He had taken three lives last night. In self-defense, yes. Yet, he didn’t feel the stalking remorse he imagined should follow taking another life. He had never felt it.
He supposed he shared this similarity with Ivan, along with his near-addiction to violence and the high it gave him. Amidst all his secrets and lies, one thing was certain: embracing his birthright as Ivan’s son, he was more himself than he had ever been, a fact that didn’t make him proud.
He was genetically hard-wired to be a monster. His biological destiny stalked him constantly. Despite all of the promises he made himself, all of the distinctions he made between himself and Ivan, he feared he couldn’t outrun it.
Artur’s call suggested a certain level of dress might be in order—button-down, tie, and his bullet-proof vest, now compromised where the bullet had lodged in the right shoulder, but still serviceable. Although the vest bulked him up, it wasn’t easily visible under his clothes.
Vlad doubted Artur meant to shoot him but couldn’t be sure. What exactly had Artur learned? Vlad’s fate might depend on how smoothly he talked his way around this newest challenge.
Pass or die.
When Vlad arrived at Koslovsky Imports, the storefront wasn’t opened yet. He peered in the front window, but saw nothing. Lights off. No movement. Although he had the key to open the locked metal gate around the front entrance, he headed around to the building’s rear door instead. His eyes scanned the area. He preferred not to walk into another ambush.
He found Artur in the workroom, a large stark office with desks and fluorescent lights where Artur’s employees wrote orders that Vlad and others filled.
For the past few months, Vlad’s work had consisted mainly of delivering imported empty vases, garish canvases, and gaudy light fixtures—all at a very high markup—to Artur and Victor’s wealthy Russian clients all over Brighton and Manhattan Beach. Determined to ferret out Artur’s secrets, Vlad paid close attention, watched who came and who went, who bought and who sold, who was a player and who a mere nuisance.
He couldn’t make out a pattern yet, couldn’t see the larger enterprise, didn’t have the knowledge he needed to take over. Artur carefully controlled the flow of information. While he had been including Vlad in more meetings lately, Vlad sensed he still stood on the outside looking in—with the most limited of views.
Artur withheld his trust. Smart man.
Artur paced back and forth between the tables. He held a bulky envelope in his hands. When he saw Vlad, he tossed the package at him.
“What’s this?”
“Your money,” Artur said flatly.
“For what?” Vlad wondered if this was the payment for all of his work and now he was being dismissed.
“The hit you did for Ivan.” Artur’s words were carefully modulated. Vlad admired Artur’s self-control. If he hadn’t seen the man’s pacing, he’d never have suspected the depth of his agitation.
“What hit? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play stupid with me. Four men walked into an alley, and one came out. Sound familiar?”
Vlad almost chuckled. The situation was so messed up it was almost funny. The father he hadn’t seen in years had most likely sent men after Vlad with orders to kill. Now that Vlad had prevailed, Ivan made a show of sending money, as if the shots in the dark had been agreed to and contracted beforehand. Clearly Ivan wanted people, his business partner in particular, to know that Vlad had successfully and intentionally committed murder. Why?
“He’s very pleased with you, by the way.”
“Ask me if I care.” The burn of anger in the back of Vlad’s throat lent acid to his words.
“You should care. He’s a very powerful man—even in prison. You handled a problem for him. Quietly. Discreetly. He thinks you’ll make an excellent addition to his bratva.”
Artur’s mildness didn’t fool Vlad. He detected the challenge in the man’s words.
“I didn’t come to New York to work for Ivan.”
Artur continued as if Vlad hadn’t spoken. “Go if you want. No hard feelings. Go play tough guy for Ivan. He thinks you have the makings of a brigadier, a full-fledged member of the Vory. Isn’t that what you want?”
“No.” Vlad didn’t want to be a Thief in Law like Ivan. Nor did he aspire to be his father’s underling and certainly not his contract killer. His ambitions reached so much higher than that. He planned to take his father’s place, to usurp him and Artur both as the leader of their operation.
