Nikoli (Full Novel)

by K. J. Dahlen

  When she put her empty plate back on the table she sighed. Reaching for her glass, she sipped the vodka he handed her before. She just now thought of the fact that she had been drinking this stuff since she got her but she sort of liked it too. “So where do we go from here?”

  Nikoli shrugged. “First we get our daughter back and deal with Danton, after that I have no clue.”

  Bella nodded but didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to beg him to allowed to stay in her daughter’s life.

  “Tell me more about her,” Nikoli asked softly. “What was she like as a baby?”

  Bella smiled and got lost in her memories, “She was always a curious child. She learned to crawl at four months and she walked on her own at eight months. I was working at a day care back then, while I took online courses for the credits I needed to get an early education degree and she wasn’t going to be left behind by the older kids. Once she got on her feet, there was no stopping her. I would just watch her with wonder as she explored the new world she found herself in.”

  Chapter Eight

  Nikoli stared at her for a moment. She spoke with awe of watching their daughter growing up. In one way, he was upset that he had missed it all, yet in another way, her words were so descriptive he could almost see it in his mind. He was already half in love with his daughter and he hadn’t even met her yet.

  “Then the older she got the more curious she became. She was reading at two years old. She remembers everything she learns. She’s already skipped two grades in school and she can make friends at the drop of a hat.”

  Nikoli chuckled. “Then she must take after you. I was more a loner and I didn’t mix well with others. Most of the time I was better off on my own.”

  Bella nodded. “Yeah, so was I. When I was growing up it was better to just stay out of the way and out of the limelight.”

  Nikoli sighed. “Your father. We will still have to deal with him once this is over. We need to find out what kind of a deal he made with the Ukraines and why.”

  “Why can’t we just forget that man exists? I don’t even want to see him again, ever and I sure as hell don’t want him to know about Malina. He didn’t want me from the day I was born and I don’t want anything to do with him. He might hurt her too. I cannot chance it.”

  “Maybe he’s looking for his heir.”

  “Then let his other children take their place as his heirs. I don’t care. I never wanted anything from him anyway.” Bella huffed angrily.

  “But you deserve a piece of his empire,” Nikoli insisted “As his daughter you have that right as much as his other children.”

  “They can have it all.” Bella shook her head. “I have nothing but bad memories from Chicago and I will never set foot in that city again. I don’t want mob money.”

  “But why should you give up your birthright because you can’t stand him?” Nikoli tried to ask.

  Bella wasn’t listening. She got to her feet and walked over to the windows. Wrapping her arms around her stomach, she stared at the city below. After a moment or two, she told him, “If you tell him I’m here I’ll take Malina and disappear. You will never see us again. Not even your best man will be able to find us. It will be like we never existed in the first place.”

  Nikoli bolted off the sofa and came over to where she stood. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he turned her to face him. “You wouldn’t dare.” He growled.

  “I would in a heartbeat and there would be nothing you could do to stop me,” she told him emotionlessly. “I will not have that man near her. I would do it to protect her.”

  Nikoli gazed at her for a long moment. He could read the truth in her eyes. She would take their daughter and disappear and he would never see either of them again. “You hate him this much?”

  “Isn’t ignoring me my whole life or causing my mother’s death enough of a reason? He did so many things to my mother and me when I was growing up, I can’t even speak about it. He sold me to a fat old man who would torture and finally kill me, he’s been hunting me for over half my life and you have to ask me why I hate him?” She wrenched herself out of his hold. “Tell me something Nikoli, would you sell your daughter to a fat pig of a man just to make a deal with him? Just to say you have a connection to another mob group? Would you do it for a truck load of money?”

  “No, don’t be ridiculous.” Nikoli glared at her.

