by Ker Dukey
He doesn’t sound Russian. Not even a little.
“I know what you’re thinking, and it’s because a speech therapist taught us from a young age how to speak without our accents. Father required it. I’ve lived here a long time, and the accent came easy with time.” He grunts and looks down at his hands, flexing them. I can tell he doesn’t like his father. I can fucking relate.
“He always said it was a weakness knowing so much about a man just from their accent, so we were taught not to have one.”
My heart races. Who the hell are we? The sister he spoke of earlier?
“And,” I bite out harshly, irritated he’s giving me bit by bit. A motherfucking tease.
His eyes close briefly. Does this sister evoke so much pain in him? What did she do to him?
“My brother and sister. There is so much about me I couldn’t divulge to you,” he says softly. “It’s another life. One I’ve not been a part of for a long time.”
“Tell me why you hate your sister,” I push. I can see the ache, the betrayal. It saturates him, stripping him of all his color.
How bad must it have been to leave a scar so vivid on his soul?
“She killed me,” he announces, his tone hard and ice cold. “She fucking killed me.”
Viktor
I DON’T LIKE THE QUESTIONS. The answers bring pain I’ve worked a lifetime on ebbing. Thoughts of Vlad crash and collide in my mind.
“This is what you wanted, moy brat, to build an empire to rival our father’s.”
“But I wanted it for him.”
“Well, you need to do it for you. Prove yourself. Show him who you are.”
I did show him. And now look at me. At the mercy of another.
My eyes snap to the flashing lights as we turn in toward the club and creep along the road.
Fuck. Police cars line the parking lot of my club. My fucking life and everything I built is slowly crumbling around me. That stupid detective Benjamin hates so much must have ordered his minions over here when I left him to poke his nose around.
“She did take a photo,” Benjamin hisses, rubbing his hands over his face, manic and uncontained.
“Calm down,” I order. “Stay in the car. I’m going to walk the rest of the way.”
His head jerks in my direction, but I don’t look at him. “Benjamin. Stay here until I return.”
Getting out of the car, I walk down toward my club. The overhung clouds close in around me, summoning the storm inside me to the surface. Everything has gone to shit. All I’ve worked for is swarming in red and blue.
My father would be disappointed. Vlad would be furious if he knew how deep I’d allowed Benny to burrow inside me.
“Affection is one thing, Viktor, but to attach your emotions to another is a dangerous game. When you have a weakness, people will exploit it.”
And how right was he? I allowed Kami in too deep, and my monster used her against me. Lured me in through her, and I fucking fell for it. Walked right into the predator’s trap as though I was the prey. Yet, once I got there, desperate for the person I thought I wanted, he locked me away, and the only thing I cared about was the loss of him.
Rain begins to trickle down from the sky, and I swear my skin sizzles when the drops touch the flesh. I’m the fucking devil, so it’s fitting. So much anger rages in my blood at witnessing the disrespect to my establishment. This kind of show is just that—a show. It will ruin trust for my clientele and cost me their business.
If this is Dillon Scott playing games, he is going to be so disappointed with the outcome. I do not break. I do not falter. I do not lose. And one thing Benjamin will have to learn: I do not bow to anyone. I’m a Vasiliev.
Reaching the entrance, I’m stopped with a hand to the chest by a uniformed police officer. It surprises me they allowed me to get this close before stopping me, which tells me they have no right to be here. They’re just playing scare tactics or a diversion.
“Sir, this establishment is closed until further notice.”
“Says who?” I ask, my voice calm, though I feel anything but. Fire blazes inside me, barely controlled.
He seems momentarily surprised by my words, and instead of looking over me like before, he brings his stare down to my face. “Says the county sheriff’s department.”
“Do you have a warrant?” I narrow my gaze on him and watch the waver in his features.
Yeah, you can wear a uniform, but that won’t protect you from beasts like me.
“Samuels,” he barks without looking away from me. Yes, you should keep me in your sights, motherfucker. “Bring the warrant over here.”
