Saving the Sinner (Curvy for Keeps Book 9) Read online

  SAVING THE SINNER

  by

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

  1

  YASMIN

  I stare at the convent wall and it stares back at me in silent judgment. The green paint has faded to the dead yellow of fields in winter. Winter came early this year, I think as I glance down at my solitary green suitcase and then back at the walls of my room in the convent’s tower. Winter came early for me.

  “Where will you go?” says the Mother Supreme. I look at her and shrug and then look away. She doesn’t care. Why would she care? She’s the reason I’m going.

  No, you are the reason you’re going, I remind myself as I press my thighs together so tight I feel a catch in my lower back. Still I squeeze, clenching the sinful space between my legs and closing my eyes as I let judgment wash over me. Perhaps forgiveness will follow.

  Even though I’ve done nothing for which to be forgiven.

  “The Ravarnian Faith demands that the women of the cloth be not just celibate but chaste,” Mother Supreme said when she informed me that I would not be permitted to take my vows with the others next month. I had failed the medical exam, she told me. I was not chaste. I was not clean. I was not pure and untouched.

  “No man has touched me,” I’d said firmly, the color rising red in my cheeks as my fingers clawed at my black robe. Mother Supreme had straightened her lithe body and glanced at my heavy bosom and my wide hips, and when she looked into my eyes I saw that she was both disgusted and pleased. She’d disliked me the day I got to this little community in Utah, travelling all the way from Las Vegas with one suitcase and all the money I had left after the robbery. Of course, I wasn’t being fully honest about never being touched by a man—after all, swinging my big hips on a stripper-stage got me a lot of lap-dances when I was back on the club floor, and although I never did private rooms or anything outside the club like the other girls, I was certainly touched.

  But not in that way.

  Never in that way.

  So when I burned my G-strings and tossed my tinsel-tops and decided to start a new life with this offshoot revival of the old religion of Ravarnia, the war-torn country my mother had fled with me in her arms, I sure as hell didn’t expect to be turned away. I thought it was a calling. I thought it was my fate. I thought it was my destiny.

  “Perhaps hell is my calling,” I say out loud as Mother Supreme’s quick footsteps fade away in the hallway outside. “Perhaps flames are my fate. Perhaps death is my destiny.”

  I gather my things and walk through the empty hallway and down the stairs to the main floor and into the prayer hall. I glance up at the vivid frescoes that adorn the domed ceiling of the prayer hall as I walk past the empty pews of polished wood. The Ravarnian Faith emerged decades ago, doing away with a great many orthodox traditions and starting a few new traditions in the process. One is that there are no priests, only nuns. A matriarchal religion that saves the souls of men and women alike. I loved the idea when Mama told me about it in the years before she died. I’d asked her why she never mentioned it earlier, but she just shrugged and smiled before coughing so hard she was no good for the rest of the day. Those last days were hard for both of us, and when the filterless Russian cigarettes finally took her from me, I took what she left me and moved to Vegas.

  One of the things she left me was this old green suitcase that’d held all our possessions when we fled the old country. Later she confessed that she’d stuffed me into this very suitcase when she was stopped by a Russian patrol outside the Ravarnian docks. She never told me what she offered those Russian guards for them to let her through the gates and onto the small fishing trawler that ferried us across the Caspian Sea to freedom. I don’t want to know. All I know is that she did what she had to do, and there’s no sin in that. There can’t be.

  “There must have been a mistake,” I say to Mother Supreme one more time as I walk past her outside the heavy wooden double-doors. I turn and glance at the arched doorway, the high steeple. Then I look hopefully at Mother Supreme.

  She stands still and stoic. Her skin looks gray in the overcast afternoon. I might as well argue with the walls. I turn and walk past the door and down the steps and onto the stone-studded path. She waits until I make it down the path and out the metal gate. Then the double doors close and I am alone.

  I tighten my grip on that old suitcase handle that’s rough and worn but still strong. I’m still strong too, I decide. Mama made it past the Russians with me in her suitcase. I can make it out of freakin’ Utah.

