“Which was what?”
“Protecting Mariya!” Nora snorted and puffed out her chest, which was as large as her older sister’s.
Valery snorted back. “Get your big sister to pay your share, then—don’t ask our brother!”
“Booooo! Mariya! Valery’s being mean to me!”
“Both of you, stop fighting. Oh, for… Argh! Brother?”
“Okay,” I said. I patted each of them on the back. “What say we go home and get something to eat?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Say, comrade, did you hear?”
“Word is some guy went toe to toe with Aquarium and lived to collect his pay.”
“Huh?! With spetsnaz? Not half bad.”
“Eh, so what? He’ll be dead soon enough…”
✦ ✦ ✦
It’s true—everyone dies eventually.
The Janitors’ rumors do reach my ears now and again; sometimes I even contribute to them myself.
You hear about particularly capable Janitors every once and a while, but eventually, you stop hearing about them.
Maybe they died, maybe they retired, maybe they changed riverbanks—no way to know. And I wasn’t interested.
I’ve got nothing in common with those back-alley legends, the Baba Yaga fairy tales people tell and have always told in the shadows. I’m not Uchitel, the Teacher, and I’m sure not Captain Ilya Murometz.
That’s what it means to be a top-class, run-of-the-mill, replaceable part.
“Mn… Ah…”
I ran my fingers along the curves of porcelain-white breasts, which rose and fell in time with her breathing. She twisted and moaned, looking like she was drowning in a sea of white sheets.
—Who benefited? That’s the question.
The KGB got to save on its budget and put Narkomfin in its debt.
GRU got to flex its intimidation muscles without losing a single person. Miss Tachibana survived, and she would loosen the purse strings for GRU a bit in the future.
Mariya got to show off what she could do, and since it all wrapped up nice and neat, she’d probably been paid well.
And then there was me.
I survived the affair and got my money, and here I was fondling a pair of pale, beautiful, perfectly formed breasts.
The only piece of clothing I had nearby was battered old body armor full of holes.
“Danya…”
My own name caught me off guard. A pale hand ran through my hair.
In almost the same motion, my nose descended toward the snowy peaks, and I took a lungful of the sweet aroma of soap.
“You were thinking about something else just now, weren’t you?”
I looked up and saw moya lyubimaya <the person I loved most>. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes gleamed, damp.
Knowing that I was the one who had made her that way fired my manly pride.
“Nyet. I don’t like when your mind’s not on me,” she said.
“Will you mend my outfit?” I asked.
Her answer was her lips on mine.
“Ngh… Daaa…nya… Danyaaa…!”
Stasia’s breath came harsh. It was like she was gasping for air, and she breathed from my mouth.
Our tongues reached out hesitantly, then entwined. I answered her seeking.
“Oooh… Ahhh… Ahn! Daaanya…! Mmm… Oh! Danya… Danya!”
Once upon a time, I had thought a hundred rubles seemed like enough money to buy the whole world. But what about now? Right now, this one night was everything to me.
So I put everything on her—all the kindness I could muster, focused completely on loving her.
It was about as much as a Janitor could do.