by Vivian Wood
“Napping on the job?” he supplies in a vicious tone. “That is really terrible. Really outrageous.”
My knees practically vibrate as he walks me out of the boathouse to the bench next to the door. You can see the whole lawn from here. He sits us there and pulls me onto his lap, holding my upper arm in an iron grip.
“You’re hurting me,” I say.
No answer.
He’s cool. Competent. Focused. A killer.
I concentrate on my breath and tell myself not to freak out, but this is bad—really bad.
“Right now, you can still walk out of this,” I say. “Whatever you plan to do, you can’t get away with it. Just cut your losses.”
The killer says nothing, and it comes to me that he’s actually gotten away with a lot already. Planned carefully. Even sitting here is a well-made choice: Dad won’t see us until it’s too late, partly in the shade as we are. He’s positioned for maximum shock.
The killer has everything under control. Like he was born to this.
He’s hot and hard under me. Pure muscle and steel and man. My belly tightens. I shift, trying to minimize the places my body touches his.
He pulls me to him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
I swallow. Stay calm. Don’t let him feel your fear. I strain to hear the golf cart whir. Dad’ll take the golf cart down. But the green expanse of the lawn is empty. Is he okay? What about his heart? The lake sparkles on, soft waves, gentle breeze carrying the faint scent of seaweed. And I realize something strange: No boats.
It’s one of the last lovely fall days. Everybody who’s anybody comes up to Lake Geneva from Chicago on a day like this. “Where are all the boats?”
He gazes out—wistfully, almost. Dark hair caresses his cheekbone. “Looks like they took the day off.”
He’s different from the guys in Dad’s circle. Contract killer? Lone wolf? “People wouldn’t just not come out—”
He smirks. “Message from the mother ship?”
I swallow. This guy did something to make them stay away. I can’t imagine what. He has to be somebody, pulling all this off. That kind of thing takes men. Extreme choreography. “What is this?”
“Shhh,” he growls into my ear. “Take the strap off your purse.”
“You can’t—”
“Can’t what? Tell me what I can’t do, Mira Mira.”
Mira Mira. That’s the name of the fashion blog the PR person runs. The PR person with the greatest gig in the world, running around to Paris and Hong Kong taking pictures of clothes. Pretending to be me out there, freaking out over the latest couture.
“Tell me one thing I can’t do right now,” he says.
I can’t. He’s taken absolute power in a way no other man would dare. It’s strangely mesmerizing, the way impossible feats sometimes are. Because nobody is supposed to be able to do this.
“Good answer.” His breath is a caress on my ear. “Don’t you test me, Mira. You won’t like the result.” He moves his lips to my ear. “Now wrap the strap around your wrists.”
There’s something in the way he says it that gets me hot and cold all over my skin. Is he doing it on purpose?
“Make it nice and tight.”
With shaking hands I undo the strap and circle it loosely around my wrists.
He puts the gun aside and with a few twists he yanks it tight, tying the knot, so that my wrists are bound in my lap. He settles me in, then takes up his gun. You can see everything from here. Everything that matters.
I’ve met a lot of scary guys who are full of special mafia snowflake opinions on wine and weapons, but this man is in another class entirely. A barbarian in Armani. There’s a dark freckle on his right cheekbone, like a tiny dark jewel. That, too, is strangely familiar.
Heavy pounding on the stairs behind me. I don’t have to look to know someone’s coming down from the roof deck of the boathouse. The perfect place for cocktails after a boating party. Or keeping watch during a takeover, picking off the chess pieces.
The guy comes into view, huge and dark and Albanian like my captor, though this one is younger—early twenties, maybe—and has a more military look, with short hair and posture like a soldier. He, too, wears a suit and tie.
“Viktor, I want you to meet somebody. This is Mira Nikolla. Mira, this is Viktor.”
The man nods curtly. “Lazarus is still in the wind.” Viktor speaks with a Russian accent.
Lazarus was supposed to be here for lunch, but he ducked out.
