Debase

by Rachel Van Dyken

  The only sound in that room was her breathing and the squeak of my leather gloves as I tightened my hands into fists.

  I hated repeating myself.

  She blinked slowly.

  “Well?” I was agitated. I couldn’t read her as well as I could read other people, and that was saying something. I was forced at a young age to get good at reading the room, the men in it, my father especially. It was how I outsmarted him in the end, and how I stayed alive, by making him think he was in control when I pulled the strings.

  It’s why I lasted.

  Because I knew pride got you killed.

  “Sorry.” She eyed me up and down then looked away. God, she was dirty. What did they do… roll her in a swamp before bringing her in here? I shook my head. No, I didn’t even want to know. It wasn’t my job to know what happened to her before she came here, even though I knew more than I’d care to admit to her.

  She didn’t know that I was planning on killing her brother.

  She didn’t know that I was going to go with Chase Abandonato and make it personal because I could.

  She had no idea the monster I would become.

  The one I would embrace.

  “Speak.” I waited, my patience thinning by the second. “Or you could return to your room, the one with the chains on the bed and blood running down the cement floors, if you prefer that…”

  “No, I just don’t know what you expect of me.” She chewed her lower lip and put her hands on her hips. She was skinny, her leggings showed off nice legs, but other than that I was too distracted by the giant mop of hair on her dirt-caked face and the blue eyes peeking out from sooty long lashes to notice anything else. “You said to take a shower — or commanded it, actually — but after the shower, after the food, do I just sit and wait for you?”

  “This entire conversation is ridiculous; you get that right?” I smirked, almost enjoying her obvious discomfort. “You don’t get to ask questions. I said eat, you eat, I said shower, you march your ass down the hall and shower, and if you finish and I’m not here, you make yourself useful. You like washing dishes, wash the fucking dishes. You want to watch TV, find the remote, you want me to draw you a list of chores, that’s not gonna happen. I’m sharing my prison with you, may as well find out a way to co-exist without losing your shit every time I speak to you or look at you for that matter. If I say you’re safe, you’re safe. Now, if we’re done, I have a man to kill.”

  “Wh-what?”

  I grinned, this time enjoying her face going pale. “Well, first I’ll torture him, then I’ll let you get in a few good hits. I may chop off his dick if it pleases you, and then he’ll die, slowly, when I think he’s ready. Sometimes I give them IVs and just enough drugs to keep them alive. It’s amazing what people will do when they’re desperate. I think you’d like to see him beg, I think I’d like it too. In fact, I look forward to it. Now, if you’ll stop looking at me like I’m the devil, I have a De Lange to destroy.”

  “You can’t just—” She stopped herself, as I took a lethal step toward her. Six thirty-two put up her hands like she wanted to stop me. “The Italians, he’s a De Lange, you can’t just kill a De Lange without—”

  A knock sounded on the door.

  “Come in.” I said, again enjoying myself more than I should.

  “Literally the most depressing decorations I’ve ever seen in my entire life and I know my shit,” Chase said as he waltzed into my sanctum and whistled, and then his eyes fell to her.

  If she knew what was good for her she’d look away.

  She’d run her ass down the hall and shower.

  They knew a De Lange was here.

  They didn’t know it was her.

  I’d give them someone else.

  I’d lie.

  I still had no idea why I was putting myself on the line for someone like her, someone I would kill without blinking. Again, I had a fascination with her strength, with the fact that she didn’t scream when they brought her in, that every time I looked at the monitors she wasn’t crying.

  But staring up at the ceiling like she was on a fucking vacation.

  “Six thirty-two, meet Chase Abandonato, De Lange executioner and sometimes friend.”

  “Sometimes my ass,” Chase muttered eyeing her up and down. “You look like complete shit.” He looked to me. “One of your new ones?”

  I shrugged. “Came in a few days ago.”

  He sighed. “I just killed seven people in cold blood and had brunch like it wasn’t a big deal, but this—” He pointed to her like she didn’t even exist; it pissed me off. “This is worse. I don’t know how you keep doing this.”

  “I’m Russian.” My answer.

  He burst out laughing. It always sounded strange, the one that had the most pain laughing, but there he was, in my hell filling the room with its odd sound and making this life look easy as he strangled people with the same hands he used to make love to his wife.

  Italians.

  All of them were insane.

  “You need me to wait outside?” He lowered his voice.

  “No, she won’t escape, will you, six thirty-two?” I taunted.

  “No.” She gulped. “No, I won’t escape… um…”

  “Petrov,” Chase offered for her, his voice filled with disgust. “He’s your new heaven, your new hell, your god, your devil, I’d learn his name and know not to forget it lest he get pissed off and ask you to spell it and kill you for doing it wrong.”

  “Thanks, Chase.” I muttered a curse.

  “No problem.” He slapped me on the back. “You got your shit?”

  “All my shit.” I looked at her one last time and gave her my back. “You have zero tact.”

