Despite my pain, and the disorientation, I am still paying attention, memorizing how many steps I take, listening to the sound of our footsteps echoing off the walls, and the sounds of men speaking in another room, and a television. I’m starting to get a feel for the layout now.
He leads me behind a desk, shoving me roughly to guide me. I hear a chair’s wheels squeak as he pushes the chair back. “Kneel at my feet.” When I obey, he rests his feet on my back.
He sits there, clicking away on a computer. My muscles ache, and I shift a little, which earns me a warning nudge of his foot. A couple of hours pass, and my bladder is close to bursting when he finally takes me to the bathroom. He actually leaves me alone, but I’m still wearing my blindfold and have to feel around for toilet paper.
“Lunch time,” he announces afterwards.
He leads me into a room that I can tell is large because of the way our footsteps echo, and pushes me into a chair.
A parade of footsteps thuds into the room. Other people are joining us. I instinctively cross my arms to cover my breasts. He slaps my arm, hard. “I won’t tell you more than once, Anya.”
“Yes, sir.” I don’t even try to hide the fury in my voice as I drop my arms to my sides.
A plate clatters on the table in front of me.
"You can eat with your hands,” he says.
I fumble, picking up a chicken leg, and gnaw on it.
Men with Americans accents have joined us. I hear a faint trace of Italian as well. Mafia; the Bratva do a lot of business with them. I listen very carefully, and I’m pretty sure there are three of them. Glasses clink. Silverware clatters. They make toasts, and tell jokes, and laugh. What kind of monsters are these, who are okay with a naked, blindfolded female prisoner sitting at the same table as them?
I reach down and feel around on my plate, and find a piece of bread. I stuff that in my mouth, clumsily. There are also roast potatoes. I eat every last bite, not knowing when I’ll be fed again. When I’m done, I find a napkin, and wipe my greasy fingers.
"Nice piece. Perfect tits. Is she up for grabs?" one of the Americans asks.
"Not this one, no. She's a special project." They don't know Kostya like I do. I can hear an undercurrent of anger in his voice.
I actually think he is jealous of me.
I believe that is why he killed Arkady and the gross guy who groped me. Not because they disobeyed his orders, but because they put their hands on me.
Does that mean there’s still hope? If he is jealous, he must still care. And we still have time.
Almost as if reading my mind, he yanks the leash hard, hauling me to my feet. “Gentlemen, I’ll be back shortly,” he says.
I am led back into my room. He chains me to the floor again, and allows me to remove my blindfold.
I blink at him. So handsome. He looks just like the man that I remember. I want so much for him to be the old Kostya again, even for just for a moment. "I’m not fighting you. I’ve done everything you ask. Will you sit with me and talk to me? Just for a minute or two?" I ask, keeping my voice soft and respectful.
In response, he grabs me by the hair, and pinches my right nipple so hard it brings tears to my eyes.
"You forgot to say sir.” His voice is granite, a high, hard wall shutting me out. "And I don’t talk to pieces of furniture, which is what you are. You’re a thing, not a person. We aren't friends. A true friend wouldn’t have put me in this position."
Chapter Seven
Kostya
With Anya safely locked in her room, I return to Diego and his two captains, Carmelo and Rocco.
I don’t like the look on Diego’s face; he stayed mostly silent while we ate lunch, and avoided so much as glancing at Anya. Ever since he married Donata, he’s gotten all holier than thou when it comes to trafficking women. He never tries to interfere in our business, but I can tell it makes him uncomfortable.
His opinions wouldn’t bother me normally. Maybe I’m letting Anya get under my skin, making me question what I know I have to do.
Carmelo and Rocco have no such hang-ups. They’re both still single, though.
Carmelo’s a handsome guy, until you look at the left side of his face, which was slashed with a knife years ago when he was in prison. He has a thick scar running from forehead to chin, and half his face sags slightly. Rocco, with his movie star looks and thick brown curls, has a deep hatred of women which is more than evident when he visits my women in training. I use him to punish them, sometimes. Carmelo, on the other hand, seems to use my girls as a way to avoid being truly intimate with women. He’ll come in, satisfy himself, and leave, knowing he’ll never have to see them again.
