by Rie Warren
Oh . . . fuck. She was really going to go through with it.
She was going to offer herself up as some sort of sacrifice to Oleg.
Do not do this, Sashenka, I thought desperately.
Then Yury managed to crack Oleg a good one on the chin . . . but Sasha was already there.
She was talking, shouting.
She was holding out her hands in supplication, making a deal I was certain. One that would save her father and the women and baby, but not her.
If he just moved his goddamn head, I’d have a bead on this bastard.
Sasha got in the way.
Then they were walking away.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. They were going to get away!
My skin tightened all across my body. My blood boiled. I took aim and pulsed the trigger of my rifle. Shot after shot downed pizdas left and right but I could not kill Oleg. Not when the conniving fuck used Sasha as his body armor.
He shoved her into a black van and rammed the doors home.
Still, none of the pakhan’s soldiers made a move, and I was screaming inside of my mind then roaring out loud as I leaped to my feet.
Grabbing the rifle off the bipod, I slung it over my shoulder.
I raced to the road on foot, getting to the pavement just as the first vehicles in the convoy hurtled past at dangerous speeds.
Hunkering back down with my gun, I lay in wait. I wouldn’t shoot any of the first cars. If tipped over, they’d become unavoidable obstacles strewn across the road. The van could crash. Sasha could get mangled or worse.
The black van came whizzing along finally.
I shot at the pavement to the front and the sides. I didn’t shoot out tires. I didn’t blow holes into the engine block. I wouldn’t risk Sasha’s life like that.
As the vehicle sped past, I popped up to my feet.
That insane asshole jerked open one of the back doors. “You’ll be a widower soon, Maksim!” he shouted. “Unless I find some use for Alexandra in one of my brothels. I hate to waste good Russian bitches.”
I fired useless shots into the air, running after the van that raced away.
I only halted when the span of distance grew too great.
My hate had no place to go except back into my body. The energy of rage and revenge pushed my legs into renewed action. I hurried up the hill to pack away my rifle and collect the helmets before taking off down the road in the direction of the mansion.
Several items glinted in the middle of the tarmac halfway to the estate and, when I reached the articles, I wanted to bend over and puke my guts out.
There lay Sasha’s dagger, her Glock, and her smashed-up phone.
I picked all of them up with another punch to the gut knowing she was unarmed now. But Sasha was not helpless.
I just had to keep thinking that.
Farther on, the black bulletproof vest had been thrown into the verge, tangling with wild thistle. A thorn punctured the pad of my thumb as I collected the vest from the lilac colored flowers.
What a stupid way to shed blood.
I would rather go head to head and toe to toe with Oleg.
I would rather rip his head from his neck with my bare hands and spit down his bloody gorge.
As I neared the mansion at a fast pace, a Bratva SUV screamed toward me down the road. Tires squealed when the vehicle braked.
I opened the driver’s door and ordered, “Get over. I am driving.”
No questions were asked.
At the mansion, I parked at the head of the drive, barely glancing at my Harley.
Soldiers were already dealing with the bodies I’d dropped dead.
I stomped over to Grigor. “Find anything.”
“Nyet. Nothing personal.”
“No phones or affects?”
“No.”
If I had one of their fucking phones, I’d at least have a lifeline to finding Sasha.
“They were an attack squad,” he said, as if that were an excuse.
“That is what you’re supposed to be!” I bellowed.
Grigor held his ground in the face of my wrath. “I am sorry about Sash—”
With my finger shoved at his chest, I bit out, “You do not speak her name to me until she is returned where she belongs.”
Pivoting, I marched into the manse. I stopped in the grand hallway, closing my eyes and cradling Sasha’s discarded belongings against my chest.
Then I headed to Yury’s den because that was where the loudest voices came from.
I busted through the door that cracked against the wall as loud as a gunshot when I entered.
I stood still for a moment, looking in turn at each of my brothers then my pakhan.
Jaw clenching, I measured my words slowly and carefully. “Jo and the baby and Baba are all right?”
Kirill nodded in a very controlled way. “They are going to be fine. Thanks to—”
Rushing forward like I was a bull and he’d just waved a red flag at me, I slammed him into a bookcase. “You don’t get to say her name either!”
Kirill’s eyes rolled back when I locked my forearm against his throat.
Then I let him go, surprised I hadn’t been stopped when I struck out at my own brother who was the Bratva enforcer and several ranks above me.
Arkady shoved a shot of vodka into my hand.
I downed it without looking or thinking, my eyes blazing at him . . . the Zolotov underboss.
“How much did you see?” he asked.
My nostrils flared, and I reached out, grabbing the bottle of vodka to drink straight from the neck. “I feel like I’m the only one who saw everything. What kind of fucking question is that?” I took another swig, backhanding my mouth. “I’m the only one who killed anybody, for fuck’s sake!”
“There were reasons.” Kirill glanced at the bottle of vodka as if wondering if that would become my next weapon.
I thought about everything I’d shared with Sasha, all the things we’d told one another, and I knew she understood me better than even my own brothers.
New rage surged inside of me with a blood-haze of adrenaline. “Why didn’t anyone go after her? What the fuck?”
