Sergey's Stashes

I heard Sergey's widow, Sonia, flare up at Ivan, Sergey's brother, although I wasn't that close to where they stood next to the gravesite. Of course everyone's heads had snapped up when they heard Sonia lash out in that snarly, nasal, thickly accented voice of hers. She was leaning heavily on the arm and shoulder of a younger, thuggish Russian guy I'd seen hanging around on Sergey's goon squad. Sonia was a buxom Slavic blonde a good bit beyond her "use by" date, although it was quite evident she'd been very tasty at some point in her life. Sergey had kept in much better condition, considering he now was dead. As I understand it, the money for his financial stakings had come from her family and that her family was one you wouldn't want to mess with. I do know that she no longer had what it took to keep Sergey home and satisfied.

I'd done what I could to hold back at Las Vegas's Woodlawn cemetery. I might have come closer--the crowd was fairly large--without being notice, although there was little reason for Sonia to think that I was anything more than the lounge singer at the Ice Palace bar in Sergey's Russian Dreams casino on the Las Vegas strip. Ivan, the casino's entertainment chief and therefore my boss, had seen me approach the grave ceremony, though, and had motioned for me to hang back. It was good he did. Sonia was casting her baleful look on those around the gravesite, no doubt looking for a target. I doubt, though, that, in her wildest dreams, she would have set her ire on me. I would have been the target she was looking for, though.

"What's this about him dying in his mistress's arms?" Ivan, Sonia had blasted out. "Where did the media get that idea and why have you been avoiding me?"

"Let's keep it down, Sonia." Ivan said in as soothing a voice as a Russian mafioso could manage. "People are looking. This isn't the time or place to--"

"And the money. Why is the casino accountant telling me there may be some discrepancies--?"

"Not now, Sonia. The priest is about to begin." Ivan had wrapped his arms around the widow, but he was looking back at me. I didn't want to talk to him now--or ever again, if I could avoid it. I wasn't so dense that I didn't realize that all bets were off on my employment at the casino. But he had that "I want to talk to you" look in his eyes. His black suit jacket was pushed open in his awkward embrace of Sonia so that I could see the butt of the gun in his armpit holster. I shuddered. How did I get involved with these people to begin with?

But I knew how that had happened, of course.

Ivan had known what was what here too, of course. That's why I had called him that Tuesday night--just a week ago now?--in a panic. I didn't know what else--who else--to call. Ivan was Sergey's pimp as well as his brother and his right-hand man at the casino. It was because of Sergey's appetites and that Ivan already was getting me singing gigs that Ivan knew. It's why I got the permanent singing job at the casino, although I was good enough to hold down the job. Ivan liking how I had scratched his itch was what got me hooked up with Sergey. I'd only gone under Ivan a few time before I was turned over to Sergey. Ivan wanted to deliver his offerings to Sergey as fresh as possible, and I got the distinct impression that Sergey didn't like to share, not even with his brother. Sergey's desires were why I had a small suite to live in at the casino. It, of course, was better than I could get for digs otherwise, but I had the rooms for Sergey's convenience more than mine.

Sergey was a little lethargic that Tuesday night. I had to pump him up with my hand and mouth, and then, although he usually was a vigorous top, exceptionally so for a big, pretty heavy man in his early fifties, I was saddled on him, riding him, both of us having a good time--I couldn't deny I liked having Sergey inside me--when he gave a snort and a fart, his eyes went wide and fixed, and he stopped breathing. I tried CPR but that didn't work. So, I called Ivan, who showed up within minutes because he was downstairs supervising the casino entertainment, and he'd come and done the rest. Sergey was already gone when Ivan got there. While he was wiping surfaces down and contemplating what to do next and in what order, I had to pack out everything that was mine and move to another room--a smaller room, I might add--one without a good view. I obviously was sinking fast in importance here in the casino.

I hadn't seen Ivan since then until we were both at the cemetery for the funeral. I only had one thing I needed to clear up with him and then there wasn't anything I wanted more than to change my life and identity and clear out of Las Vegas. I didn't want any more to do with Ivan or anything connected with Sergey--and certainly none of their Russian friends--and I didn't want to do casinos ever again, especially ones that had been as shady at Russian Dreams was. I didn't really want to know what little I did know about Russian-run casinos.

