," the Don said. "You will smile. You will not speak unless someone speaks to you."

He leaned down, just a little. "And God help you if you mess that up as well." He straightened. Then he turned and walked toward the lift, his white jacket shining in the red dark.

The doors closed behind him with a soft chime. Aliya stayed where she was.

She sat on the cold floor with her knees drawn up and her arms around them. The room was silent. The glass boxes stared at her from every side. Her head was spinning.

She could not seem to hold a single thought. They slid off one by one like rain on a window. My father is dead. My father is dead. The words repeated, and she could not make them mean anything.

She had not been allowed to see him. She had not been allowed to say goodbye, or even to see his face. He was lying somewhere in that building, in the dark, and she was sitting here waiting for someone to tell her what to do next.

She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. She did not scream. She did not make any sound at all. Quietly, the tears fell, one after another, onto the shining floor.