Arkady glanced at me from beneath lowered brows and, when he spoke, his voice was low-pitched. “We didn’t think it wise to pursue them in the moment when Oleg said he’d butcher Sasha by nightfall if we did.”
Oh, shit.
I almost fell back on my ass, more despair heaped upon me.
Then Kirill just had to go and say, “I fucking told you not to bring her.”
I roared up into his face. “And what do you think she would’ve done then? Because she follows directives so goddamn well, right?”
He pulled his fists up when I cocked mine back, ready to go to blows with my own brother.
“Stop,” Yury bellowed, a shout that shook the paintings hanging on the walls. “Fighting each other will solve nothing.”
“It wasn’t just about Yury.” Arkady stepped back into range of my fists while Kirill blew out a curse. “Oleg threatened to hurt Baba. And Jo. And Saoirse.”
“BLYAD!” Spinning from him, I threw my cocked fist at the wall with enough force to crack plaster if not my bones. “I know all of that. I saw it all.”
I also knew no one could have made Sasha see any other way to solve the impossible problem.
The reality and the reasonings did not make the sting go away.
The den door opened, and Baba bustled inside. She started right in, berating us in Russian for causing a commotion when the household had already suffered enough today not to mention the infant Jo was still trying to calm so she could nurse her.
When she finished, the sting still fucking remained. But I bit my tongue in contrition.
The rotund woman ambled into the pack of all us big and very pissed off men. “What is plan to get my granddaughter back?”
Arkady rubbed a hand along his jaw. “She still has the tracker implanted, da?”
“Of course. It’s
not easily removed, and I’d certainly never allow such a thing anyway.” After sinking one last shot of vodka, I scrubbed my hands down my face to rub away all the guilt and blame.
Kirill had hauled out his phone and plugged in the high-tech finder app. “Target is still on the move.”
That drew me up from my stooped stance. “She is not the target.”
“Semantics. And if I didn’t know how you were feeling right now, I’d have already flattened you.”
I shoved him back with both hands on his chest. “Try it.”
That time Baba got between us, railing off more Russian about how she would not allow egos and stupidity to be the reason Sasha died.
She was right.
There was still time.
In a matter of minutes, the three of us Krasnovs had geared up and we were out the door with a slew of soldiers at the ready too.
Yury had been ordered by Baba to stay put. I took one last look at him—he watched through the windows that were still marred by the smudges of the women’s faces.
The pakhan’s shoulders fell, a broken expression across his heavy features.
Maybe it was smart—if not incredibly reckless—Sasha going with The Cunt. We’d finally get a location and be able to take him down without collateral damage to the rest of the family.
We left in a line of three SUVs. I would’ve preferred going on my own—Sashenka was my wife, my responsibility—but Baba was right. Egos and stupidity had no place here.
“Tracker has stopped,” Kirill reported some time later, sitting in the back of the vehicle he, Arkady, and I shared in the lead of the fleet.
My head snapped around from the front seat while Arkady drove. “Where?”
Kirill thrust his phone screen in my face and tapped on the beacon, which was way the fuck out on a different road past the southside of Boston.
Times like this I wished we had a goddamn helicopter.
We couldn’t get there fast enough, and my leg jiggled like I was Boris begging for an itch-and-scratch treatment. I stared out the window, unseen sights whizzing past in a blur.
I popped my knuckles. Cracked my neck. Checked my blade and my handgun.
The rifle was in the back.
I’d taken up that sniper weapon to add distance to the kills. After the first murder, with that disgusting Russian pig so close to me at one point his paunchy body threatened to drown me in blood before I rolled out from under him.
But to get Sasha back—to kill Oleg—I would slaughter the sick bastard with my bare hands and crow over his leaking innards.
We’d driven through the hustle and bustle of Boston, the beacon staying in one location, sending off a strong and steady signal.
Leaving the city behind, Arkady picked up speed again. On and on we went until there was nothing but mile markers on the road. Then an old shack with the roof half collapsed. Then, a little farther on, we zoomed to the crest of a hill. Down below, a high cloud of thick, black smoke billowed skyward.
Oh fuck.
My heart took a nosedive right to my stomach, and I attacked the door handle. “Stop the car.”
Arkady seemed to be moving in slow motion when he squinted at me.
“STOP THE CAR,” I blazed out.
Then I jumped from the SUV before he even threw it into park. I sprinted to the wreckage below then skidded over muddy tire ruts to the abandoned van. The grill was smashed into a ditch, and the ass end angled up toward the road.
But the worst of it was, this barely even resembled the van that had zoomed past me up by Yury’s. No, this was a carcass of the vehicle and the source of the smoggy smoke. The burn job hadn’t been an accident either. I could smell the gasoline, oily and noxious in the air.
Oleg had torched the van.
Petrified of what I might find inside the incinerated scrap metal, I was just one more horrific thing away from going full mental meltdown.
I ripped off my shirt, wadded the material around my hand like an oven glove, and yanked the stubborn back door of the van wide.
Coughing and eyes tearing up, I peered inside the smoldering remains.
