by Bethany-Kris
Hannah still hadn’t looked away from her phone. “Probably pretty good. What other reason would he have to ask about you?”
“Why would he even care?”
“Who would know?”
Vera didn’t miss the way Hannah’s voice had gone faint like it always did whenever she was faced with the sound of her abuser’s voice.
“How far am I gonna have to go to get away from him?” Hannah asked, then.
Vera didn’t have an answer, so she said nothing.
No doubt, that didn’t really help.
“I can leave,” Vera said, already able to sense the fear that saturated her best friend beside her. “If you think that’ll help or keep him from calling again or—”
Hannah shook her head. “Nothing helps when it comes to that goddamn man, really. What more can I do that I haven’t already done? Ma’s purchased the whole floor across from ours for the personal security she hired outside of what the building provides; she’s lived like that her whole life so she’s used to it. As long as I stay here, there’s nowhere safer I could be.”
Maybe, Vera thought.
But what if what was happening here wasn’t actually the problem?
“You know what’s really fucked up?” Hannah asked.
“Nothing comes to mind.”
Her friend rolled her eyes back. “He got married again like three or four weeks ago.”
Vera’s head fell a bit to the side.
Hannah bobbed hers in silent agreement with the confused expression staring back from her friend. “Exactly,” she said, pointing at Vera. “Even when he’s married to someone else he’s still trying to screw with me. Does it ever end?”
It does, Vera wanted to tell Hannah but couldn’t bear to do that to her friend. It does end—when someone dies.
12.
Vaslav intended to start his weekend off on the right foot which meant crossing one more thing off his list of tasks he despised. There was a time when he once enjoyed the reprieve that a good haircut and shave could offer, and as a boy had gone for years to the same man once every four weeks for the same straight edge trim. The circumstance of his teenage and young adult years meant he had become accustomed to handling that business himself. As a free man, he got back into the business of making the trips a habit, back when he didn’t care to let the beard grow to soften the grisliness of his scarring.
He used that same old barber, too, until Mr. Petr passed on, and his son took over a couple of years back. At that point, though, Vaslav was much more than just a man getting a cut and shave, and since his barber became a protected man, the space was also sacred. No harm should be done there.
It was also a double-edged sword.
Every time he showed up for a shave and a cut he found a row full of men filling the barber’s waiting chairs. Each with a different complaint or request. Some who had traveled damn near from one side of the countryside to the other for the chance to speak to him—a man who went as far as to refuse his own men even hand to hand payment for their dues as a vor under the protection of his name and brotherhood.
And so that sacred place went straight to shit.
Because Vaslav respected the history he shared with Petr’s son, and the old barbershop on the far end of Dubna, he opted not to blow up the place. Although, it would have done the job of keeping people from bothering him when there were a million other better ways to handle a situation than whining to him about it.
He didn’t have the time, patience, or one single fuck to give.
Vaslav was not the man who cared to dabble in the politics between vory. People in their positions did not get there by being unable to handle their business with others who were less than friendly. He did not want to be friends, or to make them, when he could never trust them in the first place. Who needed friends when there are so many enemies to watch?
That was what mattered.
He took care of his cuts and shaves most of the time now, and allowed himself the pleasure of having it done only a couple of times a year. The infrequency of it almost guaranteed that he wouldn’t have to deal with an entire barbershop full of men ready to have their voice heard.
“I remembered last night,” Vaslav said from the back seat of the SUV as it rocked into a rough pothole. Two kilometers away from their final destination.
“Remembered what?” Igor asked behind the wheel.
“Why I liked you.”
“Da?”
Vaslav nodded as his hands threaded through the thick coat of a dog he hadn’t expected to be waiting for him when he walked out the front doors of his home. Marrow, as black as coal, had never looked better; he even let Mira brush him out the evening before when Vaslav asked who had cleaned him of the usual twigs and sprigs the massive retriever always found in the forest.
For once, he wasn’t as aggressive as he typically was and without any obvious reason, shoved himself into the SUV ahead of Vaslav when Igor had opened the rear door for his boss. Marrow had then promptly settled all seventy kilos of his weight across the seat and Vaslav’s lap after his dirty paws made prints all over his master’s pants.
Since when had he become a lapdog?
A new day brought a whole different reality with it, and he couldn’t say he particularly trusted it, either.
“You never asked for anything back, my friend,” Vaslav said.
Before Igor could properly respond, a beep interrupted the conversation. Igor ended it altogether when he fished the device out of the cup holder and took his attention away from the road just long enough to see whatever it was he needed to see. The phone was discarded just as fast as he’d picked it up, then Igor glanced at the road, and back at Vaslav in the rear view mirror.
“New problem, yeah?”
Vas didn’t like this already. “So—chto dal’she? What the fuck now?”
“Looks like somebody got a flight this morning and managed to head out of Italy earlier than expected. Seems like the flight was chartered,” Igor tacked on. The worst was yet to come, though. “By someone in the states.”
