by K. J. Dahlen
“Da, she is safe.” Zeta admitted. “You do know there are other men here watching you don’t you?”
“Da, we know. Who are they?”
“They work for Sergi Constantine,” she admitted. “He would like to speak to you and everyone you brought with you.”
“Sergi Constantine.” Someone growled. “Why the hell would we speak to a man like him? He is the leader of the Bratva.”
Then after a moment of complete silence, Zeta heard her brother ask, “Is this true Zeta? This Sergi is the leader of the Bratva?”
“Yes, it is true.” Zeta nodded.
“You betrayed us?” Maxim called out.
“No, I would never do that!” Zeta cried out. “I begged him not to hurt you guys. I told him you only came here after me.”
“Why should we believe you?” someone yelled.
“Because you are not dead yet,” someone else called out. “We were given orders from Sergi himself not to hurt any of you. We are here to watch over you in case of trouble only. But if you shoot at us, we will shoot back. Those are our orders.”
Zeta began looking around the parking lot. “Please don’t anyone do anything foolish here. Sergi promised me you wouldn’t get hurt. He only wants to talk to you. Please Maxim? At least hear what he has to say. He told me what Ivan did to all of us is not how the Bratva is.”
“How do we know that?” She heard someone growl. “All we know is how we were treated, how our families suffered because Ivan Kolvastan couldn’t keep his hands off our girls.”
“I told him that and he couldn’t believe it. I think he needs to hear the words from your mouths.”
“Why?” someone sneered. “So he can send us back to prison or to a firing squad?”
“Maxim, for the first time since I was a child I have hope again in my heart. Sergi Constantine put it there. He spoke of honor and protecting the women and children of Russia. I’m giving him a chance. Will you? All I ask is that you listen to him!” Zeta called out with tears in her eyes. She knew she was taking the biggest chance in her life but she had to take it. She didn’t want her daughter to grow up living like a fugitive.
Suddenly, her brother stepped out of hiding and walked over to where she was standing. “I will hear what he has to say. For your sake and for Anya’s sake. No one else has to come with me if they chose not to, but they will have safe passage out of here.” He turned his head and looked around the parking area. “No one is going to shoot anyone. I will go and listen to what this Sergi wants. I will tell him my story and I hope to God, he listens. I may not have family anymore in Russia but I know some of you do.” He paused then looked over at his sister. “I’m tired of living like an animal in the shadows all the time. Looking over my shoulder for someone who might show up to take us back to that hell hole they called a prison. I will tell this Sergi Constantine what happened and why and then I will walk away with you and Anya to start over.”
“And if he locks you up again?” Dima asked from the shadows.
Maxim raised his head and stared into the dim light around them. “Then I will tear his heart of and shove it down his lying throat.”
They hear his men begin to cheer but they also heard Sergi’s security men growl at the threat to their leader.
Maxim grasped his sister’s arm and accompanied her back to the elevator. As they were stepping into it, some of the other men joined them. In fact, all his men joined him in the elevator. As the doors were closing, they all saw Sergi’s men come out of the shadows and stare at them.
Zeta hit the floor button and they were winging it up to the seventh floor.
When the door opened on the seventh floor, the entire hall was lined with armed men.
Just outside the room where Sergi waited for them, Zeta stopped and gazed at all the men with her.
She came back to her brother and looked up into his eyes. She wasn’t a tall woman at only five foot one inch but Maxim was well over six foot tall. “The men inside that room aren’t armed. Well Sergi, Misha and Nikoli Silvanic aren’t. Please don’t take your guns inside.”
“You expect us to be defenseless against these men?” Dima asked and his nose flared. “He’s Bratva, you foolish girl.”
“I know I ask so much. And I know it’s not only my life on the line here. You have more to lose than I do, but I’m asking you to trust him. There is something in his manner that tells me he is telling the truth. He said he wanted to talk to you and if you do not want to stay with him, he told me you would be free to go after you’ve had your say.”
“That’s a lot of trust sister. Trust we may or may not have,” Maxim told her.
“Please brother? I have no reason to believe in what he says either but I believe his words. I have lived in fear every day of my life for the last fifteen years. I didn’t suffer being locked in a prison but I was trapped in another kind of prison.”
Maxim studied her face and read her fear. He seemed to make up his own mind. He might have suffered under Ivan’s roof but she had suffered too. He never thought of it from her point of view. He slowly reached for his weapons and laid them carefully on the table outside the room.
He turned to look at his men.
One by one and with some reluctance, they all laid their guns and knives on the table.
The guards watching them didn’t move to threaten them but instead they watched carefully, ready at a second’s notice to defend their leaders.
Then Zeta opened the door and they all moved inside the suite.
When she looked up she saw Sergi, Misha and Nikoli standing there waiting for them.
Barron and two other men stood on either side of them.
Misha was holding Anya in his arms and for once, she didn’t seem to mind him holding her. This surprised Zeta. Anya didn’t like strangers and only the brothers could usually touch her without her screaming her head off. She moved closer to her daughter and took the small child from Misha’s arms. Then they moved back to stand with her brother and his men.
