by Tabatha Kiss
“Excuse me,” I say, standing up. “I’m going to use the restroom and then Yuri and I will get out of your hair.”
“Please, little brother…” Yuri groans from the chair beside me. “A little quieter, please…”
I offer a comforting pat on his back and Gio chuckles at him as I quickly turn and follow Sofia into the hall.
She disappears around the corner towards the kitchen and I do a quick scan of the hallway to make sure no one sees me as I trail her inside.
Sofia looks over her shoulder and freezes as she sees me. “Luka—” She scans the room for witnesses. “What are you—”
I push the hair out of her face, finding the purple bruise taking over her left cheek. Her eyes fall and she cowers from my touch.
“What did he do?” I ask, holding in my rage.
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Sofia…”
She brushes my hand away and steps back. “We can’t be seen in here like this, Luka. You should leave.”
“Come with me.”
The shock in her eyes matches the surprise in me. I have no idea where those words came from but they feel as real as any other.
“Come with you?” she repeats.
“Yes.”
“You mean…”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“I can’t leave you here,” I argue.
“You did before.”
It stabs deep but I know she doesn’t mean it that way. “That was a mistake. I didn’t know any better. I should have taken you from this place when I—”
“Luka, please… nothing has changed.”
I picture those perfect silver eyes staring up at me from my ankles. “Everything has changed.”
“I understand why you think it has, but it hasn’t,” she says. “I have kept my promise to you. No one will ever know. Please, keep that promise to me, too.”
I can’t stand it, but she’s right. This isn’t just about me or her or even Lucian. It’s about our entire families as well. One wrong move could tear this truce apart and we’d both probably end up dead because of it. What would become of Lucian then?
“I want him to know,” I whisper. She blinks with confusion. “Not now, but someday. I don’t want him to grow up thinking Gio is his father. I want him to know the truth… when he’s ready.”
“Then, he will,” she nods. “I promise.”
I reach for her face again and she flinches as my fingertips graze the bruise beneath her eye. How any man could lay an angry hand on something so beautiful…
I lean in to kiss her but she turns away.
“Don’t come back,” she says, her face wrinkling as if just saying it causes her pain. “I can’t trust myself around you, Luka…”
I lower my hands. “Sofia…”
“You have to go.” She stares at the floor. “Now.”
No. Not like this.
An urge charges down my spine, screaming at me to take her in my arms and kiss her but I beat it down. Taking what I want from her might feel good but, in the end, that would make me no better than Gio.
I step back. “Goodbye, Sofia,” I whisper.
She looks up and her eyes glisten with hidden tears. “Goodbye, Luka.”
***
The further we travel from the Zappia estate, the more I feel it.
That sense of loss over something I didn’t even know I had. Sofia, the girl in my dreams. Lucian, the son we created together.
And Gio… the bastard who believes they both belong to him.
She should have let me take her with me. I should have thrown her over my damn shoulder and dragged her out of there three years ago before she ever walked down that aisle.
Yuri makes a fist and taps it against my knee. “What’s wrong with you, brother?” he asks. “You’ve been off since yesterday.”
I try and force her face out of my mind but I can’t shake that beautiful smile. “Just eager to get back home,” I say, staring forward at the back of the driver’s thick head.
“What’s the rush? We should stay in Rome for a night or two. Get a nice meal, meet a few girls…”
“I’d rather not.”
He snorts. “I’d rather take a day off.”
“No one is stopping you.”
The driver takes a hard right turn off the busy street and we roll into a warehouse — one far away from the airfield we’re supposed to be going to.
“Luka, this—”
I hold up a hand, interrupting Yuri. “Excuse me,” I say, signaling to the inept Zappia driver to explain himself. “Where are you going?”
He slams on the brakes and throws his door open.
Yuri’s jaw drops as the driver races outside on foot and disappears. “Hey—”
I look around the warehouse. It’s dark and completely deserted. Either this is the oddest encounter that’s ever happened or…
This is a hit.
I reach for the pistol stashed beneath my back. “Get down, Yuri.”
“What?”
“Get down.”
The bullet breaks the windshield and pierces the leather seat between us. I grab Yuri’s shoulder and force his head between his legs. A second bullet hits the seat behind him and I grit my teeth.
I stare ahead through the cracked windshield, scanning the warehouse for the attacker but I see nothing behind the stacks of crates and machinery.
“Stay here, Yuri,” I growl, shoving my door open.
“Luka—”
I ignore him, buzzed on adrenaline and rage, and step outside onto the concrete floor. My eyes shift from stack to stack, knowing that the shooter must be behind one of the columns between me and the far wall.
I cock my pistol and move forward, ready and willing to fire the one bullet necessary to end this bastard.
The warehouse is completely silent, save the passing traffic on the street outside. The noises echo in the shadows, blending with my beating heart and my tongue turns dry. I twist my neck left and right, sensing nothing and no one behind every box or pillar and I grow even more frustrated with each one I pass by.
I spin around to head back towards the car when a shape darts out of the shadows.
