Chapter 2

 
Usually I was the first to arrive at the office and unlocked the door to my department myself, but today I was delayed, and the team was already at their desks in a noticeably elevated mood. Today we were all waiting for the Koreans to arrive and the contract to be signed, which meant a working reception and news about a salary increase for the entire next year.

And I understood them. Who could work under those circumstances? We had already shredded our nerves getting ready, and ahead of us loomed the New Year holidays and a long-awaited bonus. For the past month, we had all worked like the damned on the concept for the future ad campaign of a new brand. And I myself, as the agency’s chief creative, had studied the market and developed the presentation of our capabilities.

The previous Thursday, Regina and I had delivered that presentation for the Koreans. Merzlyaeva had shown herself off in a diamond set rented from our clients and a mink cape, demonstrating the success of her agency and the skill of her dentist, while I talked myself hoarse, explaining, outlining, showing, and promising.

Promising what I knew for certain I would deliver. And everything had gone wonderfully. The client representatives had left satisfied, intending to return on Monday. That was why, like everyone else, I was already mentally deciding where I would spend my bonus and what trip I would send Zhenka on.

That was why, when I entered the office and headed to my desk, I pretended not to notice a couple of bottles of sparkling wine by my assistant’s drawer.

“Hi, everyone! I’m here! Marik, hide that before I see it.”

“Hi, Lina! You didn’t see it anyway! By the way, did you notice, boss? It’s your favorite martini! And I can’t wait to open it.”

“Boss?” I smirked at my friend’s joke. “Careful you don’t call me that in front of Regina. She’ll call you in and lecture you about chain of command. Girls, don’t listen to Subbota! Mondays cloud his judgment!”

“You’re wrong, Vetrova. Mondays bring me revelations! And believe me, everyone here knows whose team we are!”

Arguing with Marik was difficult, and I knew that better than anyone. Maryan Subbota and I had been friends since university. I wouldn’t say we were bosom buddies while we were studying, but we liked each other.

Our friendship grew stronger in our fifth year, when we found shared interests and an internship at a serious manufacturing company, where we ended up together. But advertising concrete blocks and rebar turned out not to be very interesting, and after successfully defending my diploma, I went looking for work closer to the fashion and beauty industry. A year later, once I had my own small department, I dragged Marik over to my side too. Since then, I had trusted him as I trusted myself, and I had never once doubted that trust.

Subbota’s looks were hard for women not to notice. Tall and well built, a dark-haired man with green eyes, he was unusually smiley and good-looking. He could easily have broken women’s hearts if he’d had the right personality type. But Marik avoided complications, made do with books and his own company, and in his free time preferred racing along highways on a sportbike.

He successfully held the attention of the girls in the department, entertaining them with stories that, with well-read Marik, never ran out, while still managing to keep his distance from everyone. Everyone except his loyal friend. In short, to me he was one of my own, and like all my own people, he couldn’t stand my boyfriend.

Couldn’t stand him at all!

Subbota’s desk stood next to mine, and he spoke quietly when I set my purse on the file cabinet beside the printer and began taking off my coat:

“Our little omega is here. He arrived with Regina, as businesslike as my file folders, and already pawing the ground. He’s dropped by twice asking for you. He kept pestering me about why your phone wasn’t answering.”

“Arnold?” I took off my coat and hung it on a hanger. I looked at my friend. “Why ask you?” I wondered. “Usually you two refuse to notice each other at point-blank range.”

And that “usually” had lasted for years. Thank God, though, Regina’s son was not often in the office, and when he did come, he spent a couple of hours in his mother’s office, after which he took me to lunch and left on “urgent business,” sometimes taking Allochka with him too.

“So I asked him whether he thought you’d spent the night at my place,” Marik said, raising an eyebrow.

I had just taken off my glasses, and my eyes went round.

“You actually said that? He doesn’t understand jokes!”

“What am I, an information desk?” Subbota snorted. “It’s not my problem you two don’t sleep together. Personally, even thinking about it makes me nauseous. You know—about your sex life.”

“Water!” Marik raised a hand, pretending he was thirsty and drinking from a bottle. “Have mercy, insatiable woman, I need a break!”

I understood. And only Marik could get away with something like that. So I grabbed the first folder of papers I saw from the desk and smacked him on the forehead with it.

“Shut up!”

How many times, angry at myself and my stupid relationship with Merzlyaev, had I complained to my friend over a glass of martini about how I’d managed to get tangled up with him?

No, of course I knew “how.” By now, without even guessing, I could assume that Regina had twisted the inexperienced girl I’d once been around her finger and taken me under her control. It was no accident that my director had drawn me closer as soon as I changed the way the team worked internally and started bringing the agency money.

And when, in the simplicity of my heart, I once let slip that I dreamed of opening my own advertising agency, she invited me to her home and introduced me to her son “unofficially.”

Like a matchmaker, Regina watched over us and showered us with hints. She kept pushing Arnold at me. Whispered in my ear that a girl without parents couldn’t drift through life like a stray leaf. That I needed a strong, reliable shoulder to lean on. A good man I could always depend on.

Spoiled by his mother’s care, vain and lazy at the same time, Arnold did not fit those parameters at all, but I wasn’t used to male attention and didn’t understand the details right away. Besides, I had started earning a decent salary, and the attention of a confident, experienced woman like Regina flattered me.

Her twin children looked like her. All three had pointed chins, sharp noses, dark hair, and a slightly smug air.

Or maybe not so slightly. I had little to do with the life of the Merzlyaev family outside work. And even later, when Arnold and I became boyfriend and girlfriend, our relationship barely held together. I didn’t like visiting their home, and Arnold was irritated by my Zhenka, who wrinkled her nose at the sight of Merzlyaev as if he’d fouled the air. So we usually met at work, and sometimes wherever we could.

Our first time was so awkward and awful that we didn’t go near each other for two months. I had already decided everything between us was over and that I could keep drifting along like a stray leaf, until Regina intervened.