by SR Jones
“You know a lot about them,” Stamatis observes. “Do they have verbal diarrhea as well as being very bad men?”
“I’ve worked in counterintelligence for years, and I still report back to certain governmental parties who, while not supporting or condoning my private activities, are very grateful for the information given to them and therefore turn a blind eye.”
“You report on your own clients?” Andrius barks out a harsh laugh. “You’re a piece of shit.”
“Yes, maybe, but I am a piece of shit who can give you men the information you need to take down the leaders of this little cabal. You take the Albanians out at the head of this, and those from Ukraine and the Kosovans, then the South American arm won’t be able to do what it wants, and the African groups will fall back into disarray. You don’t need the whole snake, you only need the head, and I can give it to you.”
“Leave us,” Stamatis states. “Go and wait outside, and remember there are armed men outside this door, so don’t think about doing anything.”
He does as we ask, struggling to get the door handle turned with his cuffed hands but eventually managing it when none of us help. The moment he’s gone the room erupts.
“Shut the fuck up,” a quiet, but firm voice says, and we do. Andrius shakes his head. “Okay, let me speak for a moment. I believe him. We already knew some Albanian mobsters were gunning for us, we just didn’t know who. He has’s got no reason to lie. If he’s dying, and we can verify as much, why would he? I’ve already decided that I’m going to take these motherfuckers out, and I’ll need help doing it. It’s not going to stop me from building what I want here, but in the meantime, I’m going to find out where every single one of these bastards at the head of this Starz Allianz bullshit are, and I’m ending them. Damen, you could work on the intel for me, if Stamatis will let you because it will take most of your time. Stamatis, you can start to pull strings, use some of your not inconsiderable power to start closing down bank accounts, blocking shipping lanes, etcetera.”
He glances at me and Ilya. “You two can go back to what you were doing before, and keep it up, or you can join me on this.”
“Oh?” I ask. “So, you’re not killing Zoey?”
“Not today,” he replies.
“Fuck you,” I say.
He ignores me and carries on. “Bohdan, are you in with me? You still will be based here, and we’ll keep going ahead with the renovations and the recruiting for what we’re building here, but in the meantime, Damen gets us a name and location, we go like fucking thieves in the night and take out that name.”
“Of course,” Bohdan says, but he doesn’t sound enthusiastic to me.
I think he’s gone soft.
“I’m in,” Alexei says. He looks to me. “I’m still working for you, boss, but the way I see it, if these fuckers are coming after all of us, then we’ve got to go after them first. I can be based with you in Moscow, but if something comes up, I’ll leave for a few days. I think you are not going to be taking weeks on a hit, no?” he asks Andrius.
“No, it’s exactly as you envisage it. Surgical.”
“Families too?” K asks from the screen Andrius is still holding up.
“Doubt many of them have families,” Damen adds. “If their sole aim it to set up people trafficking networks, my guess is they are young and have brothels where they operate with an endless supply of women coming out of their ears, many of whom will have been forced. I know a little about the crew in France that Monty mentioned. Their leader, Elio, he has a different woman every night. He picks them up in the clubs and bars in Paris and takes them home where he fucks them so hard that the rumor is some of those women have ended up needing medical care after. Not one pressed charges. They all said it was consensual, rough sex that got out of hand. He’s super paranoid. Always has six armed men with him, except for when he takes a shit and when he fucks. He has no fucking morals, no class, and no family.”
He pulls something up on his phone and shows it to the room, swiping across. It looks like surveillance photos of the leader of the Albanian gang operating in France. He’s with a different woman in each one. The dark-haired women all look similar. Tanned, skinny, and haunted.
“They take the women from their country of origin, set up gangs in new countries, and traffic those women over borders without a care in the damn world,” Andrius says. “I’ve seen it before. A country collapses, and the traffickers move in. What Monty said is correct. Those involved in this aren’t the big, old-fashioned crime families of the past. These are young guys with loose connections, and they have no loyalty to a family structure, a brotherhood or the women of their own nation. They have only a need for money, power, and pussy, and they don’t give a shit who they hurt to get it.”
