by Shandi Boyes
I resume my begging when his focus shifts back to Vaughn hanging lifeless in the middle of his torture chamber. “No, Asher, please! No, no, no!”
Before I can get within an inch of Asher’s back, Lenin bands his arm around my waist and hoists me in the opposite direction. I scream at Asher. I beg him to stop and remind him of the little boy who once wished to have a brother just like him. When that fails, I tell him I’ll never forgive him, that I will hate him until the end of time.
Neither of my ploys work. I’m removed from the room at the same time Asher’s fists leave no doubt to Vaughn’s unconscious state.
My name is Zariah Volkov, and my husband-to-be just killed my brother.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Asher
“Not a word of this, do you hear? I don’t want this getting out. If people discover what we’ve done, we’ll have more than a war on our hands.”
Lenin waits for me to clean the last of Vaughn’s blood from my hands before locking his eyes with mine. I’ve known him for over twenty years, and this is the first time my eyes are darker than his. My pupils are filling my corneas, making my usually icy blue eyes as cold and desolate as the room Lenin locked Zariah in over three hours ago.
I was so hell-bent on vengeance, I couldn’t see sense through the madness when Lenin brought Zariah to the room I was punishing her brother in. My mind was in lockdown mode, my sense of normality obliterated. If it were any man but Lenin defying me as he had, he would have paid his penalty with his life. Even then, it was a close call.
This kills me to admit, but the soaring highs and devastating lows of the past twenty-four hours broke me. I could never be accused of being mellow, but not even my crew has seen me like this. I’m unhinged, both mentally and physically.
The words Zariah screamed when Lenin dragged her out of the room rang through my ears on repeat. They played with my thoughts when I unshackled Vaughn from the ceiling and placed his flopping body onto the body bag men in my industry use in bulk; they were there when my gun pinched the skin of Lenin’s temple and I squeezed back the trigger. That’s how deep into the darkness I’ve descended. If it weren’t for what Zariah did and said tonight, who knows how far the carnage would have spread?
I hate being deceived. If you cheat, I’ll find out. If you try to hide someone’s deceit, I’ll find out. If you try to tell me I’m wrong, you’ll die along with those who deceived me. Those rules would usually lead to a higher kill count tonight than what I’ve amassed so far.
Once again, if it weren’t for Zariah, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
As much as my ego hates confessing this, what Zariah disclosed earlier was true. Dominique wasn’t visiting Zariah during her near daily outings to the Volkov compound in the four weeks leading to her death. From the intel I’ve gathered the past four hours, they didn’t even cross paths the day Dominique was killed. In a way, I’m relieved. If Zariah was present, who’s to say she’d still be here today? She may have been killed too; then I’d have more than one death to avenge.
I will also admit that I’m torn. For twelve months, I’ve craved a bloodbath. I wanted the people responsible for Dominique’s demise to suffer as I had. But in less than twenty-four hours, everything I thought I knew has been upended.
I still want revenge; I still want to hear them plead for their lives as they kneel at my feet mere seconds before I deny their claims, but my focus has shifted. Nothing I can do will bring Dominique back, and even if it could, after what I’ve discovered, I can’t guarantee she wouldn’t suffer the same fate. But Zariah doesn’t need to fall on the same knife Dominique did. I can protect her from all of this. I did years ago, and I will now as well.
I’m dragged from my thoughts when Matvei enters the bathroom attached to my office. The grave expression on his face makes sense when I realize he’s arrived empty-handed. I asked him to fetch Zariah for me. I wasn’t fucking happy when Lenin advised me he locked her in a room a few doors down from the one he dragged her out of, but with my bedroom door no longer having a lock, he didn’t have much choice.
“Where is she?”
Matvei’s wide shoulder notches up as he scrubs at the stubble on his chin. “I don’t know. She jimmied the lock with a hairpin. We’ve searched the entire compound... She’s either hiding real good, or she isn’t here.”
