by Reinke, Sara
“Shhhh,” he heard a small, soft voice say. Something shockingly cold and wet suddenly touched his face, and he jerked, eyes flying wide in frightened, bewildered surprise.
“Don’t…touch me…!” he seethed, but oh, Christ, talking hurt like a motherfucker, sending spears of pain lancing through his chest and stripping what precious little breath he had. With a strangled cry, he fell back against a thin, bare mattress, gasping.
He hadn’t had his eyes open long, but he’d seen enough to gauge his surroundings: a small room, little more than a closet, with dingy, peeling wallpaper, faded and water-spotted wood floors, and a ceiling that had fallen through in numerous, large chunks of plaster to reveal a latticework of half-rotted wood overhead.
His arms were raised, his hands over his head, his wrists bound by metal cuffs. These had been anchored in place with heavy-duty links of chain—each at least three inches long, and nearly half an inch thick—around a section of pipe exposed through a hole in the plaster wall above the bed. It was thick, like the kind that connected toilets to the outgoing sewer lines. As one of the Brethren, he was endowed with preternatural strength; this nearly tripled when he felt the full force of the bloodlust. But even though he gritted his teeth and pulled with all of his might, neither the thick chains nor the stout pipe around which they were wrapped would give. He glanced down and saw his legs had been similarly bound by the ankles to the foot of the bed frame. Whoever had chained him had known what the hell they were doing.
Nikolić.
Why the son of a bitch hadn’t killed him was a mystery to Julien. Had he hoped to use Julien as some kind of leverage against Lamar?
Yeah, good luck with that, asshole, Julien thought. Let me know how that works out for you.
He tried to laugh, but his voice dissolved into hoarse, agonizing coughs, and he twisted against his restraints, choking back a cry. He tasted blood in his mouth when the spell had subsided, and he closed his eyes again, shuddering as he gasped for breath.
He remembered the woman, Anna, stabbing him in the chest. Looking down, he could see a heavy bandage over where she’d gotten him. Blood had dried and crusted on his skin all around the stark white dressing; the girl at his bedside had been in the process of cleaning him up.
She couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old, with dark hair, and a pale, gaunt face. Dressed in a pink Hello Kitty T-shirt and shorts, she’d been sitting at his bedside, scrambling upright in alarm as he’d moved. She remained rooted in spot now, wide-eyed, like a deer in the headlights. She appeared clean, but malnourished, her arms and legs reed-like and thin, her bosom practically nonexistent. At first glance, he thought she wore a choker-style necklace, but then he realized it was some kind of collar, a strap of molded plastic with a small box mounted to it, resting snugly against the base of her throat.
Julien grimaced and tried to sit up, but again, pain shot through him, forcing him down again. “Who…are you?” he wheezed.
The girl merely stood there, blinking at him in confusion, and it occurred to him she didn’t speak English. Nikolić and his uncle had built a pretty fair business by smuggling immigrants illegally from the Eastern European block into the United States—primarily women to be used in the sex trade. He suspected that despite her youthful appearance, this girl was one.
“Vy…govorite po-russki?” he asked. Do you speak Russian?
It hurt to talk; every word felt like a knife shoved between his ribs all over again, then viciously twisted for good measure, but he forced them out, one by one.
The girl’s eyes widened in surprise at his address. After a startled moment, she nodded. “Da.”
“My name is Julien,” he said in Russian. “What’s yours?”
“Sofiya,” she said after another momentary hesitation.
“Sofiya,” he repeated and the girl nodded again. “Where are you from?”
“Kryvyi Rih,” she replied, a place-name he vaguely recognized.
“In Ukraine?”
That he realized this seemed to please her even more than his speaking Russian. Smiling shyly, she nodded again. “Da.”
Julien managed a weak smile in return, then tugged against his cuffs. “Can you unlock these?”
Her bright expression faltered and she shied back again, shaking her head. “Oh…” she said. The door to the small room flew open, slamming hard into the far wall and making her jump. She hunched her shoulders, eyes downcast all the more, as one of Nikolić’s goons—the one with the eye patch and scarred face—stomped through the doorway.
