Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (6 page)

My head is swimming, alarm bells ringing. “No, no. I’m not going. I’ve gotta get back home. Right now,” I balk, planting my feet firmly on the sidewalk even as I sway slightly. Will nudges my back, pushing me toward the open door of the black vehicle.

“Without your friend?” Will reasons. “How’re you gonna leave without her?”

“I don’t know,” I murmur, fumbling in my pockets, unable to find my phone. I have no idea where it’s gone, so I can’t call anyone to come get me. I haven’t exchanged any of my money for euro yet, so I can’t buy a taxi ride back to the apartment. And I’m realizing just how far away I am — I’ll never be able to walk all the way back home. I’m stuck.

“Don’t worry,” Will says, his breath hot at my ear as he steers me toward the car. “If you don’t wanna go to the party, it’s fine. We’ll just drop you off at your apartment on the way, alright? I won’t let you go home all by yourself in the middle of the night. It’s not safe out there.”

Without any other alternative, and with the pounding clouds of oblivion gathering in my drunken brain, I allow him to push me toward the open door, feeling like I’m stepping through a dark portal to a world from which I may never return again.

I
step
out of the black sedan and into the morning sunlight that’s lighting up the whole city as it wakes. The university will soon be bustling with activity as always, the streets around and within the campus teeming with fresh-faced or dreary-eyed students, as well as faculty, like myself.

But I arrive on campus a few hours before most of the activity really gets started. I always do. Before the rest of the faculty arrives, and long before the students begin to show up, I make my rounds about the facilities I’ve been put in charge of.

I stride into the gymnasium proper, breathing in the air of the training facility and enjoying the moment of peace before the hustle of the day that will be starting before much longer. There’s something about the inside of a gym even more peaceful than the world outside, something unique to this place in particular.

I know what it is, though I dare not dwell on it long. This place has become something of a refuge for me. A shrine where I can distance myself from the past and maybe earn some absolution for the things I still remember, the things that still keep me up some nights.

“
Bonjour
, Max,” greets Marcel, one of the custodians who is finishing cleaning the floors for the morning. “Still don’t trust old Marcel to make sure everything is up to snuff, eh?”

He laughs, and I shake my head with a half-smile. “Your work is impeccable, my friend. I’m just here to keep you on your toes. Can’t have the best custodian at the university resting on his laurels.”

“No, I don’t blame you,” he says as he starts to put up his cleaning equipment. “I’ve seen this round of girls checking out the gym this past weekend, and I swear, some of them could trip on a flat surface, they’re so starry-eyed. You’ve got your hands full with this lot, Max.”

“Don’t discount them so early,” I say with a wag of my finger, bending down to stretch my legs out idly while I wait for the first arrivals. “All these girls worked hard to get here. Can’t be more than three or four of them just here on their parents’ dime — most of them are first-rate athletes, where they come from.”

“There you go with that ‘hard work’ speech again,” Marcel says, shaking his head. “I tell you, I’ll be impressed if half of them last past their starry-eyed welcome to this city. Happens to all the Americans.”

“We’ll see,” I say firmly, “but there’s real potential in this bunch, and maybe you’d see that if you’d take a day off once in a while.”

Marcel laughs as he heads out the door, but only waves to me as he goes. “You should take your own advice. Good training, my friend!”

I give him a nod as he goes, then get back to warming up for the day. Marcel is a jaded old man, but he was one of my first friends coming to the university. My Russian accent still shows, whether I’m speaking French or English, but the custodians here are one of the few groups of people who don’t hold that against me.

Before long, the athletes start filing in, and I must once again stop being Max and become the distant instructor, Monsieur Pavlenko. The role suits me more, I believe. Or at least hope.

Within about ten minutes of each other, just about everyone has arrived. I try not to smile at the thought of how long that habit will last. Today is only the first day of the semester, and my experience tells me that the majority of these students will be bright and eager for the first month or so, but only a few will maintain such punctuality the whole way through. Most of them still speak little or no French, too, so they have each other to rely upon as social outlets.