I stifle my irritation at Diego’s sour expression. “Thank you for joining me, gentlemen. Shall we head to my office?”
Aleksandr is waiting for us there, a big, bristling presence, leaning on the wall and just waiting, hoping, for the Italians to so much as twitch a finger towards their weapons.
Diego sits on a leather sofa, and he sets his briefcase down. Carmelo remains standing, and Rocco sits next to Diego.
“Drink?” I ask. I already had several drinks at lunch. In the past I’d have had one or two, to be social. But my mood is dark and calls out for the deep burn of alcohol to warm my chilled soul.
“No, I’m good, thanks,” Diego says, as he gets his laptop set up.
“Yeah, hit me. Whiskey straight up,” Carmelo says. Rocco shakes his head.
I head over to the bar, pour one for Carmelo and a double for me, and return with the drinks as Diego pulls out his laptop and sets it up.
"I always have our transactions filmed, in case there is any discrepancy. Not that I don't trust you." Diego shoots me a look.
Aleksandr makes a noise.
“Did he just growl?” Rocco asks, looking amused.
Aleksandr starts to casually stride our way. I hold my hand up, and he stops dead, his blank eyes fixing on Rocco in a deadly glare.
“Any time, princess,” Rocco sneers.
“Zip your lip.” Diego shuts him down with a scowl.
I give Aleksandr an annoyed look. “You too. Settle down. These men pose no threat to us. And if I need your help, I’ll tell you.” I lean in to look at the video of the weapons transfer. I watch Nikola and Mikhail drop off the crates and leave. Then Diego’s men open the crates and start to count them.
Sure enough, there are only 80 guns in the shipment. Someone’s made a fool of me – and nearly set off a war between us and the mafia. I do not want a war. It’s bad for business, and it will piss my stepfather off.
When I first was sent to Chicago, a couple of years ago, Diego was just the captain of a crew of street soldiers.
The Chicago boss at that time was a man named Angelo, and he had an underboss named Umberto.
Angelo, a blustering, prideful fool, wanted to start a fight over territory. Umberto was more than happy to send his street soldiers into a battle that would have been pointless and costly for both sides. Diego proved to be surprisingly good at strategy, though, and he maneuvered the situation to his advantage.
Angelo and the underboss were killed, and Diego was named the new underboss of Chicago. He works for a man named Tiberio.
Diego has been easy to work with. Keeps his word, stays in his territory, and I do the same. Unfortunately, he still answers to the higher ups, and this is the kind of thing that they will not look on kindly. Diego would at least try to negotiate; if any of his bosses had been there, we’d probably already be drawing up battle plans.
“You see what I mean,” Diego says, gesturing at the screen.
"Yes. And it will not happen again. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
I go to the room where I keep my safe. I fetch a cloth bag from my desk, open the safe, and pull out thick stacks of twenties. Sixty grand in total, which I put in the bag. Anger sizzles through me. I have been made to look like a weak, uninformed leader who can’t control his own men.
I return, and
hand the money to Diego.
“Count it,” I say. It’s a pre-emptive strike; if he pulled it out and counted it in front of me, I’d have to take that as an insult, and things are tense enough already. But since I told him to, it’s fine that he pulls out the money and checks that it’s all there.
“Thank you,” he says. "But we have another shipment scheduled a few days from now. Will this continue to be a problem?”
"I will deal with the man who did this to you. And I will personally count the weapons before they are delivered to you.”
Diego’s face is grim. “See that you do. I don’t want a fight, but this can’t happen again, Kostya. I have people that I answer to. It’s not just Tiberio, it’s the council.”
The Council of Five supervise the mafia’s operations throughout the USA, with each of them overseeing a regional territory. The man in charge of the entire Midwest is Joe Esposito, an arrogant, over-confident bully. He’s in his late sixties, and he’s been in power too long. He expects everyone to bow and scrape for him, and that just doesn’t fly with the Bratva.