  The clouds thicken as I walk towards the only bus station that serves this community. There’s one bus every day, and it only goes to Salt Lake City. Hopefully I haven’t missed it.

  2

  SALT LAKE CITY

  YURI

  “You missed your shift,” I say coldly to the girl. She’s crying big tears that are streaking her eyeliner and making little black waterfalls on her sunken cheeks. “I am running a serious business here, and if you cannot be serious, I cannot use you. Go. Now.”

  She says something but I don’t give a damn. I snap my fingers at Grigori the Bouncer and he thunders over to take out the trash. The other girls look but say nothing. They know better than to intervene when I am instilling discipline. When I fire a girl I do it in full view of the others. Of course, I do not like to fire the girls. It is hard to find dancers worth my money in this town. The only ones who make it out here are running from something. And often it is themselves.

  “You want to hurt me then do it yourself, you big fucking pussy!” the girl shrieks. She’s yelling at me, and I sigh and turn and shake my head when I see the bruise on her arm. It has been years since I touched a girl, and I glare at my bouncer.

  “You need to relax your grip, you overgrown piece of muscle,” I growl in Russian to Grigori. He’s a monster of a man who eats steroids instead of regular food. He grunts and rubs his tattooed neck and I wave him away. I dig into my black jeans and pull out a roll of bills held by a red rubberband. I flip through the hundreds until I find one that’s dirty and torn. I toss it at the sunken-cheeked shrieker and turn my back on her. I have bigger things to worry about today.

  Very big things, in fact.

  “Big man in Utah, eh?” comes the voice as I step into my office. I’m startled that he’s already here, and it’s all I can do to hide my nervousness and greet him with a tight smile.

  “Welcome, Ivano,” I say, shaking his hand firmly. He’s wearing long sleeves but the tattoos go all the way past his wrists and I know they cover every inch of his broad back and heavy torso. I know because we got many of those tattoos together. Inked as brothers. We started in the Bratva at the same time all those years ago, and there was a time we believed we would rise together, rule together. But that was not my fate. Once we were equals and now I bow to him like a boy.

  Not for long, though.

  “Your flight was good?” I say, glancing down at the silver Glock sticking out of his belt. I had asked him to come alone, saying I had some personal business, a private favor. He agreed surprisingly fast—suspiciously fast. So of course I am on my guard. I didn’t see his men in the club, but they might be outside. I cannot move on him until I know how many he brings with him. I want to ask but hold my tongue. Ivano and I were once so close it was like telepathy between us. Right now it would not be good if he could read my sinful thoughts.

  “It is sinful what airlines are doing these days with their tiny seats and little packets of peanuts,” Ivano grunts, leaning back on the black leather couch and slapping the backrest like he’s testing the furniture. “And this is First Class I speak of, mind you!”

  He c
huckles and I grin. Then he holds out his arm and I shake it hard. The handshake feels good, the skin of our palms touching again after many years. A twinge of guilt goes through me when I look into his gray eyes and know that soon that light will be extinguished. I have killed many before and I will kill many more before I fall. But this will be the hardest. This one will hurt.

  And that is why I do it.

  I do it to feel the hurt.

  I do it to hurt myself.

  I do it even though I do not understand why I do it.

  “I hurt for you, Yuri,” he says as I pull open the small freezer and take out a chilled bottle of Russian vodka. Ivano watches as I fill two shot-glasses. I hand him one and he takes it and raises it. “Nostrovia,” he whispers, and we swallow together. I fill us up again and we down another. I don’t offer him a third. Why waste good vodka on a man who will not live long enough to enjoy the buzz?

  “Thank you for coming,” I say after swallowing his words along with the clean aftertaste of the cold, syrupy vodka. He does not hurt for me, I know. He is part of the reason I am exiled in Salt Lake City. He did not cause it but perhaps he could have stopped it. Instead he looked the other way and let the Bratva treat me like a dog. Now he is a boss and I am humiliated and insulted, put out to pasture like a man past his prime.

