Kings of Brighton Beach Bundle

by D. B. Shuster

  Inna jabbed her captor with her elbow. She kicked and flailed. The man couldn’t fight them both, and she wrestled herself free.

  “Run!” Nick yelled.

  The kidnapper fired in his direction, but missed. The car window behind Nick shattered.

  Nick clamped his hand even tighter around the gun, determined to keep the man from taking aim again.

  Inna didn’t run. She came into close range.

  “Run!” he shouted at her again. But she didn’t run.

  She screamed for help that didn’t come and added her hands to the fight for the gun. Nick’s heart pounded with fear for her.

  The kidnapper kicked at Inna. She grunted with pain but only tried harder to wrench the gun free.

  Nick refused to suffer another loss on Artur’s doorstep. He squeezed his forearm against the kidnapper’s throat, ready to snap his spinal column or cut off his air supply. Ready to kill with his bare hands.

  Drizzled rain poked like little needles onto his back and shoulders as they struggled with the kidnapper to gain control of the gun. He could feel the muscles in the man’s throat straining against his forearm as he squeezed. Their hands were slick from the rain, and the assailant’s grip was weakening. Still, the bastard clung to his pistol.

  Inna kneed the kidnapper in the groin. The man’s body folded as he curled inward from the blow with Nick still on his back.

  He had his first glimmer of hope. The bad guy was going down. They’d get the gun. Inna would be safe.

  There was a loud pop as the gun fired unexpectedly. Pain exploded in Nick’s shoulder. Inna screamed his name.

  Another set of hands grabbed him. Ripped him from the kidnapper’s back. Threw him to the ground. The impact as his head hit the wet cement blinded him with pain.

  “Nick!” Inna screamed. Her terror sliced him to the bone. He had to do something. He had to save her. He struggled to get up, and the world went black.

  VLAD

  THE STUN GUN hadn’t dampened Vlad’s awareness. His body rioted with pain that dissipated slowly. He heard the gunshots in the shop and the threats designed to gain Inna’s compliance.

  Vlad couldn’t control his muscles enough to crane his neck so that he could see Inna, but he heard the thunk of her gun as she placed it on the counter and the soft sound of her footsteps. She walked straight into the arms of a kidnapper to save him.

  Get up. Get up! Don’t let him hurt her.

  Vlad struggled to gain his feet and failed. The shock from the stun gun had scrambled his muscle control. He couldn’t make his hands and legs move.

  “Be a good girl. That’s right,” the kidnapper said.

  Vlad raged against his own helplessness. Time seemed to warp, and he was back in another scene, twenty years ago, the past and the present in an eerie sympathy with one another.

  “Be a good girl, Nadia. Tell me,” Ivan said, voice low and threatening. When she didn’t answer immediately, he backed her up against the wall, the steps to their passionate dance familiar and achingly wrong.

  No matter how many times Ivan hurt her and Vlad or how many months passed, she always took him back, inviting him into the apartment, into her arms, into her bed.

  Vlad hated Ivan.

  Ivan’s bare arms caged her. Dark tattoos of daggers and crosses flexed as he leaned in close. “Who was he? Who was that man you were talking to?”

  “No one. He was no one,” Nadia said quietly.

  Maybe she thought she could placate Ivan, but Vlad knew better. He had seen the devil in his father’s eyes tonight and caught the unmistakable scent of liquor on his breath, long before Ivan had starting pouring shots for himself from the bottle on the table.

  “Leave her alone.” Vlad’s voice started with the power of a man’s and ended with the sound of a squeaky child’s. Ivan didn’t even spare him a glance.

  “Who was he?” Ivan grabbed Nadia by the shoulders and shook her hard. “Tell me. Tell me!” When she didn’t answer, Ivan smacked her across the cheek.

  Vlad felt the blow in his own body. “Get your hands off of her!”

  He charged Ivan. He threw himself against his father with all of his strength.

  Ivan flicked him off as if the whole of his weight and anger were a mere nuisance. With the barest flex of his arm, Ivan threw him flying across the small room.