Sergi motioned for them to sit but no one moved.
“My name is Sergi Constantine, I am the leader of the Bratva both here and in Russia. This is my son, Misha and my second in command. This is my leading representative here in New York, Nikoli Silvanic. The other men are our bodyguards, Barron, Kirill and Felix.”
Maxim stiffened behind her but then he drew his sister behind him and he stepped forward. “My name is Maxim Marokov, leader of the Iron Bears, MC and these are my men. Zeta is my sister and Anya is my family.”
Sergi nodded. “She has told us her story and some of yours as well.” When the men grumbled behind Maxim, Sergi held up his hand. “She only told us about what happened and why her brother spent ten years in a prison for defending her honor. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing because that is not the Bratva I know. The Bratva I helped create. Her Bratva is a nightmare I was unaware my people were living.” He shrugged. “It is a Bratva I will not tolerate.”
“Yet, it is the only Bratva some of your people know.” Maxim growled. “This is the only Bratva we’ve known for a very long time. Fifteen years in fact.”
“That will stop immediately.” Sergi’s eyes flared and his body stiffened in outrage.
“Why should we believe a word you tell us?” One of Maxim’s men asked. “You are here in this country while Ivan is back home living the high life at the expense of his own people.”
“I understand that, but he won’t be living the high life as you say for very long,” Sergi assured them. “I need to know where he held you, which prison camp he converted for his own use and I need any information you have that we can use against him.”
Just then, there was a knock on the door.
Nikoli called out and when the door opened several people moved in and set up a breakfast buffet on the table in the adjoining room.
The men’s gazes followed the sight of the food.
Sergi motioned for them to move. “We must get to the bottom of this
, so I had the food brought here.” He hesitated then told them, “I can’t help you if I don’t know what you have to tell me. This is my olive branch to you. I’m not going to hurt you or hold you against your will. If there is a problem or if the Bratva is broken, I need to know in order to protect the people we are supposed to protect. From what I’ve heard so far, Ivan is abusing his people and that stops right now.”
“And how are you going to stop him?” Maxim asked. “He is a bigger fish to fry than you realize. He has ties all over the world and places to hide you will never know about.”
Sergi paused then looked at the men. “What do you know about the man that no one else seems to know?”
“I know he is the dirt under your shoes and he pretends to have all the power. But its just an illusion. He lives in the shadows and hell is waiting for him,” Maxim assured him.
“Let us eat together and you can fill us in on Ivan’s movements,” Sergi suggested.
The men filled heir plates and sat down at the huge table.
Maxim filled a plate for Anya and set it in front of her while Zeta filled her own plate and sat down beside her daughter. Maxim came to sit on her other side while Misha sat down across from both of them.
Anya dug into her plate with the gusto of a child, while Zeta could only push her food around on her plate.
Maxim and the brothers dug into the food and ate heartily. For a few moments that all that could be heard was the scraping of silverware on plates.
Then there was a rest in the noise as one buy one, they finished their meal.
Sergi took a sip of his coffee and looked over at Maxim. “So where were you held?”
“Ivan bought an old prison facility in the Siberian wilderness. He fixed it up just enough to hold his prisoners and nothing else. There was barely water there and sometimes it wasn’t clean enough to drink. He kept one side for the men and the other side was for his women and children.” Maxim glared at the older man.
“His women and children?” Sergi asked.
“Maxim, hold up,” Dima grumbled. “Why should we tell this guy anything?”
Maxim swung his gaze toward his own VP. “We might only have this one chance to right the wrong we were dealt by Ivan. If Constantine doesn’t know what his rep is doing, how can he stop it? I’m sick of living with fear that one day we’ll be caught. We know Ivan has his hit squads and that they are looking for us. I hate the fact we have to look over our shoulder all the damn time.”
“Wait a minute…” Misha growled. “What do you mean Ivan has his own hit squads?”
Dima glared at him as he answered, “We would stand in our cells and watch them train. I think Ivan got a thrill out of us watching them. He knew it bothered us to see his men train in the arts of killing. He knew word would go out about his squads and he liked using that to keep his people in line. He almost fed off the fear they had of him. He always called it respect but his people never respected him, they were fucking terrified of him. These squads keep the order and accompany the new women and kids to the compound. They are held there until they are sold and shipped to other places.”
“Ivan is selling women and children?” Nikoli stood as he almost yelled the question, his silverware clattering to the table. He took a breath as he could barely get the words out, “Women and children…” He was so outraged he could hardly speak.
“Da and he’s making good money from their misery.” Maxim sneered. “I’m sure that was his intention fifteen years ago when he thought to take my sister.”
“Do you have any solid proof of his activities?” Sergi wanted to know.
“Da, we do but we do not have it here,” Maxim told him. “We all watched when and where his deliveries came in. We all watched the women and kids he brought in too. We dug the graves of the women who fought back or tried to fight back.”
“How many of these hit squads did he have?” Sergi asked as his hands did not stop clenching into fists.
“We counted six in the time we were there, there could be more by now,” one of Maxim’s men told them.
Sergi looked at his son and Nikoli. Then he looked back at Maxim. “Do these squad have a name?”