“Fucking globalization. It’s even changed the crime world,” Ilya mutters.
“Okay, I’m pronouncing this meeting over because if I don’t get some pain meds in a moment, I’m going to shoot a nurse.” K hangs up.
The other guys drift out of the house, most of them in a tight group talking to one another. Where do I fit? Do I go back to Moscow and help Andrius and the Greeks if they find a target the way Alexei says he will? Do I take Zoey with me? If I leave her, where will she go? I expect Reece could get her into witness protection, but that would mean I’d never see her again, and I’ll never know where she is or how she is doing. The idea leaves a hole in me.
For the first time in many years, I don’t know what I want, and it’s unsettling.
Chapter Twenty
Zoey
I’m as lost as I’ve ever been. The meeting breaks up, and the men head out of the house, talking in Greek and Russian. Bohdan passes by me and shoots me a disgusted glance.
Vasily says something to his friend in Russian, and Bohdan gives him the finger and walks on by. I can see the hurt in Vasily’s face. His friends are rejecting him, pushing him out because of me. These men, they are his family, and now they’re done with him.
Andrius said Vasily could be a part of this, but the way he said so, the tone, indicated he’d much rather Vasily simply stay in Moscow and stay out of the way.
Would Vasily want me there? Me and Esme? I can’t do that. I can’t go and be some crime lord’s moll. I refuse to put Esme on that path in life. Plus, I don’t want to live in Russia. I don’t speak the language, and I hate the cold.
If Vasily goes home, though, it leaves me in a very vulnerable position. I ought to talk to Reece and see if he can help me speak to the British authorities but the thing is, if I get offered witness protection, they’ll expect me to talk, and not only about Monty and the Order, but about these guys too.
I’m screwed. All that’s around me is danger. These men are going on a mission to take out all those gathering against them. Would that include me?
I wish there were a way I could wipe the slate clean. At the beginning of all this, all those days ago, I offered to let them kill me so long as they kept Esme safe. Perhaps I could make the same offer again?
Could I simply take Esme and disappear and hope for the best? No, I’d be waiting every night for the silent footsteps of Andrius to enter my room before he lifted his weapon and shot me. Cold but quick.
The way I shot Number One… God, I can’t believe I did that. Maybe I’m not so different from these men after all? Maybe there’s a bit of the avenging angel within me?
Then it hits me. Oh. My. God.
There is a way. A way I can atone for my sins. A way I can make this right.
I need to talk to Andrius.
I need to do it without letting Vasily know.
The time ticks by, and I am so on edge. On edge because I can’t wait for my baby to be here, and I’m terrified something will get in the way of that. On edge too because I need to talk with Andrius, and I don’t know how he’ll take what I’m going to propose.
About an hour later, Vasily tells me he’s going to talk with Stamatis, and I take my chance. Just walking over to And
rius’ house is a recipe for being shot, but I pull my big girl pants up and do it.
When I reach the gate, an armed guard levels a gun calmly at me while another one phones up to the house. Five minutes later, Andrius comes jogging down the drive, and he stares at me in disbelief as he nears.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”
“Because I have a proposition, and I think you’re going to want to hear it.”
“There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear. I got your letter today, by the way. It explains things, but it doesn’t make them right in my mind. Go back to Vasily. He’s the only thing keeping you alive.”
He turns and walks away from me. I thought he’d have seen my letter and understood. It seems Andrius isn’t as reasonable as I thought. I still need him to listen to me, so I blurt it out.
“I can get to Elio. I could do to him what I couldn’t do to Konstantin.”
I wait, mouth dry as he stops and slowly turns back. “What makes you think you can get to him?”
Not, what makes you think you can do it. Interesting.
