A Vote For Lust: A Bad Boy Political Romance

by Natasha Tanner

  “Don’t worry, Ace,” I tell him. “We’ll make it. We have plenty of time, for the trip and for whatever comes after it.”

  He looks at me as if I were something precious.

  “Things will change, I promise you,” he says. “Once we come back...”

  But things change right now. One of the cars speeding ahead of us makes a sudden turn and stops in the middle of the lane. Another car does the same a couple of seconds later, blocking the way completely. Ace has to turn the steering wheel violently and almost loses control of the car. He turns to the right, then to the left, and steps on the brake until the Mercedes comes to a halt with a screeching sound.

  Behind us, Harlan stops too. And behind him, two more cards stop dead on the road as well, blocking our escape both ways.

  Two men step down each of the cars that are trapping us ahead. They all look Eastern, they all wear impeccable white suits and, of course, they all hold guns. One of them shouts something in what sounds like Chinese. I think he says Ace Hurt’s name among all the gibberish.

  Ace grabs my hand and gives it a brief squeeze. “Head down,” he says. His voice is so calm and authoritative that I almost stop worrying. I crouch as tight as I can and put my arms over my head as Ace grabs his gun from below the driver’s seat.

  “Oh, no, no,” I try to warn him, but he’s already opened the door. the car is a shield between him and the men who point their weapons at him. Who is in the passenger side, right in the trajectory of the bullets if they start firing? This gal. I’m worried again, more for Ace than for myself.

  Ace starts talking out loud. He’s speaking Chinese, making ample gestures with his left hand that everyone can see, while his gun is in his right hand, out of sight for everyone but me.

  As soon as he finishes speaking, the Chinese man replies angrily. Ace answers in a cool, calm tone. I have no idea what they’re saying, but when he gives me a quick look, as if he were saying goodbye, I realize that he’s trying to protect me. He wants to convince them to let me go and take only him. I can imagine the words: Let her go. She has no part in this. And I understand that the only thing that can make this man afraid is the chance that I come to harm.

  They seem to have reached some kind of agreement, because the Chinese now speaks as sharply as before but not as angrily. He waves his free hand and points at Harlan’s car.

  “You two, step out,” Ace commands. “Calmly.”

  Harlan gets off his car, holding his gun but pointing it down at the road. His companion does the same. Behind them, a second line of white-clad Eastern men keep watch.

  But then things change again. I am the first to see.

  The moving truck that was travelling ahead of us had stopped a quarter mile down the road when the Chinese blocked the way. All of us had forgotten about it. Now it’s speeding backwards like hell.

  It smashes against the two cars and sends them flying to the sides, trampling some of the Chinese men, killing them instantly. The others turn around and try to do something, but the truck runs over two of them and the rest scatter around.

  The other Chinese men in the back go mad and start firing their guns. Ace jumps into the car and closes the door. “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s bulletproof.” I’m about to lock my own door when I see something that makes me freeze in horror.

  Harlan Pike is standing in the middle of the road, still looking ahead, his gun still pointing down, but now there is a red stain on his white shirt. The red is quickly growing as he starts to realize what’s happened. He’s looking ahead when his legs weaken and he starts wobbling, drops his gun, then crumbles into the pavement.

  The truck opens like a mouth and the door falls backwards, turning into a tongue that licks the road. The mouth spits out four or five motorcycles, all of them black, all of them mounted by men clad in black, with black helmets whining in the afternoon sun.

  “Wh-what’s happening now?” I scream, but Ace is already out of the car again. I hear gunshots mixed with the noise from the engines.

  The bikers are shooting, but not at us. They are taking down the Chinese, finishing the job the truck started when it smashed against the cars. The Chinese fire back, but they only manage to gun down one of the bikers before being dispatched, and the biker stands up again. He must be wearing a bulletproof vest.

  “Ace!” I scream, because I can’t see him anymore.

  I look around frantically. Everything is hell. The road is clogged behind us, but nobody’s complaining, of course. People are getting out of their cars and running down the parkway, fleeing from the scene before the gunfire resumes.

