by Leslie North
He had a fabulous view of the Las Vegas skyline, and as she looked down on the city, she could see the many hotels and casinos below, their lights dispelling the darkness of the night. She let her eyes scan the city until it faded back to black and marveled at how a little light could make the darkness fade away. Too bad something as simple as a flashlight or candle couldn’t make the evil in this world fade away.
Turning, she saw Nikolai standing across the room watching her and pushed all thoughts of her purpose for being in Las Vegas from her mind.
She let her eyes wander down his body; the black shirt, beneath the black jacket, and tucked into the black fitted trousers, should have given him a dark look. Just the opposite was true. The dark clothing seemed to accentuate the grey-blue color of his eyes. And the effect of his barely there beard and mustache gave him an air of naughtiness, something that both drew her in and made her want to run away and hide.
He really is beyond gorgeous!
Kat let her eyes wander down his chest, biting her lip as he slowly removed the suit jacket and rolled his shirtsleeves up to reveal muscular arms adorned with an intricate tribal pattern. She let her feet carry her forward, not stopping until she was close enough to trace the designs on his arms with a fingertip.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why not?”
“How far up do they go?” she asked.
“Past my shoulders and down my back.”
Kat wanted to demand he remove his shirt and show her, but thought it might be a little rude. She’d always admired well-done tattoos, but being afraid of needles, had never had the courage to get one. Besides, she had spent a large portion of her life in one costume or another and tattoos required extra makeup to cover them up. Just because she couldn’t get one, didn’t mean she couldn’t admire them on others.
“Will you show me the rest of them later?” she asked, covering her mouth with her hand as she realized what she’d just said. Way to go, Kat! What must he think about me, being so forward?
“If you want. For now, let’s eat.”
Nikolai directed her to a chair and helped her be seated. Kat looked at the marvelous meal set in front of her and immediately her stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten since early that morning. The hotel she was staying at had boasted a “full continental breakfast” when she’d made her reservations. In reality, breakfast had consisted of cold cereal, yogurt, and mediocre coffee.
The kitchen staff had sent up a variety of menu items, including prime rib, pasta alfredo, mouth-watering rolls, and cheesecake for dessert. “This looks amazing,” putting a helping of pasta onto her plate. After forking up the first bite Kat closed her eyes and moaned in pleasure, “Oh God, I’d forgotten how good pasta could be.”
Nikolai watched her devour the food, wondering at her strange comment and then asking, “Your meal is adequate?”
Kat looked up at him, wiping her mouth on her napkin before answering, “It’s fabulous! As a dancer, I’ve always had to watch what I eat so carefully. Even gaining five pounds could make it harder to execute the lifts and turns with a partner.”
“You speak as if those days are in the past,” he commented, taking another bite of his own meal.
“For the most part, I guess they are,” she answered him wistfully.
“Is this because of your parents’ deaths?” he asked, wondering if she’d mentally given up dancing due to depression or sadness.
Kat smiled at him and shook her head, “No. Last year I had an accident while on stage and broke my ankle. They were able to fix it, but it’s weak and the doctors don’t believe it will ever be as strong as it once was. I’m still trying to regain some of my flexibility, but it’s not looking very good.”
Nikolai looked at her thoughtfully, appreciating the hardships she had recently endured and her ability to bounce back. “I’m sure there are many other things you could do with your talents.”
“Besides strip?” Kat asked, a note in her voice indicating her dislike for the profession.
“Yes. Why strip? Why at that club?” Nikolai knew there was something she wasn’t telling him, but wasn’t sure about what.
While Kat debated whether she could trust him, the elevator doors opened and two men exited. One was Vanya, the bodyguard he’d left at the club. The other man she recognized immediately—her uncle Danil.
Chapter 6
Nikolai was seated so that he could see the two men step off the elevator, and also observe Kat’s immediate recognition of his second in command, Danil Yakimov. He watched her expressions go from relief to joy to wariness and – sadness?
“Do you know that man?” he asked quietly.
Kat pulled her gaze away from her uncle to see Nikolai watching her carefully. She tried to find something to say, “He looks familiar, I think.”
“You think? Who does he look like to you? Have you ever met him before?” Nikolai asked as the two men approached where they sat.
Kat shook her head and said truthfully, “No, I’ve never met him before.”
Nikolai turned to the two men. “Do you know this woman?”
Vanya nodded his head, giving his boss a weird look, “Sir, she was at the club this evening.”
“You’ve never met her before?” When his bodyguard shook his head, he looked at Danil. “And you? Have you ever met this woman before?”
Danil stood behind Nikolai’s chair and looked at the young woman with her strawberry blonde head bowed over her lap. He leaned down and asked quietly, “What is her name?”
“Katya?” Nikolai said to her.
She raised her head and heard her uncle gasp. Danil felt as if he was looking into the eyes of a ghost. The young woman sitting in Nikolai’s apartment bore a striking resemblance to the woman who had become his sister after her father adopted him. He hadn’t seen or heard from his sister since she had moved to Florida to marry Konstantin some 25 years earlier. Relations between the two organizations had become strained within a few months of her leaving, and the word that had come back to the West Coast groups was that her allegiance had changed and she had been declared dead to her family.