“Uh, Dean has it?” someone shouts back.
Wagging my finger in his face, I bite out, “Hmm, you shouldn’t play games you can’t win. I will have you personally held accountable when I sue the department because we both know you don’t have a fucking warrant.”
“Ten minutes out, sir,” someone calls out, and this asshole in front of me smirks before stepping to the side.
“Enjoy your time at The Vault,” he sneers. “Make the most of it.”
Pushing past him, I make my way inside. The girls from the front desk rush over to me, but I hold up a hand to stop them from speaking. I don’t have time for them right now. If the ten minutes the prick outside was referring to was about them having a warrant here, then I need to work fast.
My office is how I left it, and I’m relieved Detective Scott didn’t take my laptop with him. Bringing it to life, Kami once again fills the screen. She must be in so much pain. Deep, soul crushing pain. I’m all she’s ever had, and I just cut her deeper than any blade could. She won’t forgive lightly for this. My thoughts drift to the past.
“Why are they being held here?” I ask Vlad as he leads me into the basement. Cells line the wall like prison rooms.
“These are payments, forfeits, debts,” he calmly states, tapping his hand on each door as we pass it. I’ve lived in this house my entire life, yet never knew this existed.
“And they’re entering The V Games?” I query.
“They are sacrificed for pleasure and entertainment.” He stops outside one of the cells and gestures with his head for me to look through the sliver of space left open on the door. Stepping forward, my eyes peek through the slat and fall upon a young girl sitting cross-legged on a cot. Blonde hair curtains around her face, blocking her from view. She’s slender, and wearing sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and heavy boots.
“Who is she?”
“She’s no one now, but she was once a daughter to a man who owed too much money to our father and couldn’t afford his debt,” Vlad states, and with his words, they summon the girl to lift her head. She’s pretty, but tortured. Her eyes are haunted, and it makes my dick jerk. Her plush, full lips part, and I lean in closer in anticipation of what she’s going to say. Crooking a finger, she curls it toward her in a come here motion.
“Why don’t you come in and play?” she beckons in English, but with a thick Russian accent. I’m almost trying to magically pass through the steel of the door to get to her when Vlad’s laughter resonates around me.
“Don’t be fooled by her pretty face, moy brat. She’s deadlier than she looks.”
What?
Snapping my attention to my brother, my brow furrows. “How so?”
“She’s been trained from a young age. She’s a fighter. Her name is Klara Alla Mila Ivanov.”
My eyes widen. “The girl from the underground Black Circle fights?” I breathe.
“One in the same.”
She was known for being forced to fight by her father from the age of ten, and gained a reputation through years of defeating opponents in the underground fighting circuit.
“Let her out. I want to see what she has.” Energy, wild and erratic, hums in my veins at the thought of getting to spar with her.
“Are you sure? If she beats you, I’ll hold it over you for all eternity,” Vlad mocks.
“If she beats me, your traini
ng methods need improvement, brat,” I taunt back.
“Very well.”
The clanking of the door disengaging sends my heart rate thundering. The blood rushes through my veins, flooding me with adrenaline.
The door opens and she stands in between the frame, her eyes hooded as she surveys me. Her hands ball into fists, and fresh ink, still red and angry on her wrist, spells her initials and a barcode beneath it. K.A.M.I. - 15k000076.
Kami.
I like it much better than her given name.
In fact, that is what I’ll call her from here on out.
“Play nice. No permanent damage,” Vlad warns her, and she smirks up at him.
“How old are you?” I ask, scrutinizing her youthful features. Her soft skin is unblemished. Her nose is crooked where she’s taken too many hits, but it doesn’t take away from her beauty. Instead, it gives her character.
“Old enough to hurt you,” she replies, her tone cold and confident.
I like her.
Vlad was right.
He’s always right, although I’d never admit that to his smug ass.