Vera was the only person Igor needed to be tracking in Italy.
“I told you he was too goddamn young.”
“That information didn’t even come from him.”
“He should know she’s—”
“He did know,” Igor interjected calmly. “He managed to track her to the airport before he made the call to me. I had to do the rest.”
“How long?”
Igor sighed. “A couple of hours. I’ve been waiting for confirmation. And about the chartered jet—the payment came from the states, but the flight is coming into Moscow tonight.”
That was a costly trip. He knew because he’d paid for one recently. An easy two or three hundred thousand dollars.
“Her father, possibly?” Vaslav mused. “He’d have to be a mighty stupid man not to keep tabs on her, wouldn’t he?”
“Vas—”
The hand that he’d been using to pet the dog still heavy on his lap cut through the air, making the animal grumble with a growl. His shaggy black coat trembled with the rumbling sound.
“You wanted to go on the drive,” he told the dog.
Marrow soon quieted.
“He’s the only gift I really regret giving you,” Igor said.
“Why?”
It was the first time Vaslav ever really took notice of how interesting Igor’s gifts actually were.
“The dog might not have listened to a damn thing anyone said, but he never went too far away from me,” Vas added when Igor took longer than he liked to answer. “Nobody said he had to be nice, did they?”
It took him a quick internet search to realize his dog wasn’t even supposed to exist. Extinct for decades, the dog was too aggressive due to inbreeding during development of the breed. Meant to be a life-saving animal, it didn’t end up that way.
Igor eventually had to admit to Vaslav that he’d come in contact with a man who had paid a Chinese lab a good bit of
money to have the dog cloned from frozen tissue the man had stolen from a research company he worked for. After having the three-month old puppy smuggled into the country, and finding himself in trouble with his work for other reasons that were likely related to his thievery, he needed to get rid of the dog.
Lucky circumstances brought him to Vaslav. At first, they thought he could be trainable as a support animal but that was a joke that ended on day one.
“He’s bit me four times,” Igor eventually said.
Ah.
Vaslav grunted and waved that complaint off. “Barely. Pinches the skin.”
“Vas, I’ve had stitches.”
“Who paid for the flight, Igor?”
He was done being distracted. Igor had become too good at playing that game with Vaslav to keep his attention off topics that might otherwise end in bloodshed.
“Probably her father,” the man said without missing a beat.
Vaslav scowled. “Another problem, then?”
Was someone else getting ready to stand in the way of something he wanted?
“We don’t know that. You don’t have to make one, either,” Igor pointed out.
“I’m not fond of giving people the benefit of the doubt.”
“She’s not even back in Moscow yet. At least wait and see what she does when she gets here ... then decide if her father is a problem you’ll have to consider.”
Americans.
Always getting in the way, he mused.
Vaslav glanced down at the dog, and realized how little he could actually move under Marrow’s substantial size. He believed there was a reason the dog wanted to be as close as he did, but he couldn’t put his finger on why when he felt fine enough for a day away from his home.
Or is that it, shchenok—pup?
Did he not want Vas to leave home?
At his silent question, Marrow lifted his head, his black-as-night eyes finding Vas before resting back down. A gust of his stinky breath flapped past the dog’s snout and lips.
“Turn around,” Vaslav muttered.
“What?”
“I want to go back home.”
“Vera’s fine, Vas. She’s on a private jet twenty-something thousand feet in the air. She’s perfectly fi—”
“It’s not about Vera.”
Something just wasn’t right.
Igor’s curse in their mother tongue was only slightly annoyed as he yanked the vehicle into the shoulder to aid in a wider U-turn. “Could have done without the entire fucking drive, yeah? Is the numbness back?”
“No, it’s not that.”
His arm was fine.
“Are you still eating Vicodin like it’s candy?”
“Igor,” Vas said, his fingers still drifting through the coat of the mutt sprawled over his legs, “Marrow’s around. Something’s wrong. I want to be at home.”
The dog never lied.
13.
Vera didn’t expect to find the two men waiting at the exit of the Sheremetyevo International Airport’s arrivals. Had Igor not noticed her approach first from the corner of his eye, drawing in the attention of the other equally tall, barrel-like chested man standing across from him at the same time, she might have been able to overhear their conversation.
Before they picked up on her, it had looked heated for men that she suspected both wore the eight-pointed stars of the mafyia in such a public place. They stuck out like sore thumbs amongst the evening arrival of travelers making their way out to the marshrutkas and cabs just beyond the tall glass doors. Whatever the two had been saying before she came into view behind the throng of people she’d been following left them with a berth of space, making her believe the conversation hadn’t been entirely polite.
“Alexi,” Vera greeted first.
Hoping it relaxed Igor a little bit from his stiffened stance with arms folded over his broad chest. Only a foot away apart, the two were about the same height, but somehow ... Igor managed to make it seem like he could look down on the other man.
Maybe if he understood that Vera knew Alexi well enough to call him by his first name, then he wasn’t a threat. As that was the only reasoning she could put behind the glares passing between the two men.