Karina?” he softly whispered.
At the mention of her mother’s name Kat felt tears flood her eyes, “No, not Karina. She was my mother.”
She waited for a reaction and was totally unprepared for the rush of emotion that came pouring forth as Danil swept around the table and engulfed her in a huge hug.
“Karina? Is she here? How are you here?” Turning to address his boss, he demanded, “Why is she here? What is going on, Nik?”
Nikolai shrugged. “I was hoping you would have some answers. I assume you were asking about your sister?”
Danil released Kat and stepped back, “Sorry. Yes, I was speaking about my sister. Don’t you see the resemblance?”
Nikolai looked back at Kat and tried to remember Danil’s sister but failed. He had only been a boy of seven years old when Karina had married Konstantin Osin from the Ogalla organization and moved to Florida. “No, I don’t see it, but I most likely wouldn’t.” Turning to Kat, he asked, “Was this who you were looking for in the Zora?”
Kat felt horrible for having lied to Nikolai and tried to make amends, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you I was looking for him. He didn’t even know I existed until just now.” Kat could feel herself starting to tremble as her nerves reached their breaking point.
Nikolai watched her fret for all of two minutes before making up his mind as he finally took pity on her and waved his hand, “Let’s move on.”
Danil nodded. “Great idea. Katya, is it?” When she nodded, he continued, “Where is my sister?”
The tears that had earlier filled Kat’s eyes spilled over and dripped down her cheeks. “Mom and dad are dead. A little over two months ago.”
Danil collapsed into the nearest chair as he absorbed the news that his little sister was dead. “How?” he asked hoarsely.
Kat could see how devastated her unc
le was, and hesitated to make matters worse by answering his question until he looked up and she could see the sorrow in his eyes. The same sorrow that had been hers only a few weeks back.
“How did she die?” he asked again.
“That’s why I’m here.” Kat got up from the table and retrieved her backpack, withdrawing the letter from her mother and holding it out to her uncle. “When I was going through my parents’ things, I found a key to a safe deposit box. This was in it along with lots of other things.”
Danil took the proffered letter with a shaky hand, seeing the familiar handwriting on the front. “I can’t believe she’s dead,” he murmured, turning the envelope over and staring at the wax seal. Memories assailed him of when he and his sister were children and caught up in playing spy games. They had often written secret notes to one another, carefully sealing them with the wax stick their parents kept in the desk drawer, imprinting their specially crafted seal onto it.
Katya took her seat once again, feeling Nikolai’s eyes on her. “I wasn’t going to bother with trying to find you, but...,” she trailed off, unsure how to tell her uncle that she’d just met that his only sister had been killed by a Russian hit man from another mafia group, and that now they were after her.
Danil slowly opened the letter, reading it slowly before calmly folding it back up and tucking it into the pocket of his suit jacket. He took a few moments to compose himself then cleared his throat and addressed Nikolai. “Where did you meet her?”
Nikolai heard the undertones of a threat in Danil’s voice and chose to ignore the disrespect he saw forthcoming. After all, the man had just found out he had a niece and been told his sister was dead in the space of a few minutes. Any normal man would be off his game with those circumstances to deal with. And Danil wasn’t just any man.
He was known for his fierce temper and lack of patience; traits that normally aided him well in dealing with members of the organization. Not so much when dealing with family. Instead of answering, he regarded Danil calmly, watching him come back to his senses.
“Forgive me, Nik.” Danil realized he most likely was going to need Nikolai on his side in the next few minutes, and angering the head of the San Moreno Bratva was definitely not in his best interest.
“Of course. Now, as to how and where I found your delightful niece, I believe it might be better if she were to tell this part of the story,” Nikolai said, turning his gaze towards Katya.
Danil looked at Kat, “Well?”
The anger in his voice put her on the defensive. She had done nothing wrong. Rather than getting confrontational she took another tack. “I did some research on your name after reading some of my mother’s journals. She kept fairly detailed records of things, yet, I didn’t even know I was Russian until I opened that safe deposit box.”
“Yet, you understand Russian,” Nikolai interjected, to see if she would confirm what he had already surmised.
Kat inclined her head, “Yes, I understood your conversation with your bodyguards outside Zora’s.”
“Zora’s? What in the hell was she doing at Zora’s?” Danil demanded angrily.
Nikolai looked at Katya when he answered, “I believe she was just getting to that.”
Katya could see the anger on her uncle’s face, but steeled her spine and continued anyway. “After realizing the connection between my parents and your…organizations—”
“Call them what they are,” Nikolai shot back. He’d be damned if he’d let her try to sugarcoat her heritage. She had been born into the American-Russian mafia, and her grandfather had once controlled the entire West Coast organization, having served as their pakhan for 30 years prior to his stroke and eventual death. She wasn’t just Danil’s niece. She was the missing link that could just possibly reunite the entire western mafia organization.