“Speshite!” he snapped with a scowl. “Oni khotyat vas vniz!” Hurry up! They want you downstairs.
Sofiya nodded, dropping to her knees beside the bed. She snatched up the washrag and dunked it into a nearby bowl of water. Wringing it out between her hands, she began to quickly mop at Julien’s bare chest and abdomen, the dried blood on his skin. She worked without once looking him in the eye or averting her attention from her task. Her hands were small, her efforts careful, but even so, by the time she’d finished, he was shuddering with pain.
Something’s wrong, he thought. How long had it been since he’d been stabbed? He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember anything except being on the highway in the Everglades before waking up moments earlier. Even so, the wound shouldn’t have still been so deep. Breathing shouldn’t have felt like an act of exquisite torture. His body should have begun to heal.
Something’s wrong with me, he thought again in mounting alarm, and he said this aloud to the girl, speaking in Russian. “Chto-to…ne tak…so mnoy.”
“You’re hurt,” Sofiya answered. She rinsed the washrag out again, then leaned over, patting his face with it, smoothing his hair back from his brow.
“Nyet.” He shook his head, pleading. No. “No, it’s more than that. It’s—”
His voice cut short as Sofiya gave a sudden jerk and uttered a sharp, strangled cry. She dropped the washcloth and both hands darted for her throat reflexively, as from behind her, the one-eyed man shouted again from the doorway.
“Speshite!” Hurry!
There was something in his hand, some kind of device that looked like a small television remote control. He’d pulled it from a pocket and held it out toward the bed now, aiming the distal end directly at Sofiya.
“I…I’m coming.” Sofiya jumped as if he’d slapped her, then scrambled to her feet.
That son of a bitch, Julien thought, realizing what had happened—what the scarred man was holding. That thing around her neck—it’s an electrified collar. That son of a bitch just shocked her!
“Podozhdi,” he gasped, giving Sofiya reluctant pause. Wait. “Are you alright?”
She nodded once, but said nothing as she snatched the washcloth in hand again.
“Pozhaluista,” he said—please—and she looked up, meeting his gaze, her dark eyes round and frightened. “What is this place? Where are we?”
“Ad,” she whispered, leaning over to drape the rag against his brow. The word meant Hell, and somehow, seeing that fearful, haunted look in her face, he believed it. “We are in Hell.”
* * *
When Sofiya left, the man with the eye patch had followed, slamming the door shut behind them. Julien heard the soft but distinctive sound of a key turning within a latch; they had locked him in. He tried to lift his head from the bed and survey his surroundings again, more closely this time. Besides the bed, there were no other furnishings in the sparse, small room except for a slatted-back wooden chair in the far corner. A single window allowed hints of muted sunlight to filter in through grimy curtains and a cracked, yellowing shade that had been pulled all of the way down to the sash.
Not for the first time, he found himself ruing the decision to stop and help Anna change her flat tire. And not for the first time, he thought about all of the painful, humiliating, bloody ways he was going to get even with that bleached-blond bitch if their paths ever crossed again.
He heard the soft, distinctive click
of the lock again and his eyes flew wide. By reflex, he tried to open his mind and sense whoever was on the other side of the threshold, but as before, there was only that static-like sensation, psionic white noise to greet him.
The door swung open and Nikolić walked in. “Ah, good!” he said, grinning maliciously from ear to ear. “You’re awake now, mišiću, I’m glad to see. Tell me—what do you think of your accommodations?” He swept his hand out, indicating the room. “I gave you the penthouse suite, you see? Only the best for you.” At this, he tipped back his head and cackled, clearly amusing the shit out of himself.
“Yeah,” Julien wheezed. “Thanks.”
Still wearing an irrepressible smile, Nikolić hooked the top rung of the slatted-back chair with his hand and swung it around. With the back facing the bed, no more than two feet away from Julien, he had a seat, stretching his legs out wide and straddling the chair. Even in this casual pose, he was a big, mean-looking son of a bitch. The seams of his Army-standard cargo pants strained against the muscles strapping his broad thighs, and the sleeves of his black T-shirt gripped every thick, curving muscle in his shoulders and arms. His grey eyes glinted in the grimy sunlight as he settled his gaze on Julien.
