by Lee Winter
They’d stared at each other and Lola hadn’t said a word. But Lola knew. It had taught Natalya a painful lesson about not wanting. Not being obvious. And understanding your target as well as you know yourself. A rookie mistake, she told herself later, as she cried useless tears that night. Assuming your own wishes and hopes count for anything.
They never spoke of Natalya’s crush on her mentor again and Natalya became a master in the art of never wanting someone so badly that it would hurt not to get her.
She threw herself into music and tried to forget the stunning Lola Sweetman. It was only when she needed help her father couldn’t afford that she found herself in a strange warehouse in West Melbourne, staring at a scribbled address Lola had sent her.
She’d made her pitch for a sponsor to a room full of men who had laughed at the stupid cello-playing kid. They laughed at her hopes. Her dreams.
And then Lola had stepped up next to her new husband, Dimitri, and smiled. “Oh, don’t be so dismissive, dears,” she told them all, flirting furiously. “I think she has potential. Let me talk to her, see who she is, and find out what we can get out of this. Yes?”
Lola had returned an hour later to tell the men that she saw in Natalya the perfect vessel to create an invisible enforcer. Ken Lee needed someone more discreet than his current hatchet man who every criminal and his dog knew on sight.
What if, she asked them, Natalya got skilled up from the best there was? She’d be untouchable. Powerful. Strong. Like a ghost. After all, who would expect such a sweet young face with a talent at strings to hide so lethal an ability?
In exchange, Lee’s right-hand man, Dimitri, and a few other associates, would finance the parts of her studies abroad not covered by her scholarship. Five years in their service. Five years of murder in exchange for music. At the end of her tenure she would be free to leave. Live her life as she saw fit—on the condition she kept her mouth shut.
It had been chicken feed to them, and few wanted to rile Dimitri who seemed so enamoured of his wife, that they agreed. But that had not been the full plan.
In that hour with Lola in the strange warehouse, Natalya heard the rest of it. It seemed that after only a month into her marriage to Dimitri, she’d realised her new husband was brutal and cruel. Oh, Lola didn’t mind when he was that way with others; in fact she didn’t care about other people at all. But doing it to her was simply out of the question.
Divorces initiated by women in gangland families were rarely tolerated—consequences could be fatal for making the crime bosses’ egos suffer. Running never got you far, either. So Lola had been at a loss as to what to do about her situation until the day Natalya had written an earnest letter to ask if she had any contacts to help her financially while she was studying in Vienna.
Lola Sweetman was a woman who seized opportunities as she saw them. And she seized Natalya with both hands. To this day, few people in their world knew how much of a scorpion Lola was. She’d often been dismissed as Dimitri’s empty-headed trophy wife.
But Natalya knew.
That day the men of the Moonlight Society had sat around laughing at her, Lola whispered to her an incredible plan. The other, audacious part of it that no one knew about.
Lola wanted a permanent divorce but ordering a hit on Dimitri would be too obvious. The wife was always suspected. So she would set up a conflict—convincing Dimitri, who had an enormous ego, that he’d be better off going it alone, away from Ken Lee.
She explained to Natalya that it would be easy to start picking off crime gang members in ways that looked like paid hits. They would be random targets from all sides with no rhyme or reason, designed to make the bosses go mad trying to work out the pattern. They would blame each other, get lost in the feud, and no one would fixate too hard on figuring out how it began.
Lola had decreed that after five years, it would be safe for Natalya to kill Dimitri. By then everyone would assume it was another family behind the hit. And Lola, ever ambitious, would have had the time to position herself to become the matriarch of the new crime family. The mistress of all she surveyed.
Natalya could go back to focusing solely on her cello playing once the plan came to fruition. A small chunk of her life surrendered for a future in the world of music.
