Chapter 53

Ivan

"Coming to this place, I thought I would finally be free; I thought I would get to live life on my own terms, you know, without having anyone to tell me how to live my life but then you show up. Now, you are the one telling me what I am allowed to do and what I'm not." She sniffed after saying that to me.

I tried to shut my ears and just successfully drop her off so she could attend he lecture for today. I stopped my car when I got to HSE's parking lot.

"We are here," I announced to her but her facial expressions to me were cold and unresponsive."Jewel, we are here, get your books ready and make sure not to forget your pen in the car." I said again and stepped out of the car to go open the door for her.

"You don't need to go round the car everytime and open the door for me if you are not going to let me do the simple things  that make me happy." She hissed and I could hear the annoyance in her voice.  It had me thinking thoroughly but quickly what u wanted, to be closer to her or to make her more scared of me as her abductor.

I sighed at what I was about to say: "This friend you talked about..." I trailed off to let her know that I was willing to take about what she earlier requested.

"We are not friends yet," I saw Jewel's face light up."I didn't tell her my name the other day because you asked me not to talk to anyone, but she seems nice. And yeah, she has other friends I could befriend too."

"No."

"Huh?"

"No more than one person. You get to talk with one person so that every other person around you both can know that you are not a weirdo."

"But..."

"Just one." I made my decision clear to her and heard her muffle a grunt.

"Okay. Just one. Thanks." She said and I smiled.

"I'm glad it's a girl you plan to talk to. Is it the girl from the restaurant? The one with whom I saw you with at our table?"

"Yeah, it's her."

"I'm trusting you. Don't say anything about the relationship between me and you. Don't mention my name to her and most importantly, do not have or carry on a conversation about me or how we met or anything about your father and my gang's relationship. Are we clear?"

"Okay." She smiled. I sighed and hoped secretly that I didn't make a wrong decision with this."Are you coming with me or you are going to wait in your car?"

"I will wait here." I told her and watched her go on into the building, smiling from ear to ear.

When she was out of sight, I called Konstantin to check up on how one of our operations were going.

"How are things there?" I asked him the second his received my call.

****

Amina's Pov

I had the biggest smile as I walked into the venue for today's class. Ivan is not as bad as I tell myself he is. I saw the girl from the restaurant, Karenn, she didn't wave and call out to me like she did previously so my excitement died. She probably gave up on trying to talk to me. The look on her face suggested that she could punch me in the face if I even approached her so I just sighed and walked past the row where she sat and moved on to the one behind.

As soon as I sat, I felt a hand tap on my shoulder so I turned around. It was Viktor. He smiled at me so I just smiled back to dismiss him but I realized late that doing that was a mistake because he skipped over the table and joined me where I sat.

"You smiled back, does that me we can talk?" He asked with a happy tune so I shook my head in response.

"Come on, please?" He came closer so I shooed at him with my hands and he moved back, thankfully."What is it? Why don't you talk? You have a swollen tongue or something?"

"Eww," I expressed my irritation to what he said but covered my mouth with my hand after.

He smiled and came closer to me again."So it's not your tongue that's the problem, you just don't want to talk to me?"

Could he just go away? I told Ivan that I wouldn't talk to anyone but the girl but now he was here and it was hard asking him to leave me the hell alone with my mouth shut.

"Why don't you want to talk to me, do I have bad breath?" He asked and exhaled in his palm to smell his breath."Come on, say something again, please? You have a pretty nice voice, you know? I wanna hear it again."

"Hold on, do you not speak English? Should I speak Russian?" He wasn't stopping anytime.

"No." I replied again and covered my mouth like before.

"Of course, not Russian. You are not from here, yeah?"

"Please, leave me alone?" I decided to beg him.

"Yayy, you are talking." He did a little victory dance with just his shoulders. I laughed. It was funny when he did that.

"What do you want from me?"

"Your name? And maybe lunch date?"

"What?"

"No, I shouldn't be that forward. Ask me that again, I will give a different answer." He laughed and I thought he sounded nervous. I was so good at being nervous myself that I could sense it when someone else was being nervous.

"I'm not telling you my name, and forget about the lunch date. Can you just return to your seat and not talk to me."

"Woah, you are asking for the impossible." He laughed nervously still."Forget I said anything about the lunch date, let's start with being friends? How about I reintroduce myself to you like it's the first time I'm seeing you?"

He took off his glove from his right hand and put it out in front of me to take."Hi, I'm Viktor, you are?"

"I'm not telling you my name." I repeated to him."And no, we can't be friends, I'm only allowed to befriend one person." I ignored his hands for the second time since I've seen him.

"Allowed? You are seeking permission to make friends?" He withdrew his hand and put on his glove back.

"Did I say that?" I pursed my lips. Fuck shit, I just told him. No panic, Amina, that can be corrected.