Holding herself stiffly, she walked over to Alexei’s chair, standing behind him with her hand on his shoulder. Vasile sat in the other seat across from them, and the man’s cold eyes focused steadily on her. She nodded at him, attempting to be polite though her mouth was drier than the desert. “Hello, Mr. Varnakov. We weren’t expecting you back so soon.”
He snorted. “Yes, I’m certain you thought the marriage would tie the whole thing up neatly in a bow. You were wrong, Alexei. I gave you in order. I already had reason to doubt your loyalty, and now you’ve given me another. Perhaps I was hasty in appointing you as the Pakhan of the city. I believe Vadim might have been right when he said he was a better candidate.”
Surprisingly, Alexei didn’t argue with his uncle. He just maintained a cool silence, though his hand came up to hold hers on his shoulder, and he squeezed for support. Even she wasn’t certain if he was giving her silent support or taking it.
“Well, you having nothing to say for yourself, Alyoshka?”
Alexei shrugged. “You gave me an impossible order to follow, Vasile. She’s my wife now, and she can’t be compelled to testify against me.”
Vasile shook his head, looking annoyed. “She can’t be compelled, but she could volunteer.” He said something harsh in Russian, and it was a word Tara had not heard from anyone. She assumed it must be dreadfully vile, especially from the way Alexei’s face tightened, and his hand gripped hers even harder, almost firm enough to hurt.
“I’m a softy,” said Vasile with perfect sincerity, shaking his head as though it was a failing of his. “I put family first, and you’re still family, Alexei. You bring much value to our organization, and I’ve been pleased with your venture into the financial markets. I would hate to lose you, so I’m prepared to give you another chance.”
Alexei stiffened slightly. “What kind of chance?”
Acting as though it was no big deal, Vasile reached into his jacket to remove a gun with a silencer screwed on the tip. He put it on the desk halfway between himself and Alexei. “Shoot the pizda, and all will be forgiven. Defy me, and you’ll share a grave with her. Either way, she’s not leaving this room. She’s a loose end you should have tied up that first night. Keeping her was a foolish move.”
“No.” Alexei spoke calmly, not even reaching for the gun. “I won’t shoot my wife, and it’s outrageous that you would ask me to. How would you feel if I told you to shoot Aunt Zhenya?”
Vasile’s jaw tightened, and he glared at Alexei, seemingly oblivious to Tara’s presence at the moment. “That’s different. She’s one of us, a good Russian wife who knows when to keep her mouth shut. This is a do-gooder American, and you’ll never be able to trust her. She’ll always live by a different moral code than you. That moral code clashes with our code, the code of the vory v zakone. That was the code you swore to follow when you accepted those stars on your chest. Now do as you vowed, or join your bride in the ground.”
Alexei still didn’t reach for the gun. “I’d rather die with her than live without her.”
Vasile swore, pounding his fist onto the desk forcefully. “You little fool. You’ll risk everything for a woman? You’ve had more chances than you deserve.”
Tara knew it was going to happen before he even reached for the gun. She could see Vasile’s thoughts on his face. He was going to shoot her and then Alexei, and then be on his way. Later, she wouldn’t even recall moving forward, barely snatching up the handgun before Vasile, but she clearly remembered training the pistol on him, telling him not to move.
“Most impressive.” Vasile laughed. “Give the gun to me, sooka, and I’ll ensure you die quickly. Draw this out, and you will die slowly. I’ll take you back to my home and see what my nephew finds so fascinating about you before I put a bullet in your brain if you don’t give me that gun.”
She stared at him, her brain spinning without settling on any particular thought. She heard Alexei say something, but the words didn’t make sense. Her world reduced down to the evil old man in front of her, and the gun pointed at him. The equation was simple. Him or her. Not just her, but Alexei too. Someone was going to die that afternoon, and if she didn’t shoot Vasile, it would be her and Alexei.