  Vlad landed hard on his back and jumped to his feet.

  “I’m sorry,” Nadia sobbed. Was she apologizing for herself or for Vlad? She cowered against the wall, arms raised in a hopeless attempt to fend Ivan off.

  “I’ll make you sorry.” Ivan rained blows on her small body. “You talk to no one. No other man. Only me. Only me!”

  “Leave her alone!” Vlad was going to make the bastard stop, make him pay. He looked around for something—anything—harder than his fists.

  “Say it!” Ivan demanded, ignoring him.

  “Only you,” she choked.

  He grabbed a wooden chair and rushed Ivan.

  “Vlad, no!” Nadia pleaded. Pleaded with him, not with his abusive old man. “He’ll kill you!”

  He couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. They’d suffered too much at Ivan’s hands. Tonight, it would end one way or another.

  He swung the chair with all his might and landed a blow that only made Ivan grunt.

  Not hard enough. Not strong enough.

  With one hand, Ivan snapped the leg off of the chair and swung. Vlad ducked and blocked the blows with the chair until Ivan cracked the leg against his knuckles and wrested the broken chair out of his grip.

  Ivan pounded him hard with the chair leg. He slammed it against Vlad’s legs and knocked him off balance.

  “You worthless weakling.” Ivan hit him on all sides with the stick, until he couldn’t stand, until he could hardly breathe for the pain in his ribs. Ivan smacked him hard across the head. The chair leg broke in Ivan’s hand.

  “Hard-headed like me.” He heard Ivan laugh. His father’s voice sounded far away. “Get this lesson through your hard head. When you take on the Devil, be sure you can win.”

  Unconsciousness beckoned. Vlad refused to close his eyes and give in.

  “Please, Ivan. Leave him alone,” Nadia begged.

  “I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you from me. Even your son.” Ivan kicked him in the side with his steel-toe boot.

  “I love you, Ivan. Only you.”

  “That’s right. Tell him he’s nothing.” Ivan crossed the room, returning to Nadia in a matter of steps, like loud drumbeats. “You’re mine. You’ll always be mine. Only mine. Say it!”

  He couldn’t let Ivan hurt his mother. Tonight, between the alcohol and the jealousy, Ivan might kill her, especially if Ivan learned the man she’d gone to see was a detective with the Brooklyn police.

  He rolled onto his stomach. Each breath was agony. He panted with the effort to draw his knees beneath him.

  He crawled closer to the table. Wincing with pain, he reached for the coffee table to lever himself up.

  His hand encountered the vodka bottle, lying on its side. He closed his fist around the cool glass and cracked it against the table. The end broke away, leaving a jagged weapon in his hand.

  Using the coffee table for support, Vlad struggled to push himself up. Half-blind with pain and desperation, he commanded his limbs into position, told them to stand.

  They refused to obey. The salty taste of blood filled his mouth.

  Nadia shrieked as Ivan grabbed her by the arms and shook her. The sound of her suffering tapped some reserve deep inside of Vlad.

  Then, as now, Vlad climbed to his feet.

  He heard a single shot and staggered to the door, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. Please don’t let her be hurt. Please don’t let it be too late.

  “Nick!” Inna yelled, as if in answer to his prayer. She was alive.

  Vlad’s vision sharpened. Through the glass, he saw the two intruders forcing her into the back of the delivery truck. He reached for one of hi
s guns.

  Though the move should have been smooth after so many years of practice, his disorientation made him falter. He pulled the gun from its holster with a jerky motion. A wave of dizziness threatened to take him down again.

  He balanced himself against the wall, borrowing its steadiness as he opened the door. The overhead bell tinkled, but the kidnappers, intent on forcing Inna into the truck, didn’t seem to notice.

  He pointed at his target but took a long, deep breath before squeezing the trigger. He hadn’t recovered yet from the scramble to his senses. He couldn’t afford to miss and hit Inna.

  He couldn’t let those men take her either.

  ARTUR

  VICTOR WAS WAITING in their driveway when Artur returned home with Maya. Judging by the pile of butts at his feet, he had been here a while, leaning on the hood of his car and chain smoking. Artur braced himself for bad news.