I raise my gun to fire but there’s barely a moment to breathe before I feel the pain firing up my wrist. I clamp my fingers around the butt of my gun, refusing to drop it as the masked man takes another go at disarming me. He takes hold of my wrist and twists it back, tangling the nerves inside and my rage spikes inside.
I headbutt his obscured face, connecting with his jaw and he falls backward into the sunlight behind a row of boxes. He’s dressed in black from head-to-toe with a balaclava on his face that covers everything but his eyes and a tactical vest strapped to his torso like…
Like the hissing man in Moscow.
I flex my jaw, more eager than ever now to put a bullet between his eyes. He darts to the left, swooping low to sweep my knee and I can’t react quick enough to stay on my feet.
He grabs at my gun again and I pull the trigger. The bullet passes by him to ricochet off the floor, echoing so loudly it trembles my ears.
“Luka!”
I crane my neck to see Yuri bounding towards us with his gun drawn. As I spin back, the man’s foot connects with my chest, forcing me even closer to the floor and my gun slips from my fingers to fall directly into his hand.
Yuri fires a quick stream of bullets in our direction and I keep my head down as the man in black rushes towards the nearest pillar. My brother is a businessman, not a marksman, so he misses every hit but at least he bought me some time to get back on my feet.
I run forward, eager to catch up with him and finish this, but a scope brings me to a grinding halt.
He stands at a tall stack of crates with a sniper rifle trained directly at my brother’s head.
“Stop!” he shouts, his accent distinctly American. “Put it down.”
Yuri grows an inch taller. “You first.”<
br />
The muzzle flashes and my heart stops, fearing the worst as the bullet passes me by before I can throw myself in front of it.
“Yuri!”
The bullet strikes Yuri’s gun and it tumbles from his untouched hand. It spins roughly as it hits the floor and slides away from us.
The man in black lowers the rifle and raises his other palm. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, heaving a thick breath. “I just want to talk.”
“You shot at us,” I point out.
“And I missed,” he says. “That wasn’t an accident. I had to get your attention.”
“And now you have it. What the fuck do you want?”
He drops his rifle to the floor and slides the clip from my gun, along with popping the bullet free from the chamber with a quick flick of his wrist. He stuffs the clip into his pocket and the gun into his belt before reaching for his mask.
He pulls it free, revealing his pale, shadowed face and ruffled brown hair. A long, white scar stands out on his left cheek. He presents his hands to show he’s disarmed. “I was sent here to kill you.”
I scoff. “You must not be very good at it, comrade.”
“I was sent here to kill you — but I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
He reaches into his breast pocket as his eyes shift between us and pulls out a flash drive attached to a short clip on his vest.
“And what is that?” Yuri asks.
“A white flag,” he answers. “Something that will make the entire Lutrova family very happy and very busy for a long time.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific if you plan on walking out of here,” I growl.
His eyes flick to the right as he hears the same honking car as I do. This man is trained, alert — just like me.
“It’s the Snake Eyes master file,” he says. “It’s a list of every member, every job, everything you need to take them out for good.”
“The who?” Yuri spits.
“Snake Eyes,” he says again. “It’s an underground organization made up of the deadliest people you could ever imagine. I work for them as an assassin.”
“Never heard of ‘em.”
“That’d be the point, wouldn’t it?” He shifts his eyes towards mine. “You know more about them than you think.”
I pause, letting the dots connect in my head. Bodies littered across Russia with bullets through their eyes. The hissing man. The cobra tattoo.”
Never let a snake loose in Moscow.
“That was you,” I accuse. “Three years ago in the warehouse outside of Moscow—”
“No…” He shakes his head. “I’ve only been in a year and a half.”
“Bullshit.”
“This list can tell you who it was,” he says. “Along with anyone else that’s killed on your turf. That means something to you.”
Yuri scoffs. “Think again, you—”
“Yuri…” I stare at him. If what this man says is true, then we could clear my name — without Gio’s help — along with solving the mystery of who killed our grandfather. “Nash dedushka.”
He raises his brow, firing me a quick, pensive look and closes his mouth.
“Da,” the man says, instantly drawing our attentions back to him. “Viktor Lutrova znal slishkom mnogo.”
Viktor Lutrova knew too much.
I smirk. “You speak Russian?”
“A little.”
“Hrmm.” I shift on my feet and he does the same, never once dropping his guard but I don’t sense fear in his eyes at all. He could have killed us already if he really wanted to, that much I can say for sure. “You know who we are, then?”
“Yuri and Luka Lutrova,” he nods. “Sons of Nikolai Lutrova. Heirs to the whole damn crime family.”
“And who are you?”
He takes a deep breath. “My name is Fox Fitzpatrick. I’m from Los Angeles, California… and I just want to go home.”
Yuri laughs. “Then, take a plane.”
“It’s not that simple,” Fox says. “Snake Eyes isn’t the type of organization you walk away from. For instance, if I don’t check-in within the next hour, they’ll send an extraction team to find out what happened to me and from what I’ve heard, you know a thing or two about how that works. I’ll need a new identity, new papers, all of it.”