  But Yuri is not past his prime.

  Yuri has not even reached his prime yet.

  “Have you eaten?” I say.

  Ivano shakes his head and grins and pats his belly. It is larger than when we worked the streets together, collecting debts in Chicago and Saint Louis and Tulsa and Omaha. I am still lean and hard, but Ivano has become soft and secure. Too much of the good life.

  “Your men need anything? Grigori can get them something to eat and drink.” I speak far too casually, touching my nose and blinking. I am on edge and it angers me.

  “I came alone, just like you asked,” says Ivano, his gray eyes narrowing as my neck-hairs bristle. “It is strange, actually. I was thinking of you recently. Thinking of you being here in Utah. I have some other business brewing in Utah, and I had been thinking of you as a partner. I thought of you and then you called! Hah! We always had that telepathic connection, yes?” He exhales and reaches for the bottle and fills both our glasses. I relax a bit as we drink together.

  Ivano’s head moves back as he drinks and I see that old silver chain around his thick neck. “They let you wear that?” I say, wiping my mouth and squinting at the oval pendant that carries the symbol of the Ravarnian Faith. Ravarnia is a touchy subject with some of the old guard in the Bratva. Some of them fought in the Russian army during the Ravarnian Revolution. So did my father, in fact. But he defected during the Revolution. Sadly the Revolution did not last long, but the Ravarnians fought like demons. They are just a footnote in history now, but they left their mark on the Russians.

  “I do not wear it except when I am alone,” says Ivano. He glances at my neck and then into my green eyes. “Or when I am with a Ravarnian brother. Where is yours?”

  “I have no religion anymore, Ivano,” I say, shifting on my feet as I firm my resolve. I chuckle and shake my head. “Besides, I do not think the Ravarnian Faith is a religion anymore.”

  Ivano shakes his head. “You are wrong. There is a revival group not far from here. A convent that ordains Ravarnian nuns. I know the Mother Supreme. She reached out to me last year for a . . . donation.”

  I frown and touch the scar above my right eye. “Did you give?”

  Ivano holds out his arms and flashes a pious look followed by a wink. “Of course. A house full of young virgins needs a Daddy, yes?” He chuckles and winks again. “Perhaps I will visit them after our business is complete. You want to come along?”

  I grin and shake my head. Ivano has always had a weakness for the young and untouched. I myself prefer the banished and broken—being those things myself. Strange that even though I run a business built on the backs of the banished and broken, I have no desire to sample my own product. Perhaps the girls in my club are not the right kind of broken.

  Or perhaps I am just the wrong kind of broken.

  Now something rises in me like a serpent, and my throat constricts as the vodka hits me hard like a hammer. I had always planned to kill Ivano today, but I did not expect to be so turned around in the head. Perhaps it is mention of Ravarnia and the old religion. Perhaps it is the childhood memories of the old country from which both Ivano and I hail. We were born Ravarnians but our blood is Russian. Still, Ravarnia has a way of getting into your blood, infecting you like a disease, possessing you like a demon.

  And now I snap, and without another thought I grab that half-empty bottle by the neck and bring it down hard and clean on Ivano’s head. The bottle shatters against his thick skull, and before he can pull his gun I slice the jagged glass across his throat and drive the shards into his jugular. I pull out and step back as blood gushes like a river in spring. Ivano’s last breath comes as a gurgle, and he slumps down in the leather and his head rolls back and his eyes stay open and eerily focused. I reach out and yank off that chain and shove it into my pocket. Then I slide my palm down along his face and close his eyelids. I look at him and wonder if he still sees me.

  I know he sees me.

  He sees me even in death.

  He will see me forever.

  See me for what I am . . .

  A sinner.

  The worst kind of sinner.

  3

  YASMIN

  “Sinners of Salt.” I read the sign above the dark-tinted club windows and frown and rub my hair that’s all mussed from the bus ride. “Now Hiring!” I mutter, reading the rectangular metal sign that’s stuck in the corner of the door near the bottom. Salt Lake City isn’t Vegas, but stripclubs are as common as gas stations in America now.