But I intend to extend that punctuality as long as possible, or weed out the weak ones trying.

“Welcome to training, everyone,” I announce after enough of the class is assembled, clapping my hands to get everyone’s attention. “Glad to see nobody’s booked a flight home yet. We have a long day ahead of us, so I expect all of you at your best.” It doesn’t take long to herd everyone together. I don’t patronize them with the routine of having everyone line up or stand at attention like trained dogs; I know better than to treat skilled athletes like soldiers. My skill and my voice are enough to command the respect I give them in due part.

“My name is Maksim Pavlenko. To you, I am Monsieur Pavlenko, as our gracious French hosts insist. Let me be clear on one thing alone,” I say, pausing dramatically, to look each of them in the eye for an instant. “You are here because you have potential, not because you have any edge over your peers. I will not tolerate anything but exceptional teamwork going forward. I will not hesitate to cut you from this program if you fall short of my expectations, and I have seen some of the finest gymnasts in Paris come through these doors. While you are here, you must give this training your all — I say this for your benefit as well as your peers’. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Monsieur!” comes the general reply from the group, many of them nodding hastily.

“Good,” I say, granting them neither smile nor shift in expression. “Now let’s get to work.”

Drills begin immediately, and as I send the athletes through the routines that their muscles will know as intimately as walking by the time I’m finished with them, I monitor their progress with hawk-like attention.

“Williams! Run that routine again, you know not to hold your back like that.”

“O’Connell, you and Anderson help each other with your posture, I want to see both of you with your shoulders level without thinking about it before lunch today.”

“You didn’t eat breakfast, did you, Jurkowski? You need to take care of yourself, no skipping meals while you’re on my watch.”

I have to drill the athletes harshly. Gymnastics is already an incredibly demanding sport, but in Paris, the expectations surrounding the gymnasts is tripled, easily. Many of these girls have been used to being the best of the best in their respective hometowns, and it is even true that many of them have earned that respect from their childhood classmates and peers. But the feeling of superiority they’ve enjoyed for part of their lives must be stripped from them if they are to advance any further.

As I bark orders at all of the trainees, I see some of them appear to be chafing under my commands, many of them never having been pushed this hard, this fast in a very long time, if ever. But this is by design.

No part of me feels guilty for pushing the athletes so, not even as they’re fresh off the plane in a foreign land, probably feeling more vulnerable than they ever have before. This must be part of the process.

This breaking period serves another purpose, too. As an instructor, it is essential for me to establish a clear hierarchy in the class as well as maintain my distance as a mentor rather than a fellow athlete.

Every time I send one of the gymnasts through a routine, whether on a bar or beam or flat-footed, I personally demonstrate the technique they must use as a baseline for their development.

“That,” I say after sticking a back layout with a half-twist while some of the students look on, “is not a technique I demand that you mimic to perfection. If I were here to teach you how to pantomime, I’d send you out on the streets to emulate the silent performers.” There’s a bit of laughter, and I afford them a half-smile. “I want you to look at the examples of me and the other trainers you’ll meet and develop your own, personal style from that template. Nobody can perfect your technique but you. It’s easy to forget that in a place like this — as a fellow foreigner, I can attest to that,” I say, and my words seem to encourage most of the gymnasts.

“Now back to it, come on!” I shout, and in a moment, they’re off to training again.

I admit, I have more of a teacher in me than I thought I would before starting here. It feels good to give the encouragement to these young women I never received when I was growing up, particularly not so in Russia.

Memories of an old, weathered, dreary orphanage flit through my memories, me and my one friend in that cold and wretched place sticking together to steal food from the administrators and teaming up to defend one another from the other boys.

I shake my head, snapping myself out of the memories. At least that place served to let me be cold and distant when I needed to be.