“Don’t lie to me. You think I don’t know why you’re here? What you want?”
How much did Artur know or suspect? The fear that he had been exposed rippled through him, drew a cold bead of sweat down his back, made his breaths quicken.
Vlad ruthlessly quashed the fear. Weakness like that would only give him away.
Artur couldn’t possibly know the full truth. Vlad forced himself to breathe slowly, through his nose. “It’s the truth. I don’t want to work for Ivan.”
“But you want his power,” Artur surmised. “To be a big man like him.”
Vlad saw no need to deny it. “Yes.”
In a swift move, Artur grabbed Vlad by the tie and yanked, as if he held Vlad in a noose. With surprising strength, he pulled Vlad, taller and larger, down toward him until their eyes met. “Then listen very closely.”
Vlad gulped against the tightening knot.
“Last night, you were working for me. But instead, I hear you were out playing hired killer for your father.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“I’m not interested in your excuses.” Artur jerked the tie and cinched it tighter around Vlad’s neck.
After months of watching a gentleman with an almost placid demeanor, Vlad had finally caught a glimpse of the true man beneath the thick veneer of respectability, the mob boss who had brought the worst of thugs, including Vlad’s own father, to heel.
Though strong and agile, Artur was also older and smaller than Vlad. There could be no doubt as to who would win a physical contest. Assuming Artur played fair.
Men didn’t achieve Artur’s reputation—or Ivan’s respect—by playing fair.
“Understand what it means if you stay. You work for me. You answer to me. Me. Not Ivan. Not Victor. Me!” Artur’s dark eyes glittered with emotion. Vlad imagined he detected a yearning that belied the tough-guy diatribe.
“You do what I tell you. If you cross me, I will cut you where you stand. I don’t care whose son you are.” Artur wound his hand in the tie, tightened the chokehold. “Your first loyalty is to me. Ti ponymayesh?” Do you understand?
Vlad managed a nod. He could feel his face reddening with the effort of drawing the barest breath. Still, he didn’t fight back.
“The only thing that matters … is keeping Inna safe.”
Vlad had fully expected to have his loyalty questioned at any point as he attempted to infiltrate Artur’s operation. He had expected challenges and tests at every turn. He had expected to be pushed to dirty his hands with tasks akin to the hit Ivan had supposedly commissioned.
Yet protecting Inna was not an assignment Vlad had ever in his wildest dreams anticipated, especially when Artur had seemed so set on keeping him away from her.
“You want power? You’ll have it. You want money. I’ll pay you. I’ll bathe you in money.” Artur released Vlad and pushed him away as if disgusted. “You can have whatever you want. Whatever I have. Name your price. I don’t care. None of it means anything.” He raked his hands through his silver hair. “Just help me keep her safe.”
There was a pleading in the man’s tone, a desperation. Vlad realized suddenly that he had the upper hand. Artur was a man on the edge. He needed Vlad.
A father’s love. Who knew that admirable trait would provide the vulnerability Vlad could leverage to gain control? His own father had tried to kill him, as recently as last night.
After all of his months of scheming and watching, Vlad had won. Artur was hand
ing him exactly what he wanted. His trust.
So why didn’t it feel like a victory?
INNA
AFTER DETECTIVE HERSH left, Inna sat at her kitchen table, head in her hands. She felt lost. She wished again that she could speak with Dr. Shiffman.
What would Dr. Shiffman have advised her? She imagined she sat again in the soft chair in the doctor’s office, describing the terrible thing that had happened and the anxiety she felt now.
She easily conjured her doctor sitting across from her, yellow notepad on her lap. “You have to make a choice,” the doctor would tell her, had told her.
Inna had chosen life. She had chosen to jump in and stop letting everything pass her by. She had chosen to be a full participant, not a shadow.
This was a setback. That was all. She had conquered the other fears, the other trauma. She would conquer this one, too.
She decided to reach for normalcy. Small steps. She would go to work.