“Shame it’s not you in charge,” I say. “We’d be able to settle any differences a lot easier.”
“Likewise,” Diego says. On the surface, he’s loyal to the death to his bosses. However, I can sense something underneath the surface between Diego and Tiberio – an undercurrent of anger against his boss that simmers quietly but will surely erupt some day.
From what I’ve heard from my spies, he hopes to move up in the organization, and take Tiberio’s place some day. Diego’s generally more popular, more reasonable, and most of the underlings would support him. Unfortunately, the mafia are very old-school, and obsessed with pedigree. Tiberio’s fourth generation mafia, and the council member Joe is fifth generation; the older the family, the harder they are to displace. Even if Tiberio died, they’d just replace him with someone of a similar lineage.
Diego thanks me and leaves with his men and his cash, and I shake my head at the stupidity of anyone who thinks that he can so openly fuck with the Bratva. Mikhail and Nikola are dead men.
"So you want me to take care of them personally, boss?" Aleksandr asks eagerly. There’s a man who enjoys his job a little too much.
I consider it, but oddly, an image of Anya's face flashes through my mind. I try to shake it off, but something in me hesitates at the idea of submitting them to Aleksandr's cruel attentions before I at least find out why they tried to steal from us.
"No, thanks," I say. “Just bring them to me.”
He scowls in disappointment. "Are you sure? We can't have anyone thinking they can get away with this shit. Makes us look weak."
"Dead sure," I reply. "And they’re not getting away with shit. We also need to make sure that we find out what happened, where the extra guns are, and if anyone else is involved."
He nods. "Ok, sir.”
"So just bring them back here, with a minimal amount of damage."
"Minimal. Got it."
"By minimal, I mean no visible bruising, and I want them to have all their teeth!”
Now he definitely looks disappointed, but he heads out without arguing. Aleksandr is fiercely, intensely loyal to me, even more than he’s loyal to the Bratva.
When he was in his teens, near starved and dressed in rags, I caught him trying to steal from a warehouse. He didn’t know it was a Bratva warehouse.
Any other man in our organization would have cut him to pieces. I considered it, as he faced me down fearlessly. He apologized, said that he hadn’t realized that he was stealing from the Bratva, and he knew what I would have to do to him - but he didn’t grovel. I sensed something in him, and not just because of his physical size and strength. I’m a good judge of character, and I could see potential in him. So I took a chance, and instead of killing him, I let him start working odd jobs for me. He was an orphan, who’d been raised in foster care, kicked and brutalized all his life. I was the first person who’d ever shown any faith in him.
When I finally decided to induct him into the Bratva, it was a dream come true for him. He doesn’t have friends, he doesn’t have girlfriends, he doesn’t have hobbies. He lives to serve. To prove himself. From time to time, I have to redirect him, rein him back in when his deep-seated anger threatens to rage out of control.
But most of the time, he keeps it in check. So I’m hopeful that he’ll bring the guys in with all of their parts still attached.
While I wait for him, I call around town and check in on all of my various businesses, making sure that everything is running smoothly.
I check in with Moriz, the man who will be buying Raisa, Tatiana, and Zoya. He loves virgins. He’s eager for their arrival, but I can’t risk sending girls who aren’t properly broken in. I also talk to the man known only as The Auctioneer. He’s American. He’ll be overseeing the auction where Anya and 15 other girls are to be sold, in a few weeks. There will be girls from the Cartel, and the Albanians, as well, and a couple of dozen carefully vetted buyers with fat wallets and perverted desires.
I assure him that Anya will be ready on time, and I hide the uneasiness I feel when I say that. I’m actually far from sure.
Aleksandr returns with the two men who delivered the guns, bringing them to my office. Street soldiers, all muscle and bravado – except for today. Mikhail is limping, and Nikola clutches his rib cage. I glance at Aleksandr and raise an eyebrow.
"You said no visible bruising!" he points out indignantly. "You can’t see any bruises. They’re covered by clothing.”
“Whatever.”
