Killing for Her

by Alexis Abbott

I hurry down the narrow hallways surrounding the sweeping atrium in the lodge that is often used for conferences or business dinners. Ana had been here several times as a child, and she was able to tell me the basics of the layout. From there, it was just a matter of study.

  After a short flight of stairs, I crack open a door leading to the outer hallway, and I move out when I see that the way is clear. My path takes me around the corner, and before I round it, I take out one of the silenced pistols from the holsters on my chest. I whip around the corner and see two guards standing at the doorway to the foyer.

  Two quick shots is all it takes. They never even knew what killed them.

  I slip into the foyer, and just like that, I see two figures standing about five feet away with their backs to me, facing the doors leading to the ceremony proper.

  One of the figures is Ana.

  She is dressed in a large bridal gown, looking absolutely radiant. At the same time that I see her, the bridal music starts playing on an automated track over the speakers of the whole building. But I don’t have time to linger on the sight of her. The man next to her is the one I’m after.

  Nestor Koroleva.

  As swiftly as I’ve entered the building and dealt with the guards, I sweep up behind Nestor as he steps through the open door with Ana in his arm.

  The three of us appear before the wedding ceremony together.

  Nestor freezes as he feels the barrel of the gun on the back of his head, and I hear a gasp ripple through the audience, followed by the sounds of a dozen guns cocking.

  The scene is sublime.

  Ana and Nestor stand frozen in front of me on the red carpet that leads down the room to where Liev and his men stand, staring at me with mouths hanging open in shock. The audience is barely an audience at all—just a few business friends of the two men, further showing how much of a business deal this really is. Ana is the only woman in the entire room.

  The sounds of guns cocking are from the interior guards, all of them training their weapons on me. The only reason I’m not dead is the fact that I have Nestor as my hostage now. All the while, the bridal march chimes overhead as if nothing has happened.

  “You lost my invitation,” I say, and Nestor tenses up. Ana says nothing, jaw tight, staring forward.

  “You,” Nestor hisses, and he turns his head enough to look at Ana. “Was this your doing, you brat? Is this who you’ve been running around with?”

  “This is a lot longer coming than that, Daddy,” she says in a pitiless tone.

  The windows shatter.

  All around the room, bullets fly in to strike the guards as my army of ex-convicts bursts into the room from the windows, the rafters, the doors, every place they’ve made it to. Ana turns and runs behind me, right into Maxym’s arms, as planned, and he guides her away from the firefight while I grab Nestor’s neck and pull him in closer to me.

  “You could have been something, you piece of shit,” he snarls at me as he thrashes in my grasp.

  “I am more than you’ll ever be,” I say, right before I put a bullet in Koroleva’s head.

  It’s a mercy, how quick I kill him.

  I didn’t make him suffer. For Ana.

  For my parents.

  For her mother.

  For the man I want to be when this is all over.

  He hasn’t even hit the ground before I look up to see Liev already down, but still alive. He struggles for a weapon from one of the dead guards not far from him, but I fire a round that hits his hand, and he howls in pain, recoiling.

  The firefight is still happening all around me, but my men have the situation on lockdown. Most of the guards died in the first volley, and now, my men are entering the building, fighting with the survivors hand to hand and finishing off the other minions of these two monsters.

  “To think I hated you for throwing a wrench in my plans, springing the marriage at the last minute,” I say to Liev as I point my gun at him. “But I should be thanking you. Without Ana... your ends wouldn’t have been nearly so dramatic.”

  “Eat sh-” he starts to spit, but I silence him with a single bullet to the head.

  A mercy he doesn’t deserve.

  All around me, the sounds of death are like a choir to my ears. I look around and see the architects of so much suffering meeting their just ends at the hands of the people they wronged. It is strange, I should feel more triumphant than any other moment in my life.

  This is what I’ve been working toward since I was forced to join the bratva. Since my family was stolen from me by these people.

  Now, all I can think about is what the other men are feeling, and it makes me swell with pride.

  But that isn’t the other thought on my mind.