I'd almost made it to the cemetery entrance, walking as much as I could within groups of others, and was starting to make a call for an Uber ride back to the casino, when one of the black limousines I mistakenly took as being from the mortuary company rolled up beside me and stopped. The tinted window for the backseat glided down and there was Ivan Sarnov saying, "Get in, Dale. We need to talk."

"Yep, we do," I said, as I climbed into the backseat. I needed to assure him I'd leave quietly and never say anything if they'd let me go.

It was just the two of us in the back. I was surprised to see Pete, from the casino security staff--yet another Russian, one of Sergey's favorite muscle guys--driving the limo rather than someone from the funeral services. That gave me a scare. The car rolled off in a different direction from the line of funeral service cars, so I knew then I was being taken for a different ride. Was this it, then? Had I seen and known too much?

"If it's got to do with the bank account you're holding," Ivan said, putting a hand on my knee, "you can keep holding it and using the interest from that as you need to."

Yes, that was it. But what Ivan was saying was hopeful.

As part of Sergey's business model, he had stashed money here and there. As an indication that whatever he and I had was long term, I held one of those stashes in a Cayman Island account. And it wasn't spare change. He had me holding three-and-a-half million. He'd said he and I would go off to a new life with it as one option. He didn't keep all of his retirement stashes in one place. He was always careful to present me as only one of his options and this told me that I probably wasn't the only secret holder of a nest egg for him. I'd always assumed he was joking about escaping with me. And it had turned out to be a joke. He was going off in a steel coffin now. And who knew where I was going from here?

Ivan told me where I was going. "We don't have much time, so just pay attention to this."

Not much time, I wondered. Not much time until what? He was groping me with his hand now and had taken my hand and put it on his crotch, where, taking the hint, I'd unzipped and released him. Since he'd turned me over to Sergey, I'd been off limits to him. Sergey was out of the picture now. Ivan could step up to the plate again now. But what was it he was saying about limited time? Not much time after he'd fucked me in the back of the limo, I assumed. But not much time for whatever else beyond that? He answered that.

"You have a flight leaving in three hours. First to Miami and then on to the Virgin Islands--the American ones. You have a hotel booking there in St. Thomas and a banker's name to get you hooked into the Cayman Island account. You can start a new life there. Feel free to use a mil of that to get yourself established on the island and you can easily live off the interest from the rest until we decide on the money. Here's your passport and some credit cards in the new name--and the airline tickets in that name too. I like you. So, this is the sendoff you get. Forget everything you knew about Las Vegas. You'll regret it if you don't. We'll keep an eye on you."

I wondered who the "we" was. If it was meant to sound ominous, it succeeded. I flipped open the passport. I usually had black hair and a two-week's growth on a beard and mustache, but Sergey had had me get photos shaved and as a platinum blond, and those were what showed in this passport. And I was someone other than Dale now. Now my name was Evan Nance. Ivan handed me a bottle of hair dye too and told me to go platinum blond in a men's room before going through airport security.

"If you're going to mess around, you'd best make the rest of you this color too," he said.

He was giving me permission to mess around? So, was this all? "So, is this all?" I asked.

There was more, of course.

"No, of course not," he answered. "Lay down for me here in the car--we have some time. And I know where you'll be in the Caribbean too."

I sighed, unbuckled my belt, and lay back in the corner of the backseat. He brushed my hand away, though. I knew from before that he liked to unwrap his presents himself. He had my trousers, briefs, and jacket off and my shirt open, to where I lay bare under him, stretched out on the backseat, leaning into the side wall, the heel of my left boot pressed into the back of the front seat, while, fully clothed, with just his erection exposed, Ivan lay on top of me, penetrated, and fucked me. Only his dick was exposed, but that was all he needed to have free. Pete drove around Las Vegas, watching us in his rearview mirror as closely as he could, while Ivan did his pushups on me within the confines of smoked-glass windows.

He barebacked me. The brothers were Russian. They didn't believe in precautions beyond regular checks. They did have the casino doctor check me regularly, though, and if I let any other guy come back to my room after a singing session in the Ice Palace bar, I was expected to take all precautions.