As I monitor the progress of the gymnasts, I don’t fail to notice that some of their eyes rove to me when they think I’m not paying attention. I am a tall man, easily towering over all of them at six and a half feet, and my workout clothes shows off muscles far larger and harder than most gymnasts, both in my rippling arms and cut calves. My tight shirt leaves little to the imagination in my pecs and abdomen, as well as my stony back muscles that flex and stretch with each technique.

These women are very young, and all of them are out of their element. It would be the easiest thing in the world to become unprofessional with them, and at least once a year, every faculty member has a story about a student who’s tried just such a thing. And there are more stories yet of those professors who
have
taken advantage of the women’s vulnerability.

That is, in part, why I distance myself so harshly, so early, often before the women even arrive in Paris. There was one student in particular with whom I was especially harsh...and I haven’t failed to notice her absence today. As well as one other young woman’s. I know some of the students are prone to dropping out mysteriously, but such a thing is a rarity before the first day starts.

“Martins,” I call one of the women over, and she looks up from her training. “Where are Greenwood and Mason?”

She looks confused for a moment, then blinks in comprehension. “Oh! You mean Liv and Maggie? Uh, I don’t know. Heard they’re roommates, but haven’t heard much from them.”

“Does anyone else here know them?”

“Don’t think so,” she says with a frown. “Everything okay?”

“Nothing for you to worry about,” I say with a frown, taking out my cellphone and waving her off. “But thank you.”

I make my way across the gym to somewhere a little quieter, scrolling through my contacts to find their numbers — I made sure to have everyone’s contact information as they came over. These foreigners were all in my care, after all, and this was not the kind of program to be taken lightly.

Not that I would suspect Liv to be the type to blow off training, which is why I felt a touch of concern as I listen to the droning ring go on and on. I furrow my brow and try Maggie’s number, but only to the same result.

I can’t shake a strange feeling about their silence. In my years of running this program, some students had indeed blown off the classes to go enjoy Paris, but to do so on the first day?

Liv was the most puzzling of the two. She’d been so submissive and meek when we’d met, obediently falling into step. When I first caught her staring at me, I thought she’d melt into the floor of embarrassment.

That’s not the type of girl who wanted to ruffle feathers, especially not with her dedication.

I can’t explain it, but I feel a certain connection to her, as I have since I first met her to invite her to the program. My professionalism required that I be harsh with her, perhaps more so than the other students. I’m not the type of trainer who’d succumb to my baser desires, but I wanted to establish early than I was off-limits, and much too hard and cold for her.

But my impression was such that I had truly high hopes for her at the time we met, and my instincts are rarely so far off.

I peer at the students for a moment more before making another call — this time, to one of my colleagues.

“Max? How’s the new batch of students?”

“Excellent, but I’ve got to go track a couple of them down. Can you cover for me? I’ll owe you a drink later.”

“Ehhh, fine, no problem, I’m around the corner.”

“Thanks, I’ll leave my chart by the door — I’ve got to run.”

“Good luck, Max.”

I hang up the phone and head out of the building, leaving the athletes to handle themselves for the time being. By now, most all of them are self-sufficient enough to handle themselves for five minutes.

For some reason, with every passing heartbeat, I feel a growing sense of urgency regarding the two students. My mind keeps recalling my first meeting with Liv, occasionally wondering if I was too harsh with her despite all the potential I saw, and perhaps that’s what rouses my sense of responsibility even more strongly than usual. Maggie strikes me as more inclined to cut loose, but both are still extremely talented, and the fact that they share an apartment and both haven’t shown concerns me all the more.

I care deeply for my students. In all my time as a teacher, I’ve given more than a few rides home in pouring rain, helped them pay for their equipment and travel costs, and even given little lessons on how to cook cost-effectively. I have a personal stake in such things. So when a young woman fails to appear for the first day of training, I become concerned.

Especially in the case of a talented young woman like Olivia.