In moments she was outside in the cold, brisk air. The sky was gray, the air heavy with an impending storm. Anxiety stole her confidence. She turned up a narrow side street that led to the main drag of Brighton Beach Avenue and caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of a man behind her.
Inna quickened her steps, tossed a quick glance over her shoulder as she hurried down the busy street. She saw no menacing stalker following behind her, only an old grandma, babushka tied around her chin, pulling an empty cart for groceries.
It was early still, a good hour before most businesses opened their doors to welcome the Sunday hustle and bustle of Brighton Beach Avenue and the voracious appetites of its varied immigrant community. Junk and pawn shops stood beside expensive jewelers, rag shops beside the furriers, all with their windows barred, a reminder that Brooklyn’s Little Odessa was not truly safe.
The small coffee joints, bakeries, and aptekas—the Russian pharmacies—with signs lettered in both English and Cyrillic already did brisk business. Their storefronts cast a deceivingly warm light, a false invitation to comfort and security.
Inna’s heart pounded erratically, fast and skipping and then doubling beats. She dodged and darted past the shoppers, frustrated by the way their steady march and window-shopping slowed her. They seemed to pay her no mind as they stalled and blocked her, shuffling along the sidewalk and pulling their wool coats and jackets tighter around them to ward off the salty cold.
The ocean wind whipped their hair and screamed of the coming storm, one Inna felt stalked immediately behind her, the danger near at hand. She paused at the crosswalk in front of a blinking neon sign for a psychic. She didn’t need a tarot reading to know she was in danger. She felt the predatory eyes on her, sensed her pursuer closing in. But who would be following her? And why?
She hadn’t caught a full glimpse of anyone behind her and couldn’t identify the shadowy figure she felt certain had tailed her since leaving her apartment. She worried she was falling prey to paranoia. Her own fear chilled her, leached through her bones the way the coldest wind never could.
She supposed she could stop and confront the shadow that she suspected was creeping along behind her, if indeed he would stop hiding and show himself. Or perhaps he didn’t really exist.
She was too afraid to stop and investigate.
The pedestrian light blinked an orange hand, but she plowed into the crosswalk, desperate to get to her family’s import-export business. To safety. To normalcy. Three more blocks.
Above her, a monstrous subway car roared over the tracks, casting dark shadows around her. It belched and gasped to a stop inside the station. The sound rang in her ears, made her dizzy. Here in the middle of Brighton Beach Avenue, in the familiar heart of Little Odessa, where she had lived most of her life, she had a strange sense of disorientation, as if she were moving through a nightmare, as if all of the usual smells and sights and sounds had taken on a blurry and sinister quality.
A car screeched to a halt mere inches from her hip. The driver blared the horn and shouted at her in Russian. “Chto ti delayesh?” What are you doing? “Watch where you’re going.”
She paused and blinked stupidly at him. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a flash of black, but she didn’t turn to look, didn’t pause. Keep moving. She broke into a run. A cold sweat dripped down her back inside her sweater.
She ran the rest of the way across the street, jumped nimbly over the sour puddle running toward the sewer from the grocer’s stall. Her breath came fast and shallow, and she couldn’t swallow enough air.
Fear squeezed the air from her lungs, made her short of breath, made her throat and chest burn with raw cold.
She powered through the discomfort. She measured her momentum with the quick, steady tap of her heels, her steps regular as the beat of a metronome despite the unevenness of her pulse and her shortness of breath. She caught sight of the black and gold awning that signaled safety—Koslovsky Imports—and sprinted to the storefront with a burst of speed.
She wrenched the door open and pressed herself against the wall beside it, struggled to catch her breath as she both hid and surveyed the street. There! There he was! A tall, dark man in a black trench coat swiveled his head side to side as he searched the street.
Inna’s breath came in sparing gasps. Not paranoid. Not paranoid.
His gaze paused on the glass of her door. She doubted he could see her pressed against the wall, but he smiled menacingly in her direction as if he knew she was watching. He tipped his fingers at her in a salute.