  “Compliments? Bro, it’s only noon, I’m touched. Now let’s go find some De Langes and see how much blood we can spill. I don’t want to miss dinner.”

  “Italians, always thinking with your stomach.”

  “Russians always thinking with your tiny dicks, oh wait, you still have one, right? It hasn’t withered away from all that vodka?”

  “Sometimes I wish I didn’t like you more than the others,” I grumbled, locking the door behind me and walking with him down the hall.

  “I like killing, you like killing, I have rage, you have rage. We’re pretty much married by now.” He seemed oddly happy about that, and then I realized he was in a better mood than I’d ever seen him in.

  I stopped walking.

  He sighed like he knew what was coming.

  We were around the same height. I was leaner than he was, he’d packed on a lot of muscle in since the loss of his wife eighteen months ago. Her betrayal was the reason we hated the De Lange family in the first place. They tried to betray everyone by doing a deal with me. I was in on it, knew what was going on, and had always worked with Luca Nicolasi, the only mentor in this world I ever had, the only man I would die to protect.

  The rest was history.

  I, Andrei Petrov, was somehow more Italian than I was Russian, if anyone could believe it, though I refused to claim it.

  And ever since I was given that second chance by a man who should have shot me on sight.

  I’d been paying the price.

  Playing both sides.

  Helping my enemy.

  Helping my friends.

  It was almost too hard to keep everything straight and like Tex pointed out last year, I knew I was getting in too deep, allowing what I did to affect me in a way that would one day kill me if my gun didn’t do the trick on my next birthday.

  “Out with it.” I waited.

  Chase actually grinned. “Luc’s pregnant again.”

  “You have sex more than anyone I know,” I stated matter-of-factly. “I’m not surprised. The question is why are you smiling about it when we still have a line of De Langes in hiding, and worse, ones who like to hurt their own women?”

  His smile fell. “What?”

  “Ah, Tex didn’t tell you.”

  “Tex was eatin
g lunch. You know how he is when he’s eating lunch…”

  I frowned and then realization dawned. “With Mo, he was with Mo. Just say that next time, and he was already here, and we talked things through. I’ll debrief everyone during family dinner.”

  Chase’s eyebrows shot up. “You bringing a date?”

  “I’m this close to punching you in the dick and making it so you can’t have any more kids. This close, Chase.” I shoved him against the wall.

  The guy enjoyed violence. He just shoved me back and tried to hit me. I ducked and slid my knife from the sheath at my ankle.

  “Save it for the De Langes.” Chase grinned. “And I want to hear all the details about six thirty-two in the car. I still don’t understand how you name all of them with numbers; fucking awful way to live, man.”

  “It’s easier when you don’t know their names.” We continued walking.

  “Easier for them, or you?” Chase asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  Because I knew the truth.

  If I named them, I wanted to save them all.

  And I knew, I would never be able to.

  As long as a Russian ran this club, this demented club, I could save some of them, and that’s all I wanted, to save who I could, until I could rain holy hell down on the people behind the scenes.

  The only problem?

  I still had no clue who was grabbing the girls and bringing them to me, only that they showed up every day at the same time, barely clothed, shivering, and half dead.

  I had cameras.

  They were careful.

  And the payments were all offshore accounts.

  My father, it seemed, had done one thing right in his life. He’d made it almost impossible for anyone to infiltrate his empire.

  Even his own son.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Phoenix

  “I MISS WAR.” I slid the black folder across the table and waited. Luca was supposed to be golfing. Hell, Luca was supposed to be dead, and yet there he was sitting across from me smoking a cigar and staring down at the black folder like it was diseased.

  “War,” he said as he clenched his teeth on the cigar, “is easier to plan for than peace, don’t you think?”

  I grunted. “It’s all there, Luca.”

  “I see that.”

  “You haven’t even opened it.”

  “I know what’s inside.” He drummed his fingertips along the table and then eyed me. “Two boys, one girl?”

  I nodded.

  “And they have no idea?”

  “No, but they’ll find out soon. I don’t know how the De Langes got the information, information only you and I have access to other than Mil…” I grit my teeth. “Mil, may her soul fucking rot in Hell, gave it to them. She was the only other person who would dare. We don’t have a rat that’s living, we have a rat that’s dead, festering in the ground, still ruining what peace we have left. They’ll use whatever they can to gain the upper hand, you know this.”

  “Yes.” Luca tapped his fingers along the black folder like it would suddenly open and read itself to him, like he was afraid of the truth inside of it.

  The secrets I held as the head of the Nicolasi Family would one day kill me. Truth.

  The secrets he refused to share with me, and would take to his gave, were already killing him. Truth.

  “Who have you told?” he asked, his clear blue eyes locked in on me and I knew what he was really asking. He wanted me to keep it quiet for as long as I could.

  “What’s one more secret between friends?” I stood and grabbed the folder and slid it back toward my side of the table while he reached for his wine. “Andrei doesn’t have any clue, does he?”

  “What I kept from him, I did to protect him.” Luca stared into his wine. “He was too young at the time, too angry.”