She rushes me, her arms quick to deploy martial arts moves. I block her motions, and she adds some kicks, catching me off guard. She lands a blow to my mouth. Blood blossoms and floods over my tongue from my tooth piercing the gum.
She grins when she sees she’s cut me.
Spitting the blood to the floor, I grin back at her before charging and grappling her to the floor. A thud sounds as her head hits the concrete, causing her to cry out in pain. It’s brief, and she’s soon trying to hit me with her fists. Her legs wrap around my waist and she tries to turn us so she’s on top and at an advantage. I’m much stronger than she is, though, and I restrain her by twisting her onto her front and pinning her arms beneath her.
She’s lost.
There’s nothing she can do from here.
I lean down to her ear and whisper, “I win.”
She drops her head, which I think is in defeat, but then she lifts it all too fast, crashing the back of her skull into my nose and knocking me backwards. Bitch.
She squirms her way free as my hands grip my broken nose. Blood seeps through my fingertips and my eyes lift to find Vlad glaring at me.
“You don’t celebrate a victory until your opponent is truly defeated,” he booms.
“I win,” she boasts, coming at me with a boot raised.
I grab her foot and tackle her back to the ground. She struggles, but a closed fist to her face and she’s out cold.
“I fucking win,” I grind out, pinning my older brother with a glare.
“Good,” Vlad states. “Now, put her back in her room and let’s go eat.”
Every day, we repeat this game until it’s time for the real games.
With a shake of my head to clear away the past, I bring up the software for the trackers I have placed on all my close employees. I’m a businessman and no one’s fool. All the employees who deal with the less legal parts of my company are tracked so if they ever do break my rules, they can’t hide from my fury.
Bad apples must be eliminated so they don’t infect others and turn the whole pack sour.
I’ve never had to implement this before. I am a vicious wolf when it comes to who I allow in the pack, and my team has been with me for decades. Lucy was twenty when I found her. She went by her given name then, Jessica, and had an insatiable fetish for making people bleed, but her skill with a blade needed honing. It took five years before I moved her from the floor of the club to the other side of things. I learned everything about her. She was from right here in this town. Straight A student. But then, everything for her changed. She dropped out of school to run away from home at the young age of sixteen. When I asked her about that time in her life, she gave me a vague answer: “Life pushed me, but I will push back harder.”
I always found her answer endearing. Vague is how I’ve always been. It’s what keeps me a step above everyone else.
Her parents died over a decade ago in a boating accident and Lucy didn’t even blink when I informed her of their passing. She was cold, and I admired her for it. I would never have believed she was capable of betraying me. She worshipped me. Would do anything I asked. And I rewarded her for her idolization by moving her up the ranks.
The penetrating rage swarms around under my skin like a thousand scorpions pinching and snapping at the tendons. If I don’t release some of it soon, it’s going to consume me and take over.
Disloyalty is my trigger. If there is anything you can do to hurt me, it’s betray my trust. My usual invincible façade fractures and shatters when someone gets one over on me. I worked my entire life to build my fortress. My iron castle is impenetrable, yet there were cracks all along.
“You can’t let this defeat you. You grow stronger from it. Learn, adapt, and fucking conquer, Viktor.”
Vlad’s words before I left to come here anchor me, bringing my attention back to the screen in front of me.
The GPS locator for Lucy’s implant is a red blinking dot on the screen in matching rhythm of my pulse.
“Stop what you’re doing and move away from the desk, Mr. Harris. Now,” Detective Dillon Scott bellows from the doorway.
Motherfucker. He’s getting on my last damn nerve.
Dillon
THE MOTHERFUCKER STARES AT ME from the back of my cruiser, his amber eyes boring into mine in the mirror. Smug. Cold. Unaffected. I didn’t have anything to arrest him on, because quite frankly, I don’t have shit yet, but the idiot came willingly when I told him I needed to bring him to the precinct for questioning. And I do. He knows Benny, and I need to know what their relationship is.