  I turn and head out the room to find Ana... and congratulate Maxym on the position I’m going to give him for his part in protecting her.

  When the smoke finally clears, my men have suffered no casualties. The lodge is a mess of broken glass and blood, but every one of our enemies is accounted for. It was a flawless operation.

  While I tend to Ana, keeping her comforted and distracted from the ugly reality of the massacre, the men set to cleaning up the place. She knows what needed to be done, but the bravery of her doing it, of realizing that justice needed served... She amazes me.

  “It’s all over,” she says, her voice trembling as I stroke her cheek with the back of my finger.

  “Not yet. But soon. Your mother would be so proud of you, Ana. You were likely the one bright spot in her life, and I’m sure she’s smiling down on you now.”

  Ana rests her head against me as I kiss her crown, letting her calm her nerves as she clings to me.

  While my team gets to work.

  The biggest part of our plan is completed, but there’s more to be done. We have to do something with the bodies. Everything has already been arranged. I have the bodies of the bosses and their men loaded onto that wretched, evil plane of theirs, as if they were just on their way from the wedding.

  Maxym helps me rig the explosives on the thing so that it looks like an engine malfunction when it goes up in flames, destroying any shreds of evidence tying me to the massacre I orchestrated today.

  I have conducted mass assassinations before, but never quite like this.

  My men and I are cleared out of the lodge by nightfall, and as soon as our business is tied up, Ana and I start blazing a path back down to Brighton Beach.

  We have some diplomatic business to tend to.

  Anastasia

  “Ana, are you ready?”

  I look up at the sound of Nikolai’s voice, slicing through the fog of anxiety surrounding my head like a storm cloud. The man I adore, my savior who caught me as I fell, the one who has shined the brightest light into my life to illuminate the foul secrets and filthy lies gathering up in the corners, stands in the doorway.

  He’s wearing all black, an Armani suit specially designed and tailored to accentuate every smooth line and rounded muscle of his body. His inky-black hair is swept back away from his face, and he’s freshly clean-shaven. He looks every bit the part of the enforcer, but with a touch of elegance I hope our new associates will be able to appreciate.

  I’m dressed similarly, to create an impression of a unified front. To indicate that he and I are a package deal, and we will work side by side to take charge of my father’s post.

  I’m wearing a jet-black Dolce and Gabbana cocktail dress with a frilly tie-neck and tulle cap sleeves, along with Manolo Blahnik slingback pumps exactly the shade of blood. My lipstick is the same shade, as are my nails. My eyeliner wings are sharp as the blade of a paring knife, and my hair falls in shiny, vampy curls around my shoulders.

  It’s quite the contrast to the casual, more summery style I usually wear, but there’s a reason for the change. I need to ease into my new image. My new reputation. I can’t face my associates wearing a yellow sundress and sandals, looking like some ditzy schoolgirl.

  I will never be my father, and I don
’t have any desire to fill his shoes the way he did, but I do have to impress the men I’m about to meet with. More than that, I have to make them respect me, if not trust me.

  I don’t expect them to like me, but they had better accept me as their new leader.

  Part of revamping my image and reputation has more to do with how I feel, though, rather than how I look. I am still reeling from the loss of my father. It’s only natural to grieve for him, or rather, the idea of him I built up in my head.

  All those years, I trusted him and loved him just as any loyal daughter regards her doting father. But the version of him I adored was just an illusion. A mirage in the desert arising from the dusty expanse out of intense loneliness. He played the game like an expert. Daddy knew just how to keep me on his side. He knew how to isolate me, to keep me cornered and alone in the world.

  If I didn’t have any other friends or family to rely on, I would be forced to depend entirely on him. He was my only contact, and I saw the world through whichever false filter he held over my eyes. He tricked me into believing his lies and never questioning his logic, intentions, or authority. Everything he did for me was part of an overarching contrived effort to keep me in the dark, almost to brainwash me. He needed to control me so that I could never gather the strength and know-how to defy him.