Ivan was thick and long and good with his cock, so I didn't mind, grasping his biceps with my hands and moving my hips with him, moaning, and taking the stretch of him hard and deep. Neither brother was cut, and I enjoyed the raw looseness of their slide inside me. I arched my back and gave a little cry as, with a jerk and a lurch, Ivan came inside me. He pulled away to the other side of the backseat immediately, pulling out a handkerchief, cleaning himself off, stuffing himself back in his trousers, and handing me the handkerchief to tend to my own needs before I redressed. He said nothing, but he was smiling. Pete had maneuvered the limo so that we were approaching McCarran Airport.

All very neatly done.

There was a final kiss before I was dropped off at the airport departures entrance, which let me know in what way Ivan liked me. He said something in parting that I remembered and deeply appreciated after I'd thought about it, if, in fact, he was telling the truth. "This relocation is all me," he said. "The other guys at the casino want you to disappear, Dale--or I suppose I should call you Evan now--but not necessarily this way. And the widow is on the rampage, trying to find out who was with Sergey at the end." That caused me to shudder. If he was leveling with me, I had escaped the iron fist of the Russian mafia. Even with Ivan, I suspected I was being set up for something, but not for a one-way trip into the desert apparently.

"Do they know my new name?" I asked.

"No one but me and the man who obtained the passport know that name, and only I know it's connected with you."

I was both scared stiff and grateful. I had been contemplating changing my life from here myself but I had had no idea how to do it. Ivan was doing it for me. And I knew there were other ways this could have been handled from here.

I also knew, though, as I stood outside the departures entry after Pete pulled my suitcases, packed by someone other than me, out of the limo trunk, that this wasn't the safest option for me--not the way it was happening, with me just disappearing off the face of the earth. Certainly not when I'd already been called in for questioning. It wasn't just that I'd been there when Sergey bought the farm and I had been in bed with him. It was also because they had let it slip that it wasn't a heart attack that had taken Sergey from us. He'd been poisoned.

I had no illusions about who was being set up as being the one who poisoned him. It might be an empty victory that I wasn't here when the finger got around to be pointed at me.

* * * *

I turned my head toward the view of Frenchman's Cove beyond the glass doors leading out onto the balcony in the $1,200-a-night St. Thomas Marriott resort room. The banker who met my two-and-a-half-hour evening flight from Miami had brought me here from the airport on the other side of Charlotte Amalie of the St. Thomas harbor on the chief American Virgin Island. We'd only stay the night here--at my expense, of course. But our final destination, the smaller and more remote St. Croix Island, didn't have daily puddle-jumper airplane service beyond the time I had landed.

The banker had a multipart fee for meeting my plane and getting me settled. Ivan had told him what I'd do and how good I was in doing it.

The man was insatiable, getting what he could from our one night here, having made quite clear that he expected me to be fully accommodating for the services he'd be rendering for me in getting my life reset. Ivan had obviously told the man I was a male whore, earning my keep on my back. He hadn't been at all subtle about putting me on my back when we'd arrived at the hotel. This wasn't our first fuck. He'd fucked me as soon as we'd entered the room and now, again, after we'd gone to dinner. Our puddle-jumper plane hop down to St. Croix would come later in the next morning. There was every indication that Anthony--that was his name, Anthony Hendricks--would fuck me a couple of more times before we had to leave for the airport.

I wasn't resisting him. I was on my back, legs bent and spread, buttocks rolled up to give him full access. He was long and thick in erection. I had my arms raised, grabbing the top edge of the mattress between it and the headboard, and he was hovered over me, his knees spreading my thighs, his hands gripping my wrists, holding me in place and starring down into my eyes, moving in deep, back nearly to the surface, and then in deep again, intently eyeing my pained expression at accommodating the stretch and thrust of him until I hadn't been able to take it anymore and turned my face toward the view out over the water toward downtown Charlotte Amalie. He knew I was into it, though, I was looking away, but my hips were moving in concert with his thrusts.