Pulling in a favor with the judge to get the search warrant for The Vault so fast wasn’t difficult considering what we have in our arsenal: ex police chief, Benny’s father, Steve Stanton’s brutal murder on the cell phone recovered at the club. A female prisoner slashed up on this jerkoff’s computer. And best of all, a photo of the wanted Benny fucking Stanton on the premises. Lucky for me, these idiots lacked a full brain cell between them and the warrant scared them enough to comply.
It’s too easy.
I sense Harris isn’t going to be forthcoming. He’s too smug for someone sitting in the back of a police car, and my hackles are already raised on high alert knowing Benny is lurking out there.
Why hasn’t he come for Jade, or attacked me at least?
I don’t like any of it.
Feels too easy.
Like I’m missing something.
Right now, though, the only thing that matters is I have Harris’s laptop bagged as evidence and one of the uniforms will bring it back to the station. More importantly, I have a key player in this fucked up shit sitting in my backseat. Before we left, I made sure to scour that entire damn club for Benny, but of course he didn’t turn up. He’s slippery as hell. Cassian Harris is my best lead right now.
He’ll lead me to Benny. He has to.
They know each other. Somehow. Some way. I had a hunch this asshole was a bigger player in a game I wasn’t quite sure we were playing. When in his presence, there was something about him that bothered me. A nervous energy haunting me. And now I know it was Benny. Evil doesn’t die that easily, and his scent must have been all over this fucker, waiting for me to sniff him out. The hairs on the back of my neck rise when I glimpse him eyeballing me in the rearview mirror. My gut tells me something lurks under his preppy exterior.
Of course, I never imagined this guy would be in bed with the likes of Benny. Fuck, how do they even know each other? Benny is a loner. I need answers.
The pictures Josey sent were most definitely him. Tattooed. Bearded. Shaved head. But still the same evil. And once I saw those pictures, I immediately realized he was the one I’d seen with Elizabeth that day—just the back of him, but it was him. The bastard was right under my fucking nose and within shooting distance. Kissing. I know now those two were kissing that day, and he’s most likely the one
who cut her neck, which really stresses me the fuck out. If she’s in some relationship with Benny, things just got a hell of a lot weirder. It makes sense, though.
Her doll fetish.
The strange clothes.
She’s just like her brother in that aspect. A perversion for that weird shit. I should have seen it much sooner. I should have fucking protected her. And now that’s just one more problem on my massive list of shit that’s giving me ulcers.
Elizabeth is gone.
I grip the steering wheel so tightly, my knuckles turn white. Cassian Harris continues to stare at me as if he knows every-fucking-thing, and it enrages me. He’s about to fucking spill every goddamn bit of it.
“How do you know Benny?” I demand, my voice cold as I drive.
He smirks in the mirror. “I’m not sure I know who you’re referring to.”
Smug fuck.
“Cut the shit, Harris. You and I both know you’re fucking friends with that psycho. He hurt my wife, and I’m afraid he’ll hurt someone dear to me as well. Do yourself a favor and tell me everything.”
He smiles at me, wolfish and calculating. It makes me want to pull over and slam my fist through his perfect white teeth. “Friends. With a ghost?”
My phone rings, giving me a reprieve from the asshole in my backseat. “Detective Scott,” I bark.
“Fuck,” Marcus hisses. “This is bad.”
My heart thunders in my chest. If Benny has my girls… No, I left them safe at the precinct surrounded by armed officers. “What?” I snap, impatient with his games today.
“An eye witness at Josey’s place described Benny to a T. Showed her the photo from what Josey sent us and she confirmed he was the man who took her. Took, Dillon. He took Josey. It wasn’t a break in. It was a kidnapping.” His voice cracks as he continues. “He has them fucking both. Elise’s sister and Josey. Christ. We know what he can do. What he did to Jade…” he trails off, and Elise starts to sob in the background. They’re together wherever they are. Under normal circumstances, I’d be giving him hell for that, but right now, I have too much on my plate.