Reckoning

by Elizabeth Knox

  “Oh moy bog,” she whimpers, her voice coming out like a soft cry. I turn her head towards me, kissing her lightly on the lips before I speak.

  “What’s that, baby?”

  “Kazhetsya ya vlyublyayus’ v tebya, Junior.” She still speaks Russian, knowing very damn well I don’t understand a fucking lick of it. Her eyes go glossy, and a tear falls over her cheek, down her face. I slide out of her, lifting her into my arms and carry her to the bed. Once she’s settled, I go over to the cakes and grab a plate that the girl at the shop was so kind to give us. I take a giant piece of carrot and German chocolate cake, putting it on the plate and grab the plastic silverware that the girl also supplied us with.

  We both eat in silence for a few minutes until I see her smiling. My little Russian hard head is enjoying this carrot cake. “It’s delicious.”

  “Mhm. I thought you might like it,” I tell her, getting up to grab more cake for me and the pint of milk. I bring it over and hand the milk to her, she takes a heavy sip.

  “Oh moy bog! It’s so good with the milk.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask, shoving a giant chunk of the German chocolate cake in my mouth.

  “It is like the English ‘oh, my god’,” She tells me, eating a little more of her slice of carrot cake while sipping slowly on the milk.

  “Oh, and what about a few minutes ago?”

  “It was nothing.” I don’t believe that at all. It didn’t look like it was nothing. For as long as I’ve known her, she’s never cried, so in order to do that it must have been something a little heavy and I plan on finding out exactly what that was.

  Katya finishes her portion of cake, and I finish off the rest. What can I say? I’m a big boy, and I’m hungry. Plus, they were fucking delicious. Some of the best cake I’ve had in a really long time.

  We lay down in bed. I’m on my back, and she lays up against me, her leg over mine, body tucked into my side. We left the light next to the bed on, and I find myself staring at her bear tattoo. I have a lot of ink personally, and whoever put that bear on her is quite the artist.

  I run my fingertips over her stomach, slowly going over the ink, tracing the bear until I feel a patch of skin that doesn’t quite match the rest. If she was standing, I bet I could see the scar more clearly, the first time we fucked I sure as hell did. I’m just wondering what the hell happened to her, and I don’t like that I don’t know.

  I continue to move my hand over her stomach, feeling a jagged line, I follow it until I reach the other side of her stomach and when I move up a little higher I feel another bump of skin. “What happened to you?” As I ask I keep my voice low. I don’t want to demand the answers out of her, but internally I want to make her tell me.

  I want to know who exactly it was that hurt her.

  She looks up at me, letting out a breath that she was holding in. “I was pregnant, and Sergei didn’t like that the timing didn’t suit him.” I don’t understand… There is no way I am following what she is telling me, and then it clicks just like that. She told me that Sergei killed their child.

  “We had been trying to have a child for a long time. I was never able to get pregnant. At one point, I thought I wasn’t able… we tried lots of things and none of them worked until one day, out of the blue, I found out. I was happy… happy to finally be a mother.” She smiles softly up at me before continuing. “The day I told him, I found out I was being replaced. I was no longer of use to him, and he wanted a divorce but having a child with your soon to be ex-wife was not part of his plan, tsk. He instructed one of his men, a doctor whom he has been paying for years, to kill our child. He did much more, and much worse.” She closes her eyes, and I can only imagine the pain that is replaying when those eyelids of hers shut.

  “He didn’t just take my child. He took my ability to have children. Sergei told me that if I could not give him what he wanted when he wanted it, then I would give no man what I could not offer to him. So now I will never be able to be a mother. I am destined to die without children of my own.”

  I run my hand through her hair, rubbing her head gently I feel her breath hitting my chest. “Does that please you, or would you like to know the gritty details as well?”

  “No. Baby, you know you can still be a mother. It just won’t be the way you thought it would,” I whisper, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

  “You make me think of the world in a different light. For a bad ass biker man, you have a very open mind.” She laughs lightly against me. I guess I do. Maybe life makes you think of things differently after you’ve been through the ringer a time or two.

  I pull Katya a little closer, snuggling her against me and wait as the two of us fall asleep. We need to be rested for tomorrow. There is no telling how our day is actually going to go.

  Chapter 25

  If you can love the wrong person that much, imagine how much you can love the right one. - Anonymous

  Katya

  I woke up at the break of dawn to my phone buzzing away on the bedside table. I had to practically crawl over Junior to reach it, and when I read who it was that was texting me, I had to curse.

  From: Sergei

  Meet me at Central Park. We must discuss business, now.

  I huffed and puffed reading the message, knowing that there was no other option but to meet him. I quietly tip-toed over Junior and went to the wardrobe where I had a few outfits hanging. I picked something quick and easy, a dark pair of jeans, black boots, and a dark purple oversized sweater which complimented me entirely.

  I left a note on the bedside table for Junior, telling him that I had business to attend to and to meet me at the airport in a few hours when we were to meet Mariana and Ion. I knew that he would make sure he was there. I did not have to babysit him, and this would give me time to sort whatever it was that Sergei needed me for. There is a part of me that thinks this is not business at all, that this is personal, and usually my gut instinct is never wrong.