Danil watched Nikolai, already seeing where his mind was going and was torn between wanting to hide his niece away from the ugliness that came with belonging to the Bratva, and wanting to take her under his wing and tutor her to become a great leader amongst them.
Turning his attention back to his niece, he demanded once more, “What were you doing at Zora’s?”
“I found several pictures of you on the Internet in various casinos and a few at the clubs. One picture had the name of the club in it—Zora. It was taken several months ago. I figured if you had gone there once, maybe you would visit it again.”
“So you visited a strip club, hoping to find me there?”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly visiting it…I applied to be a dancer there—”
“What?” Danil turned to Nikolai for confirmation. After Nikolai nodded Danil dropped his head into his hands and took several calming breaths. Then he asked, “Did Mickey touch you?”
Not waiting for her to answer, he looked at Nik, his jaw clenched. “He’s a dead man if he laid as much as a finger on her!” Looking back at Katya, he pointed a finger in her direction, raising his voice, “You are never to go back there. Never!”
Katya bristled at his tone. “You have no right to tell me what to do.” She surged to her feet, only to have her hand grabbed by Nikolai, who pulled back down into the chair right next to his. She gave him a lethal glare before turning it back to her uncle.
Danil muttered something under his breath and then calmed himself. “Let’s put that aside for the moment. What did you hope to accomplish by finding me? You said yourself that you never intended to do so. What changed your mind?”
Katya closed her eyes, trying to find her inner place of calm so that she could finish explaining herself. When she felt Nikolai squeeze her fingers, she opened her eyes to see that both men had calmed themselves and the bodyguard had withdrawn to the other room.
“I didn’t ever plan on contacting you. But then things changed.”
“What changed?” Nikolai asked, still keeping hold of her hand. He let his thumb rub over the back of her hand, feeling how her body trembled with the emotions crashing through her.
“I discovered that my parents were murdered,” she spat out, barely containing the fury she felt toward the two men who had killed her parents and then come after her.
“How did you discover this?” Danil asked.
Kat explained how she had realized she was being followed and recounted the visit from the FBI agents, including that her parents were about to become informants and that there was a mole in the FBI on the Ogalla payroll.
Before either man could speak, she continued, “I suspect the men who killed my parents are hoping to finish the job by killing me as well. I don’t fully understand how this was all supposed to work in their favor. According to my mother’s notes, the current leader of the Ogalla group is ostracized by almost all of the other organizations in the western hemisphere.”
Danil nodded, “That’s correct. He’s aligned himself so closely with the Colombian drug lords that more than once he has turned on his own Russian brothers to secure a higher profit. Most of the organizations have put their own price on his head to dismantle the entire organization.”
Katya wondered if that meant he would help her avenge her parents’ deaths.
“You still haven’t told us what you hoped to gain by locating your uncle,” Nikolai said, once again rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand.
Taking a breath, she looked her uncle in the eye. “I want the men who killed my parents dead. I want their bosses dead. I want everyone who hoped to gain from their death to meet the same fate they subjected my parents to!”
Nikolai was stunned at her coldness. She had not grown up knowing violence, yet she had easily become a partner with it in order to deal with her grief. She instinctively understood how her people defined justice and apparently wasn’t adverse to it.
Danil looked at Nikolai, who nodded, then promised Katya, “If revenge is what you are after, I believe that can be arranged. It will be my pleasure to ensure that the men responsible for the death of my sister pay with their lives.”
Katya exhaled. She’d really done it. She had just asked her uncle to kill people for her. It was surreal and she was having a hard time getting her head around it. That didn’t mean she was willing to change her mind or back down from whatever might be required of her.
Nikolai called his bodyguard back into the room, “Contact our link at the FBI, and make sure that whoever is looking for her is reassigned. Also, find Grigori and invite him to join us for the weekend.”
Danil listened to the instructions and then asked, “You’re going to bring in Grigori?”
“Yes. I’ve always believed it’s better to use outside talent when getting rid of the trash. No messy emotions to get in the way.”
Katya looked between the two men. “Who is Grigori?”
“My cousin and a member of the Brussels organization.”
“As in Brussels, Germany?” Katya asked, wondering why someone from Germany was needed to visit.
“Yes. Grigori acts as a torpedo.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Katya, there is much about the way we operate that is not found on the Internet,” Danil explained. “Do not question Nikolai in this matter. Trust that the men responsible for your parents’ deaths will be dealt with.”
“But—”
“Enough! “Danil told her, raising his voice and causing her to cringe back against her chair. I’ve told you to not question—”
“I believe you’ve said enough, Danil,” Nikolai said pointedly. He was growing tired of Danil’s lack of control. “You will not intimidate her for questioning what she does not know.”
“Nik, I respect your authority over the organization, but this is now a family matter and I will deal with it as I see fit.”
“Stop talking about me as if I’m not sitting right here!” Katya snapped. She was quickly coming to dislike her uncle.
Danil glared at her and then stood, “Grab your bag and we will finish this discussion when we get home.”
Katya shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” She stayed seated, even when her uncle took a menacing step towards her and raised his hand as if to hit her.