  I wonder when he began to suspect I might be trouble. I wonder if he ever expected that at all. My gut tells me that Daddy never really put much thought into what kind of woman I would grow up to become. I was always just an investment to him, another asset along with his vacation homes and his stock market value.

  He underestimated me, down to the very end.

  He never saw it coming, not from me, his precious, sheltered little angel.

  Before Nikolai came into my life, I never saw it coming, either. I always knew I was smart and capable, but my father had me so distracted with luxury and travel that I rarely got the opportunity to prove my worth. All my dreams of growing up and finding my place in the world, not following in my father’s footsteps as a businesswoman, but blazing my own path to do good things in the world, to set things right, seemed to disappear when I was engaged to Liev Ovechkin.

  Good old Uncle Liev never suspected me, either. The two men would have laughed their asses off at the suggestion that I might have more going on in my head than just a pretty face. And judging by the way they and men like them treat women, it’s no surprise.

  In their world, women are just shiny toys to pass around and dispose of when you get tired of playing with them. That’s what the Bloom Express group have done with children and women for over two decades.

  That’s what my father did with my beautiful, good-hearted mother.

  She was disposable to him. But not to me.

  I know that, had she been given the chance to live, to truly bloom as her own person, she would have been incredible. She was cut down before she got the chance to shine. But not me. And what happened to her will never happen again to another woman or child, not on my watch.

  It will be an adjustment period for my new associates, of course, but they will have to get over it. Because we are never going back to the way things were before.

  I’m better than that.

  Nikolai is better than that.

  And together?

  We’re unstoppable.

  I’m sitting in the big leather armchair behind my father’s old mahogany desk in his spacious private office in our Sands Point home. After he died, I was of half a mind to tear the whole place down. Just raze it to the ground and rid myself of all the tainted memories.

  But I realized that was the easy way out. I don’t have to obliterate those memories. I just have to take what I have and make it work. I have to take straw and spin it into gold.

  So we cleaned out the office, gathering up all the incriminating evidence of my father’s evildoing and filing them away in a safehouse. He’s already dead, so no use handing it over to the police just yet. We tidied up the house and I settled into the office, still weighed down by dark memories and shame. It’s a heavy burden to bear and a massive undertaking for anyone, but I can do it.

  With Nikolai’s support, I can do damn near anything.

  I give Nikolai a nod. “Yes. I’m ready. Send them in,” I tell him softly.

  He smiles at me, one of those gorgeous blue eyes closing in a wink. He makes me strong. He makes me fearless. He makes me realize the scope of my own worth. I’m much smarter and tougher than Daddy ever thought I could be, and now it’s the moment of truth.

  It’s time to prove myself.

  It’s time to usher in a new era.

  Nikolai opens the door and beckons for the seven men to walk into my office. They are all similarly dressed in dark clothing and grim expressions. Their wrists are adorned with shiny metal Rolexes, their chests gleaming with gold chains. Even the buttons of their suit jackets are carved from expensive ivory, pearl, and opal. These seven men form the most elite upper echelon of the Brighton Beach chapter of the Bratva.

  Well, the most elite besides Nikolai and I.

  The men file into the room with obvious reluctance, and I know without having to think about it at all that all of them are armed. That’s fine. I expect that. After the gruesome deaths of my father and Ovechkin, they must all be on edge. Whose neck will be on the chopping block next? What kind of trap could they be walking into right now? But the point of this meeting is to put those fears to rest while simultaneously assuring them that I am in charge, and I will not accept disobedience.

  Nikolai closes the door behind them and I stand up to greet the group with a gracious smile, leaning forward on my father’s old desk.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” I say pleasantly. “You all look well.”

  None of them say a word. I could hear a pin drop in this room. They’re all waiting on me.

  “Right. I see no reason to beat around the bush, so I’ll cut straight to the point. I’m sure you have all come here today carrying your own unique prejudices, assumptions, and motivations. I don’t blame you. Any time there is a shift in the power dynamics of a long-established group such as this one, there are bound to be some growing pains. And some dissenters,” I begin, making sure to hold eye contact with each one of them in turn.