Even as she had the realization, her finger was already pulling the trigger. She couldn’t seem to stop herself, and she shot him four times in succession, the shots centered between his chest and his head, one completely removing the old man’s face.
It was only when Alexei’s hand fastened over hers, wrenching away the gun, that she realized what she had done. She stared at him in shock, watching his mouth move but unable to comprehend the words coming from it. He looked angry. No, enraged. He was enraged with her, and she didn’t understand why. She’d had no choice. Right?
She stared at him, but the words refused to coalesce in her mind. Eventually, she surrendered to the darkness whirling through her, and though she didn’t pass out, she let herself sink into a gray state that protected her from everything, at least for the time being.
* * *
He shoved aside his lingering anger with Vasile to focus on Tara. Alexei knew she was going in to shock, and it somewhat mirrored his own. Fortunately, he was far more immune to violence than his delicate wife, so he was able to push past his initial reaction and pull her into his arms.
She didn’t respond when he called her name, not even to blink to her eyes or look at him. He was concerned about her mental health, but he was far more concerned at the moment about her physical wellbeing. Neither one of them would make it very long if he didn’t get rid of Vasile’s body right away.
Still, he couldn’t leave her like this, and he couldn’t take her to their room and risk her wandering around or confessing what she had done to someone when she was in this state, assuming she could form words. With little choice, he lifted her into his arms and ran up the stairs, taking only a moment to lock his study before he did so, and bypassing their room in favor of the black room instead.
A little bit of her awareness seemed to return as he opened the door and stepped inside, setting her on her feet. She clutched his lapels, her eyes pleading with him not to leave her there. It took everything he had to gently pull her hands from him and push her back a couple of steps. “Stay here. I must deal with this.”
She wailed softly, but she didn’t speak again as she sank to the floor, hugging herself as she rocked back and forth. He felt like the world’s biggest bastard leaving her there, but the situation with Vasile had to be dealt with immediately, though it pained him to turn from her.
He ran down the stairs again, returning to his study and locking it behind himself. It bought him a little time, time he needed to figure out what to do with the dead body in his office, brains all over the chair and spattered on his desk.
He felt no remorse or grief for the loss of the old man, and he was intensely and insanely proud of his wife. She had simply acted, doing what was necessary. It was what he had planned to do too, but she had remained unaware of the gun on his lap, pointed at his uncle. He had been a millisecond from pulling the trigger when she had snatched up the pistol and did it first.
With Vasile’s sudden arrival, he hadn’t had much time to think of a contingency plan or disposal option should the confrontation end in the old man’s death. Now that it had come to that, he lacked the luxury of time to formulate a foolproof plan. His brain spun, and he finally came to one conclusion. He couldn’t trust his own people, not with this. He didn’t know who was loyal to Vasile and who was not.
It seemed obvious his own man Stepan was more loyal to Vasile, since he had told the other man all about Tara’s place in his life. He wondered if he would have to deal with Stepan too, along with Vasile’s byki, but he pushed aside the concern for the moment as he focused on an unpleasant choice before him.
There were only two people who could help him out in the situation, and the question was which one would it be worse to owe such a debt? He briefly considered Gio Peretti, but shook hi
s head and discarded the notion. Peretti would no doubt have a cleanup crew capable of slipping in and leaving the place spotless, all under the noses of Vasile’s byki, but he could only the shudder as he imagined what Perretti would expect in return.
That left Murphy. Patrick Murphy was at least a more reasonable man, though he couldn’t say he was eager to owe this kind of debt to him either. Even more daunting was the prospect that once he confessed the situation to Patrick Murphy, the other man might decide to go to the Russians above Alexei instead of acting as his ally. He could only hope they had built strong enough ties between them during the past couple of years that Patrick’s loyalty would be to him first. It was a long-shot, but what other choice did he have?
Reluctantly, he reached for the phone, grabbing a tissue to wipe brain matter from it before he punched in Patrick Murphy’s private number, a number he’d never had cause to use before, but had committed to memory. One didn’t add the head of the Irish mafia’s phone number to the Rolodex.
