by Tillie Cole
“What? What else do you remember?”
“He organized for the Georgians to intercept the bus. He emptied it and burned the bus. They filled it with dead teens from the Gulag so there was burned bodies. But it was Abram. He ordered me taken.”
Kisa’s eyes shone, but her face was calmer now, numb. “He needed to protect Alik,” she said, nodding. “He needed you gone so no one would know Alik killed Rodion.”
My teeth gritted together and I lowered my head, taking a long, deep breath. “They never expected me to survive. They thought I’d be killed in the cage.”
We were both silent for a while, but then Kisa stood and held out her hand. I looked up into her eyes and saw only strength. “But you did, Luka. You did survive. And…” She took a breath and straightened her shoulders. Resolve had settled within her. I could see it in her face. “We need to get you back to the gym. You have a fight to win tomorrow.”
I watched my Kisa-Anna, and the anger I had fled my body.
I had to win this fight.
I had to reclaim my life or forever live in the dark.
Slipping my hand in Kisa’s and seeing her eyes shine with tears, I got to my feet and pulled her into my chest. Her gaze met mine, and I raked back her long brown hair with my fingers.
Her eyes closed. “You have to win the fight, Luka. Justice must be served. It is the way we live. Blood for blood. You have to do it for you, for us … but I want you to win for Rodion. He should be avenged.”
Leaning down, I pressed my forehead to hers, just being for a minute. I finally pulled away, picked up my clothes and put them on. Zipping up my sweater, I pulled up the hood and finally faced my Kisa. She was staring at the ground, but she looked up and a sad smile pulled on her lips.
I strode toward her and tugged her into my chest, once again inhaling her scent. “Will you still want me after I kill Durov?”
Kisa froze, but her head began to nod against my chest. “Yes, lyubov moya,” she said almost silently. “I have been with Alik for so long. He needed me to live, couldn’t stand being without me.”
Kisa pulled back from my chest but didn’t look up. Her hands played with the string on my sweater. “I’ve always known he was … different, dangerous. Always known he wasn’t like everybody else … but I put up with it because, well, he was all I’d ever known for so long, and I knew he’d kill me if I tried to leave. He wouldn’t survive without me next to him. He’d unravel, he become too dark, too unrestrained.” Kisa sucked in a deep breath as my heart ached at the tone of her voice. “But I didn’t know he’d taken you from me, taken my brother from me. I’d asked him about that day so much in the beginning and he swore to me that you had killed Rodion. Now everything I’ve ever believed has just come crashing down.”
“And your father? What will he do?” I asked, feeling a wave of possessiveness over Kisa. Jealous that Durov had had her all these years. That he’d made her believe he needed her so much she could never be with anyone else.
She was mine. Not his. Never his … MINE!
Kisa glanced away, seeming lost in her head. “When Papa finds out what Alik did to his son, his heir, his pride and joy, and then finds out who you are, that you are innocent, he’ll want Alik dead too.”
“He will?” I asked in confusion.
Kisa faced me and her head tilted to the side. “Luka … do you remember if you had any family here in Brooklyn? Do you know how you know me? Why we grew up together? Why you knew Rodion and Alik?”
My hands started to sweat and my headache grew stronger again. My eyes squeezed shut and my stomach clenched, my breath pausing in my throat.
“Luka! Luka!” Kisa prompted, and I let out a long exhale as my eyes snapped back open. Sweat beaded on my forehead and I felt as though I’d been punching a bag for three hours straight.
“Don’t try and remember right now,” Kisa instructed, and I focused on her eyes, on her hand that rested on my cheek. “Don’t. You’re tired. You’ve put yourself through too much tonight. The color has gone from your face.”
Kisa’s fingers stroked my stubbled cheek and the feeling was hypnotic. I breathed with the rhythm of her caress until my heart began to slow.
“Good, lyubov moya,” Kisa soothed.
Once I had calmed, I nodded my head, telling her I was good.
Kisa’s question stabbed at my mind. A family? People who … loved me? I couldn’t even imagine it. Another stab of pain tortured my mind, but I knew I had to block it out. To block out everything but the fight against Durov.