  Victor didn’t say a word. He’d given a surly nod to Maya and then closeted himself with Artur in the study. Artur watched his friend pace back and forth over the silk Oriental.

  “What is it, Victor?” he prodded. The sooner he got rid of Victor, the sooner he could attend to his own business. He had told Vlad he would return to Koslovsky Imports within the hour, and he still had several more arrangements to make.

  Victor checked his watch and frowned. Was he stalling? Or was he in a hurry?

  “I met with the messenger,” Victor said.

  By “messenger,” Victor no doubt meant the emissary from the Directorate, although Artur wouldn’t have risked the assumption that their bosses had sent a mere errand boy to oversee the latest operation. There was far too much at stake if their dealings were exposed—a fact Artur was counting on.

  The Directorate was full of clever men. Someone else had surely seen the vulnerability in this newest operation and sought to contain it.

  “He doesn’t want any trouble with the Georgians.”

  “Too late for that,” Artur said. “Did he also say he wanted world peace and an end to global warming? Do I look like a miracle worker?”

  “You don’t have to go after them.”

  “What do you think this is, Victor? A meeting of the Politburo? How do you think things work in Brighton Beach?”

  “There are bigger things to consider than your dispute.”

  “My dispute?” Artur snorted with disgust. He had humored Victor’s stubborn naivete long enough. The man’s deliberate tone deafness was fast becoming a liability. Victor insisted on clinging to the old rules, despite living in a new country and with a new world order. He refused to understand that power didn’t flow the same way without a government monopoly or that his rank in a secret government organization wasn’t enough to make people revere him the way they had in the former Soviet police state.

  Artur rose. He braced his hands on his desk and leaned, looking down at Victor, his supposed superior in the Directorate.

  “Listen to me, Victor. There is only one rule here. One rule that matters: If anyone strikes at you, you strike back twice as hard. That’s how you get power. That’s how you keep it.”

  “What are you saying? You’re declaring war on them?”

  By “them” Victor undoubtedly meant the Georgians, but Artur had other potential targets. The Directorate for one. His own son for another.

  “They declared war when they tried to hurt Inna. They tried to kidnap her this morning.”

  “This morning?” Victor asked, surprised. “Are you sure it was the Georgians?”

  No, he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t like the list of suspect parties he was accumulating. He would unravel this whole mess, the overlapping plots he sensed at work, and soon. In the meantime, he was taking precautions and calling in reinforcements.

  His old partner, Ivan, understood everything that Victor didn’t, and Artur was ready to cash in his chips for the vor’s assistance. He knew with total certainty that he wouldn’t have to ask twice. He need only say the word and the bonds of loyalty would launch Ivan into action, marshaling fire power and feet on the ground even from his prison cell.

  “If the Georgians didn’t do this, they’ll do something else,” Artur said. “They think they’ve been wronged, and they won’t rest until they feel they’ve been avenged.”

  “They’re not the biggest threat here,” Victor said. “What do you think the Directorate will do if you won’t follow orders?”

  “What exactly were the orders?” he asked, but he already knew. He’d missed the meeting with the Directorate’s new representative, but he had accessed the recordings of Victor and Gennady’s conversations at Secretnaya Banya, the exclusive Russian bathhouse that was supposedly a safe haven for conducting sensitive business.

  “You can’t do anything to call attention to us or jeopardize the deal,” Victor said.

  “The fucking deal. You think it’s not already in jeopardy? You think the Georgians are going to go on with business as usual now that their man’s been killed? Let’s not forget he was an undercover cop. You think the cops aren’t paying attention to every move we make?”

  “Don’t rock the boat,” Victor said.

  “You live in a dream world.”

  Victor didn’t reply. He made another telltale glance at his watch. Artur had an uneasy feeling. Why did Victor keep looking at the time? Was something about to happen? What did Victor know? “I notice you keep checking your watch.”

  “Morozov is waiting for me tonight at Troika,” Victor said. “We’re meeting with the Georgians. To go finish the deal. You need to come with me. To show the Directorate we’re on top of things.”