  I snorted out a laugh. “He’s still young, still angry.”

  Luca shrugged. “Apparently, I like to pick young angry little miscreants, don’t I?”

  I grinned. “Touché.”

  “We’ll keep it quiet for now, see if the De Langes strike first blood.”

  “And if they do?”

  “We may lose one life, we may lose them all, but one thing I know for certain, is we will rain a holy hell on that bloodline, the one you asked me to cut from your very skin, the one that defies the rest of the four families by standing alone, I would rather take in the entire Petrov family than let the De Langes win.”

  I sighed. “That’s good, because you may have to.”

  “It’s not that I’m disgusted with vodka, it’s that wine is so much more… classy.” He lifted the glass to his lips and with that, I knew our discussion was done.

  He would disappear like he always did, until it was time for me to find him again.

  And I would work like hell to make sure that I kept the secrets safe.

  Kept the families safe.

  Kept my wife and my son safe.

  Blood stained my hands, blood the color as thick and red as the wine in his glass. I built my life on it; I would leave this world with it.

  “Luca…” I shouldn’t have spoken it. That’s what I thought even as I said it. “We’ll need to raise our children different. Junior will need to know pain in order to survive.”

  Luca’s face was sad. “The next generation must know the difference between peace and war, pain and torture, they will need to respect the families in ways that will haunt them for the rest of their lives, and this will be your job, Phoenix. Your curse will be that your son will one day look at you with hatred and you will be thankful for it because as long as you hate, you survive. Yes, you will raise them different, because you will want them to live.”

  We sat in silence as we often did when he visited.

  And I wondered if I was the sort of father that would rather kill my own son than expect him to become a monster like myself.

  I loved him too much.

  My love made it even more dangerous, because I knew it wasn’t just me, but every other man in the four families, each of us would one day have to ask ourselves if it was worth it.

  And we would each have to decide for ourselves.

  I could have sworn in that moment I had a premonition of Serena and Junior sitting at this very table with black folders talking.

  I shuddered at the thought.

  And knew I had my answer.

  I would raise him to love as much as he hated.

  And I would not let it break him the way it did me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Alice

  HE LOCKED ME in.

  I wasn’t sure if I was safe not with that man, not with any man, but at least he locked me in which meant he was keeping others out.

  I wondered if that was my only future, being locked in rooms until the men around me decided what to do with my body, with my soul, I was worthless, a bargaining chip hardly worth using.

  I was either dead by the Italians.

  Or used by my own family.

  No matter what, I didn’t really have a life, did I?

  And as pathetic as it was, I was happier in that prison than I had been in my old room, waiting for the inevitable, waiting for the smell of whiskey as his hands touched me.

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  No tears.

  Six thirty-two didn’t cry.

  At that I almost laughed.

  My life had come down to this. A number.

  A long ass number.

  I walked down the dimly lit hall to the bathroom. I expected it to be the same as the rest of the house and was actually surprised when the entire thing was bathed in white marble. It was a walk-in rain shower bigger than most apartments, no doors, just a corner you walk around, there were jets sprouting out of each of the white tile walls.

  I quickly turned on the hot water, pulled off my disgusting clothes, and walked into the shower.

  The water hit my back so hard that I let out a gasp, and then I looked up and let it consume
me as the dirt and blood ran down the drain, the color was so bright against the white, so telling.

  I imagined I was washing away his hands too.

  My brother.

  I imagined him getting tortured, killed. And I wondered why it made me feel nothing but calm. I knew what the mafia did to people. I heard the whispers amongst my family about how much they hated the Abandonatos.

  Most of all they hated the guy who was killing them all off.

  Chase.

  He had been married to Mil, our dead boss, the one that truly screwed us over in more ways than one. We were making money, doing fine, according to my father, but she wanted more, and her pride wouldn’t let her take it from her rich husband, so she worked for the Russians. That, I knew.

  Who they were.

  What they did.

  And how she worked for them.

  I had no idea.

  I just knew that she got in too deep, and that she was killed for it.

  I also heard that the scream from her husband pierced the universe it was so loud, and that the families knew it was a scream for our blood, our heads.

  I remember the day because it was the first day I was locked in my room.

  Today was the first day in a year and a half I was given a shower without someone standing by the door making sure nobody got in and that I didn’t escape.

  I thought he was protecting me.

  I even accepted that it was the only way my father knew how.

  And yet he always let my brother in.

  I grabbed the only body wash in the shower and started running it all over my body. It smelled like him, the blond fallen angel who wore gloves and was scary attractive.

  His flawless complexion alone would make anyone do a double take, but it wasn’t just that or the icy blue eyes, or even the thick hair.

  It was the way he carried himself, like the world should know who he was, and thank him for existing.

  I shivered even though the water was hot, and rinsed off, taking my time not knowing if I would get the luxury again. It took me forever to get the knots out of my hair and I used probably half of the conditioner in that shower in order to do it, but finally I was able to rinse and run my fingers roughly through it.