by Keri Lake
I nabbed the chair set beside her bed and spun it around, resting my elbows on the back of it as I plopped down on the seat. “I’ve spent nearly an entire year trying to infiltrate their group. They don’t let outsiders in without it.”
“You think you can take down an organization like that? Do you have any idea how big they are?”
“I wasn’t trying to take down their entire organization. I just wanted Tesarik. And to find you.”
Brows pinched, she paused in rubbing at her wrists. “Why? What value am I for you?”
“A human life.” I lifted the antibiotics from the bag and dumped one of the pills and a vitamin into the palm of my hand. “Doc says your thigh is infected. She called in an antibiotic for you.”
“What’s the other?”
“A vitamin.” Hand outstretched, I offered the two, watching her wary eyes scan over them. “I’m sending you back tonight.”
Those eyes flicked to mine, and all I could surmise in them was anger staring back at me. “Sending me back? Where?”
“Not to Tesarik. To your father. Dmitry is your father, right?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she popped the pills into her mouth, washing them down with a glass of water from the nightstand. “What do you know of him?”
“He contacted me before I found you. Gave me a number to reach him.”
“I want to see it.”
I slid the card from my pocket and handed it off to her, studying the tight crease of her forehead as her gaze flicked over it.
“Black gloves on his hands?”
“Yeah, what’s up with that?”
“His wife was murdered in front of him years ago, and his hands were dipped in acid to ensure he’d never know what it felt like to touch a woman again.” She ran her hand through her hair and let out an exasperated breath. “Does he know where I am now?”
“No, I’ve not yet contacted him. Is he a danger to you?”
Sneering, she tossed the card onto the bed and slipped over the edge of the opposite side. She padded toward the window, where she peered down, as though searching. “What man isn’t?” she asked, glancing back at me. “What did he offer to pay?”
“For what?”
“For me. How much?”
Shaking my head, I shrugged. Aside from his offer to finance her extraction, he hadn’t offered any sort of reward on top of it. “Nothing.”
Rolling her eyes, she peered out the window again and crossed her arms. “Nothing. Right.”
“I told you before, Nicoleta. You’re not a prisoner here. I’m not out to sell you. I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
“So, I could just walk out that door, and you’d let me?”
Huffing a sigh, I nodded. “If that’s what you wanted. There’d be no guarantee Tesarik won’t find you again. Which is why I need to figure something out for you.”
“Why?”
I tugged a Zippo from my pocket and tapped a pack of smokes onto the heel of my hand, sliding a cigarette from inside. “I plan to kill him,” I said, and inhaled a long drag. “Wasn’t there the night I came for you.” My voice croaked with the held smoke. “Otherwise, he’d already be dead.”
Her head craned back in my direction, eyes studying me from where she stood. “He hurt someone you care about. That’s why you carry shadows behind your eyes.”
Thoughts of Livvie left me frowning, and I dropped my gaze from hers, taking another hit of my smoke. “He did.”
“He hurt someone I care about, too. Which is why I can’t go back to Dmitry.” She jutted her chin toward me. “Can I have one of those?”
Popping another from the pack, I held it out to her, and she rounded the bed and nabbed the proffered cigarette. Once she’d pressed it between her lips, I flicked the Zippo and lit it for her. “Why can’t you go back?”
Eyes on me, she turned her head just enough to blow the smoke off. “Can I trust you, Dax?”
Something about the girl seemed off, sending up alarms through my system. “Of course.”
She lowered her gaze, brow twitching as if my response troubled her, or something, and she curled her bottom lip into her mouth. “It was no accident that Tesarik found me when he did.”
“Come again.”
“I wanted in. And if you’re a woman, there’s only one way into their club. It’s like you said, they don’t take in outsiders.”
My mind rewound itself to months back, when I’d first seen her hanging from a chain in some dingy ass building, while Tesarik assessed her. I tried to remember one moment I might’ve mistaken that for something involuntary. No way. No way would a girl sign up for that shit willingly. Knowing what he did to them, how some of them were never heard from again.