His pause before his last sentence is warranted. I’m fucking ropeable. I can’t protect someone when I have no clue where they are.
“Get Bahrain—”
“Already on it,” Lenin interrupts, talking over his cell attached to his mouth. “He’s tracing her last movements.”
Lenin didn’t lie when he told Zariah I have motion-activated cameras in every corner of my property. Usually, I would have had a tracker implanted on Zariah by now as well, but up until a few hours ago, I had no fucking clue what she truly meant to me.
Things are starkly different now.
Even if I hadn’t already claimed Zariah as mine, Vaughn’s confession tonight would have flipped everything I thought I knew. This is bigger than Zariah being sold. It’s a fucking war, and we were the pawns used to start it.
I shift on my feet to face Lenin when he sighs. “Matvei is right. She’s no longer on the property. Bahrain has her exiting one of the garages a little over two hours ago.”
“Which car did she take? They all have trackers; have him trace her location.”
“She didn’t take a car,” Lenin grinds out before disconnecting his call. “She went on foot. Bahrain is sending us footage from the main gate. If she left the compound, that’s the only way she could have exited.”
He’s not lying. We have dogs trained to rip you apart if you so much as step foot past my property line, and the tall fences surrounding us have skin-shredding wire curled around the top.
When Lenin’s phone flickers to life with a video, I step closer to him. Bahrain has tracked Zariah to the main gate. Her dark shirt and hair mean she’s barely visible in the blackness of the night, but the whiteness of her wide eyes as she crawls past the security station at the gate can’t be missed.
“What is she carrying?” I point to a shimmer I see reflecting in the bottom left hand corner. She’s holding something close to her body.
“A camera?” Lenin’s tone is as unsure as his facial expression.
A smile tugs at my lips when he taps on the screen two times to zoom in the image. She isn’t holding a camera. She’s clutching projector film rolls.
The adrenaline thickening my blood throws out clones when the truth smacks into me. “She’s going home.”
Those projector reels hold more memories of Zariah’s mother than Zariah and I have combined. She would only take them if she had no intentions of coming back, and considering this is the only home she’s had beyond the compound she grew up in, where else would she go?
My smug grin sags when the Zariah on screen leaps to her feet and sprints toward a stream of cars rolling past our property. I’m not angry at her attempt to flee, I’m glad she’s still holding some of the courage that’s captivated me the past two weeks; it’s her flagging down an unknown motorist to ask him or her for a ride that’s pissing me off.
“Trace the plate number. I want to know who the driver is.” While they do that, I move to my desk to secure my Suzuki Hayabusa key out of my top drawer. I don’t even care that it is below freezing outside. My bike is faster than any car I own, and it will stop pesky traffic from getting between Zariah and me. “Also, it’s time to bring Stepanov out of hiding. We’ve got answers to questions he should have had answered years ago, and he needs to hear them.”
“And Nesti?”
My teeth nearly crack from how tightly I hold my jaw. “Keep out feelers. He’ll surface soon.”
Matvei nods. “He won’t when I give him a brand new pair of concrete boots.”
Confident my crew has everything under control, I head to the garage my bike is stored in. My men will follow me, but if they
don’t, I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.
With my blood still hot, I only throw on a leather jacket for protection before hooking my leg over my bike. Its engine purrs to life as quickly as Zariah does when my hands land on her. Muddy sludge dots my boots when I pull back on the throttle.
I race through the streets, my speed excessive. I visited Zariah’s family compound many times when I was a child, so I know the best route, but it doesn’t lessen my love of the throttle in the slightest. Nothing is on my mind right now but getting Zariah as far away from the deathtrap that’s nearly claimed her life twice already.
Dominique was killed on my watch. I refuse for the same thing to happen to Zariah.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Zariah
My heart rate spikes when my bedroom door flies open for the second time tonight. I don’t know who I am expecting, but I’m reasonably sure it can’t shock me any more than I already am. My family home has been gutted. Not a single shred of the life it once held has been left behind. The family portraits that adorned the walls only hold mismatched paint colors. The floors are void of a single piece of furniture. Even my bedroom has been stripped bare.
