by LP Lovell
Rafael comes to stand beside me, a smile pulling at his lips. “I can’t wait to see this.”
My vicious little queen will finally get her revenge.
34
Una
The distant sound of gunfire fills the house, but I don’t know who’s winning. The simple fact is, a band of Elite are not easily taken down. The office door flies open, and I swing my gun towards Sasha. He frowns at me, impatience written all over his blood-spattered features. “Come.’
I push to my feet, swinging the rifle over my shoulder. We descend the stairs and I follow him out of the villa. The cobble stone courtyard is surrounded by flowers, and the scent of night jasmine catches on the hot desert breeze.
Rafael’s guards that I ‘shot’ come to stand with us as the main gate is opened, allowing two Hummers to cruise into the courtyard. The windows are completely blacked out, heavy duty guns mounted on their roofs. Sasha is rigid beside me and I can practically feel the tension pouring from him. I know this is hard for him. His loyalties aren’t as black and white as my own.
The passenger side door to one of the hummers opens, and Nero climbs from it. He’s wearing gray suit pants and a black shirt, open at the collar. With his Ray Bans and his perfect face, he looks like he should be in the pages of a magazine rather than here, in a cartel compound, participating in a mafia war. Gio gets out of the driver’s side and Rafael climbs out of the other car, followed by Anna. Her long, blonde hair catches in the wind, and she folds her arms over her body, staying close to Rafael’s side. I lock eyes with my sister, and she offers me a small smile. Apparently, I’m forgiven for cutting off her finger.
“Now that everyone’s here…” Nero opens the back door of the car and drags out Nicholai. His suit is rumpled and dirty as though he’s been rolling around in the dirt. His nose is bloody, and the man who always seemed so strong and invincible is now very far from that reality.
I’m seeing it with my own eyes, but it doesn’t quite seem real. We put this plan into play, but I always thought that he would somehow see it coming, that he would outmaneuver us the way he has done to so many others. But he was blinded by his own desperation, his own demented obsession, and in the end, it was his obsession with Dante that brought him to this point. He broke his own rules, and instead of going after a vulnerable, helpless child from an orphanage he chose the child of two of the most feared people in the world. Stupid.
That icy blue gaze of his meets mine before shifting to my side. “You,” he says to Sasha, voice layered in accusation and disappointment. “I gave you both everything.”
Me, he wanted to trust, but didn’t quite. Sasha…well Sasha was the unfailingly loyal, prodigal son. Until he watched me—the best of the Elite—fall. Until he witnessed my love for Dante. It changed him. So, when Nicholai asked him to gather intelligence on whether my son was indeed in Rafael’s possession, Nicholai never doubted it. It was too perfect.
I take a deep breath and step in front of Sasha, knowing that this weighs more heavily on him than it does me. “You gave us nothing. You took everything.” I feel nothing but cold indifference as I approach him, aware all eyes are on us. Nero’s presence is the strength I need, but he leans against the car, standing back, allowing me this.
I circle Nicholai, kicking him hard enough to send him to his knees. Grabbing his jaw, I force him to look at the four bodies of the fallen Elite I shot, scattered haphazardly over the courtyard. “Do you know why you are here, Nicholai?”
He says nothing, fighting against my hold. I grip the top of his head and threaten to snap his neck. “You are here, on your knees, because you were arrogant. You believed yourself invincible, protected by your army. Protected by your children.” Releasing him, I walk over to Sasha who hands me two knives. They clatter to the cobblestones when I toss them in front of Nicholai. “Pick them up.” I crack my neck from side to side as I pace a few feet towards Nero and back again. “Fucking pick them up!” I shout when he doesn’t respond.
“So you can kill me and call it a fair fight?” he says.
A low rumble of laughter comes from Nero. “Nothing could make that a fair fight. You will die, undoubtedly.”
“You took my child from me and then forced me to fight some of your best only days later.” Anger is threatening to consume me and the urge to just shoot him in the face is strong. I squeeze my eyes shut, remembering the moment he turned his back on me, leaving me strapped to a bed while he walked away with my baby. “So now you will fight your best, Nicholai. You will know what it is to fight for your life.”
His eyes meet mine for the briefest moment and then his jaw clenches. I smile when he grabs the knives and charges me. No finesse, no skill. My feet remain planted until the very last second, when I catch his arm and twist it behind his back. The satisfying crack of bone rings out over his roar of pain. The knife slips from his grasp and I catch it, slamming it deep into his shoulder. His pain echoes in my ears, his screams a symphony of sweet revenge.
He spins, slashing wildly with the remaining knife, his movements nothing more than the desperate efforts of a man who knows his fate is sealed. I easily divulge him of his remaining blade, imbedding it into his other shoulder. And the screams grow, higher and higher, reaching a crescendo the likes of which I’ve never heard with a clean kill. This is not clean. Killing has always been an easy skill for me. I enjoy it because I’m good at it, but it’s just a job. I don’t make my victims suffer. This…this isn’t a job, and I want him to suffer like I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone before.
He sways on his feet, blood pouring from both shoulders as he glares at me. “The Bratva will hunt you, little dove,” he says through a grimace.