A sweetly feminine voice answered the phone, and he knew it must be Lauren Murphy. “I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Murphy, but I need to speak with Patrick please.”
She didn’t ask him to identify himself, and he didn’t know if it was because his Russian accent identified him, or because she was a well-trained mafia wife and knew not to press for information she didn’t need. That was a skill Tara would have to pick up at some point, assuming they survived this.
Patrick answered, sounding gruff and half-asleep. “I was up half the night with the baby and just laid down for a nap, so this had better be damned important.”
The thought of the other man being up with his baby was both amusing and incongruous, but he had no time to spare to contemplate it at the moment. “I need your help, Murphy, and you might as well know now if we fuck this up, we’ll put a target on both our asses.”
There was a brief hesitation, and then Patrick asked, “What do you need, Varnakov?”
* * *
Alexei, standing beside Patrick with Yuri on his other side, watched with satisfaction as the limousine went over the cliff. Two of Patrick’s men stood behind their boss, and he assumed they could be trusted implicitly. Otherwise, the other man wouldn’t have brought them along, because he wasn’t anxious to be dragged into a war between the Varnakov bratva and the other branches of the family. Alexei was still slightly awed and overwhelmed that the other man had come through for him with only a slight hesitation.
Together, they had concocted the scene playing out before them, and the next stage happened as expected. A sudden blast, followed by a whoosh of flame visible even from their vantage point, indicated the car had exploded as expected. With any luck, the evidence would be murky enough that it would appear Vasile’s limousine had simply driven off the road.
There would be questions about why he was so far out of the city, going up into the hills, but it should be unlikely anyone from the Brighton Beach branch of the family would suspect foul play. He conceded they would probably wonder if it had been an accident, but there would be no proof of external involvement, and certainly be no proof linking his wife to Vasile’s murder.
The two byki and the driver who had accompanied Vasile were in the car along with him, but they had been subdued and had their necks broken first. Alexei and Patrick hadn’t wanted to risk gunshots that might leave behind bullets for ballistics, and had gone so far as to dig the bullets from Vasile’s body. The one that had gone straight to his face and out the back of his head hadn’t been a problem, but the other three bullets had all lodged in his fleshy body.
Alexei grimaced with disgust as he briefly remembered the feeling of cooling blood on his hands as he’d dug into Vasile’s flesh with the pocketknife. The explosion should have burned hot enough to remove any evidence of his clumsy mutilation during the bullet extraction.
Stepan, as expected, had clearly revealed his lack of loyalty when he had discovered what was going on. His body would be disposed of by Yuri after they finished here, using the usual methods. It would have made no sense for Stepan to be in the car with Vasile, so the two deaths had to remain unconnected.
“Now what?” asked Murphy. “I expect your people will be all over this place for a few days, especially until someone finds the car and identifies the bodies. What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to try to play dumb. As far as I know, Vasile came and went, and I didn’t see him after his quick visit.” He shuddered as he imagined the people who would be in his house over the next few days, the kind of scum he didn’t want anywhere near Tara. “I have one more favor to ask.”
Patrick laughed, but there was an edge to it. “You have a set of balls on you, Varnakov. What else do you need?”
“I need you to watch something for me for a few days. Someone. I want to protect her from what’s coming.”
Patrick nodded, not even hesitating. “I’d want to do the same for Lauren and Maddie.”
* * *
She’d lost track of how long she was in the room that had once been her prison. At first, her thoughts were a scattered kaleidoscope, but when that phase had passed, she’d been able to do nothing but dwell on her thoughts.
Tara sagged with relief when the door finally opened. She was physically sick with worry, her stomach churning with the need to vomit every few minutes. All it took was closing her eyes and recalling the vision of Vasile’s head disappearing under the impact of the bullet she had fired to send her running to the toilet to retch again. The last couple of times, her stomach had been empty, so she had been reduced to dry heaves that made her stomach and esophagus burn with acid.