I would finally get my revenge.
“We need to go,” Kisa said reluctantly, and taking her outstretched hand, we walked back over the sand toward Serge, climbing in his awaiting car.
A while later, we arrived at the gym and I kissed Kisa on the lips.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Luka,” she whispered. “I’ll try and come to you before the fight.”
Nodding my head curtly, I opened the door of the car but paused to look over my shoulder, thinking how beautiful Kisa truly was. “I…” I cleared my throat, tipped my head to the side, and said, “I … love … you.”
The words felt strange coming from my lips, but when Kisa’s eyes began filling with tears and her mouth pulled into a huge, watery smile, I knew these three words were right.
Love. A new yet somehow familiar emotion for me.
Kisa scrambled over the seat and crushed her lips against mine. As she pulled back, she whispered, “I love you too. So much. So, so much.”
Nodding again, I hid the sense of warmth filling my body. It took me by surprise. I didn’t know how to deal with such things.
“Tomorrow,” I said, stroking my thumb across her soft face and stood.
“Tomorrow,” Kisa said in reply.
Serge tipped his hat at me from the driver’s door.
I backed away into the shadows of the gym, once again one with the darkness.
With each step I took to my training room, I mentally chanted the words:
Durov.
New York.
Revenge.
Kill.
Tomorrow night, I would finally get my revenge.
19
KISA
“Are you okay, miss?” Serge asked, looking back at my blank face through the rearview mirror.
I continued staring out the window, an array of emotions tearing through me like burning flames. Alik had killed my brother. Alik, the man that had controlled me and possessed me all these years, the man I’d devoted my life to serving. And he’d blamed Luka, my Luka, for Rodion’s death … God! Just so he could have me?
The thought made me feel sick. Feel racked with guilt. Despair and a million other emotions.
And tomorrow night, my two loves—one pure yet broken and one so dark that I now realized I didn’t know him at all—they would fight to the death.
Tomorrow night I would lose one.
I knew in my heart who I wanted—no, needed—to survive … Luka. It had always been Luka.
Alik deserved to die.
“Miss?” Serge pushed again, and I met his worried gaze. “What’s happened? I know that look on your face, devastation. I’ve only ever seen it one time before … and that was when we were told Mr. Tolstoi died in that crash.”
I felt the tears tracking down my face, and I sniffed and wiped at my cheeks. “Serge … I’ve just found out who killed Rodion. I … I…” I trailed off, unable to finish my sentence, the pain too much to bear.
I noticed we had pulled up to the side of my papa’s house, crawling to a stop in the shadows of the dark street, out of view.
As the car came to a stop, Serge turned in his seat. “Mr. Alik?”
My eyes widened and my pulse throbbed in my temples. “You … knew? All this time?”
Serge shook his head. “No, miss. I didn’t. But, well, I’ve watched him his whole life, watched him grow from a boy to a man and something was never right with him. Like he’s disturbed, deep in his soul.�
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I swallowed hard, listening to everything coming out of Serge’s mouth. And he was right. Alik had always been different. Thriving off violence, off control, off his possession for me … off his kills. Kills he had to make or he would turn to the streets or the rival mobs to work off his rage. The Bratva decided five years ago that he should fight for The Dungeon during the Championship. My papa wanted him to have an outlet for his rage, one that wouldn’t cause trouble with rivals, and one that would also bring in a profit.
“When the news of Rodion’s death was delivered to the staff, I couldn’t believe Luka would do such a thing. He was a good boy, a good Bratva boy: stern and hard, but not overly cold. But mainly, he was loyal to his family. Loved his family. His papa had brought him up well, unlike Mr. Abram. He had raised that boy of his to be a killer. After his mama ran off when he was a baby, he brought that boy up without any affection.” Serge’s eyes seemed to lose focus and he shook his head. “There’s just something within his eyes … something that has never sat well with me.” Serge shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I remember finding him as a child, killing a cat—no, torturing it. He saw me watching him in horror and he smiled. He smiled at me, Kisa. I knew then that something sinister ran in that boy’s blood. He enjoyed killing that cat. He liked hearing it in pain.”