“I don’t think they will. After all, with you dead, their guns and drugs will once again run freely.” I grasp the hilts of both blades, yanking them out and slicing them in front of me, lightning fast. His stomach splits open in a cross from ribs to hip. He collapses to the ground, gasping and twitching like a dying fish.
I crouch down next to him. “Goodbye, Nicholai.” My blade finds home in his throat, deep enough to sever the spinal cord. That final tell-tale breath leaves his lungs and I fall back on the ground, staring at his lifeless body. Lifting my face, I look around at all the people watching, all the people he hurt. Families ruined, children broken. This was what he deserved. This was justice. And finally…I’m finally free.
Epilogue
Nero
One month later
A plume of smoke rises as I extinguish my cigarette in the ash tray. I push up from my desk and turn off the lamp. I’ve been up late dealing with the fallout of Nicholai’s death, handling Cesare and the Russians. It seems they’re willing to call it quits if we let them trade their guns in our territory. Cesare agreed to it, so for now I have to go with it…at least while the old man still breathes.
I climb the stairs and check in on Dante the same way I always do on my way to bed. Tonight though, I find Una sitting in the armchair in the corner of the room, Dante cradled in her arms. Her dark clothing blends with the shadows as though she were born from them.
I didn’t even hear her come in. Her and Sasha went out for a job earlier, a ‘quick hit’ as she calls it. Once a killer, always a killer. They get paid well and it feeds her bloodthirsty nature. But fucking Sasha will not use the elevator because he says, and I quote: It’s an ambush waiting to happen. In a private elevator. He insists they use the stairs and has somehow bypassed my alarm. He and Una move like ghosts, so I never know when either of them is going to just pop up.
Una’s knuckles are split open. Blood splatters adorn her neck, streaking through her white-blonde ponytail. My bloodstained queen, cradling her innocent child. Dante’s cheek is pressed to her chest, lips parted as he breathes heavily. One step is all it takes to have a .40 Cal pointed at my head in the blink of an eye. Of course. Una’s palm covers the side of Dante’s face as though she would protect his ears from the gun shot.
“Are you
ever going to stop pointing guns at me?”
She tilts her head to the side before tucking the gun beneath the cushions again. “Don’t creep up on me like that.”
“It’s not creeping.” I carefully take -more like pry - Dante from her. She lets him sleep on her every night, even though he sleeps just fine on his own. My guess is she’s making up for lost time. I lay him in his crib, and he doesn’t even stir. He sleeps like the dead, and I hope he always does. I hope he never has a care in the world. With Una for a mother, he’ll always be protected, sheltered from the dangers of this world.
“You can’t sleep in his room for the rest of his life, Morte.”
“Watch me.”
I laugh. “Come on.”
She gets up, glancing longingly at Dante before she finally follows me out of the nursery. She whistles for George and he trots up the stairs before curling up right in front of Dante’s crib. That damn dog is almost as attached to him as he is to Una. She insists he sleeps with Dante for protection. What the fuck that dog is going to protect him from, I don’t know.
As soon as our bedroom door closes, I pick Una up, pinning her against the wall. Her fingers thread through my hair, tugging hard as I kiss down the length of her neck, groaning as I inhale the scent of vanilla and gun oil mixed with the metallic twang of blood. It’s fucking hot. I still when I feel the cool kiss of steel at my neck and pull back, cocking a brow. A twisted smile plays over her lips. “Don’t do it,” I warn.
Those violet eyes flash, lust and violence roaring to the surface. Without breaking eye contact, she drags the blade along my collar bone. I hiss out a breath as she brings it to her lips and licks the blade.
“Oh, you just love to fucking push me.” I yank her away from the wall and throw her on the bed.
She smiles because she’s just as fucking depraved as I am. My perfect match, my other half, my vicious little butterfly. My broken, savage queen. There’s no one else who could possibly stand beside me but her.
“I love you,” she says, her eyes bright and cheeks flushed.
I press my forehead to hers. “I fucking love you, Morte.”
She may have started as a pawn in a game, but now, she is the crowned queen. She is that which I treasure most. She is my happiness. Even monsters can find a happily ever after.
Bonus Epilogue
Una
Two years later…
Bitter wind whips around me. The snow beneath my knees melts, soaking through my jeans as I focus through the binoculars at tonight’s mission; a non-descript grey building hunkered within the other snow-covered businesses in the commercial district. It’s just a few miles outside Moscow, almost hiding in plain sight. From the outside, it looks like a pharmaceutical supply company. It’s a good front, a reasonable excuse for the guards on the door, but I know they’re Elite from the way they’re dressed. This facility isn’t a military base though. Our intel suggests it’s another lab. This isn’t where soldiers are trained, it’s where they are created. My son may have been an obsession for Nicholai, but little did we know that the idea of breeding soldiers was not a new one. We’ve already shut down two exactly like this one.
Two years, and every time I think we’ve destroyed all the Elite bases, another pops up. Nicholai is long dead, but the bratva weren’t willing to let go of his legacy. A lot of the facilities simply moved below ground. My guess, his Elite army were an attractive prospect to someone. The bratva certainly isn’t short of power-hungry madmen.