That had been the plan. The reality turned out a little differently. No one had anticipated how enthusiastically Melbourne’s crime bosses would take to killing their own or how long their rage would drag on for. How well Dimitri’s new gang, Fleet Crew, would do at carving out a place in the crime world, causing even more tensions. How the two-decade-long gang wars would be left to run almost entirely unchecked, thanks to police indifference.
And no one anticipated how perfectly well-suited Natalya Tsvetnenko would be to a career that was to have been only temporary.
People generally assumed she’d stayed on for the money. She didn’t do it for so tawdry an outcome. She did it because she was an artisan. Because she was brilliant at it. She also did it for Lola, who smiled at her a special smile whenever she’d done a hit everyone had deemed impossible.
And she did it because the moment of watching a soul leave a body was the same sensation she experienced when she was lost in her music. She was leant wings to soar. Immortal. Bruising her skin against the sun. At any moment she could fall, but she hadn’t.
She did it for the rush that had no equal.
She did it because she could.
And now it could all be over. Her partnership with Lola. All because of a curious little mouse she couldn’t bring herself to kill.
“What of them?” Requiem asked, her throat dry.
Lola laughed savagely. “Even now, still you ask? Well, fine. You asked for the price? The price to let them both walk is your music. Your talent.”
“My music?” Requiem gaped at her. “You can’t stop me from playing.”
“Is that so?” Lola reached into her Chanel handbag, and withdrew a gun. Requiem recognised it immediately. Dimitri’s. Inherited when he’d died in the gang wars. When Requiem had looked into his trusting eyes and shot him dead. The last time she’d ever touched a firearm.
Lola had apparently kept the chilling weapon for sentimental reasons. Even the sight of it still made Requiem’s stomach turn.
“I will put a bullet in each of your hands,” Lola said calmly. “Shatter the fine bones until they are a pulped mess of muscle, ligament and fragments. You will be on your knees in pain and horror.
“But if you subject yourself to this, then you can walk away cleanly, no strings attached. And so can they. It will send a certain message about people who defy me. And you, more than anyone, know the power of sending messages. That’s why they all queue up for your services, even though you’ve killed some of their own. Messages have power.”
“I could disable you ten different ways before you even pulled that trigger,” Requiem ground out.
“I know,” Lola said simply. “It is purely voluntary.”
“I could rescue those two myself, and walk away right now.”
“Yes.” Lola looked at her. “Of course you could, but then you’d never be free. My syndicate now runs to thousands of members. The armaments industry is a hungry one and it’s growing, worldwide. If I let it be known an associate would be amply rewarded for your death, there would be nowhere to hide. And you’d lose your career anyway, because you’d be on the run, unable to be visible even for a concert.”
“Lola,” Requiem stared at her in disbelief. “We were family.”
“And this is just business—important and necessary business. You understood that when you stapled Yeo Han’s prick to a door. It’s not personal. You knew the rules and you broke them. For God’s sake, I taught you the rules. How many times have I told you? How many times did I drill it into you?”
“Emotion is weak,” Requiem muttered.
“You should have listened. Now be a dear and put your hands on the table. I’d hate to have a wonky aim. Imagine that: Trying
to disfigure you and I end up killing you.”
“I despise you,” Requiem said, sliding her hands to the table, and hating how compliant she was even now. She, a killer of men. Destroyer of the pitiful.
Her hands trembled.
Lola smiled. “You despise me? Oh I’m sure that’s not true. Is it, dear?”
Chapter 13
Requiem stared at her hands, trying to imagine not being able to play. It was the same panic she felt at the thought of killing Lola. She loved her music. And she had loved Lola. Somehow in her mind, years ago, the two had become one. Lola and her music, interwoven. Both beautiful. Dangerous. Capable of breaching her walls and making her cry.
Even when she knew Lola was pure scorpion, she still couldn’t stop this connection. And now it was as though her hands were frozen, so trained were they to dutifully follow Lola’s whims. It was shocking. She had no precedent, no training as to how to overcome this.
