by Bella Rose
“When you take the medication, other people will understand what you’re trying to say and do. Perhaps then you would not feel so misunderstood and put upon.”
“Ha!” Vladimir curled his lip in disdain. “I remember when I was in the hospital as a young man. The doctors gave me medication to take. It made me feel slow and sleepy. I realized then that I was smarter, faster, and better than all of them. That is why they wanted to medicate me. They wanted to be better than I am.”
The enforcers were getting restless. They kept staring at Nicolai and shifting toward their guns as though they were waiting for some sort of signal. Soon someone would draw and the shooting would begin. Vladimir looked eager for the bloodbath to come.
“Brother,” Vladimir began, “when did you lose your balls? Really. Do you keep them in a jar under the sink? I never figured you for a coward and yet that is exactly the way you are acting.”
“I suppose to a deranged individual like you, my hesitation in ordering my own brother to be killed would seem like weakness.” Nicolai shook his head. “Have it your way then.”
Vladimir acted just as Nicolai gave a nod to Anatoly. The big enforcer barked orders at the men, but Vladimir had already snagged Lily about the waist. He spun her into place before him like a human shield. Her surprise wasn’t enough to stop him.
“Shoot and you kill Nicolai’s woman!” Vladimir shouted.
Dragging Lily backwards, Vladimir took refuge behind the bar. Nicolai felt a rush of adrenaline in his veins. He had to get Lily out of here. Nicolai left his men and crawled on his belly toward Vladimir’s hiding place. Behind him, Anatoly and the others kept up a steady stream of shots and yelling that worked as the perfect distraction.
Finally, Nicolai holed up near the bar. He could hear Lily valiantly arguing with Vladimir.
“What are you doing?” Lily shouted at Vladimir. “You don’t have to do this!”
“Shut up.”
Nicolai leaned around the cover of a table and chairs. He saw Vladimir hold his gun above his head in order to start shooting blindly in the direction of Anatoly and his men. Shouts filled Kalinka as glassware shattered and covered the floor in sharp slivers. One man gave an agonized yell that suggested one of Vladimir’s bullets had struck its mark.
“Stop!” Lily begged. “You’ll kill someone!”
“Vladimir Pasternak!” another voice shouted loudly from the direction of the entrance. “You’re under arrest for murder!”
Nicolai swung around in the other direction, poking his head around the edge of the table to try and see the newcomers. Captain Grayson had finally arrived, even though he was late. Things were already hopelessly out of hand. Cops were likely to make it worse. Not better.
“Oh goody,” Vladimir said with a laugh. “The police have arrived at the party.”
Nicolai peered back toward Vladimir’s hiding place. Lily was on the floor behind the bar. She huddled into a ball with her hands over her head as the bullets flew. Vladimir shouted insults in Russian and English as he dropped the clip from his handgun and pulled a new one from his pocket.
Just as he was lifting himself far enough to shoot over the top of the bar, a stray bullet hit a bottle of liquor on the shelf behind the bar. Nicolai saw the mirrored back of the bar shatter. The bottle itself exploded. Glass and whiskey rained down upon Vladimir and Lily. Nicolai felt a knot of horror in his gut. He had to get her out of there.
Chapter Fifteen
Lily was pretty sure that she was going to die with an insane man right beside her. It was not the way she wanted to go. The scent of whiskey was making her nauseous and she could hardly move without getting sliced by broken glass. There were pieces of the mirror everywhere.
She jerked as another cut opened up and burned as though her entire arm was on fire. She searched beneath the counter for something she could use to protect herself, but all she saw was a bunch of shot glasses and a discarded lighter.
“Why couldn’t someone have at least left a jacket?” she muttered.
Vladimir was grinning in a way that made her stomach knot with fear. “What are bitching about now? Are you cold? Give me a minute and I’ll light this place up!”
His asinine boast jarred her. “Of course,” she breathed.
Swiping up a handful of shot glasses, she pressed her back against the cabinets. She took careful aim and hurled the tiny thing at the bottles on the shelves behind the bar. The shot glass wasn’t big, but it was heavy enough to knock the bottle down.
Lily covered her head as the bottle shattered on the floor and spilled liquor everywhere. Vladimir only laughed as though it were the greatest joke. That was fine with her. She knocked five more bottles down and soaked the floor in alcohol.
The cops were screaming one thing, Nicolai was shouting something else, and Lily was done with all of them. She grabbed the lighter and bolted away from Vladimir.
“Lily!” He sounded more panicked than angry. “Don’t leave me!”
“Sorry,” Lily muttered.
Clicking the lighter until a flame sputtered to life, she threw it toward Vladimir. Seconds later she rolled to her belly and covered her head with her hands as a fireball belched toward the ceiling.
All of sudden, the room was filled with the deafening yells of police, mafia members, and the eerie screams of a man on fire. Lily moaned as the scent of charred wood and flesh reached her.
She scrambled to put more distance between her and the bar.
“Lily!” Nicolai’s voice reached her through the chaos.
The sprinkler system finally kicked on. The hiss of sputtering flame was followed by the drip drip of water as the entire restaurant was flooded. Lily heaved a giant sigh and flopped onto her back. Closing her eyes, she let herself be soaked by the cleansing rain.