And—oh thank fuck—there was nothing inside.
No charred body.
Backing out the way I’d come, I hunched over with my stomach roiling. I heard my brothers coming up behind me. They didn’t breathe a word as I puked nothing but acid from my guts.
After I’d vacated whatever was left in my stomach, I wiped my mouth on the shirt then bunched it up and bundled it under my arm.
“There is nothing here.” My voice came out all raspy and rusty.
I kept my head down, my eyes trained on those deeply rutted tire tracks as I moved past Arkady and Kirill back toward the road.
Something glinted, a tiny square of something up near the pavement.
I thought it was just glass from one of the windows that had blown out from the heat. Then I halted mid step when I figured out what the fragment really was.
Blyad.
I reached down with trembling fingers and picked up Sasha’s tracking device that had been winking at me in the sun’s hot June rays. No wonder the trail stopped here. Jesus. The tiny tracker was sticky with blood. Sasha’s blood. Because one of those cunts had dug the beacon out from the flesh of her arm.
And wasn’t that fucking morbid beyond all reasoning? I’d never understood the concept of scared out of my mind before. I did now.
The prospect of losing that which I had only just discovered tore great gashing holes inside of me.
Pain of the body was much more preferable to this.
The ride back to the mansion was silent. Incomprehensible worry wrapped me up in cold chills as I considered all the sickening scenarios Oleg might conjure up to torture Sasha. There was no question that tonight I wouldn’t be returning to The Hammer and the Sickle. I was certain that by the time we arrived at the estate, Lucia would have been delivered too. Yury would take no more chances having us spread all across the city.
Besides, it was unlikely Oleg would return to the estate. Now that he had what he wanted, he was most likely on the run.
Defeated and deadened, I zombied my way into the grand house, noting nothing around me.
I still held Sasha’s tracker clenched in my closed fist as if it had fused with my flesh.
“I will fill Papa in,” Kirill said before glancing my way. “You should eat something, Maksim.”
With my stomach still churning, that was not going to be happening any time soon.
From the den, I reclaimed Sasha’s other possessions that Oleg had discarded like rubbish on the side of the road. I hauled myself up the stairs. Making a left at the landing, I forced myself to march straight past her suite without looking in.
Shutting my door behind me, I carefully placed Sasha’s blade, her gun, the ruined vest, and smashed phone on the bed. I shucked my clothes, stepped from the heap. I walked into the bathroom and almost blindly made my way into the shower.
I shivered until the water heated up then stood beneath the blast of spray with my head hanging, my hands braced on the tiled walls.
I didn’t know how long I stood there, motionless. But my fingertips became wrinkled and raisin-like before I made a move. I washed just to get the stink of the smoke off my body, not to revel in being clean.
I would not be made clean until Sasha was safe.
It must’ve taken me a long time, because it was dark outside when I entered the bedroom that had been my self-enforced cell for many years.
Arkady was there. “I brought you a tray of food.”
I glanced at the silver-domed platter he’d put on the desk. I nodded.
I crossed to the dresser, tugging on whatever clean clothes came to hand.
Lounging against the wall with his hands stuffed in his pockets, Arkady acted too nonchalant for my liking.
“You should sleep,” he said.
My anger ignited, sparked anew.
I took one lunging step toward him. “
You have not told me what to do since I was a little kid. You are not about to start now.”
“You stubborn asshole. We’re just worried about you.” Hands lashing up, he grasped my arms.
I broke free with a tremendous heave. “And I am worried about Sashenka!”
“We all are. I know you’ve spent half your life looking after her, but—”
“It is more than that. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”
His eyes flipped wide before narrowing.
Then his shoulders stooped the way mine did. “Da. This is how I felt when that fucker Don Sabato took Lucia,” he spoke quietly in sudden understanding that I didn’t want and didn’t need.
“Leave me.”
He did. Silently.
He left me in my old room, which felt foreign and lonely and nothing but a cell for the shell of the man I’d been before marrying Sasha.
How fucking fitting.
I didn’t sleep.
I tried to eat.
I set about formulating a plan while I stayed awake.
I sat at the one desk on the one chair and cleaned Sasha’s dagger then carefully oiled her Glock even though she’d done both last night. I placed the useless bulletproof vest in the closet and took the SIM card from her phone, thinking I would replace the iPhone for her.
Because when I got her back, she would have all her belongings. All the fine things I’d made fun of her about.
She would have everything she had ever wanted, and so much more.
I vowed it.
We began the next day. We sent out feelers to associates and contacts all across Boston and the eastern seaboard. Anyone with a connection to our pakhan, every syndicate we’d sold our weapons to, even the cartels that bought our coke so their clients could snuff quality snow up their noses.
We tapped every single fucking vein available to us for any shred of info or, even better, the possibility of a Sasha sighting.
She could be dead already, but I wouldn’t allow myself to think that. I couldn’t, because I knew Oleg wouldn’t let Sasha die with dignity. Not after his brutal treatment of the other Alexandra Zolotov . . . the one he’d mentioned to us that first night. Without Sasha’s knowledge, I’d confirmed the woman’s gruesome death at his hands back in Russia.