  “No,” Artur said. “I don’t.”

  “Don’t do this to me, Artur. Don’t ignore me. They’re watching Inna,” Victor warned. “I wouldn’t want them to grab her themselves, just to prove a point.”

  “They’ll be very sorry if they try to prove that point,” Artur said.

  “Save your bravado. Remember what happened to Sofia.”

  “You think I could forget?” Artur said. The ache of his loss haunted him every day. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. He would protect Inna and wrest her free of the Directorate’s looming menace, the way he hadn’t managed with Sofia. “Don’t threaten me, Victor. I’m not the same man I was.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you can tell our bosses that when anyone strikes at me and mine, I will strike back twice as hard.”

  MAYA

  DATO’S MAN HELD Maya captive, his gun pressing into her side, while Dato advanced on Stan. Dato slashed his second knife through the air. “You’ve been a busy man. Talking to the police.”

  Stan wheezed and whined. “I’ll tell you everything I told them.”

  “Don’t bother.” Dato dug the tip of his knife into Stan’s chin and drew a large red drop of blood. “I want the truth.”

  He carved a thin line down the column of Stan’s neck on one side and then the other, as if preparing to dissect him. Blood outlined the cuts in an angry, dripping red. “Who killed Zviad? Was it you?”

  Stan’s skin had a greenish cast. Maya felt a flicker of hope as she recognized the symptom, her own plan working after all. Not long now.

  But not soon enough.

  “No. No, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.” Stan was near hysterical. Blood oozed from the knife cuts and soaked the collar of his shirt.

  “Who did?”

  Dato pulled the knife on the table from Stan’s hand and backed up a step, letting Stan believe that fingering someone else would save him.

  Stan gasped and clutched his bloody hand to his chest. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t consider that he might be killed no matter what he said. “It was Mikhail!”

  “Mikhail.” Dato repeated as if memorizing her lover’s name and marking it for violence.

  “Yes. He lured your man to the p-p-party room. P-p-promised him a pretty woman and drugs. And then shot him.”

  “Why?” Dato crossed his k
nives at Stan’s neck and marched the pharmacist to the wall. Stan’s curly hair pressed against the worn wallpaper with its faded pattern of blue roosters.

  Maya’s stomach curled into a tight knot. In his current state, Stan would surely spill the whole plot, sentencing not only Mikhail, but also Aleksei, if not herself, to a horrible death at the point of Dato’s blade.

  Stan made a strange gurgling sound. He clutched at his chest. His eyes rolled up in his head. He surrendered to the poison Maya had painted on the blackmail money and collapsed. Slumping forward, he sliced his neck on Dato’s crossed knives.

  “What a fucking mess.” Dato jumped back with a hiss as blood poured freely from Stan’s neck. Stan’s body hit the linoleum floor with a dull, sickening thud.

  No stranger to violence or even to death, Maya nonetheless shuddered. These men did not know the art of a quiet kill, and, worse, she was now at their mercy—a mercy she knew better than to expect.

  JACK

  DOUBT CLUTCHED AT Jack’s gut as he glanced nervously at the back door. Aleksei could arrive any moment. Or one of the waitresses. Or the bartender. Someone might come out for a smoke and notice Jack breaking into Aleksei’s office with a teddy bear under his arm.

  He glanced once more at Becca. She sat at his desk, busy with an assortment of pens and paper. He wished he hadn’t had to bring her with him tonight, but Lena had insisted. They didn’t have a babysitter on the weekends, and his wife had a deadline and needed the relief from Becca’s constant questions and five-year-old need for attention.

  Jack didn’t have a key to Aleksei’s private sanctuary. He took two paper clips from his pocket and unbent the metal until it was straight.

  He hoped the lock would yield as easily as the flimsy one on the bathroom at home. He’d mastered the trick of unlocking that one when Becca had accidentally locked herself in, claiming she needed “piracy.”

  Prepared to jigger the paper clips in the lock, he closed his eyes against the shame of what he was doing, or perhaps against the pain of feeling driven to it.