***
As the water soaked him to the skin, Nicolai stretched out on the floor beside Lily and curled his body protectively around hers.
“Are you all right?” He pushed a strand of wet hair away from her face. “I nearly died when I realized what you were doing with the bottles.”
She turned her head and wrinkled her nose at him. “Nobody else was going to flush him out of there. And an entire room full of men with guns and not one of you can hit the broad side of a barn.”
He laughed. “None of us wanted to chance hitting you.”
“I suppose I can respect that,” she told him cheekily. “I just can’t believe it’s all over.”
“Not quite.” Nicolai cast a glance over to the bar where the police officers were poking at Vladimir.
“Is he dead?” she whispered.
Anatoly approached Nicolai. The expression on his face showed that he was less than pleased. “He’s alive, boss.”
Nicolai muttered a few choice epithets in Russian. “What do they intend to do?”
“What do you think?”
He rolled onto his knees. Once he managed to gain his feet, he held out his hand and tugged Lily into a standing position as well. “You deserve to be present for this as well.”
“I do?” She looked confused.
“You’ve been more injured by Vladimir’s behavior than any of us.”
Lily glanced toward the scene at the bar. “What is it that the police want to do?”
“They are technically duty-bound to arrest him and then take him to the hospital for treatment,” Nicolai explained.
“No!” Lily looked almost panicked. “That would be a bad decision.”
“Then let’s go convince them of our position, shall we?”
She looked torn. “To be perfectly clear, what is our position exactly?”
Anatoly snorted. “Vladimir must die.”
“That’s harsh.” Lily thought of the man who had first tried to save her from her papa’s cruelty. “There is still a little good in him somewhere.”
“That’s true.” Nicolai knew she needed to come to this choice on her own. “Nobody can tell you how to feel about this. It’s fo
r you to decide.”
“Is this how you feel when you make decisions about your job?” she wondered out loud. “Like when a woman is to be used by other men in one of your brothels. Do you feel torn about it like this?”
“All the time,” he said softly. “I never place a woman somewhere she does not want to be, but that does not mean I don’t understand that she may feel she has no other choice. Nothing in life is easy.”
***
Lily had never said it out loud, but the thought of Nicolai owning and running brothels throughout the city weighed on her. She hadn’t wanted that life, but Vladimir would have forced her into it. Were there other women out there in that position?
“For now, we have to focus on Vladimir.” Nicolai gently nuzzled her neck. “You can petition to change the world later. I promise.”
“You promise that you will always listen to my concerns?” She wasn’t sure why she had a need to extract such a vow, but she did.
“I do.” He shook his head. “Prepare yourself. Vladimir isn’t going to look the same.”
Lily grabbed Nicolai’s hand and steeled herself for the worst. It still did nothing to prepare her for the sight of the destruction that she had wrought. The fire she had caused had completely annihilated the bar area. Vladimir lay on his back. His hair was completely burned away, his scalp raw underneath. His face had been burned, though it was still recognizable. His clothing was charred and she could not tell if it was still there or not. His body had been burned to a crisp, and yet his eyes still blinked and his mouth opened as though he were trying to speak.
A tall man in a suit met them. He nodded to Anatoly, Nicolai, and Lily. “I’m Captain Grayson. We have to take your brother in, Mr. Pasternak. Protocol states he must be arrested. The doctor will decide when he is well enough for arraignment and trial.”
Nicolai gave the detective a long stare. “He orchestrated the murder of one of your men. He also murdered my father in cold blood.”
“Yes.”
“You do realize that there is a history of mental illness that will very likely help him succeed in making a plea for insanity.” Nicolai waited for that to sink in.
Lily grasped Nicolai’s hand. She wanted this detective to understand. “He’s going to get out and he’s going to kill someone else. It’s in his nature.”
“We have rehabilitation for people like this,” the captain seemed to be trying to convince himself more than her.
“He’s already been rehabilitated,” Nicolai said softly. “This is what it got him. Captain, I understand your scruples, and believe it or not I applaud them. I’m simply suggesting, in this case, that mafia justice might be better suited to handle this problem.”
“You want to eliminate him.” The captain curled his lip. “That’s murder.”
“That is justice.” Nicolai cast a glance at his wounded brother. “And at this point, it’s probably mercy as well.”
The captain seemed to consider this. “Very well. Perhaps Lily would come with us to make an official statement?”
Beside him, Nicolai could feel Lily freeze in terror. He reached down and squeezed her hand. “There is no one better equipped to tell this tale.”
***
Lily was pretty certain that she was going to make a terrible mistake that would end with her being locked up in jail. Still, Nicolai was gazing at her as though he thought she could take on the world and win.
She sucked in a deep breath for courage. “Where are we going? To the station?”
“Oh no, ma’am,” the captain said with a smile. “We’ll just go out front where it’s a little easier to breathe.”
“Oh. That sounds all right.”
Lily had to admit that it felt amazing to be outside Kalinka where she could finally breathe. She saw that a little crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. There were fire trucks present, although the firemen appeared to be just cleaning up and resetting the sprinkler system. The fire was pretty much out.