“I saw the pictures of him with those women that Damen showed around. I look like those girls. Give me some fake tan and a lot of make-up, and I could be one of those girls. Put me in his path in Paris, and I bet I could get him to take me back for a fuck. He leaves his guards outside while he screws, right? Once I’m in there with him, I can kill him and leave.”
He walks to the gate, slowly, powerfully, like a big predatory beast. “How would you kill him? Can’t shoot him. The guards would be in there in two seconds flat, and you’d be dead. You’re hardly strong enough to kill him with your bare hands. There’s no way you can do it.”
“Vasily told me that Alexei is a maestro with a knife. If he trains me, teaches me, I could use a knife. If we’re in bed, and he’s undressed, it won’t be hard. So long as Alexei shows me how to do maximum damage with the first cut, I think I can do it.”
He comes closer and curls his fingers around the iron of the fence, lowering his voice. “Gutting someone is hard. It’s messy. Scary. It’s nothing like shooting someone which, let me remind you, you couldn’t do.”
“Not K because I like him. I shot one of the men who made me shoot K. I know it will be personal, up close, but he’s a horrible human being who is regularly beating and raping women. I honestly think so long as I keep that front and center, and the fact he got me in this mess, then I can do it. I need training, but I can do it.”
Head cocked to one side, interested now, he regards me. “Why would you offer this?”
“Because I want my daughter back, and I want a life. I have few options. I can go live with Vasily as his wife in Moscow, but I don’t want that. I’d be nothing more than his prisoner.”
His laugh startles me. “You love him, you idiot. And he loves you. As I said to Vasily, this is not a healthy love, but you do love one another. Or, at the very least, you’re obsessed with each other.”
“Yes, we are obsessed with each other, but I won’t go there as his prisoner. I will not. So Moscow and Vasily are out. I could go into protective custody, but I’d have to be willing to turn on you guys, and I won’t. That leaves taking my chances alone with Esme, but we wouldn’t last long with how many people would be on our tails. So if I do this, I want two things. One, you guys forgive the debt I owe for what I did to K, whether I’m married to Vasily or not. Two, you let me join you.”
“Join who?”
“You, this, the thing you’re setting up. I want in. I served. I’ve killed now. You’ll need women too, you know? Some people won’t want their wives or daughters guarded by men. If I put my life on the line and do this, I think it’s only fair that I earn the right to be a part of this. An employee trained up in the first intake.”
I square my jaw and try to calm my rapid breathing.
“You have very much cheek.” He mangles the British phrase, but I don’t laugh.
Instead, I wait as he thinks.
“You kill Elio, and you will deserve to be let in so far as I’m concerned. You’d have taken a huge chunk of the head of the snake by his death, and at great risk to yourself, but I must speak with Konstantin. Ultimately, your fate lies in his hands. Know this.” He leans in closer. “If you’d pulled that shit with me, and then put a gun on Violet while she was carrying my child? You’d be dead. No mercy. No pausing. No messing around. It seems I am in a minority, though, with this, and as I say, it’s up to K. I’ll let you know.”
He turns and walks away from me once more. I watch him go. His dark hair shines in the sun, and he looks a lot younger than he is, which I guess is similar to K? Mid-thirties maybe? Living out here suits him. If I could find myself a place amongst this strange pack, could I look so healthy? Or am I deluded to ever think they’d accept me here? Maybe one day, years into the future, I’d wake up to K with a gun at my head, and he’d smile before he pulled the trigger. I must be insane thinking this is a safe place for me. Then again, unless I give up my life completely and go into hiding in protective custody, nowhere will be safe for me. I’m stuck, and some might say the best thing to do is be right in amongst the nest of vipers because at least then you know where they are.
Back at the run-down hellhole I’m staying at with Vasily and Ilya, I wait and wait. There’s a growing distance between myself and Vasily. It’s as if we both know this pretense will be over soon. It can’t survive with the disinfectant of a child’s gaze. Esme will look at Vasily and see a thug; I know it. She’ll probably fear him, and I doubt he has a paternal bone in his body. I expect that as soon as he sees me with my daughter, it will dampen down his desire for me. He’ll see me as a mum first and foremost, not his kinky Cherry Bomb.