“You’re …. You’re trying to tell me … you volunteered yourself as a fucking slave? A torture toy for a bunch of sick fucks? For what? What could possibly be that important?”
“Not what. Who.” Curls of smoke trailed after her as she padded across the room once again. She stopped beside the window, resting the side of her head against it. “A little over two years ago, I stumbled upon a link to a website buried somewhere in the bowels of the dark net. I downloaded a video there.” Her brows came together, cheeks caving as she drew in another inhale. “The girl in the video was systematically tortured and raped by two men in pig masks. In my sixteen years, I had seen some fucked up things, but this was, by far, the worst. And at the end of the video, they tied her to an anchor and threw her into the Detroit River to drown.” Not bothering to look at me, she kept her eyes directed out the window.
The story wasn’t too far off from what’d happened to Livvie. Had almost a ritual feel to hers, too. Black rage curled through my veins, an old familiar sensation I’d spent practiced hours tamping down.
“This girl … you know her?”
“I knew her. Very well.”
“Tesarik did this.”
“Not directly, no.” A quick glance back allowed me to see a flicker of wrath in her eyes, too. “It was his website and his production company, though.”
“So, you hoped to find out who killed the girl.”
“Her video had been commissioned by someone. Someone paid to see this happen to her. I wanted all three. The men who raped her, and the one who paid for it.”
“You allowed yourself to be taken in to find her killers. Christ, Nicoleta, you could’ve suffered the same fate.”
“So be it. If I go back to Dmitry, he’ll lock me away, like Rapunzel. He’s protective, you know.”
“Which is what you need right now. Tesarik won’t stop looking for you.”
“Then, why not let me stay with you?”
“No.” I shook my head and flicked my cigarette into the glass of water I’d have to replace for her. “I’m bad news. A fucking walking bullseye. You’d be another target.”
“I am a target. Whether I sit locked in a room, or run the streets, eventually, they’ll come for me.”
“I know someone who can keep you in hiding, if you need that. He’s … sort of a big deal in the underground.”
“I don’t want to hide, Dax.” Cigarette dangling from her fingertips, she stepped toward me. “I want the men who killed the girl.”
“No. Count me out.” I pushed up from the chair and swiped up the pack of smokes, stuffing them into my back pocket. “Look, I searched all over Hell’s half acre to find you, and I’ll be damned if I let you dive headfirst into a fucking shark tank again. You’re vulnerable. Young. Slightly naïve. They’ll pick you up before you even know what hit you.” As she opened her mouth to spout another argument, I lifted my finger into the air to silence her. “The answer is no. End of stor—”
A splintering crack of the front door shot like a bolt of lightning down my spine. I exchanged a glance with Nicoleta, and held my finger to my lips. My gun sat tucked in the nightstand in my bedroom, and with light steps, I tiptoed toward the door.
Peering through the crack showed no movement. I stepped out
into the hallway, sliding along the wall to my bedroom, where I slipped inside and slowly slid out the drawer. Magazine was full on checking, and I shoved it back into the gun and padded out into the hallway, toward the kitchen.
Light from the living room illuminated the corridor, and I could see from where I stood that the door had been kicked in. Finger on the trigger, I readied myself to shoot the first thing that moved.
A shot pinged to my right, and I ducked down on instinct, swung the gun left, racked the chamber, and shot twice. I backed myself into the hallway again. Another shot whizzed past my face. A third hit the wall near my thigh.
I shot again, and a searing hot pain slammed into my shoulder. Hand slapped to the wound, I fell back against the wall and lowered my gun. A shadow moved in my periphery, and ignoring the pain, I jumped to my feet, gun aimed at the bastard who had his barrel pointed at me.
“Who are you?” I gritted out.
“Looks like I’m the lucky bastard who’s about to put a bullet in your skull.” His lips stretched into a smile, as, eyes on mine, he raised a second gun. That one aimed square at my nuts.