I came here to cling to a piece of my life I once knew. Now I have nothing—not a single thing. Everything has been taken from me, and it was cruelly stripped by the man confronting me. I should be fighting to hold myself together, to not succumb to the horrifying blackness engulfing me. I do neither of those things. Instead, I fight with everything I have. I give as bad as I am getting.
With the cry of a wounded woman, I charge for the man responsible for my turmoil with my fists held out in front of me and my cheeks lined with tears. Asher dodges the fist I’m aiming at his face, but he accepts the one directed at his chest. It pummels into him with a thud, its repetitive wallop coming with a heap of tears and cruel words.
“You killed my brother… my baby brother.” I hit him over and over again. “I hate you, Asher Yury. I fucking hate you!” I can’t see anything through the tears blurring my vision, but I’m certain my words are hurting him more than my fists. He stiffens more with every horrible name I call him, but he does little to stop the onslaught.
“How could you do that to him? All he ever did was look up to you! And for what? To have you kill him like his life was worthless. You should have killed me. You should have taken my life instead of his. I’ll never forgive you for this. I will hate you until the day I die.”
What Vaughn and Dominique did was wrong. They had every right to fall in love. They shouldn’t have kept it hidden like they did, but that doesn’t give Asher the right to kill them for it. They were young and fearless; they didn’t understand the repercussions of their actions. That’s why I crushed so hard on Asher when I was a child. I had no clue of the ramifications that could come from my feelings. I loved him for who he was, not the title he would have assured I’d keep for eternity. Lineage wasn’t important to me. Endless love was.
Now he’s ruined it. He’s taken away everything I’ve ever known and destroyed it.
Within minutes, my arms are burning with exhaustion. I’ve belted into Asher with everything I have, yet it’s still not half the punishment Vaughn suffered.
A sob tears at my throat as I drop my forehead to rest on Asher’s chest. I’d rather choose anything but him for comfort, but considering he’s the only stable, solid thing in sight, I have no choice. I’m seconds from collapsing. My tiredness of this life and everything that comes from it is visible all over my face.
Holding me close to his body, Asher moves us to the other side of the room. After sitting on the floor, he braces his back where my headboard once sat before cradling my head into his heaving chest. I should be ashamed I’m letting the man responsible for my turmoil comfort me, but I’m not. The last two weeks have been such a blur of emotions, I’m having trouble separating fact from fiction. I truly feel as if I’m having an out-of-body experience.
The tears streaming down my face intensify when Asher runs his hand across my wet cheeks. “Shh, Little Mouse. You’re okay. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
His pledge would have snatched the last bit of sanity I’m clutching if it didn’t arrive at the same time his cell phone is thrust into my line of sight. It has a grainy video playing. Although the image is pixelated, I recognize the man lying on a bed in the middle of the frame. It’s Vaughn. His face and body are badly battered, but the rise and fall of his chest can’t be mistaken.
Just in case I’m not seeing things clearly, Asher demands, “Wake him.”
I don’t realize it’s a live feed until Wyatt moves into the frame. He nudges Vaughn. Not enough to hurt him, but enough his eyes pop open a mere second before his hand darts out to seize Wyatt’s wrist. His firm grip has the men standing in the shadows paying careful attention to him, but it doesn’t spark a reaction from Wyatt. He’s too laidback to let a little anger set him off. His personality is at the opposite end of the spectrum of his brother’s. I never saw him act out in violence when we were younger. He likes stirring the pot too much to let anger work its way into his system.
With my mind still hazy, I remove Asher’s phone from his hand. “Vaughn?” My voice is hoarse from the amount of screaming I did.