  I see Ace. He’s wrestling with one of the bikers. He must have realized that bullets are useless, so he’s using a better weapon: his body. He smashes the guy’s helmet and I hear him shriek as the fragmented plastic digs into his face. Ace tries to drag the guy into the Mercedes, but the biker disengages from him and attempts to run. Ace catches him again, though, and they both fall on the road. Ace punches the guy some more as the other bikers start to realize what’s happening. One of them turns around and heads directly to where they are fighting. Ace jumps back at the last moment, though, and the biker ends up running over his buddy. I hear the noise of his ribs cracking under the weight of the motorcycle and his horrific, agonic yell.

  “We need to go,” Ace says, jumping into the car again. But then my door opens and an iron hand closes around my wrist. I cry in surprise and pain before turning my head and looking at the man who’s dragging me out of the car.

  “Hi,” he says. “Please come with me. I’ve missed you so much.”

  Piotr!

  “Noooo!” I yell at the top of my lungs. I can’t think of anything else to say. I can’t resist; he’s too strong. He drags me out of the car inch by inch, as I try to hang on to the steering wheel, the gear shift, the seat frame, whatever. It’s useless.

  “Come with me!”

  “NO!”

  I start kicking and floundering helplessly. I’m already halfway out of the car when Ace lurches forward to get Piotr. He ends up lying above my legs, but Piotr is faster and finishes the job with a quick jerk. He climbs on his motorcycle, pulls me up and makes me sit behind him, and when Ace tries to get him, he fires a single shot and starts the bike.

  I scream.

  Ace drops on the pavement. He might be dead. I scream again.

  The moving truck is already in motion. Piotr turns left and right to avoid the crashed cars and the corpses of the Chinese and jumps inside the truck using the door as a ramp. The rest of the bikers follow. The door closes on all of us and the last thing I see is Ace’s body lying on the pavement beside his Mercedes. Someone blindfolds me, and I keep kicking and screaming as the truck takes me to some place where happiness will never find me.

  A ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW

  VAN

  I don’t know where I am. I think we’re somewhere in New York, but I can’t be sure. I can’t hear any sounds coming from the street so it must be a pretty quiet area. The room is comfortable, and if it weren’t for the locked door and window, I could pretend that I’m not being held prisoner.

  But I am.

  Piotr came to see me a couple of times. He said he doesn’t want to do me any harm. That I should just understand that we’re meant to be together.

  “It makes no sense for you to keep rejecting me,” he said, as if he was truly developing a rational argument to its logical conclusion. “I am a pakhan now, a mob boss. Why would you be with a mob boss in New York when you have me at home?”

  “This is home for me now,” I replied. So he pretended to hit me. I screamed in anticipation, but his hand stopped an inch from my face. Next time he might not stop.

  The guy is truly out of touch. Can’t a girl say no? I’ve rejected him so many times that one figures he would have understood by now.

  “Do you want some books, food, magazines? I can get you whatever you want, my princess.”

  “I want you to fucking die.”
/>
  He walked out of the room and locked the door again. I’ve been lying on the bed for hours. From the light that enters through the crannies in the closed window, I can guess that it’s about six, with the sun getting ready to be swallowed by the sea.

  I’ve been so afraid of Piotr for so long, afraid of the possibility that he could appear around a corner or in a grocery store, and now that I’m his captive, I despise him most than anything. Oh, I sure am afraid, but I fear for Ace, not for me. Can he be dead? What happened on the Grand Central surely must have made the news, but there’s no TV in this room, and Piotr won’t tell me anything about what happens outside.

  “We didn’t want to kill anybody,” he told me when we were speeding along the road on the back of the moving truck. “The idea was to block your car with the truck, force Ace to stop, and then just take you. But those fucking Chinese wanted to take him. Who would have thought they would choose the exact same moment to strike?”

  I don’t care about the Chinese. You killed Harlan. And you may have killed Ace too.