Fuck.
Something brushed against my shoulder from behind, and in the next blink, the man stood wide-eyed with the hilt of a blade sticking out of his throat. An errant shot fired and ricocheted off the floor, hitting the wall.
As he fell to his knees, I stood dumbfounded, watching the blood trickle down his neck. With a tug, he yanked the blade loose, and more blood poured from the wound. Temple first, he hit the floor on a thud, his palm losing the battle against the blood gushing from his throat.
Mouth gaping, I turned to find Nicoleta standing behind me.
Small. Young. Seemingly innocent Nicoleta, who stared back as if killing the man were nothing.
My eyes shot back to the dead guy, then to her again. “You learn that shit in the circus, or something?”
Sparing no more than a glance, she strode past me and knelt down beside the stranger still struggling on the floor. “He might be one of Dmitry’s. Unfortunately, he can’t answer any questions.”
“Or one of Tesarik’s. Which means we have to leave. Now.”
She pushed to her feet and rushed back toward the bedroom, while I followed at her heels. “There will be others. We can’t leave through the front.” She slipped on the sweats and the T-shirt laid out on the chair.
“We? There is no we. If it’s Dmitry, he’s trying to kill me. So I’ll leave. You said he’s protective of you, right? You stay, I go.”
“He knows I won’t go with him.” Hands on her hips, she swung around, somehow looking less vulnerable than yesterday. In fact, her short-cropped hair and the small bit of blood on her cheek had her looking like a Femme Nikita, or some shit. “Look, you want Tesarik, right? No one knows his schedule better than me. I know exactly where he’s going to be two weeks from today. You help me, I help you.”
“I already helped you. No deal.”
“Then you can continue to play cat and mouse. Either way, I’m not going back to Dmitry. Not until I find the men who killed the girl. It’s only a matter of time before the others show.” She crossed her arms with all the stubborn fixings of a girl who refused to take no for an answer. “So, are you in, or out?”
“You’re a real piece of work, sweetheart.”
“It’s this, or I go, and Dmitry comes after you, anyway.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose failed to hold back waves of frustration slamming against my skull in a mocking tempo. “Be grateful I don’t hurt women.”
“And you’ve seen that I’m perfectly capable of hurting men, so consider it in your best interest to help me.”
“Before I agree to anything, you’re going to tell me everything, including where you learned the knife shit.”
11
Nicoleta
“What’s this?” Dmitry studied the purple markings I already knew had fanned out from my eyeball.
I turned my head to break his grip of my chin. “It’s nothing.”
“Who did this to you?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody packs quite a punch. This bruise is fresh.”
With a frown, I shoved my hands into the pockets of the new jeans he’d bought for me—ones I’d have to explain to my mom when I got home. “What are you, a doctor?”
“No. Just taken my fair share of punches.” Leaning back against his desk, he crossed his arms over his chest. “You know how to defend yourself?”
I shrugged and gave a half nod. “Sorta.”
“Sorta? I’m afraid sorta doesn’t cut it.”
“I fell. It happens. Can we just forget about it?”
He pushed off the desk and nudged my arm on the way toward his office door. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“No questions.”
I followed Dmitry through the house toward the back, through an area I’d not been before. The giant I’d met on my first day sat kicked back in a button-down shirt at a small table. Dmitry silently flicked his fingers, moving like a shadow through the room, and as if the big guy could read his mind, he shot to his feet wordlessly and followed behind us.
I looked back at him, noticing that he didn’t so much as spare me a glance, his chin high in the air, like a true giant failing to acknowledge an ant.
We reached the back of the house and pushed through a door to a backyard vaster and more expansive than any I’d ever seen.
“Unload,” Dmitry said, and again, like a mind reader, the guard set out two guns, a knife, and a piece of metal with four holes onto the patio table beside us. “Aleksey is going to teach you to defend yourself.”