  It didn’t take me long to get to Central Park. I made sure that I got a coffee along the way. The liquid warmed my body up on this chilly fall day.

  I found Sergei in a familiar spot, the one where we would sit and talk amongst ourselves. It felt weird to be here of all places, where we have held so many memories. Then again, most places I have been are where Sergei and I have shared moments. I doubt I would find any place where I did not hold a memory that I had previously cherished with him.

  “Katya,” he greets me, standing up from the bench. “Please sit.”

  I sit next to him, being careful as to not let myself touch him whatsoever. I feel that if I touched him I would burst with pain.

  “What was it that is so important that you must see me?” I ask him, irritated beyond belief. We had gone so long without seeing one another, something that I had done on purpose and for a reason. I did not want to see him. Now we have seen each other two times in such a short amount of time.

  “I hear you are with one of the bikers from your brother’s club,” he growls, glaring at me as if I am doing something wrong.

  “This is none of your business,” I explain to him, starting to rise from the bench when he grabs my arm so tightly that it causes me pain. “Let me go,” I hiss through clenched teeth, tired of his behavior. He has no right. He made his choice long ago.

  “You are still mine. What makes you think that you may go and fuck others?”

  I snap at his words, taking off the lid to my coffee and throwing it in his face. “I belong to no one. I am not yours and never will I be again. You made the decision to toss me aside like trash, and now that you see I am happy you want to ruin it. No, I will not let you take my future when you have already taken so much from me. I refuse to let you!”

  “You don’t have much of a choice. I still give you money, you will do whatever I say as long as it means you still have a roof over your head. You are predictable like that, dear Katya,” Sergei seethes, taking his hands from his face, trying to wipe the coffe
e with his shirt.

  “You underestimate me,” I tell him, coming to a point in my life where I want nothing more to be rid of him, even if that means I will be homeless and hungry. I will not continue to do this. “I am done. I will work with you no more. I am out.”

  “You can’t just go out of our partnership, Katya. You know that more than anybody. You are part of my business whether you like it or not. Fuck, you are my protégé. You will have it when I die. What makes you think I will let you just leave?”

  “I am not giving you an option, Sergei!” I scream, starting to walk away from him.

  “Krolik.” I come to a dead halt, not moving an inch as he calls me a name I haven’t heard since the day I was brought to him. “I trust no one else more than you, no one else holds the keys to my empire as you do. I have trained you for this, to take everything. Do you think that I had wanted to do what I did? If you had just told me sooner, then I would have not made a deal with DiGiovanni. I would not have done what needed to be done!” He screams at the last bit, and all I see is anger and hurt.

  What needed to be done. He says it so lightly, when he killed our child. He took the life that he wanted to create and halted it from ever reaching existing.

  “You do not get to say to me what you are, to blame me for your actions,” I yell, tears threatening to spill out over my cheeks. “I wanted more with you. We had it all, and you ruined it. You destroyed everything, for what? More power!”

  “I can do nothing about it now. I can only tell you what you know, that what I have will be yours. You cannot be out, the keys sit in your hand, and when I am done you will know.”

  “I do not want to hold the keys while you have them. I want to have no part in all of this with you. I want peace, and how may I have that when I am constantly being reminded of how much pain you caused me?”

  I turn to look at him, wanting to see the look that has spread across his face. When I turn, I am surprised by his expression. It is one that I know too well. His lips are pursed, and his eyes are on the pavement below us.

  He agrees with me.

  “Fine. Then we must come up with an arrangement.” He is quiet for moments, and just as I am about to start walking, he speaks. “You will take over when I die, and before that I will continue to run operations. You will have no part in business unless I believe it is absolutely necessary. In the meantime, I will continue to pay you as we have previously discussed. Do you agree to these terms?”

  “Da,” I mutter before walking past him towards the cold streets of New York. I only left because if I had stayed I know that I would have crumbled into a million pieces in front of him. I can only pretend to be strong for so long, especially to the man who has hurt me more than any other.

  Sergei has hurt me more than my very own mother.

  He continues to hurt me day after day.

  Chapter 26

  This is her home. Being in his arms is her home. - Bliss

  Katya

  I had just made it to the airport in time to catch the plane. Junior was there and sending me daggers the entire time, demanding to know where it was that I went and what it was that I was doing. I know that he was only acting this way because he cared, and it warmed my heart that even cared this much about me.

  Our trip passed quickly as Bianca was a chatterbox. She is the spitting image of my sister, looking like a smaller version of her. I chatted with the girl the entire flight, she told me of her favorite TV shows and what she thought of many major issues that she had the luxury of seeing on the news. Coming from a child, it did crack me up a bit. I watched how my sister and her family were the entire flight. How Ion loves Bianca as his own even though he is not her biological father. You can tell that the love between the two of them is the most genuine. I am happy for my dear niece. It is warming my heart to see the way he treats her, spoiling and loving her as a true father should.