There’s a bang at the door, and my heart starts, thinking it might be Esme, but it opens and Alexei walks Monty in.
“What?” I shriek. “He can’t be here. Esme will be arriving any moment. Get him somewhere else.”
“Where?” Alexei asks. “They have done with him, for now, they say. He can hardly go to a hotel.”
Too damn late.
A sleek car pulls up outside the still-open front door, and the moment I’ve been waiting for turns into a shit show. The back door opens, and Esme comes running out full barrel at me. I catch her as she throws herself into my arms.
Oh God, the scent of her, so familiar.
I can’t help myself as a sob breaks free from my throat as I crush her to me, crying into her hair.
She pulls back and looks at me with concern. “Are you okay, Mummy?”
“Yes, darling,” I reply, and try to pull myself together. “I’ve missed you a lot, that’s all.”
She looks past me, and her face pales.
I turn to see what she’s taking in, and there’s Ilya, big and glowering with a tight t-shirt stretched across his ridiculously wide frame. Then Alexei. Tall, dark hair, dark eyes, all intense. And finally… Vasily. He’s wearing a wife beater, faded jeans, work boots and his muscles are covered in ink. They all look terrifying.
I glance back at Esme about to speak when she looks beyond the three men, and her face lights up. “Uncle Monty!”
She rushes past me and to my nemesis and … hugs him. She hugs him. My gaze flicks to Vasily who is watching this with something unreadable in his expression.
Monty can’t hug her back, thank God, because he’s wearing cuffs, but the next moment, Esme realizes this, and the panic is back on her face. “Are you in trouble, Uncle Monty? Are these men the police?”
Crap.
Vasily moves from the counter, and walks to Monty, all relaxed and smiling. “No, we’re not the police, Esme, and Uncle Monty is not in trouble. It was a dare. I bet him he couldn’t get out of these cuffs, and he bet me he could. I won.”
He takes the key out of his pocket and undoes Monty’s cuffs. “There you go,” he says.
“Why do you have handcuffs if you’re not a policeman?” Esme asks. That’s my daughte
r, smart as a whip. She’s also insatiably curious, nerdy, and a bit different. She’s always gone her own way, burnt her own path in life.
“I erm, I used to be a soldier.” Vasily shrugs. “These are from those days.”
“Did you fight in wars?” Esme’s eyes go round.
She’s also a tomboy. She has very few dolls, but loves nature, horses, and anything to do with guns, which has always disturbed me. She watched an old Western when she was about six, and I caught her reenacting being shot and dying so many times afterward. Then she saw an old war film, and that was it. She wants to be a soldier, or a famous show jumper; she hasn’t decided which yet.
“Yes, I did.” Vasily hunkers down to her level and smiles at her. I find myself holding my breath. “Not for long, though. I got hurt, and I had to leave the Army.”
“Are you still hurt?”
“No, but it means I can’t do that job anymore.”
“What job do you do now?”
“Hey, Esme,” I call out to distract her from the uncomfortable questions. “You haven’t seen me in months; come and give me another hug.”
“Sorry, Mummy.” She comes and wraps her arms around my legs as I hug her to me.
Reece walks into the room, and with him strides is an astonishingly handsome man. In a room full of striking men, he stands out because he’s not good looking in the hard way of Vasily, or the sleazy, to my mind, way of Ilya, but he’s straight drop-dead gorgeous. Pretty almost.
“Luka,” Vasily says. “Welcome, man. How you doing?”
“Better than you, I hear.” Luka laughs.
They start to banter, but I tune them out. I need some time with my daughter. I’m also achingly aware that Monty has no cuffs on him, and if he wanted to destroy me, he could do something to Esme maybe before any of us could stop him.