Aleksey’s eye merely twitched in response, but he neither agreed, nor disagreed.
“Choose your weapon.”
I stared down at the small arsenal set out for me and, all at once, felt afraid for both Aleksey and me. Was he crazy? What if I accidentally shot him?
“Aleksey has taken many bullets, but I can assure you, you won’t hurt him.” Dmitry’s voice carried an air of amusement, and suddenly he was reading my mind, too.
Would he hurt me?
I opted for the knife, lifting it with shaky hands from the table.
Dmitry gave Aleksey a nod, and the giant knelt down behind me, until he’d become my height. Still, he didn’t look at me, as he lifted my hand and turned the knife over so I was clutching the blade.
“Aleksey was trained as a soldier for the Vory. He’s very good at weapons.” Dmitry took a seat on the patio and lit up a cigar.
The giant finally spoke, using a language I didn’t understand, and tapped the knuckles of my right hand, while patting my left hip.
“He says, to properly throw a knife, it has to be in the hand opposite the leg you keep forward for stability. You throw with your upper body,” Dmitry translated, before taking three puffs of his cigar, letting the smoke gather around his face.
I nodded and allowed Aleksey to position my left leg one step ahead of my body. My bones could’ve crushed to dust in his big palm, as he drew my arm back and more of the language I didn’t understand came as a command from behind.
He extended his heavily tattooed arm beneath mine, flattening his palm, so mine sat atop his, and I somehow understood he wanted me to use my non-throwing hand for momentum. Gripping my wrist, he tugged my knife-toting hand back and guided a false throw for practice.
We drew back once more, taking the initial position from moments before, and in the next breath his hand snapped mine forward, and the knife flew out of my fingers, missing the target. I could feel the power in his arms, the strike almost knocking me senseless.
“Again,” Dmitry commanded, peeling his gaze from where my last throw had landed.
I walked forward and unstuck the knife from the ground where it’d lodged itself, before returning to my position in front of Aleksey, who reset my leg and raised my outstretched arm.
“Imagine the target is the one who left t
hose bruises on you this time.”
Gaze lowering, I frowned, and guilt snaked through my blood, imagining my mother standing before me.
“This troubles you? Then, imagine someone else.”
Easy enough. I thought of my mother’s boyfriend, Pigman. I hated him enough to imagine a blade slicing through him.
Aleksey tugged my hand back again, and together we tossed the knife, only grazing the tree, but I celebrated the near miss with a smile.
Dmitry said something to the behemoth in his language, and his deep chuckle raced down my spine. The guard laughed, striding toward the fallen knife, which he picked up and returned to me. How strange to hear a giant laugh.
“This time on your own,” Dmitry said.
I took the stance, allowing Aleksey to adjust my arms and leg, then threw the knife. It missed. I threw it again. Two more times. Three more after that. Each time, Aleksey corrected my posture, grunted a command in his language, and I learned that, “Opyat!” meant, “Again!”
Perhaps an hour passed before I finally threw the knife and hit my mark. With a leap, and in all my excitement, I wrapped my arms around Aleksey, who stood stiff and guarded, refusing to reciprocate.
“Now.” Dmitry pushed up from his chair and stood beside me, setting his hand on my shoulder. “No one hurts you again. Understand?”
I stared at the knife still wedged in the tree trunk and gave a sharp nod. “I understand.”
An ache throbbed in my chest as I recalled bits of conversation with Tesarik, and I blinked away the tears welling in my eyes at the memory that Aleksey had been captured while trying to save me.
To hurt me, they’d made a point of torturing him slowly and without mercy.
“So tell me.” Dax kept his eyes on the road as he drove us through the city over wet pavement that gave off an almost romantic glow in daylight.
The rough tone of his voice yanked me out of the somber thoughts of my friend—a welcomed distraction. “Tell you what?”
“Where the hell that ninja shit came from? You’re obviously not what I thought you were.”