“He calls them the Red Death,” Maxim replied. “There is at least one squad here in the United States. They have been here for a while now, searching for us. They like to mark their hits with a carving in the victim’s forehead.”
Just then, Maxim’s phone chirped with a text. When he looked at it, he found an image attached. Looking at the photo, he swore, “Dormo.” Then he turned to Sergi and showed him the phone.
Sergi studied the photo and grimaced. “Who was he?” he asked.
“That’s Lonnie Banks. He’s Zeta’s old boyfriend and Anya’s dad.”
Sergi studied the photo again. The man Lonnie had been beaten but that’s not what killed him. The rather large rip in his throat and the amount of blood present was what killed him. That’s when the carving on his forehead finally made sense. It was the outline of a Crow’s head. Blood stained the marking that did indeed, resemble a Red Bird of Death.
“If they can find Lonnie Banks what’s to stop them from finding us?” Dima asked.
Chapter Five
“How many more of you are there?” Sergi asked.
“We left a half a dozen men watching the compound,” Maxim replied. “Two or three of our men went to hunt down Lonnie. We didn’t know where Zeta and the baby were.”
“How did you know to come here?” Misha asked.
“I was out looking for Zeta,” Dima answered. “I stopped just after you pulled back out on the highway. I went down the ditch and found the baby’s shoe. I followed your car back to the hotel, then took the shoe to her brother.”
“Is your compound hidden well enough for them not to find it?” Misha asked.
Maxim shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. Lonnie tried to find us but never could. That’s when he got involved with Zeta but she knew better than to tell him where we were. I don’t know if that changed or not this time around.”
Zeta shook her head. “I never told him anything. That was why he got mad at me. He was yelling at me, and Anya started crying that’s how we ended up in the ditch. He told me he would turn over every rock in four states until he found us this time. There was more at stake now as Ivan put a bounty on your heads.”
“A fucking bounty?” Dima growled. “He wasn’t happy with ten years of our lives, now he has a bounty on our heads?”
Sergi shrugged. “This doesn’t surprise me. He needs to find you before you tell the world about his operation. He’s gotten by unscathed for five years since you escaped. He will know his operation might not last any longer.”
Maxim nodded. “Through the grapevine, we’ve discovered he’s been liquidating his assets at home. We’ve had our men monitoring him and he’s been moving his operations to another location.”
Sergi glanced at Nikoli and Misha. “Through the grapevine? What grapevine? Do you know where he’s moving them too?”
“We have our sources.” Dima growled. “We’ve been keeping track of people and events back home, even if we can’t be there. Some of us still have family in Russia. Family, we care very much about.” He hung his head.
An eerie quiet fell over the group.
Dima raised his head and stared at the Bratva men sitting there with them, before he told them, “We think he’s moving his operation to the far eastern coast of Russia. We think he’s setting up a shipping route for his merchandise.”
“Blyad!” Sergi swore as he stood and started to pace.
The men all watched him. Some looked startled that he did seem to care about all of this.
“If we want to catch him, we’ll have to move quickly.” He stopped o pacing looked over at Maxim. “Do you know where he held you exactly?”
Maxim nodded.
Dima added a warning, “He had armed guards roaming the woods beyond the compound. His men are well trained and they like to inflict
pain. Ivan does nothing to stop them but he does like to watch them do it. He’s a sick man.”
Zeta sat there and listened to what was being said and felt sick at the words. She never would have imagined this could happen to someone she knew. Oh, she knew stuff like this happened, she just never imagined it happening to her.
She had been spared all the misery by the grace of the good lord and Maxim’s deeds that fateful day but in the last fifteen years, she had to wonder how many others had suffered in her place. She held her daughter and thanked the lord she was safe.
She glanced down at the top on Anya’s head and thought about how she came to be. She had told her brother and his friends she’d been foolish enough to fall for Lonnie’s lies but that wasn’t really what happened.
Her mind flipped back to the night she met him and the old pain flooded back. Her body might have healed but the memories never would. That night would always be with her. Looking up into the faces of the men around her, she knew it always would be locked away, for the sake of everyone at this table. She would never reveal what happened that night.
Even though Lonnie was beyond anything they could do to him, others weren’t and she had grown to care for the men that stood beside her brother.
Misha glanced over at Zeta and caught the strained look on her face. Almost one of horror that slowly changed to something else. The words these men were speaking would be a nightmare to have to live through but it wasn’t Zeta who lived through them, or was it? Had something happened with this Lonnie? Something other than what she’d first told them about?
He watched her look at her daughter with the kind of love only a mother could give her child, then she looked at the men around her and he knew right then and there she was holding something back. Something that maybe would have put their lives in danger if she told them.
Misha knew from the moment he met her that she would mean something in his life. He’d thought at first perhaps a lover but now he was thinking it was something else entirely. During the night, he couldn’t’ keep his eyes off of her. He had learned of each and every curve of her face while he stared at her sleeping form. Then she’d stood up to him and Sergi, protecting her daughter supposedly from the bad men. Next, she put herself between her brother and his men and the one thing they all feared the most, the Bratva.