  I’m so tired to have happiness at arm’s reach, only to be taken away from me... Part of me wishes that Piotr would just kill me and just be over with it.

  But, of course, he won’t kill me. He will take me back to Russia, and marry me there, whether I want to or not.

  * * *

  It’s already night when he comes back to see me.

  “You won’t be here for long, my princess. We leave in the morning.”

  “What happened between you and Misha?”

  I’ve been thinking about it. They have been friends for years, and even though Piotr was a bad influence for my brother, at least they helped each other. But last time we talked, Misha said that Piotr had forgotten him. Maybe that was the reason he’d fallen so low right when he seemed to have found a way to a normal life.

  “Nothing happened. I made my way up the gangs while I kept myself clean. He took a fucking modelling job but he turned into booze and drugs again. It can’t be helped.”

  “You were his friend. You could at least have tried to help him.”

  “But I don’t need Misha,” Piotr says, giving me a confused look, as if I had suggested that he went to the Moon on foot. “I need you. I’ve always loved you. I came all the way from Russia, just for you.”

  “You’re fucking sick.”

  He pretends to hit me again. This time, I don’t even flinch.

  “You don’t understand,” he says, with an irritated grimace. Then his expression switches to a hopeful smile. “But you will.”

  I swear if he takes me back to Russia, I’ll kill myself at the first opportunity.

  The bug is my only hope. But only if Ace is alive.

  DESPERATE MEASURES

  ACE

  ... Harlan. And the other guy. What was his name? I have to...

  The road is cold as Antarctic ice, or maybe it’s the blood loss that makes me feel cold. I push myself up and a sharp pain shoots through my shoulder, making me crumble and fall on my face again.

  “Ace!”

  The voice comes from far away, but somehow he’s right above me, pulling me up. More pain, and this buzz swarming in my ears.

  “Come on, Ace! This place will be full of policemen in twenty seconds.”

  I look at him. Harlan’s guy. I’ve seen him, but I don’t know the first thing about him. And now Harlan’s dead.

  “What’s your name, kiddo?”

  “Not Kiddo, certainly,” he jokes. “I’m Paulie. Come on.”

  He forces me to get into the car, then sits on the passenger seat. As we speed away, I try to overcome the pain in my shoulder and clear my mind.

  The guy who took Van, the guy who shot me. That must be Piotr Plokhoy. I can’t know for sure but the way he talked to her made it clear that he knows her. Even though he spoke in Russian, I can guess what he told her. Back together at last, or I missed you, or something like that.

  I will find them both. I will save Van, and I will kill him. Twice, if I can.

  How?

  Then I remember.

  “The bug,” I say. “I put a bug in her clothes. We need to—”

  “Don’t talk,” Paulie says. “And try not to die.” He keeps his eyes on the road, keeping his cool, focusing on the task at hand. Which right now is getting out of here and not dying.

  I like Paulie. He makes sense.

  * * *

  Two hours and a shot of antibiotics later, I’m back home. Jack Starr stares at me with a concerned expression.

  “Of course it had to be today,” he says. “Way to fuck it up for everyone. Damn foreigners.”

  “Shut up, idiot. You were born in Ireland.”

  “At least my name is not Ovidius,” he fires back.

  He puts a grin on my face in spite of everything. “Don’t tell anyone or I kill you. Have we located her?”

  “We have,” Jack says, “but we don’t have much to strike back. These guys can kick our asses.”

  Or kill her as soon as we show up. “Yeah, that won’t work. We’re desperate, so we need to be humble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we must beg,” I reply as I lean forward to grab my phone. A bolt of pain throws me back.

  “Easy, champ,” Jack says, and reaches for the phone. “Don’t move or the bandage won’t hold. This is not a hospital. We’re not expert bandagists.”

  “I don’t think that word exists.”

  “Whatever. Who are you calling?”

  I let out a deep sigh as I he hands me the phone.

  “I’m calling Vassily Zhurov.”