“Oh God, Alik!” I cried. “What’s wrong with him? What lives within him to make him like that?”
Serge ran his hand over his head in distress. “And the day we were told Luka had died, Miss Kisa … Everybody cried. Even though they believed he had killed your twin, they mourned for him. But Alik, he was cold, calculated, and dare I say, happy? Abram displayed no reaction either. Something about that whole day just never sat well with me.”
“Serge,” I cried, finally submitting to the sob choking my throat. “I don’t know what to do!”
Serge laid his hand on my knee. “Mr. Luka is back, Kisa. I don’t know where from, and I don’t need to know, that isn’t my business. But I can see he’s no longer the Luka that left. He’s darker now, tormented. His memory is in pieces. Lord, the confusion on his face tonight when he saw me, it was vast. But not a day went by from the time you were born that boy didn’t look after you, protect you. And even now, with his mind warped, with the hell I know he’s been put through, he won’t let Mr. Alik leave that cage tomorrow night alive. Of that I’m sure. He’ll kill Mr. Alik to protect you. He has earned the right to this revenge. He has earned the right to retake his place among the Bratva and know his family and where he’s from.”
“He doesn’t remember them, Serge. None of his family. Papa Ivan, Talia, his mama, none of them.”
“He will in time. But right now, he has one goal, only one thing occupying his mind … to right what Mr. Alik made wrong.”
“God! How the hell has it all come to this?” I said, wiping at my tears. “So much death, so much pain! All because of greed and jealousy.”
Serge smiled sadly. “This mafiya life is never an easy path. There has been much death, much pain. But the Lord has brought back your love, Kisa. Despite the pain, a miracle has occurred.”
My stomach swirled with dread. “But … what if Luka can’t get past all of what happened? What happens when he remembers everything? Will it be too much?”
“He will have you, Kisa. You saw his soul, yet you didn’t recognize his face. And he knew you, even when his memories were not there. You are his light, his guide back to this life.”
“He showed me his eyes,” I whispered and Serge’s eyebrows furrowed. Taking a deep breath, I explained, “Since the day I met him, I’ve noticed that he keeps his eyes down, his hood pulled over his face as if somewhere in his subconscious he knew that his distinctive eyes could be recognizable. But he let me see them. He showed me those eyes almost immediately. And as soon as I saw them, I saw my Luka.”
Serge’s gray eyes glistened and he dipped his head, only to raise them again. “Then he knew you too. Even if he didn’t remember you, his soul did. That boy was always besotted with you. I’d never seen anything like you two kids. A love so fierce it was like you’d been together for a millennium.”
My heart swelled at Serge’s words. I leaned forward to kiss him on his cheek, but just as I did, the passenger door flew open and Alik climbed inside, his eyes red raw with rage, and he placed a gun at Serge’s head.
“Drive,” he ordered in a terrifyingly guttural voice, and I instinctively started trembling. Fear seized my voice and any movement my mind willed me to make.
“Alik … baby,” I whispered, trying to sound natural, unafraid. Alik’s back stiffened.
“Shut the fuck up!” he snapped, his tone deadly, his eyes bloodshot and red. He pushed the barrel of the gun harder against Serge’s temple.
“Take us to my dockside apartment,” Alik ordered, and Serge risked a glance back in the mirror. Alik drew back his gun and butted Serge with the barrel, leaning forward. “I said take us to my fucking dockside apartment!”
I cried out when blood trickled down Serge’s face, but he put the car in drive and we rolled off down the streets, sticking to the shadows.
“Alik, please? What dockside apartment?” I whispered, watching his jaw twitch and redness run up his neck. I could physically see his anger engulf his pale skin.
“I got a dockside apartment, Kisa. Had it for years. I do what the fuck I want there.”
I gasped when I guessed what that could be. “And what’s that?” I asked fearfully.
He turned and smirked at me, but his eyes were on fire. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “Whatever the fuck I choose to do to keep me from ripping people apart.”
Alik watched my expression, which I knew was betraying my abject fear. My blood ran cold. He leaned forward as the car built up speed.