Sasha’s voice crackles over my coms. “Move. Now.”
Lowering the binoculars, I shift my stare through the sights of my rifle. Two quick shots and the guards are down. One more takes out the gunman on the roof. Then Sasha moves in with a team of Italians we picked specifically for these jobs. Nero doesn’t give a shit about rescuing children, but he does care for dismantling anything left of Nicholai. For me, this is personal. I swing my rifle over my shoulder and push to my feet, cutting across the empty top level of the parking deck. Three flights of stairs down, and I’m crossing the quiet street beneath the orange glow of a street light. With the businesses all closed for the night, my boots crunching through snow is the only sound in the eerie silence of deep winter. As soon as I’m inside the building, the steady pop of gunfire greets me. Bodies already litter the floor in the lobby, and I skirt around them on my way to the elevator at the opposite side of the room.
It descends several levels before the doors open on carnage. More bodies, gunshots, blood.
I find Sasha in a control room just off the main corridor, hunched over a computer, hacking their data systems. It’s the easiest way to document everything and trace the women and children being kept here.
“I just need a minute to get through the firewall,” Sasha mumbles, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
“Hurry it up. I want to go home.”
He spares me a cold glance. “Yes, you have a wedding to prepare for.”
“No, I’ve just been here freezing my ass off for a week already.” And I miss Dante. And Nero.
“You’re going soft.”
I ignore him, because he’s right, instead stepping out of the room.
Moving down the corridor, I clutch my gun. The cinder block of the walls gives way to glass. I stop beside the window, staring into a room full of plastic cribs, all lined up in rows. As soon as I push open the door, the high-pitch wails of babies crying filters in. There was a time when the noise would have irritated me, now all I can think is that I’ve never heard Dante cry like that. He’s never had to. I’ve seen enough security footage from these facilities to know how they operate. These babies are left here, expected to be soldiers. Their basic needs are met, but they’re never held, never comforted, and it cracks my cold heart. Even Nero doesn’t truly understand my misplaced morality when it comes to the job I’ve tasked myself with.
I pass the cribs, each child wrapped in an indistinctive white blanket which somehow strips them of all identity, and I finally come to a stop beside the crib in the far back corner. The baby’s face is red, mouth open as though trying to cry, but only a hoarse sound comes out. An identification number, 213, is printed on the tag around a chubby ankle. Sex and date of birth. Female, only two months old. The urge to soothe her pain is a poignant jab in my chest. Scooping the child up, I bring her to my chest and after a few seconds, she quiets. I wonder if Nicholai ordered these children deprived of human touch from birth. It would make the touch conditioning more effective. The thought has me pressing my palm firmly against the baby’s back.
“You’ll be okay, little one.” When I glance at her face, I still. Indigo blue eyes blink up at me; the exact same shade as Dante’s. Something stirs in my chest, this unexplainable pull, a knowing… My pulse rages against my eardrums so hard, I barely hear Sasha approach.
“Una, you need to see something.”
I know exactly what he’s going to say. I can feel who and what this baby is to me. Words get stuck in my throat before finally coming out in a strangled rasp. “I know.”
He holds an open file in front of my face, the identification number 213 is printed at the top of the page. And there’s only one other detail I can focus on. Mother: Una Ivanov. Father: 001011. Just a soldier.
“I…” I look to Sasha, unsure what to do, what to feel. She’s mine, biologically at least. But I knew that, was drawn to comfort this child before I even picked her up. It shouldn’t shock me. This is what Nicholai did, and even now, his effects are still far-reaching. He harvested eggs from my own sister when he had her. We found her daughter, Violet, in a facility last year. It stands to reason that he’d do the same to me. I was in a coma for weeks before I had Dante. They could have done anything to me, taken anything from me. But in two years, we’ve never found a child of mine. I had hoped… I don’t know what I hoped. That no child of mine would ever suffer in a place like this. How many of my children could be out there?
“Do not think about the possibilities, Una.” O
f course, Sasha knows exactly where my mind is going. He’s logical like that.
My arms tighten around the child. “Let’s go.” I stride from the room, Sasha following silently. We have teams in place to handle everything. The children will go to orphanages. Raphael and Anna will take in and help the women who have been trafficked, and the facility itself will be destroyed, bringing me one step closer to ending the nightmare that embodied my entire life.
I press my lips to the little girl’s downy head. “I promise, no one will ever hurt you or abandon you again, sladkiy.” It’s a promise I will keep if it kills me, and I have no idea where that will leave me with Nero. All I know is, I owe this child a life.
When the plane lands in New York, Tommy stands waiting on the runway. A briny scent drifts off the dark waters of the Hudson River, and what once seemed so foreign, is now a reminder of home. As instructed, Tommy put a baby carrier in the back of the SUV. I don’t miss his confused expression as he opens the door and waits for me to secure the child.
“Did you tell Nero?” I ask before I close the door and head to the passenger side.
He sinks behind the wheel and shakes his head. “You told me not to.”