A hand clamped down on her shoulder, and she jumped with a shriek.
“What’s wrong?”
She whirled around. Vlad. Scowling and far too imposing. Too muscled. Too big.
She clutched at her chest, but she had no power to calm her unsteady heartbeat, no control over her racing pulse or thoughts. Instinctively, she shrank from him, backed away, pressed herself tighter against the wall.
“Inna? Devushka, chto takoe?” Her father hurried to her side, asked her what was wrong.
She pointed toward the street, toward the man outside. She fought to breathe, to speak. “Followed,” she managed. “I’m being followed.”
Wait! The sidewalk where he had stood only moments ago was empty. Where had he gone? Her body shook, but with a chill that had nothing to do with the sudden cold snap.
Vlad muscled past her and raced into the street. He jogged in the direction she had pointed, stopped and peered into the alleyways.
“Tixo.” Quiet. Her father pulled her against his side and stroked her hair as he studied the street outside the shop window.
She sank against him and rubbed at her tired eyes. With dismay, she watched Vlad circle back, jog in the opposite direction. Moments later, he returned to Inna and her father, grey eyes fierce and alert. His features were chiseled and hard.
“I didn’t see anyone suspicious,” he said as he came through the door on a blast of bitter wind. If the chill in the air had touched him, he showed no sign, no telltale shiver. He reminded her of a rock wall, an impenetrable slab.
Once she had been on the other side of that wall. She remembered the gentle boy who had accepted her scribbled drawings like they were great gifts, who had hung on her words as if they were important, even though she was only a child and he had stood on the cusp of adulthood. There was no trace of that boy now.
She inched closer to her father, who gazed down at her with increasing concern. He scrubbed his hand over his face, over the high, angular cheekbones, and pinched his chin, the way he did when truly distressed.
“I’m not paranoid!” she protested.
“No, you’re not.” Her father’s agreement gave her a token of reassurance but didn’t stay the anxiety nipping at her.
“Maybe she saw Mikhail.” Vlad positioned himself near the wall by the window, as she had before, and surveyed the street.
“Why would I have seen Mikhail?”
“I asked him to guard you,” her father said.
Her chest tightened. She supposed she should be grateful for the protection after her attack. Yet somehow she didn’t feel any safer. Despite his good looks and the ease with which he charmed their customers, there was something cold and calculating in Mikhail’s gaze, as if an essential spark were missing.
“I don’t want you to worry.” Her father took her hand. Only when he started to chafe it between his did she realize she had been fluttering her fingers in agitation. “But we can’t be too careful. Someone hurt you,” his voice cracked, “and murdered a man at Troika.”
Maybe normalcy was out of her reach. A true threat couldn’t be overcome by deep breathing exercises and a commitment to forward momentum.
“So you assigned Mikhail to be my bodyguard,” she finished before he felt compelled to provide more detail. “And are hoping I mistook him for a stalker.”
When they both regarded her silently, she said, “It wasn’t Mikhail.”
“Tell me what you saw,” Vlad demanded, eyes still trained on the street.
When she described the man in the trench coat, Vlad and her father looked at each other and seemed to communicate without speaking. She didn’t fully understand the secret message, but she didn’t need to be a genius to intercept the meaning: Something was very wrong.
“I never saw Mikhail. Where is he?”
Vlad’s voice was a low growl. “Good question.”
MIKHAIL
“SHE’S NOT ALONE,” Vitaliy said. “Vlad and her father are there.”
Mikhail was a block away from Koslovsky Imports and running hard. He held his cell phone to his ear and cursed viciously. No one was supposed to be at Koslovsky Imports this morning. Inna was supposed to make a narrow escape and then be waiting alone for Mikhail, afraid and needing his protection.
“Tell me what they’re doing now.”
“Vlad’s standing near the window keeping watch,” Vitaliy said. “Artur’s with them. It looks like she’s telling them about her big bad wolf. I spooked her good.”
Kings of Brighton Beach Bundle Page 16