Not that it worked.
Alexi barely glanced her way. “Your father thought you might like a familiar face to drive you back to Noble Row. Or someone to talk to, yes?”
Igor shifted from foot to foot, swinging his stance around to face Vera as he muttered under his breath, “You made a stupid choice for a smart man, Alexi.”
Nodding Vera’s way, Alexi told her, “I didn’t realize—or maybe your father didn’t—that you already had someone coming to pick you up.”
At that comment, Vera’s gaze darted to Igor. “Neither did I.”
Actually, she hadn’t known Alexi would be there, either. Although, after the phone call she made to her father to explain a situation she thought was growing and dangerous, she couldn’t fault Demyan for wanting to be safe and sending Alexi.
The man Vera knew her father paid to keep tabs on her muttered, “Those are the kinds of things you should give a guy a heads up about, no?”
Igor scoffed, eyes rolling back in his head. “Why, so then people can’t find out your little side business of watching her?”
“It’s separate from my business with the brotherhood. I came from there—mudak.”
“Ti durak—you’re an idiot,” Igor spat back. “It’s called loyalty!”
Vera, who had not yet caught up to what was actually the problem with the two, but let go of her rolling luggage and carry-on bag to put her hands up. “Okay, enough of the asshole and idiot stuff. How did you even know what time I was flying in, or that I was even flying in at all?”
“I told you, your—”
“Not you,” Vera said, cutting Alexi off fast.
She didn’t look away from Igor. He at least had the decency to look sheepish at her sharpening tone.
“I told you once, I do what I am told,” Igor said.
“And that means what exactly?”
Grunting a bit before clearing his throat, Igor shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and replied, “I have a bead on you. It keeps me updated on different things.”
“Like?”
“Locations. Online activity. Basics to—”
“Keep track of me,” Vera interjected, arching a brow.
“Take it back to the man in charge, Vera,” Igor deadpanned.
Oh, she would.
Very few things could get Vera from zero to sixty in a snap, but that was mostly certainly one of them.
Giving the quiet Alexi a look, she then asked Igor, “So, why are you here then? Besides the fact you apparently knew when my flight was coming in, I mean.”
“Isn’t that obvious?” Alexi asked, unbothered by the shut up that hissed from Igor. “He’s here to pick you up.”
“I was planning on getting a cab, actually,” Vera said.
Igor shrugged. “Again, I just do—”
“What you’re told, right.”
Vera sighed, and bent down to grab the mini duffel she’d used as a carry-on and the rolling luggage at her other side. “I need a drive to Dubna, anyway. I assume that’s where you’re taking me?”
“Vera?” Alexi asked.
“I told my father I would call him tomorrow after I slept,” Vera explained to Alexi, “and I plan to do just that. He knows I’m okay, and that I have something to handle here.”
And that he needed to let her do that.
It was all Vera explained to her father because she wasn’t even sure if it was safe to tell him anything more. Demyan didn’t particularly like it, but she also hadn’t thought for a second that he would, either.
That didn’t change her situation.
“And when he calls me tonight for an update about your flight and arrival?” Alexi asked.
“You can tell him what I said.”
Because so would she.
A
tense conversation in muttered, fast Russian passed between the men that Vera wasn’t able to follow well enough to understand before Igor ended it with something she could hear clearly. An order. “And you are not to take back any information you learned tonight about the business and issues here to a man in New York. He will kill you.”
Alexi gave a jerky nod, and then proceeded to spin on his heel and saunter off for the exit.
“What just happened?” Vera asked.
“I pulled rank,” Igor replied dryly.
“Thanks for explaining nothing, I guess.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing here? You seemed more surprised to see your father’s little spy than me.”
Vera’s brow furrowed. “Because Vaslav is angry that I left the country?”
That’s the only reason she could think of to explain why he was there. If they had a bead on her, like Igor said, then Vaslav would have known she was gone and coming back. Why else would he send a man to meet her at the airport?
“No,” Igor replied. “You had a ... uh, there was an incident with your neighbor this evening.”
Her back straightened. Mr. Anatoly?
“What? Please don’t tell me Vaslav did some—”
“While I wouldn’t put it past him, no.”
The fact that he offered her no other information irritated Vera like nothing else.
She was still trying to catch up. “I don’t understand. What happened?”
“Listen,” Igor said, tipping his head to the side and offering his palms out like he was asking for mercy, “if you want answers and a better explanation, I can take you to the man who will give those things to you. Otherwise, we’re just wasting time going in circles, Vera. I do what I’m told, and I was told to be here to bring you there—”
“To him in Dubna.”
Igor nodded once. “Or to your home to be a buffer between you and the politsiya as there’s still a bit of activity there. Not that they’ve connected you to his attack—you’ve been gone for days, hmm?”
“But somehow you have,” she returned. “Made a connection to what happened to him, and how it relates to me ... I mean.”