  * * *

  The man takes his time to answer the call. I swear to myself that he’ll pay for every second if something happens to Van. When he finally takes it, he sounds irritated.

  “Are you calling me to gloat?” he asks in his thick Russian accent. “Your girlfriend plucked me good. Just enjoy the money and leave me alone.”

  “I have no time for pretending, Vassily,” I say impatiently. “You lost a billion dollars. You can have them back if you free her.”

  A silence on the line. I counted the seconds as if they were days.

  “A ransom? For your Russian girlfriend?” he said, finally. “But sadly, I don’t have her. I wish she were here with me now. She’s a looker. And have you seen the way she walks? Yes, I’m sure you noticed.”

  “Fuck off,” I say. “She was kidnapped by the Brotherhood. We know the guy who did it and we know he’s a pakhan for the Bratva. What’s your price?”

  “Oh, no, no,” Zhurov says. “You have it wrong. It almost offends me that you think I could have kidnapped your beautiful girlfriend. When I want a woman, I make sure I make her want to be with me.”

  “So you don’t know Piotr Plokhoy?”

  “I’m afraid not, my conflicted friend. I happen to know some guys in the Bratva, just not this one. I have nothing to do with this...”

  I have no way to know if he’s telling the truth. We haven’t dealt a lot with the Russian mob. Maybe there are a bunch of small groups without any contact with each other. Maybe it’s a loose organization. Maybe he’s lying and trying to raise the price.

  “... but if you double the amount, I can give you some men to fuck him up,” he finishes.

  PLAN B

  VAN

  I wake up to Piotr’s voice. “Come on, it’s time,” he says. Only then I realize I’ve somehow been able to sleep, but my night has been full of nightmares with barely any rest. Also, I haven’t eaten anything in a whole day. One of his guys brought me a sandwich in the previous afternoon, but I threw it to his face.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Home.”

  I follow him out of the room and into a poorly lit corridor. There’s no point in trying to devise an escape; I don’t even know where in New York I am, if I’m still in New York. I can only hope that the bug is working, and Ace is alive to pick up the signal. It’s still grappled to the backside of a
button in my blouse, small and inconspicuous. If it’s not working, or if Ace is dead, nobody will find us.

  I’m not sure that the police are looking for us or even know we exist. They must have found all the dead Chinese guys on the parkway, along with Harlan’s body; and maybe Ace’s. They may be searching for the big ass truck from which the motorcycles jumped out like deadly hornets. But the truck lies abandoned somewhere now. We switched vehicles twice before getting here. Long before I could realize where we were heading, they blindfolded me. “Forgive me for this, my princess,” Piotr said as he slipped the cloth over my eyes; “it’s for your own good.” He ran the back of his hand down my face and put a light kiss on my lips. I tried to kick him in the balls but I missed.

  Now that I can peer outside through the windows, I realize we’re on a second or third floor, but not in Manhattan. I can see the skyline in the distance; this must be Staten Island or something like that. Some of Piotr’s men join us in the descent as he gives them quick instructions.

  We exit the building and start making a beeline to the shore. There is a big boat waiting there, and resting on its deck, a small helicopter.

  “Are we flying somewhere? Just the two of us?” I ask Piotr.

  “Keep walking,” is his answer. “We’re taking a ride.”

  Two men are guarding the boat. Both of them are clad in black, just like the rest of Piotr’s guys that are walking with us. One of them waves his hand indicating that everything’s clear; as we walk past them, they look away as if to check the boat to make sure there will be no surprises.

  Piotr nods and we step into the boat.

  Then I hear the rumble.

  Piotr turns around, alarmed. I turn around too, hopeful.

  There are more men around the building now, besides Piotr’s own guys. The others have appeared suddenly from somewhere. They came in the night on some other boat, I guess. They must have stayed watching in the dark as they waited for us to come out.

  I hear gunshots. A battle has started in the area between the building and the boat. I can’t make out who’s who, but as Piotr’s loyals have been taken by surprise, they are the ones who are falling down the most.