“That was very brave of you,” Captain Grayson said stiffly.
“What was?”
“To start the fire.” He nodded. “It shows a quick mind too, that you would think to do that when all of us were just shooting at each other.”
“Yeah, that did seem pretty ineffective,” Lily agreed.
“How do you know Vladimir?”
“He took me from my father’s—or stepfather, I guess. Vladimir took me as payment for a debt.”
“Excuse me?” Grayson looked horrified. “That’s not legal. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not with Vladimir anymore, in case you didn’t realize.”
“I think we got the idea.” The captain began scribbling a few notes. “How did you come to be here tonight?”
Lily took her time, explaining how she had come to be kidnapped by Vladimir and stressing how Nicolai and the other men were not to blame. She wasn’t certain what she was allowed to say about the syndicate’s activities, so she avoided talking about that altogether.
“That’s quite a fantastic tale,” Grayson murmured. “I might even be inclined to believe it.”
“Thank you.”
The captain closed his little notebook. “What do you intend to do now?”
“I’m not sure.”
The front door of Kalinka opened and Nicolai stepped outside. Captain Grayson gently touched Lily’s shoulder. “I believe you might have a young man interested in commanding a certain share of your free time.”
“That’s the thing,” Lily told him, “Nicolai doesn’t command anything. He’s courteous and kind. He’s not like anyone I’ve ever known.”
“There are places for people like you within our organization.” The intensity of the captain’s voice shifted. “You know this world intimately and have the trust of men that we have been unable to get close to. That would be very valuable if you should wish to utilize that asset.”
“You’re asking me to be an informant?” She was surprised her jaw didn’t hit the ground.
“You would be one of the best.”
She gazed at Nicolai. He was looking right back at her. She turned back to the captain. “I could never do that to my family.”
“As you wish,” the captain conceded. “If you should change your mind, I would welcome you.”
“I bet,” she murmured.
Chapter Sixteen
“It still pisses me off that he tried to recruit you,” Nicolai said grouchily. “That took a lot of brass.”
“Well his rank is captain so I’m sure he has a lot of brass,” she quipped.
Nicolai stared at her for a brief moment. “That joke was in really poor taste.”
“Ha! It was funny. Admit it! You thought it was hilarious and you’re fighting the urge to fall down laughing.”
“Oh I’m fighting an urge all right,” he agreed. “But it has absolutely nothing to do with laughter.”
He wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck. Lily tilted her head to give him better access, even though she should have been waving him off. “We’re going to meet with the council in less than five minutes, Nicolai. We really don’t have time for a quickie.”
“I will make time.” He kissed the part of her shoulder left bare by her dress. “Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?”
“Several times,” she teased. “And usually while you’re trying to coax me out of my dress.”
“Can I help it if you’re completely irresistible?”
Lily turned in his arms and stood on tiptoe. She cupped both of his cheeks and pulled his face down for a deep kiss. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever tire of kissing this man. He had opened her eyes to a whole new world and had made her feel like her own person in ways that nobody else ever had.
“Ahem.” Anatoly awkwardly cleared his throat. “They’re ready to see you now.”
“Both of us?” Lily frowned. “I hadn’t expected that.”
“It will be
all right.” Nicolai looked strangely confident and she had no choice but to follow along.
Taking his hand, she allowed him to lead her into the small room located in the back of yet another Pasternak restaurant. This one was called The Samovar. She knew this was a little bit cliché for a Russian restaurant, but the place seemed nice anyway. It was all old-world elegance and the dark masculine wood of a study or den.
The room the council was using for their meeting was located at the very back of the establishment. From here they could barely catch a hint of what was happening in the busy dining room in the front.
“Ah, there you are, Nicolai.”
Lily didn’t know who was speaking, but all of the men appeared to be in their late fifties to early sixties. There was even one gentleman in his seventies. Lily gave them the deference that their age commanded and hoped that she’d handled herself all right.
“Tell us about your woman, Nicolai Pasternak.” The older gentleman encouraged. “She has very pretty manners, indeed. Is she for sale?”
“No. Lily was given to Vladimir in payment of a debt owed by Ivan Denisovich.” Nicolai’s tone was respectful, but also powerful in its own right. He obviously did not want to show too much deference. “Ivan had no right to sell the woman. She is of age. At this time, she is under my protection until such time as she will agree to be my wife.”
***
Nicolai could tell that he had shocked Lily. She turned to stare at him with her mouth wide open. In front of them, the seven gentleman in their sixties were enjoying this performance immensely. Since that had more or less been his plan from the beginning, he was pleased.
“I don’t think your woman was ready for that one, Nicolai,” Sasha Orlov said with a gleeful laugh. “Perhaps you should have proposed first.”
“Do you think so?” Nicolai kept his tone completely serious. “How about this?” He turned to face Lily and took her hands in his. “Lily, will you be my wife? I would love nothing more than the chance to have you by my side for the rest of my life, and to spoil you rotten at every given opportunity.”
She kept glancing at their audience. Sasha Orlov waved her on. “Don’t mind us, young lady. We want to see the romance bloom.”