He was my first black man, a solidly built man of the Caribbean, although he was more milk chocolate than ebony, reflecting mixed ancestry. He was a handsome man in his early forties, but massive, with more pounds on him than he should have. He was so tall and sturdily built, though, that he carried the weight well. Everything about him was big--his ego, musculature, his hands, his feet, his balls, and, of course, his cock, which was a jet black, with a purple, massive mushroom cap, which I'd had trouble getting into my mouth when he put me on my knees on the carpet and brutalized me before pulling me up, tossing me on the bed, covering me, and taking what he wanted. I was isolated and unprotected here in the Virgin Islands by anyone but this man, and the man knew it. He made sure I knew it as well.

He was uncut and barebacked me--just as Sergey had done. The deep slide and stretch of him had me moaning and groaning. He obviously been told I could take it--that I wanted it that way. I couldn't say at this moment that I didn't.

I felt him tense and his balls retract into his groin. He released my hands and gripped the top edge of the headboard, setting himself and thrusting harder, deeper, more vigorously. He was moving to his release. I grasped his buttocks, arched back, thrust my hips up, and cried out, "Yes, yes. Now!" shooting off myself as he jerked and shot, jerked and came--so full of cum that he blasted me four times.

Only the second time we'd fucked and we came together. I suspected that there would be a continuing relationship with my new banker--my first black man--beyond just helping me establish myself with a new identity in the Virgin Islands. On the whole, I didn't mind. Anthony was a bit forceful, but I wouldn't have taken up with either Ivan or Sergey if I didn't want a daddy to take care of me. On the whole, Sergey was fine, despite the heartburn some of his business ties gave me. So, far, my first black man--Anthony Hendricks--was just fine too.

When he pulled out of me, I moved to roll off the bed, but he turned me over onto my belly on the bed with this strong hands, mounted me from behind like a dog, and screwed the hell out of me again.

* * * *

Hendricks flew with me to St. Croix the next day to settle me into a gay-friendly hotel, The Fred, on Strand Street, near the sea in Frederiksted, which he said was where the gay scene was in the U.S. Virgin Islands. But beyond the hotel reservations, introducing me to some friends of his he thought could be useful to me and showing me some houses for rent, we would only be staying with me that first night. I was of two minds on that. He screwed me really, really well--but he screwed me almost constantly and arrogantly, and I was still paying for his relocation services.

His office was on the main St. Thomas island. He'd been told to settle me someplace more remote, though, and he thought St. Croix, being the most gay friendly, would be the best place for me.

"You can decide on your own later," he said. "I suggest you take a short-term rental to begin with, as real estate is quite expense in the islands."

"Whatever you advise," I answered, already settling into a role of submission to him, as he had established himself as a strong dominant.

We looked at a few small houses for rent, I picked out an unimposing flat on Prince Street, just three blocks from the Frederiksted pier, which was the main gathering spot in the seaside town on the island's west coast. I could walk to everywhere I needed until I decided whether to have more private housing and a car, both of which would eat into the nest egg I was working with. Yes, it was a gigantic nest egg, but I was afraid that at some point the Russian mafia would show up to screw every dollar of the original amount out of me. What I was really looking for was some business I could buy into to become established here.

That pretty much dropped into my lap.

"I'm told you were a singer in a Las Vegas casino bar," he said to me over lunch at Polly's at the Pier on Strand Street by the entrance onto the pier. "That must mean you're a good singer."

"I held down the evening slots at a piano bar in a major casino, yes," I answered.

"After dinner, maybe you'd like to go bar hopping on King Street then. There are some gay bars there that have music. I can introduce you to some guys. I have to go back to Charlotte Amalie tomorrow, but I can help you get introduced here."

"Fine. We settled on a flat quickly, so what else is there to do here this afternoon?"

"After lunch, I'll take you by our bank branch here and get you set up with the manager and connect with your funds, but then I think you know how we can spend the rest of the afternoon. There's a beach right next to The Fred, and we can check that out, but, for the time I'm spending with you, I think--"

"I understand," I answered. We did get out on the beach, me in just a Speedo, which confirmed for me that The Fred was a gay-friendly hotel and St. Croix was the place in the islands where guys were getting it on, because I got quite a bit of attention while we were on the beach. After an hour there, I was very much in the mood to give Anthony what he wanted in our shared room at the hotel. I'd exchanged looks and a few words with other guys on the beach and in the hotel that told me that it was very unlikely I would be lonely after Anthony flew back to the big island the next day.