I fix the men with a hard stare. “Sit down,” I say, pointing at the couch where Diego and his men sat earlier. “Would you like a glass of water?”
“Yes, sir,” Mikhail bobs his head frantically, as they limp to the chairs and collapse.
I put a couple of glasses down in front of them. I pour water from a ceramic jug. Along with the water, several human fingers spill into the glasses. I collect them from traitors, and keep them in a freezer for moments like this.
Mikhail turns an interesting shade of ivory, and looks as if he might puke. Nikola lets out a stifled shriek. He is openly sobbing now, and I smell urine.
"Did you piss yourself?" I ask him with annoyance. Now I’ll have to get the fucking couch cleaned.
"Please, please, please..." he wails.
"Sir, what have we done?" Mikhail pleads.
I fix with a steely glare. "The Italians paid us, in advance, for 100 AK-47s."
"Yes, sir." He bobs his head.
"And you delivered eighty."
"Yes, sir."
I stare at him. "And you don't see the problem?"
"Sir, we followed Yeger’s orders. He asked to speak to us personally before the delivery, and he was very specific. I assumed you knew." Mikhail’s voice is trembling and he’s looking at the floor, the wall, anywhere but those glasses full of fingers.
I keep my face blank, but inside I’m ready to explode. What the fuck? Why wouldn’t my stepfather tell me that?
Nikola leaps to his feet and runs for the door. Aleksandr chases after him. He catches him by the hair, punches him in the head and knocks him to his knees.
"You can have him," I say, waving my hand in dismissal. "Do it in front of the girls, so they get an idea of happens to people who don't cooperate with us. I'll deal with Mikhail."
"Yes, sir!" Aleksandr says happily.
Jesus. He’s lucky the Bratva exist; there aren’t too many other job opportunities for sick fucks like him in the civilian world.
Aleksandr grabs the sobbing, retching Nikola by the ankle and drags him out of the room.
I lean forward in my chair, tapping my fingers on the desk. What the hell is going on with my stepfather? If Mikhail is telling the truth, I’ve got a major fucking problem. I’ll have to call Yeger as soon as this meeting’s over.
I scowl at Mikhail. "Do you understand what Nikola did wrong just now?"
"Yes, sir.” He swallows hard, Adam’s
apple bobbing. “He did several things wrong. He displayed weakness, and cowardice. And in attempting to flee, he disrespected your authority."
"Very good. He lacks the Bratva character. He should never have been accepted into our organization. Do you work with any other men like that? I need to know.”
“Uhhh...” Mikhail swallows again, clenching his fists.
"I know that you don't want to snitch. That is admirable. However, weak men like him dishonor the name of Bratva. I will have their names, and what you have observed."
He quickly rattles off three names. "I have never seen them disobey an order or steal from the organization. It is more a matter of character." He describes examples of them being fearful, backing down from fights, turning down assignments that might be too dangerous, and also laziness, leaving other men to do their work.
We have certain expectations, which are made very clear to them when they sign on – as are the consequences of failure.
"You will not tell anyone what we spoke of," I inform him.
"No, sir."
I look at him speculatively. I can tell that Mikhail is shrewd, and smart. I can always use more men like him.
“You may go. I would like you pack your things; you’ll be moving into one of the rooms in this house, for now,” I tell him. His eyes light up, and he thanks me profusely. He hasn’t been put off by what he just saw here; that’s a good sign.
As soon as he’s gone, I lock the door and put in a video call to my stepfather. It’s two in the afternoon here, ten in the evening in Moscow. I’ll catch him before he goes to bed.
When he comes to the phone, he’s already wearing his robe. He settles down in his chair and salutes me with a shot glass of vodka.
“How is your little project coming along?” He means Anya.
“Very nicely,” I tell him.
"She's not putting up a fight?"
I think of her crawling away from me as I blasted her with the hose, and my stomach curdles. "Oh, she is, but there's not a woman alive that I can't break."
"You're welcome," he smirks. “I always knew you had a sweet spot for her.”
Kostya A Dark Bratva Hate Story Page 6