“You know my uncle Draško raised me?” he asked. “My mother—his sister—she died when I was very young. My father was…how you say? A good-for-nothing. A low-life. I never knew him. But anyway…” With a chuckle, he shook his head. “I remember the first time I met you,” he said. “November, 1988. I’d heard my uncle Draško speak of you many times before then. He told me once he saw you take down a dozen men all on your own, with no more than your bare hands and a knife. I grew up on stories like that about you. And then, when I eighteen, I met you—first time, face to face. For me, it was like meeting Michael Jackson, a rock star or superhero. I couldn’t believe it—there you were.”
Where the hell is he going with this? Julien wondered, wishing like hell that Nikolić would just get to the fucking point already. To draw enough breath to feel like he wasn’t smothering, he had to actively, conscientiously breathe, every inhalation and exhalation a willful, deliberate effort—against what felt like barbed wire wrapped around his torso. On the inside.
“When Draško sent me out with you to take out that one šupak …what was his name? Miloš Lukac…”
“Lukin,” Julien gasped in correction, closing his eyes as another excruciating breath shuddered from him. “His name…was Miloš Lukin.”
“Ah.” Nikolić nodded, then tapped his forehead with his fingertip. “You remember it better than me.”
In those days, the Serbian mafia in the capital city of Belgrade had been organized by municipalities, and each had operated as its own independent network. There had been no central figurehead or “godfather,” and the leaders of each municipality’s branch—or clan, as they were called—often entertained fierce rivalries. Such had been the case between Miloš Lukin, leader of the Vračar municipality clan, and Draško Radojević, head of the larger Žarkovo clan. Draško had been eager to impress Julien upon his visit, and even more so to prove himself a worthy recipient of Lamar’s investment funds. Thus, for Julien’s sole benefit, he’d arranged for a small group of hand-picked soldiers—under the charge of his teenaged nephew, Nikolić—to shake down his chief rival and the primary contender for Lamar’s purse: Lukin.
I’ll never forget that day, Julien thought.
“Here I was—a Boyevik in the Žarkovo branch; the youngest lieutenant in all the clans,” Nikolić continued. “And I damn near pissed myself to meet you—the legendary Julien Davenant, whose fighting prowess was second only to his loyalty, Draško would tell me. Your unflinching loyalty…what a good little doggie you are. And I wanted to be just like you. I wanted my uncle to see me like he saw you—to admire me like he did you. I wanted men to fear me the way they feared you.”
He smiled again, but his eyes remained cold, glittering like chips of coal. “You shamed me that day, mišiću,” he said. “Not just in front of my men, but in Draško’s eyes, too. He never looked at me the same. After that, he judged me by that day—by you.”
Julien blinked at him, then managed a hoarse laugh. “Are you…fucking kidding me?” he croaked. Yanking once, weakly, to rattle his chains, he said, “Is that what all of this is about? You…you’re pissed at me…over something that happened…more than twenty-five years ago?”
“Where I come from, honor is all a man has to really call his own,” Nikolić said, no longer smiling. “Everything else can be taken away, can fail you, betray you.”
“Honor?” Julien glared at him, closing his hands into helpless fists. “Tell me, Nikolić…what honor is there in shooting an unarmed woman in front of her kid?”
“I shot that kurva to make her talk!” Nikolić leapt to his feet. He shoved the chair away from him, sending it crashing to the floor. When he stormed to the bed, Julien felt his heavy footfalls shuddering through the floorboards, the rickety iron frame, and mattress.
“There was nothing more for her to tell,” Julien seethed. “Lukin wasn’t there. He was in Kragujevac. Killing her didn’t change that—it only pissed him off and sparked a goddamn clan war. How many men did your uncle lose after that—because of what you did? What’d you think would happen? That I’d be impressed?” He spat at Nikolić, bloody phlegm spattering from his lips. “You shamed yourself, you stupid fuck.”