My captor frowns. Whatever he’s doing, he wanted Lazarus under control for it.
He’s right to be unhappy. If there’s one person you don’t want after you, besides my father, it’s Bloody Lazarus.
“She agrees,” he says, reading my expression.
“You don’t know what I think,” I spit out. The last thing I’m willing to do is help these guys or offer any kind of insight.
“Have every possible resource scouring for Lazarus. He’ll be a problem.”
Viktor nods and puts his attention onto his phone, fingers flying.
I study the strong, familiar line of Viktor’s nose, so like my captor’s. Same with the cheekbones, the lips. Brothers. They both look Albanian, but how is one brother American and one brother Russian?
And then I see Dad in the golf cart, buzzing down the lawn.
“Dad! Watch out!”
Dad hears me, but he keeps driving his cart, which looks like a toy against the green. He knows what’s happening. Probably understands it better than I do.
“Turn back!” I yell.
Dad sees us now. Face grim.
“This is already better than I thought,” my captor says. “Such drama.” He nuzzles my hair, turning it on for effect on Dad. I’m just a prop. I always have been, in this world.
“You’re not going to get out of this.”
“I like the way you smell,” my captor whispers. My mouth goes dry as he slides a hand over my pink skirt, holding me tight against him. His body is packed so tight with muscles, he feels like stone underneath me—or he would, if not for the immense heat he gives off.
But his attention isn’t on me. It’s on my father, who’s out of the cart now, running, nearing.
Running is bad for his heart. “Daddy,” I whisper.
“Shh. Daddy’s coming.” My mouth goes dry as he slides the barrel of the gun over my cheek in a horrible, gentle caress.
He wants me to look scared for my father, so I do my best to look bored. Probably not pulling it off. I am scared.
My father slows and holds out his hands, a placating gesture. “Please—”
My captor surges up off the bench, taking me with him, practically pulling my arm out of the socket. We head to the center of the green, green lawn. I become aware of a few more men arrayed around the grounds, seeming to materialize from the shadows around trees and outbuildings. A lot of big guns. Assault rifles.
“Whatever this is, leave her out of this.” My father keeps his hands up. “I can give you so much. More than you can imagine.”
So my dad doesn’t know him, either.
My mouth goes dry as my captor again slides the barrel of the gun over my cheek, tracing a design over my cheekbone.
I see my father out of the corner of my eye, but I can’t keep my eyes off the gun, cool and deadly across my skin.
“Let her go,” my father says. “You looking for money, is that it? We could talk about that. Bank accounts. Boats.” Dad points at his cherished 1940s mahogany Chris-Craft, moored at the dock. “Beautiful, priceless things. Whatever you want.”
I heave a breath of relief when my captor finally takes the gun off my cheek. “Boats are just glorified cars,” he growls, “except they don’t go anywhere.” The next thing I know, he has it pointed at Dad’s million-dollar boat. He pulls me to his chest as the gunshots tear out.
Viktor is smiling, maybe laughing—I can’t tell. He shoots the boat, too. I cringe as the assault weapons start. It’s a war zone
suddenly.
And then it’s over. And everybody’s attention is on my father’s precious boat, half-sunk.
He’s made his point. This is a man you don’t buy.
“Now for your dear daughter,” he says.
My father rushes toward me. Guys materialize from nowhere to grab him. Viktor pats him down, takes his Luger, his phone, his second Luger. He even finds what Dad calls his party favor, the gun tucked in a special pocket at the back of his jacket. They’re tight and well trained.
“Touch her and I will kill you,” Dad says. “I’ll have your balls.”
My captor releases me. I quickly work my hands out of the strap and throw it down, but my arm is seized by one of his minions. My captor doesn’t look; he knows where his men are.
He just strolls up to my dad—djall e bukar—a beautiful devil. That’s what he is.
“You’ll have my balls? Is that so?”
“We’ll string you up and—”
Crrrack.