  Still, there aren’t that many in this city, and considering I have no other skills and very little money, the signs couldn’t be any clearer. I’m going in.

  “Or maybe not,” I say, pulling the door and then pushing it before giving up and sighing. I press my face to the tinted glass and try to see inside. I see the dim outlines of booths and the center stage but nothing’s moving inside. Vegas stripclubs get customers for breakfast and lunch, but I guess the Salt Lake City sinners only come out after dark.

  “At least it’s warm out,” I say as I stroll down the storefront to find a spot I can sit and wait. I stand my suitcase in a sunny spot and park my big butt on it. It’s got a sturdy steel frame that can take my weight. I sigh and lean back against the cool glass of the club window. Another sigh and then I look down at myself, puffing out my cheeks and wondering why I haven’t lost weight after three months of convent-food. “Guess Mother Supreme likes her virgins fattened up for the Devil,” I whisper before biting my tongue at the blasphemy I just uttered. Whatever, I decide as I glance at my crotch and wonder if I was born with more original sin than other girls.

  I’m still staring at my crotch in wonder when I hear something behind the club window. I turn and squint. Someone’s moving inside, and I press my face to the glass again and try to see what’s going on. But the sun is out and it’s too dark inside and I can’t see shit. Still, there’s definitely someone inside, and so I hurry to the door and knock on it.

  No answer and so I knock again and peer inside. Nothing’s moving now, but then I see shadows against the far side, near where I was sitting. I hurry back over and knock on the window. Then I glance down the block and see the alley, and without waiting I grab my suitcase and scurry down to the unmarked red metal side door. I bang on the door and on a whim pull the handle. To my surprise the latch clicks like it wasn’t shut all the way and the door opens!

  I smile wide and glance up at the sliver of blue sky above the alleyway. “Thank you!” I whisper to the Goddess. Then I’m inside, and I put my suitcase against the door and look around. “Hello!” I call, cocking my head and listening. There’s a large exhaust fan above the door that’s whirring like it’s o
n a mission, and I can barely hear myself breathe. So I step towards the main club to see who’s around.

  It takes a moment for my eyes to focus in the dimness, but it takes less than a moment for my heart to start beating so hard my knees shake.

  “What the hell?” I mutter when I see what looks like a scene out of hell itself. All I can see are shadows and silhouettes, but from here it sure looks like a man dragging a body down the corridor along the wall. The man is lean but heavily muscled, and he’s wearing no shirt. The dead body is big and bulky, and as I watch them the man bends down and then heaves the body up and over his shoulder. He mutters something in what sounds like Russian. Then he disappears down the corridor towards the back of the club, leaving behind a trail of blood that drips from the dead man’s neck.

  I’m frozen so stiff that my furiously beating heart is the only sign I’m alive. Did he see me? Obviously not or I’d be dead too. I glance at the door and at my suitcase and then up at the exhaust fan that gave me cover when I entered. I stare into the spinning blades as my mind spins even faster. I know I should walk out that door and get as far away from here as I can. I know that it’s only the grace of the Goddess that the man didn’t see me. But I also can’t fight that feeling that the Goddess led me here in the first place. How weird was it that the latch to that side door had stuck and not closed all the way? How convenient was it that the exhaust fan was going full speed so the man didn’t hear me come in or even knock on the window? How odd was it to hear the man mutter something in Russian . . . and Russian with an accent.

  A Ravarnian accent.

  “There’s something for you here,” I whisper as a tremor goes down my spine and my breath catches in my throat and my gut seizes up in that sickening way when I know I have to make a choice. I’ve been led here and shown this scene in the way the holy women of history were shown their visions, brought to the edges of their faith, tested to see if they were fit to serve the Faith.

  And what is the most sacred duty of a Ravarnian nun, I ask myself as I finger the silver chain around my neck and pray inwardly to the Goddess for direction, for strength, for clarity.