The little mouse’s impassioned words came back to her suddenly from their evening at the café: “What will happen if you ever face an emotional storm you can’t handle, that’s too big for you to suppress through sheer force of will?”
And now she knew the answer to a question she’d dismissed so cockily: She would freeze. No one had ever told her there was a third option to fight or flight.
She couldn’t even consciously twitch her fingers, she noted from a far-off part of her consciousness. She stared at them on the table, willing them to move, willing herself to fight back against the woman who had haunted her dreams for good and ill for more than twenty years.
The cold muzzle stroked along the veins of the skin of her left hand.
“That’s a good girl,” Lola purred. “So compliant. Oh my dear, how adorable.”
Requiem’s brain raged and swirled even as she watched in stony silence as the metal dragged across her skin.
Lola didn’t care about her, Requiem’s brain whispered. She never had. Requiem knew that. She did. She’d thought it often enough, so this wasn’t a surprise. And yet there was a sickening difference between suspecting a thing and seeing it.
Lola’s hand holding the pistol was so soft. White, unblemished. Her fingertips, with a pale pink lacquer on the nails, were perfection. She could be a model. Yet she had such cruelty in those hands, capable of the vilest of acts. She’d seen those fingers run down the cheek of a man about to die, tracing the wet path his tears took. She mocked him for breaking down. He’d just seen his wife die. And she mocked him.
Requiem shouldn’t be in her thrall. She should be able to look at this ugliness in Lola’s soul and turn away in revulsion.
And yet…Lola had such charisma. Her eyes would watch you as though you were the only person who mattered in the world. She knew people. All facets of them. All their little secrets. She could just glance at a man and know which things would most likely bring him to his knees with shame or terror. And she would press into the scar, the weakness, with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel.
Even knowing this, knowing her cold, vicious heart, Requiem still found she couldn’t move her hands from the table where they sat in matching sweaty puddles.
Not against Lola’s orders.
Requiem wasn’t afraid of reprisals, nor was she weak from the fear that afflicted others. Those pathetic targets who’d look at her and say “Please” were nothing like her.
It was just…Lola.
“Oh my poor, poor dear. You would love to hurt me right now, wouldn’t you? But you can’t. Because it goes against all your training. And those secret, dirty feelings you have for me.”
There it was. Lola’s gift for homing in on weakness remained unparalleled. Requiem tried not to care. Tried not to mind Lola scouring a pain so poorly healed, she’d never moved on. Or, more depressingly, had never wanted to.
“Had for you,” she corrected, her voice sounding rough and dry to her own ears.
Lola ignored her.
“I loved how obedient you were,” she said conversationally. “Like a little puppy. So eager to please. You even took care of Dimitri for me, even though he did so much for you. He was your master who you worshipped and you killed him. Stared him right in the eyes, said sorry, and shot him dead. Because I asked.
“It’s interesting, isn’t it. You never used a gun on anyone ever again, did you?”
The gun muzzle against her flattened hands inched forward. It was so cold. Requiem shivered.
Her finger twitched. She stared at it. Well, that was progress, of sorts.
“If you’re trying to find out whether I would have done anything for you, you know damned well you owned my soul,” Requiem said coolly. “A fact you took advantage of time and again.”
“Yes, well,” Lola said, flippantly. “I found it amusing. So, tell me: What are you going to do with yourself when you can no longer play your music? I am quite curious. You can hardly continue killing, either. Will you try to romance the trembling leaf in the other room?”
Requiem snarled. “Fuck you.”
Lola smiled at her agitation and stood closer to her. “Not my type—much to your everlasting agony.”
“You really don’t care, do you?” Requiem muttered in a flat voice. “Dr Frankenstein, taking her monster apart. First you assemble me. Then you disassemble me.”
“One has to love the symmetry.” Lola’s voice dropped to a confessional whisper. “And no, I really don’t care. You’re just like your father. Useful and amusing—until you’re not.”