I furrow my brow. “You’d betray your own people just for that?”
“No, they’re not…” he pauses, flexing his jaw. “I work for them, yes, but not by choice.”
“We get you home and you give us that list. That’s it?”
“That’s it,” he nods.
I study his face; he’s as young as I am but scarred and weary with experience. “What’s the catch?”
“Well, obviously, it won’t be simple to crack into. You’ll need a hacker.”
“We’ve got one.”
“A good one?”
I raise a brow. “Is that all?”
Fox grabs my gun from his belt and grips it by the barrel before holding it back out to me. “Yes.”
I reach out and squeeze the gun’s grip, ignoring the protesting look in Yuri’s eyes as I take it back.
“What I’m offering you is worth way more than what I’m asking for it,” Fox says.
I smirk. “And while you run off into the sunset, an underground organization of assassins comes knocking on our door looking for you.”
“I wouldn’t have come to you if you couldn’t handle it.” He slips his toe beneath his rifle and flips it up to grab it.
I take another hard look at him. He’s a killer, I can see it in his eyes, but there’s a softness buried deep behind the duty and the pain.
It reminds me of Sofia. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, of course, but she’s made some tough choices.
“Okay,” I tell him. “I’ll get you home.”
Yuri grabs my arm. “Luka…” He pulls me away, forcing me to turn my back on Fox. “What are you doing? Pops would never—”
“We can find out who killed our grandfather, Yuri,” I argue. “I’m sure our father would think twice before wasting that.”
He leans in closer so only I can hear him. “We should just kill him and take it.”
I lay a hand on his shoulder and pat him twice. “I love you, brother, but I know our limits.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I mean…” I glance over at Fox. He’s still on full alert — eyes wide and ears open. “We should already be dead.”
Yuri furrows his brow at me, not believing a word of it but he says nothing more to argue with me. I’m sure he’s disappointed in my weakness but it’s quite the opposite. Looking out for him is my job and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my big brother alive. Hearing what this Fox Fitzpatrick has to say is the easiest way to survive at the moment.
I turn around to Fox and extend my hand again. “We can work together,” I say, “but I would prefer to be armed. You understand.”
Fox keeps his grip on his sniper rifle but he tosses my ammo clip back to me. “I do.”
I catch it and slide it back into my pistol, listening to that metallic sound echo throughout the empty warehouse as it clicks into place.
“You say Snake Eyes will come looking for you?” I ask.
“Yes,” he nods.
“Then we better leave them something to find.”
Blood leaves a trail.
Fox stares at me, barely blinking as he follows my meaning.
I slide a bullet into the chamber of my gun. “Hold still,” I tell him.
I aim at his left bicep and pull the trigger, firing a round through the outer flesh of his arm. He cringes and stumbles back as he reaches for the crimson wound.
“Let it bleed,” I say, knocking his hand away.
His blood drips down his pale skin and taps against the floor beneath us. He watches it for several moments and the pain leaves his eyes quickly.
“You’ve been shot before,” I note.
“I ha
ve,” he confirms.
“You take a bullet well.”
He narrows his eyes. “Thanks.”
I flick the safety on as I slide my gun into my belt and glance up at Yuri’s shocked face. I’ll explain it to him later. “How long before this extraction team comes looking?” I ask Fox.
“A few hours, at most,” he answers. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d rather be out of Italy by then.”
I nod. “You say someone hired Snake Eyes to kill me?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
He looks up from his wound. “Giovani Zappia.”
Chapter 13
Sofia
The house is quiet. Too quiet.
Granted, this house isn’t usually surging with activity but there’s something different in the air today… and it’s not just because of what happened with Luka.
I won’t lie and say his offer didn’t tempt me but it isn’t possible. I made a promise that no one would ever know who Lucian’s real father is and I intend to keep it. Leaving with Luka would only prove his guilt.
No, if I ever flee from this place, it will be alone — with Lucian, of course. I’d rather die than leave him here to be brainwashed by the Zappia cult.
I enter the kitchen, expecting to find the staff inside, chatting amongst themselves and preparing dinner, but the entire place is empty and spotless — as if they all vanished from thin air.
A cold dread seeps even further inside of me. I step out into the hall and make eye contact with a guard standing near the front entrance. He says nothing and merely gives me a respectful nod as I pass by but his gaze lingers on me for far longer than usual before he opens the front door and walks outside. I slink away, feeling even worse than before.
I pick up my speed and rush back towards our bedrooms across the house. I don’t know what’s going on but I’m not too keen to track down answers at the moment. There’s little else I’d rather do right now than take my son in my arms and hold him as tight as possible.
I twist the doorknob and throw it open, eager to see his perfect, little face staring up at me from his crib.
“Lucian?”
My eyes jerk back and forth in my skull while the rest of me stays frozen. He’s not here. He’s supposed to be here.
“Lucian!”