  “Well, my father did that to me.” Then her eyes widened. She now remembered what Danton had told her. “And Danton did the same thing to Malina! He told me she brought him a great price.” She turned to Nikoli. Grabbing his arms, she dug her nails into his skin. “He told me my father would be happy to find out where I had been all these years! He said Ivan would be happy to finally get his hands on me as well. Danton may have already told my father and Ivan where I am. I had forgotten this when the shock of losing Malina hit me!” Clawing into his skin, she went into pure panic mode. “Oh, my god! I have to get Malina and leave town before they get here. It might already be too late. I have to go!”

  “Calm down,” Nikoli tried to soothe her. “He won’t come here and we know our men are watching over Malina. He can’t get to her either. I’ll let them know about Ivan. They can stop him from getting close to her.”

  “Do you promise?’ she whispered. Her eyes held a faint trace of hope.

  “I promise.” He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. “Now let’s go to Sergi’s room and find out what’s been happening in the past few hours.”

  When they joined the others, Sergi had some news for them. One the men he had watching had video of Malina and Danton.

  Bella watched carefully to see how her daughter was holding up, but Nikoli watched to get the first glimpse of the daughter he hadn’t known about before the other days.

  He gasped when he first got a look at her. She was the spitting imagine of his mother. He looked more like her than he did his father and the fact that his daughter looked liked his mother pleased him. Then he saw her eyes. They may have been her mother’s shape but they were all his color. “She’s beautiful,” he whispered.

  “She is indeed.” Sergi agreed. Then he moved to another video and when he hit play… it was Bella’s turn to gasp in panic.

  She began trembling and raised her hand to cover her mouth.

  “Do you know this man?” Sergi noted her reaction.

  Bella nodded. “That’s my father, Geno Marchanti. What the hell is he doing here?”

  “Where was this taken?” Nikoli wanted to know.

  “This was outside the airport,” Sergi told him. “About an hour ago.”

  “Oh god, I have to get to Malina and get the hell out of town!” Bella began to panic. “I can’t stay here.”

  “What is she talking about?” Sergi demanded.

  “She’s afraid her father will come after Malina to get to her.” Nikoli grabbed her to hold her in place. “He can’t hurt you or her. Our men won’t let anyone close to her and we’ll protect you.”

  “Her father may know she’s in the city but he has no idea where she is staying,” Kirill stated.

  Bella shook her head. “He’ll find me.”

  “Why would he?” Sergi cocked his head to one side. “You are of legal age, there is nothing he can do to you and because of that he has no claim on you.”

  “He wants me dead. When I ran away from home, he couldn’t hand me over to Ivan and then Ivan almost took him down. He’s never recovered from that. He almost caught me once in Detroit, about two years after I took off. The only thing that saved me was a chain link fence. I was on one side and he and his goons were on the other side. He screamed at me that I was dead to him and he would see my body floating in the river before he allowed me to fuck him over for a second time. In fact, he told me it didn’t make any difference how long it took he would see me dead. He said one year, two years ten years he would never stop until he saw me dead.” Bella paused and rubbed her upper arms, as she felt chilled. “If he knows Malina is my
daughter he’ll use her to bring me out of hiding and complete the deal with her instead of me with Ivan and then he’ll kill me.”

  “The question is how did Danton know who you were to begin with?” Misha asked.

  Bella paused then remembered back three days ago. When Danton broke into her place, he called her Isabella Marchanti, not Redding. She looked over at Nikoli. “He knew who I was all along. When he broke in and grabbed Malina he called me Marchanti.”

  “Ok so he knew who you were and he knew your connection to Nikoli,” Sergi concluded. “The question is how.”

  Kirill cleared his throat. “I think I know.”

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  “When we found out who her father was, I did some research on his family business. There was a link to an offsite and I followed it. Her father offered anyone who could find her money to let him know where she was. That was all he wanted to know was where she was.”

  Bella stumbled over to the sofa and fell down on the cushions. “Why can’t he just leave me alone? Is that too much to ask? He hates me yet he’s hunting me down like an animal!”

  Sergi turned to Felix. “I need you to find this man Geno Marchanti. I want to know why he’s here and who he plans to make contact with. I also want to know if he still has contacts with Ivan and the Ukraines.”