“You’ve fucked up, Myshka. I know what’s been going on, and with who.”
I sucked in a stuttered terrified breath. “Alik—”
Alik’s foot kicked out and smashed against the dashboard on an incensed roar. “I said shut your fucking mouth!”
As I cowered back in my seat, Alik panted, his chest rising and falling. I watched him like a hawk, his head twitching and his feet tapping with impatience. I couldn’t cry, couldn’t show any reaction.
I was so terrified.
I’d never been on the receiving end of this Alik before. I’d never defied him or hurt him … until now.
He knew about Raze and me.
And I wasn’t sure I was going to come out of this alive.
* * *
The docks came into view not too far from The Dungeon, but far enough away that nobody would know Alik came here. It wasn’t an apartment as such, more like a fisherman’s shack that had been refurbished.
Serge stopped the car, and for a moment, we all sat there in strained silence. Lowering the gun, Alik turned to Serge.
“Stay the fuck here.”
Serge looked at me in the backseat and sadly shook his head. “I can’t do that, Mr. Alik.”
Alik laughed and held up his Beretta, rolling the gun in his hand. “You’ll do whatever the fuck I say, old man.”
Serge straightened in his seat, and I saw Alik smile. I knew that smile. That sadistic smile. And I hated that it was directed at Serge. My kind old Serge.
“No, Serge, please just do what he says,” I begged.
Serge’s eyes set with resolve. “I can’t, Miss Kisa. I could never live with myself if I let anything happen to you. You’re … you’re like the daughter I never had.”
A tear trickled down my cheek as I began to plead with him, but Alik didn’t give me a chance as he aimed his gun at Serge’s temple. I opened my mouth to shout out, but Serge met my eyes in the mirror and he shook his head no. He was saying goodbye.
A second later, Alik pulled the trigger. Serge slumped forward, dead, and this time I did scream.
In no time at all, Alik jumped out of the car and opened the back door. “Get the fuck out,” he ordered,
and heart struggling to beat despite the shock of Serge’s violent death, I moved to the door, but Alik groaned, leaned in to grab my arm, and wrenched me forward. “Fucking move!”
Crying out once more, Alik dragged me toward the apartment, unlocked the door, and pushed me inside.
I blinked and blinked, trying to take in the room. It was sparse, only minimal furniture—a ragged couch, a small kitchenette, and a bed. My stomach rolled when I saw the sheets were messed up, used condoms on the bedside table … but that wasn’t what had me recoiling in shock. No. That honor was bestowed upon a clearing at the left side of the open space. A clearing covered in plastic sheets … plastic sheets stained with blood.
“Alik,” I hushed out. “What is this place?”
I felt Alik’s warm body at my back, and he gathered my hair and pushed it over my left shoulder. His mouth moved to my ear. “My sanctuary. Where I can be the man I am. Not the one I’m forced to be out there.”
“And … and what man is that?” I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.
He pressed kiss after kiss along the side of my neck, sending shivers down my spine. Every part of me was tense. I didn’t understand why he wasn’t screaming at me. This quieter Alik was too unnerving.
“Free,” he replied, making me jump.
My eyes drifted to the unmade bed, and I felt sick. “You fuck women here?”
Alik’s lips froze and in seconds I was spun round by his hard grip on my biceps and slammed against the nearest wall. His harsh stare bore into mine, cold and unfeeling.
“They’re not you, Myshka. They were whores. You’re my woman, my whole fucking life.” Darkness clouded Alik’s crazed red eyes and he leaned so far forward that the back of my head ground against the hard wall. “At least you were. Until you fucking betrayed me. Opened your fucking whoring legs.”
Alik’s voice was quiet, too quiet, the softness deceiving. His head twitched and his jaw ticked as he lifted the Beretta and ran it down my cheek. He suddenly looked broken, completely devastated.
“How could you, Myshka? How could you fuck that cunt, baby? How could you let him into what’s mine?”
“Alik—” I tried to speak, but Alik moved the gun over my lips, shaking his head as his other hand wrenched up my dress and cupped roughly against my pussy.