  Again, they remain silent. That’s fine by me.

  I continue with a smile. “Now, I don’t know exactly what your individual roles are in regards to how my father, the late Nestor Koroleva, used to run things. As you can probably guess, he kept a lot of secrets from me. He never wanted me to inherit this role. He never expected me to take his place. Despite all of his careful planning, he never quite considered the possibility that I might be a living, breathing, thinking human with agency and opinions. I lived in his blind spot. A pity for him, I suppose, but an advantage for me. Because now I have legal control over his estate. All of his money and influence are mine. That also means that all of his sins weigh down on my shoulders. I know you have all played your own important role in those sins. God only knows how many children, how many women, you all have hurt. Killed. Treated like chattel. But not anymore.

  “My father’s death and his legacy cast a long, oppressive shadow over me, but it’s my plan today to start inching my way out from underneath it to stand in the light. Nestor Koroleva was a bad man. A criminal, not just against the law of the land, but against humanity itself. I seek to undo those crimes. I can’t take back all the years of pain he has inflicted upon the world in his selfish pursuit of money and power, but what I can do is point this organization in a different, brighter direction for the future. We will no longer be agents of harm, but of mercy. We will suck out the poison. We will right the wrongs. And you all will do so, as well, as loyal and devoted members of the family.

  “Now, I must warn you. Just because I have good intentions does not mean I didn’t also inherit some of my father’s more aggressive tendencies. Just like him, I require fidelity. I require honesty. I demand respect, though I al
so plan to earn it. We will continue to prosper, but not on the backs of those we make to suffer for our own selfish gain. Not anymore. If you came here today expecting me to follow in my father’s footsteps, you are mistaken. But if you think for one second I will not deal with objectors with the same ruthlessness that he did, you are wrong again. My partner is a formidable enemy, and so am I. Do not test my patience. I want to reign with cooperation and compassion, but if you betray me or my vision, I won’t hesitate to cut you down. You will be buried along with my father and Ovechkin, and I will not mourn for you.

  “That said, I want you all to be able to trust me. I’m not a tyrant—I am a diplomat. I have lopped off the head of the beast, but I know a coup like this can sow the seeds of vengeance and rebellion. I will watch you all closely to see how well you can fit into this new era. We are going to face the light again. We are going to use our money and control to do good things for once. Take this opportunity I’m offering you to atone for your sins. This is an olive branch. This is a second chance. Let’s move forward together into the light,” I conclude.

  There’s silence for a moment and I make eye contact with Nikolai, who gives me a slight nod of approval. Then, one of the men speaks up and says, “And why should we accept your rule? We have never had a diplomat—or a woman, for that matter—at the helm. How can you possibly expect us to just fall in line with your ideas that differ so much from your father’s?”

  A slow, wry smile spreads across my face as I stand up straight, staring at him unblinkingly. The other man shift awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

  “Look around,” I answer cheerfully, “have you noticed how clean and empty my father’s old office is now?”

  The men all look around, confused. The one who spoke up says, “Yes. We all know you’re capable of cleaning house. You are a woman, after all.”

  Emboldened by his crude statement, a low titter of laughter rolls through the group. I remain patient and composed, even though I can sense that Nikolai has a little more trouble keeping his true feelings at bay. Once the silence resumes, I explain, “This room used to be filled with all sorts of evidence. Files, folders, letters, emails, spreadsheets, safes—all sorts of items that could be very, very interesting to the police. My father was an arrogant man. He got complacent. This office was a treasure trove of evidence, implicating not only himself and Liev Ovechkin, but every single one of you, as well. But me? I am much, much more organized. Like you said, I’m a woman. And I know that everything should be in its place. All of that evidence, reaching back nearly three decades, is now housed in a secure, secret location. You see, I don’t need a gun to keep you all in line. All it would take is one call to the mayor of New York City, with whom I have cultivated a very good friendship over the years, and every single one of you would be thrown behind bars for so long you will never feel the warmth of the sun on your skin ever again.”