  Felix nodded and left the room.

  Sergi walked over to where she was sitting and sat next to her. “Tell me about what kind of man your father is.”

  Bella laid back on the cushions and stared at the ceiling. “I told you before what kind of man he was.”

  “You said something about him being a bastard but you didn’t tell us the whole story,” Sergi corrected her. “To a man like me, there is a distinct difference in appearance and fact. What was the deal between him and your mother?”

  Bella shrugged. “I never knew how they met, but she ended up pregnant with me so he had to keep her around. He didn’t want to pay for support but he didn’t want to marry her either. So she lived with him. I’m surprised he didn’t kick her out at some point but he never did. They would fight all the time but he wouldn’t kick her out of his house.”

  “Was she blackmailing him somehow?” Sergi asked.

  Bella thought about it for a moment then she turned her head to look at him. “You know you could be onto something there.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Misha asked.

  She leaned forward and wrinkled up her forehead. “I listened to them argue. They would scream at each other in the middle of the night and while most of it wasn’t very nice every once in a while she would taunt him, something about… oh, what the hell did she call it? A Prince’s Token? Or something like that. She used to rant and rave at him about having stolen it and that it would come back to haunt him. She told him he would never rest until it was returned to its rightful owner. My mom was a woman who believed in karma and she always told him this would come back to haunt him. Maybe even be enough to cost him his miserable life. He would scream back at her that he would see her in hell then.”

  Sergi surged to his feet and glared down at her. His eyes were livid with rage. “You father has the Prince’s Token?”

  Bella slammed back against the sofa, her eyes wide and fearful as she peered up at him. “I don’t know. What is this token?”

  “When Nikolas the Royal King of Russia was arrested, his son had an amulet he always wore for state events. It was a solid gold piece that had been part of the Crown jewels of our motherland. When the chaos of the overthrow was over, the Bolsheviks searched but never found the Prince’s Token. A piece of our history from the time of the first Tzar. The piece hasn’t been seen since about 75 years ago. The KGB tracked it down to a private member of the last royal family but by then it was already gone.”

  Bella looked over at Nikoli and saw his face was made of stone, his eyes cold and forbidding. Looking back at Sergi, she held up her hands. “Well, I didn’t take it, please remember that. I don’t know how Geno got his hands on it but I doubt he paid for it. More to his style would be to steal it, that I could believe. There was a vault in his basement office that was always locked. He never let anyone see what was inside it but if he still has it, that’s where it probably is. I have the combination if you need it, of course he could have changed it in the last eighteen years, but he never knew I had it so he might not have either.”

  “How did you get it then?” Nikoli asked.

  Bella shrugged. “When you’re a kid and got nothing better to do you tend to wander through the house and look for ways to amuse yourself. One day when no one else was home and my mom was passed out from being stoned for three days. I got curious by a locked door going downstairs. It didn’t take me long to pick the lock and find the vault. My father denied me all my life and I was thinking how cool it would be if I had something I could use against him? Maybe something that would come in handy if he ever treated me the way he treated my mother.” She held up her hands, “Please remember I was twelve when this happened. I didn’t know what kind of man he truly was yet. When I got the door unlocked, I wrote down the combination but I never opened the door. I never looked at what was inside the vault. If he ever caught me, he would have beaten me to death without thinking. He was just that kind of guy.”

  “What exactly are you telling us?” Misha spoke up.

  “What I’m saying is I don’t know if this Token is in his vault or not.” She stated. “But if he still has it, the vault would be where he has it.”

  Sergi lifted his head and his nostrils flared as he glared at the men around him. “I want the Token recovered. If Geno Marchanti has it, we need to get it back. It was never meant to leave Russian soil. It was never meant to fall into hands such as his.”

  Nikoli growled and raised his hand in a Russian war cry. He and the others got louder and louder until Bella had to cover her ears with her hands.

  This was a new behavior for these men as they all shouted something in Russian. Whatever it was…it sounded deadly. Bella stared in awe as the men around her declared war on her father. She almost felt sorry for him…almost.