  When we all landed I had a chat with Mariana and Ion, telling them that it would be best if I reached back out to them later in the day. Junior had told me earlier while we were on the plane that Ryder’s birthday party was going on today and he would go back to the club then.

  “I’m just going to take you with me,” he tells me, freshly out of the shower in my hotel room.

  “No. I don’t think that is such a good idea.” I know what will happen, they will crucify him for bringing me. I am still viewed as the enemy to them, and to more specifically – my brother and sister.

  “You realize that you’re coming with me, and that’s that. It’s not cause you need to talk to your brother and sister. Yeah that shit is important but me bringing you there is not about you or them. It’s about you and me. It’s about us, Viper.”

  “What are you talking about? This has everything to do with Dmitri and Ksenia,” I start to explain to him but cannot as he places his finger over my lips.

  “Sure, I want you to sort out all that shit with your brother and sister, but that’s not why I’m bringing you with me. I want them to see you and me. You with me,” he says, a glimmer of light shining through those eyes of his.

  “No, they will hate you for it. For being with me,” I tell him, sure of my assumptions. No one in that club likes me, and I cannot blame them for their opinions.

  “They’ll get over it, they always do. I haven’t felt like myself in a really long time, baby. You help bring something out in me that I thought died, you’ve brought me back to life and screw them if they can’t accept that you make me happy.”

  “Things will not be that simple. You are a biker. Do you think that I do not know what that means? What is the saying, brothers before all else? You know what will happen, and so do I.”

  “And what is that exactly?” He huffs at me.

  “They will make you choose, and you will choose them.”

  “Why are you so sure of that?” he asks, and I don’t know how to respond. I just know. We aren’t two people who are deep in love. We are two who have an undeniable connection, and if you ask me if I can see myself falling for this man. I will admit that I am already starting. I’ve tried to hold my heart back as much as possible, but he breaks through my walls, tearing them down bit by bit. “C’mon, let’s get going,” he mutters, turning around and walks through the door to my room.

  I follow him until we reach his bike and wrap my arms around him while he drives us to the clubhouse. All I can think about now is my meeting with Sergei, and trust me, I do not want to be thinking of this right now. I always seem to have business playing in the back of my mind.

  It was no shock to me that Sergei made a deal with DiGiovanni to marry his eldest daughter, Caprice. I know that it is not just solely for the access to the Italian Mafia that he will no doubted receive now, but this will also expand his reach. I assume that this means business will skyrocket, but I just can’t help thinking there is more that is going on behind the scenes. More than I do not know about. With Sergei though, you never really know.

  When he pulls into the parking lot of the club it is filled with bikes. The few times I have been here, there have never been this many people. Bikes fill the gravel so much that they are back to back, hundreds must be here. Junior pulls up along the side, a few men who stand outside stare at us the entire time. I wonder if they know who I am, or if they are simply staring at Junior because he’s back again.

  He steps off, taking my hand to support me as I do the same. “We got this. You hear me?”

  I smile lightly at his words of encouragement. He is unlike any man that I have ever been with, truly. “We will see how it goes,” I tell him.

  Junior keeps a tight hold on my hand as we weave through people. We both walk closer to the doors, and it becomes more packed than I could ever imagine. Bikers and women are packed everywhere. He told me that this was a child’s birthday party…why are so many people here?

  Junior looks in the doors quickly and drags me along with him around the side of the building until we are behind the clubhouse where
the amount of people here still shocks me. “Isn’t this a party for a baby?” I ask him.

  “Yeah, Viper. But we’re a little different. We know how to throw a party, even if the one it’s for is a tyke.” He nods, holding onto my hand tighter as we continue to go through the crowd of bikers.

  My other arm is grabbed forcefully, yanking me in another direction as Junior is pulling me the opposite way. “I almost did not recognize you.” Ksenia’s voice is not as I remember. She sounds stronger now, like her will has been rebuilt. She has always been such a little dove, it is her nickname. Our little broken dove. Maybe she is not so broken anymore.

  “I needed a change. It is time for that, yes?” I ask her, Junior stops tugging on my arm, and I feel the pressure go limp almost as strongly as I can feel his eyes on me.

  “You will never change, we both know of this,” she grumbles, glancing around the crowd. I wonder who it is she is looking for, and it takes me a mere moment to realize she is probably looking for Dmitri.

  “All I have done is change, through our entire lives. I have changed myself into what I needed to be to keep us alive. Do you not see that?” Ksenia’s eyes go wide at my statement.

  “No, you did not do what just needed to be done. You turned into a cold, hateful woman who is selfish and only does what she wants. You do not get to say that you have done things for me, or for us. You have done them for you and yourself only.”

  My sister may be being a rude bitch to me right now, but I would lie to say I am not proud of her. She has come a long way from being the girl who barely uttered a word to anyone else. Now she has balls, speaking her mind – even if she does not know what she is saying.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I tell her, and she doesn’t. She does not truly know the meaning behind anything that I have done. At the end of the day I have always put her best interests in front of my own, even now. It is how she ended up here in the first place.