I scream as his hard, cruel hit sends Dad stumbling backward, falling, blood dripping from his lip to his white shirt.
“Leave him alone!” I say.
“Stand up, Aldo,” my captor says.
“One hair on her head,” Dad growls. “If you hurt one hair—”
“Please,” I say. “He has a bad heart.”
“Poor Aldo Nikolla,” he says with a mocking edge. Mocking my father. No man would dare. Ever. It’s here that I know my world has changed.
I try to pull away. Arms tighten around me.
“Daddy,” I whisper, watching him through bleary eyes.
“It’s okay, Kitten,” Dad says.
“Kitten,” my savage captor sneers. I can’t tell whether he’s mocking Dad’s affection or whether it’s the name, which, admittedly, I never loved. I always saw it as wishful thinking on Dad’s part.
The intruder comes back to me, drapes an arm around my shoulders. The threat hurts Dad more than any blow. “Kitten,” he says, pulling me close.
Dad looks horrified.
I twist in his arms and get an elbow out, manage to shove him away.
He stumbles back. “Oh, Kitten!”
Different arms close around mine, new guys holding me from both sides, holding me too tightly. I try to jerk away.
My captor’s smile is all brutal beauty. He sparkles with hate, taking pleasure from Dad’s pain. This is very, very personal.
“You disgust me,” I say.
My captor comes to me, studying my face, my eyes, like he’s looking for something. Again I get this hit of familiarity. But how could I possibly know him? I turn away.
“Unh-uh,” he says. “You don’t get to do that with me.” He takes my chin and forces my gaze back to his, holding my jaw in a fierce grip, fingers thick and strong. I can feel his words like a knife in Dad’s heart. “You’re mine now to use as I see fit.”
I suck in a breath. Dad can’t take much more of this.
“And when I want you to look at me, you look at me,” he says.
I won’t go down whimpering.
So I look at him.
And I spit at him—right in his face—shocking myself. Never in my life have I done such a thing.
A bright dime of saliva glistens on the stubble-darkened skin under his cheekbone. It’s small—dainty, even—but it may as well be a nuclear bomb for how it silences everyone, stops everything.
What have I done?
The men holding me have gone stiff.
Even the wind in the trees above seems to still. Dad’s supporting himself on his elbow, hand at his chest.
The intruder doesn’t wipe the spit off—no, he’s too cool for that. He lets it glisten in the sunshine as he stares into my eyes.
His gaze is so powerfully intimate, I think I might not be able to move even if my arms weren’t being held by his guys.
My belly quivers as he takes a step toward me. One, then another, until he’s directly in front of me. His beautiful smile is cold as ice.
“No,” my father says from somewhere in the distance. “No.”
But I can’t look away. Nobody’s ever looked at me with such intensity. My heart pounds.
The intruder raises a finger, and I can see the thick pad of it. A white line bisects the inside of the knuckles; defensive wound, I think sort of automatically. I see a lot of them in my work.
Slowly he swipes it through the spittle on his cheek, then he holds it up in front of my face so that I can see. He seems happy. A furious angel at full blast, spit on his finger, gun down at his side.
Panic washes over me like a haze. He’s going to wipe that finger on my face or lips. Punch me at best. Most likely kill me.
What have I done? Made it easy.
He turns his hand and simply looks at his finger.
My pulse is an ocean in my ears.
He looks back up, invades my eyes with his stare.
And then he does something I never in a million years would’ve predicted: Looking deep into my eyes, pinning me with his gaze like that, he sucks on his own finger. He sucks my spit off it.
My belly tightens over the dangerous sexuality of the gesture.
But he doesn’t stop there. No, he keeps going, pushing his finger in through his thick lips, shoving it in—slowly, inexorably. Eyes pinning me.
The haze intensifies. The moment goes on forever. I stand helpless in the face of all the things he’s shoving into my mind with that move.
It’s domination, and it’s danger. Invisible fingers sliding into me.