  But this would be a fitting end to the man who’d made her life a living hell.

  Chapter Nine

  A few hours later, Nikoli took her back to his penthouse. Sergi’s men were watching over both Geno and Ivan.

  Felix had picked up Geno and brought him back to the casino. He was being held in the security section and no one knew he was even there. Nikoli has a private section built in the subbasement what was completely sound proof and secure.

  Geno had resisted his trip to the casino and Felix had no choice but to bring him in. The younger man had not been gentle with him but in the end, he was brought in. Then Sergi sent three of his security team to Geno’s home to recover the Token, if it was indeed there.

  Nikoli had poured them both a glass of vodka. Leading her over to the sofa, he sat down beside Bella. Neither of them had said too much and the silence was beginning to become uncomfortable when Bella asked, “So tell me about Danton. I know you stopped him from killing Misha but how in the world did he think that would get him into the Bratva?”

  Nikoli laid his head back against the cushions of the sofa and stared at the ceiling. “Danton was always a stubborn ass. Even as a child, he always talked back to his mother, disrespected his father and he would always brag to anyone who would listen that someday he was going to be a big man. He would have money and power and nothing and no one would stop him.”

  “You knew him as a child?”

  Nikoli nodded. “Yes, I did. He was one of my many cousins on my mother’s side. My mother was his father’s sister. Our fathers never got along so we didn’t spend much time together but we would run into each other on the streets.” He shrugged. “My home life wasn’t the best and after my mom died when I was fourteen then my father pulled a disappearing act. I was left pretty much on my own after that.”

  Bella reached out and touched
his hand. “Sounds like we both had our own troubles growing up, huh?”

  Nikoli turned his head and growled, “At least my father never tried to sell me into slavery.” Shaking his head he said, “My father might have been a bastard but nothing like yours was.”

  “So how bad is this deal he made with Ivan?” Bella asked.

  Nikoli sighed. “Ivan is a loser even to his own people. He began strong and not so bad then something changed in him and he became more brutal. When he became the Butcher, no one in the Ukraine mob wanted to mess with him. Ivan had friends and they watched his back. He knows he’s on his way out and if one of his own in the Ukraine doesn’t take him out… one of us will. He knows it and so do his people. So far, he hasn’t crossed the line but this time he just might have. Sergi’s people are watching him as well as his own people. They know there is trouble coming and they want to be prepared for it.”

  “So what is going to happen?”

  “That will be Sergi’s call. He’ll call either Travern or Daemon and work out something.”

  “Can we trust that?” Bella whispered. “A deal between the leaders?”

  Nikoli turned to study her face. “I know you don’t trust many people but Sergi is one of the best. He’ll make the best deal he can. He won’t go to war unless he absolutely has to, but he will protect Malina. He’s never let me down yet.”

  Bella picked at the hem of her shirt. “What’s going to happen to Malina? I mean when we do get her back?”

  “What do you expect to happen?” he asked her quietly.

  Bella was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “I don’t know do I?”

  Nikoli settled back against the sofa and sipped his drink. “I want to know her. I want to talk to her have some one on one time with her. If you will allow that.”

  “Allow that?” she questioned.

  “I realized something when I heard you talk about her tonight.” He began. Pausing he continued, “I realized I not only missed out on so many of her firsts, I missed out on bonding wither as a parent. I also realized that I can’t just step in and make her love me as a father. I can’t do it without you.” He sighed and took another sip of his drink. “I lost my son when he was just hours old. The woman who stabbed my wife stole him while I was with her, watching the life drain out of her body. When I found him gone, I went a little nuts. I’ll admit it…I went completely insane. I couldn’t find the woman or him. I spent the next twenty years searching for him. Then he was given back to me already grown up. I didn’t know how to talk to him, how to be the father he needed or how I needed to be. I almost lost him on more than one occasion. Raven taught him to be a man and she taught me to be a father to Nicky. She guided him growing up and she helped me become the man he needed me to be.”