Alexei stepped inside the room, and he looked grim. Of course he looked grim. He’d just watched her kill his uncle, and clearly, he was angered by it. She still didn’t think she’d had another alternative, but she couldn’t blame him for holding a grudge. Vasile had been his family, and she was just his…what? Wife? Barely.
Perhaps Alexei had just planned to let his uncle remove her. It would have been the easiest thing for him, and he would’ve retained his position without any difficulties. Now, she had no idea what kind of maelstrom he was facing, but it couldn’t be pleasant. If he would have her, she would stand beside him though.
As though he had read her mind and wished to crush the notion, he said, “Come with me. I have a bag packed and ready to go.”
She drew in a harsh breath, feeling as though her heart had split in two. For weeks, she had wanted the freedom to leave this house, but now that he was sending her away, she could barely fight back tears at the thought of leaving him. “You’re getting rid of me?”
He sighed, and his expression was tense. “It’s for the best, Tara. Hurry up now.”
She wanted to dig in her heels and be stubborn, but what would be the point? He’d clearly decided to get rid of her, so why try to change his mind? Why would she even want to change his mind? She had wanted to be free, hadn’t she? She had fallen into the role he had set for her in a narrowly defined set of parameters, but this wouldn’t have been her choice. If she’d had the chance before, she would have left, wouldn’t she? Now that she had the opportunity, she shouldn’t be feeling torn up inside that he had decided to free her.
Striving to look graceful, though knowing she failed utterly, she straightened her shoulders and walked forward, not looking at him. It was only as she drew near him that she paused, and then only because he touched her arm. She looked up at him, trying to remain impassive. “What?”
“Are you all right? You’ve never killed anyone before, so how are you holding up?”
She shrugged, which also had the effect of removing his hand from her. She stepped away and around him before he could try to touch her again, though as far as she could tell, he made no move to do so. “I’ll survive. Soon, this will all be just a bad memory.”
She was referring to far more than being forced to shoot Vasile Varnakov, but she wasn’t the melodramatic type to make a big producti
on and fanfare about their parting of ways. She briefly entertained the idea of asking who would handle the annulment or divorce, but she could sense his urgency to have her gone. He clearly wanted to be rid of her, and it would be a relief to get back to her home.
That was why it was a bit of a nasty shock to find out he was handing her off to a complete stranger. The tall man before her with hazel eyes and russet-colored hair looked stern, though there was a hint of kindness in his gaze. The two men flanking him were big and beefy, and their expertly tailored suits did little to hide the fact they were bodyguards. “Who is this? What’s going on?”
“Mr. Murphy’s going to see to you for a few days, Tara.”
She looked up at Alexei with a frown. “I just want to go home. My sister’s there.”
Alexei shook his head, his arms crossed over his chest in a decisive manner, transmitting he wouldn’t entertain arguments. “You aren’t going anywhere except where I send you, lisichka. Go with Patrick.”
She wanted to argue, but what was the point? If she didn’t walk out of there, he’d simply sling her over his arms and carry her to whatever conveyance the Murphy man used. He was clearly done with her, disgusted by her actions—which was highly hypocritical considering his profession—but he wasn’t going to leave her as a loose end.
As she shuffled between the two bodyguards, with the Patrick guy following behind her, she stumbled as a horrifying thought occurred to her. What if Alexei had sold or given her to this man? Did he consider her a disposable commodity? Depending on the person he was handing her over to, she could be facing death or something even worse, like slavery. Had Alexei bragged about how he had broken her, perhaps primed the man behind her to expect her to fall into his bed as easily?
She shuddered at the thought, almost throwing up again despite a lack of contents in her stomach. She bent over and heaved, but nothing came out. If the man thought he could manipulate her body into responding, he was crazy. There had been something between her and Alexei from the start, an unwanted connection and a little zing of attraction that was missing with this guy. He might be able to break her, but she would never enjoy it.
MAFIA: Dark Romance Collection Page 36