Then he starts to pull it out, just a glint of a smile in the depths of his dark eyes. He pulls it out slowly. This guy, he wants to make me feel every second. Every inch of it.
And I do feel it.
I can’t look away from this dangerous stranger with just a glint of a smile in the chocolate pools of his eyes.
I understand something in this moment: Nobody gets out of here unscathed.
“Take me,” my father says. “Kill me. It’s what you came here for.”
I’ve never heard him so frightened. Everything’s spinning off its axis.
The barbarian doesn’t take his eyes from mine. “Take you? On what planet are you more fun than Kitten is?” Those evil lips form into a diabolical smile. That, too, is a weapon. “But there is one thing,” he says.
“What?” my father asks.
“Our brother,” he says. “You give us the location of our brother, and we’ll be in a slightly better mood.”
My father looks confused. “And do I know your brother?”
I stiffen as Viktor nears my father. I’m thinking he’ll hurt him again, but he just hands my father a paper photo. The old kind.
My father takes it. Even from feet away, I can see the small white rectangle tremble in my father’s hands. He looks from Viktor to my captor. I know him well enough to see the gears turning in recognition…and horror.
“Seems I’m not dead after all.” My captor nods his head at Viktor. “This one sent a world away. I found him last year.”
“What’s going on?” I say. “Daddy—”
My father’s lost in this. Whatever it is, it’s big.
Viktor speaks up. “We cannot seem to find our baby brother. Our bratik.” He pronounces it in an ultra-Russian way, rolling the r. Brlod-dy. He snatches the photo from him, and I catch a glimpse. Three little boys. Two of them infants.
Brothers. Something about the picture tugs at the edges of my memory.
The Russian one says, “We get our brother back alive, or we kill your kitten, you understand?”
I suck in a breath. I’ve been around this life long enough to know there’s nothing empty about that threat.
“A name and an address,” my captor says.
“I don’t have that—I swear!” Dad says. And I don’t believe him.
When in my life has my father not bent over backward for me?
Cold horror slides through me.
Chapter Three
&
nbsp; Aleksio
Aldo Nikolla looked so much bigger when he was slaughtering our parents. But then, I was small. Just nine.
And then there’s Mira. I have this weird feeling that she almost recognizes me. It screws me up a little.
I shake it off. No woman makes me lose my focus. Not even her.
I take Mira back, reminding myself that she’s his weak spot. I hold her a little more tightly than I should, and she glares.
Maybe she has some of that bravery in her still.
It affects Aldo. I see it in his eyes. Good.
I slide my rough, scarred finger over the unbroken creamy expanse of her cheek—a metaphor for the two of us now.
Mira was there in the background of a lot of the surveillance photos over the years, the cherished daughter in the castle that her family stole from us. We’d been friends before the attack—as much of friends as nine-year-olds can be. I’d study her expressions when new pictures came in. Always smiling.
She smiles, so happy, Konstantin would say. She has the life you should have. She shops with your millions while you hide like a dog.
Konstantin imagined I hated her for those smiles. Sometimes I did, but sometimes I’d enlarge the shit out of the images, studying her face. Wondering what she was doing. Wondering if she knew her own father was capable of slaughtering his dearest friends in cold blood.
Needless to say, I didn’t admit any of this to Konstantin. He was a hardened Kosovo war vet, out for bloody vengeance. He’d say I was fixating on her. He’d think I couldn’t do what needed to be done. He’d be wrong.
Over time, those smiles intensified, and Mira transformed into a plastic princess, a black-haired Barbie doll. Meanwhile, I transformed into something cold and dark and barely human.
We both got molded by the lives we were given.
I hold her a little more tightly than I should.
I always wondered what her skin would feel like. Now I know.
I feel her pulse pounding. The plastic princess is frightened, but she puts on a good front. For him? I continue down to her collarbone, I stop just before the perfect line of it disappears into her filmy white top. I’m scaring her in order to fuck up the old man. A means to an end.