“I was in charge of that mission—not you!” Nikolić roared. “You were there as my guest—at my personal behest—and you grabbed my arm, dropped me to my knees—disgraced me in front of my bratva—my men.”
Julien remembered that, too. He’d used a quick but effective wrist locking maneuver to not only disarm Nikolić, but to damn near break his arm, too. Nikolić had shot the judge’s wife in the gut, bragging with a toothy grin that by shooting her in the liver, it wouldn’t kill her right away.
But it hurts like a bitch.
Julien would never forget those words—or the look on the face of the woman’s son, his eyes tearful and horrified, his expression caught between murderous rage and helpless grief. Something in Julien had snapped to see that, to realize the boy’s anguish.
Because I’d felt it before—too many times to count. Every time Lamar ordered me to hurt Aaron…to hit him again…hit him harder…make him bleed…
“You told my uncle I was impulsive and weak,” Nikolić snarled. “I wasn’t ready—that’s what you told him, and for Draško, it’s from your lips as God’s.” He seized Julien by the face, his fingers clamping across his jawline as he forced his head back. “He has judged me by that day—weighed my merits against that moment—ever since. And because of you, to him, they will always be lacking.”
He leaned over, his brows furrowed so deeply, his eyes were nearly hidden by heavy shadows beneath the crimped flesh. “It doesn’t matter to me now. Not anymore. I’ve been building my own clan, as you’ve seen. And this is only…how do you say? The tip of the iceberg. I don’t need Draško, or his money, or his power. Now I have my own. And all of that is only going to grow.”
CHAPTER SIX
In March of 1792, the same year Mason had met Julien, everything between their clans changed. On a cold and overcast afternoon, Mason had traveled with his father to a narrow clearing in the woods surrounding the Brethren homesteads. Here, they were to meet Michel’s friend, Augustus Noble, who had been challenged to a duel by Victor Davenant, Julien’s oldest brother.
At the time, Mason hadn’t understood the reason for the duel. Something about a woman. It had seemed a ridiculous enough cause that he hadn’t really asked for more information, and Michel had been distracted enough not to offer any. They’d ridden by horseback together, but Michel kept pulling ahead as if anxious to arrive. Mason had struggled to keep up with the fleet-footed pace set by his father’s stallion, and by the time they’d arrived, his poor mare had been snorting and sweating with fatigue.
It was cold outside; he remembered that clearly. The
air had felt crisp and dry, the ground underfoot crunching with a light coating of late-season frost. A crowd of at least three dozen Brethren men had showed up to watch the gun fight, and the Davenants had already arrived. They stood together in a tight cluster at the far side of the clearing, and there was no mistaking their patriarch, Lamar. His dark hair was shot through with streaks of silver, and he leaned heavily against an ivory-handled cane, his face a mask of dark, brooding menace. Standing somewhat away from the others, as if deliberately distancing himself from his kin, was Julien, and Mason’s heart had quickened at the sight of him.
He’d never seen a duel before, and stood nervously beside his father, watching as Augustus and Victor marked their paces and prepared to fire upon each other. Mason hadn’t really been interested in the match; his gaze kept traveling time and again to Julien, who time and again kept meeting it, offering fleeting hints of a smile.
The first report of gunfire had been thunderous, and if it hadn’t been for the cloud of pale blue-grey dust swirling around the muzzle of Victor’s flint-lock pistol, Mason wouldn’t have known who’d shot first. Mason heard Michel utter a sharp, pained gasp as Augustus had stumbled, nearly losing his footing and crashing to the ground—clearly hit.
Augustus remained standing however, and as his brows twisted, furrowing deeply with pain and determination, he’d extended his own pistol, leveling his aim. Another roar of gunfire, and in the aftermath, as the thin haze of smoke had wafted skyward, it first appeared he’d missed. Victor remained standing; he hadn’t as much as flinched. Then, in a strange, somewhat tremulous voice, he’d said, “You son of a bitch…”
And he’d crashed to the ground, falling backwards and landing hard, his legs sprawled, his arms clumsily outstretched. Augustus had crumpled only moments later, and as Michel sprang to his friend’s aid, he clapped Mason hard on the shoulder.