I can tell the exact moment my mouse-like squeak reaches Vaughn’s ears. He relinquishes Wyatt’s wrist from his hold, then scoots up the mattress. I wipe away the tears sitting high on my cheeks when he accepts the mobile device from the person wielding it. He doesn’t need more worry added to his plate.
“Where are you?” His nearly swollen-shut eyes dart around the screen like the pale pink wall Asher’s back is braced against will give him more clues than asking me directly.
“I’m home. I’ve come home.”
“Home...” I don’t hear anything else Vaughn says when Asher’s deep timbre overpowers his frail tone. “Tell her the truth.”
My eyes dart between Asher and his phone when Vaughn’s eyes widen from his request. Vaughn looks truly scared from Asher’s demand, more than he did when he was seconds from death.
“Tell me what?”
Asher backs up my question with a threat. “Tell her or Wyatt will cut off your finger.”
Watching Wyatt approach Vaughn on screen with a large pair of tin snips isn’t any less worrisome than witnessing him being brutalized in person. It has bile racing up my esophagus as quickly as tears fill my eyes.
I’m about to scream for Wyatt to stop when Vaughn shouts, “Okay! I’ll tell her.”
Wyatt moves far enough back that Vaughn’s fingers are nowhere near the snips, but close enough the flickers of silver remind him of how close he came to losing his pinkie.
Like I can be any more confused, Vaughn adds to it. “I was only a kid, Z. I didn’t know what he was planning. I just thought we were playing a game.”
“Okay... and?” I’m stunned I can talk with how fast my heart is racing.
Its crazy beat triples when Vaughn stutters, “Uncle Nesti gave me something to put in mom’s drink. He said it would make her be funny like she was at Christmas. I didn’t know what it was. If I did, I wouldn’t have given it to her.”
I try to extract the truth from Vaughn’s eyes, to get a grip on what he’s telling me. When I fail, I shift my eyes to Asher.
Bad decision.
His sorrow-filled eyes spell everything out in painstaking detail. With my little brother’s help, my uncle killed my mother.
There has to be a mistake. My uncle Nesti was like a father to me growing up. Vaughn and I had our own rooms at his house, and he even offered for us to celebrate Asher’s sixteenth birthday there so we didn’t have the prying eyes of our parents ruining our fun.
“This can’t be right. My dad loved my mother. He would have killed Uncle Nesti if he even had an inkling he was involved with her death.”
Asher clears away my tears before attempting to unjumble my confusion. “Vaughn never told anyone what he did. He buried the glass
they laced her drink with in the backyard and kept quiet.”
Anger rushes through my veins so hard and fast, I feel like I’m about to burst an artery. “Why would you do that? She was our mother!” Vaughn should be thanking his lucky stars he isn’t in the room with me, or I may have finished what Asher started.
“I was ten, Zariah. I didn’t know what I was doing—”
“Back then, but you have no excuse now! God, Vaughn. I thought you were one of the good ones.”
He comes back with nothing—not a single fucking thing.
No excuse.
No reason.
Nothing.
Just when I think I have a grip on reality, Asher swipes it out from beneath me for the second time. “Keep going, Vaughn. Tell her everything you told me. It is, after all, the only reason you’re still breathing.”
I inhale and exhale several times in a row, truly unsure if I can handle much more. Everyone around me is a liar, manipulator, and cheat. I can’t trust anyone but myself, and even then, I’m a shadow of the woman I used to be.
My brows furrow when Vaughn mutters, “Uncle Nesti wanted to play the same game at Asher’s sixteenth. He said he had halved the dose, and it wouldn’t hurt you like it had mom.”
The room closes in on me. “Me?”
My chest rises and falls in rapid succession as I struggle to secure an entire breath. I feel like I’m choking, like my entire world is about to be flipped.
“When you grew sleepy, he told me to leave your room.”
No.
No.
No.
No.
As the voice inside me screams out my frustration, I hyperventilate. This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. I must be still sleeping.