Lola’s eyes went cold as her finger moved to the trigger. Instantly, Requiem came alive and lashed out, kicking the other woman’s legs out from under her. The gun clattered to the floor, skidding out of both their reaches.
Requiem stood and leaned over Lola’s prostrate form, balling her hands into white-knuckled fists. “Leave Papa out of this.”
Lola sat up and blinked in surprise. “Good god, you still love the old fool. Even though he’s been wasting away in some nursing home for, what, ten years? Drooling? Can’t even remember his own name?
“Do you know he begs me to visit? Of course I took great pleasure in explaining to the nurses that watching two diseased dogs rutting would be more entertaining. But him you love more than me? We’ve carved up the universe together! Remade the underworld! But that snivelling sack of dribble you love the most?”
“You’re right,” Requiem said, biting back her rage. “We are done. You have no hold over me anymore.”
“Really, dear?” Lola teased. “Could have fooled me. What would you do if I offered myself to you? You’d come crawling back in an instant.” She snapped her fingers.
Requiem’s throat went dry.
“What if I said, you could have me, willingly, if only you killed them,” Lola taunted.
“You wouldn’t. You don’t even like women.”
“No. But I love power.” Lola laughed, clearly enjoying herself. “You know how I love that. Just imagine how much you’d enjoy finally having me.”
Requiem stared at her. She didn’t have to imagine how that would end. She’d already lived this scenario with Sonja Kim from the other side.
Bile rose up as she realised the depths of her cruelty to Nabi. How much it was like having your heart ripped open being on the receiving end of that vicious power play.
Her jaw tightened. “If you made me that offer, I would say you’re not worthy,” Requiem said. “And I have more self-respect than to touch someone like you.”
“Someone like me?” All playfulness instantly fell from Lola’s voice. It became hard and cold and Requiem wondered if this was the real woman at last, the one behind the games, the tricks and manipulations. The one no one ever got to see.
“Yes. Someone so ugly.”
“Oh and you’re so perfect,” Lola scoffed. “Look in the mirror. You’re damaged goods. No one will want you. Not the trembling leaf you’ve thrown everything away for. We both know she can’t have any sort of good or happy life if it includes you in it.�
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“No,” Requiem said. “I already know my life doesn’t include her. But it doesn’t include you, either. You’re grotesque, Lola. That’s who you really are. No one would want to be near you if they knew you as I do. If they could see your soul, no one would want you at all. You would be alone. No one around to admire you but yourself. An empty soul you fill with mirrors.”
Lola looked as though someone had sucked all the air out of the room. “Well done, dear.” She gave her a slow clap. “You are a monster.”
“If I am it’s who you made me. But you know what’s scariest about monsters? It’s our knowledge that they’re just human beings, like everyone else, one twist away from normal. Not even a full twist.”
“You’ll never be normal. You’re kidding yourself.”
“You don’t think I know that? I’m not part of the rest of the world.”
Lola’s smile positively glittered. “At least you know your place.”
“Oh I do. And I thank you for teaching me it.” She suddenly snatched Lola’s arm and twisted the wrist with both hands until it snapped. “Your education has had its uses. Have this reminder that I passed with top marks.”
Lola screamed in pain. “You’re still my monster, you rotten child. Behave!”
“Those days are over.”
“I used to laugh at you, you know,” Lola sneered at her, cradling her broken arm, “the teenage you, wearing your heart on your sleeve. It was embarrassing how much you wanted me.”
“At least I had the courage of my convictions. Shall I do your other arm? I know how well you like to co-ordinate your looks.”
“I made you! You will obey me!” Lola hissed sharply.
Requiem leaned over her, concentrated and then viciously snapped her other wrist. “Matching,” she observed. “How lovely.”
Tears of pain slid down Lola’s cheeks, causing her ordinarily perfect mascara to run. Her eyes looked like a grime ring around a cracked sink as her expression contorted into agony.