“Kostya, what are you doing?” I cry out, panicked. He’s completely lost it. I’ve seen him angry, I’ve seen him cruel, but I’ve never seen him out of control like this.
He doesn’t answer, just utters a guttural snarl of pure fury as he drags me across the room.
I scream at him, clawing at his hands, but he hauls me through the house and out the front door. One of his bodyguards, who was strolling through the yard on patrol, snaps to attention.
“Bring me my fucking car!” Kostya shouts.
I stand there in shock, as we wait for the car. Kostya paces furiously, muttering to himself. This is it? It’s over between us? He’d just throw me away like trash – because he’d rather live in denial than do what needs to be done?
A minute later I’m being shoved into the back of his limo. The doors lock, and Kostya climbs in the front. We screech out of the driveway, and the gate opens. I sit there in shock, terrified that he’ll change his mind and just take me somewhere to be sold. The auction is coming up soon. Maybe he’ll stash me somewhere that he doesn’t have to deal with me, and then fetch me on the day of the sale. Maybe he’ll sell me directly to a buyer.
We drive for nearly forty-five minutes, and he pulls over to an intersection in mid-town. Apartment buildings, coffee shops, a laundry mat, a clothing store...civilization. I hear the lock click open. “Get the fuck out of my car!” he shouts at me. “Before I change my mind!”
I throw the door open, practically falling onto the curb, and run for my life. I run for easily twenty blocks, dodging through alleys, racing around corners.
He’s nowhere to be found. I’m free. I’m really free. And I’ve got a pretty good idea of where to find Raisa, because she and I had talked about it years ago, before I even went on the run. I had suggested several places where we could meet up, if things turned bad for us. Because even back then, I always knew there was a chance that things could turn sour. My father dealt with very bad men.
The first place she’d most likely be staying is a small motel in a town several hours west of Chicago, and she’d have several other options as well. And if Mikhail is with her, then they’d at least have some cash to tide them over for now.
The sudden change of my circumstances leaves me stunned. I’ve been so afraid these past few weeks, even after Kostya seemed to abandon his plans to sell me. I could never really be sure – until he kicked me out of that car and drove away.
I won’t be sold. I won’t be strapped down and violated.
I’m part elated, part terrified. But as I start searching for a store where I could buy a burner phone, my elation starts to fizzle.
Because Kostya has abandoned me. I thought Kostya really loved me, but he tossed me out the door as casually as taking out the trash. Was it just some infatuation, and once he’d finally satisfied his urges with me, he was done?
He asked me for my advice. When I gave it to him, when I said one thing he didn’t like, I was out the door.
Tears burn in my eyes.
I’m alone in the world. I couldn’t spend time with Raisa; that just puts a target on her back.
The auction is in only a few days, and really, I’d given up on my life long ago, so I might as well do some good before it’s over. I need to find Raisa, but it will just be to give her most of the money that Kostya gave me, that I still have tucked in my wallet.
And then to say goodbye.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kostya
The auction will be held in six hours. My stepfather believes I’ll be there tonight with Anya. The only reason he and Pasha can’t be there in person is because he’s having problems with the Elders. Someone leaked information to them that he’s been taking medication for the early stages of dementia, and he and Pasha are tearing their organization apart, trying to figure out who it could be.
It actually wasn’t me. I suspect that Diego was behind it – one of his men probably hacked into Pasha’s medical records, looking for information they could use.
He’s strategic that way – rather than out and out declaring war, he’s distracting my stepfather, and undermining him at the same time.
But still. Everything’s going to come crashing down when I’m not at the auction tonight.
And Anya’s gone. Not that I would have brought her there anyway.
Without her by my side, there is an enormous hole where my heart should be. The hole is home to a throbbing, fiery ache. I check my phone constantly – as if she’d actually be fool enough to call. But if she did, I’d beg for her forgiveness. I’d tell her she was right. I’d tell her that when we talked, I was drunk and tired and stressed, and I took it all out on her.
I would tell her about the conversation I had with my mother late yesterday evening – early morning, in Moscow time - in which I confessed everything. I told her that Yeger has been trafficking women for years. That he brought me in on it, too, and I’ve committed terrible, unforgiveable sins because of him.
My mother didn’t want to believe me, so I showed her snippets of a video that I’d saved, of me whipping a woman. I was wearing a hood in the video, but anyone who knows me would recognize my physique. And then I played her a recording I’d made of my stepfather and I discussing an auction from a few months ago.
The look on my mother’s face just about killed me. Disappointment. Disgust. Horror. But at least, finally, I had knocked the halo off my stepfather’s head, and she was forced to see him for what he really was. She told me to go ahead and take my sister out of camp, and send her somewhere safe. She said she’d leave the house under the pretext of going shopping, then ditch her bodyguards and call me.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you sooner. He’ll never control your sister’s fate, Kostya. This ends now.” Her face was pale, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
I gave the word for my men to pick up my sister, giving them the code phrase that told her I had sent them.
Will my stepfather suspect she’s up to something? How good of an actress is she? I pray that she’ll be able to pull this off and get to safety. I can smuggle my mother and my sister out of Russia, and as soon as I know they’re safe, I’ll contact the elders and try to sell them on pushing my stepfather out.
What I didn’t tell my mother is that I had made the decision to save my sister whether she left or not. Anya was right; my mother chose to be a Bratva bride , but Elizaveta never had a choice, and she deserves one. I should have seen that long ago.
Anya would be at least a little proud of me, I think. But I can’t tell her anything because I have no idea where she is. I haven’t been able to put the word out to the community to look out for her, because then my stepfather would find out that I no longer held her prisoner.
You would think I’d have drunk myself under the table once Anya left. Anything to stop the constant ache, the worry, the loneliness.
Where is she? What’s happening to her? Is she safe?
But since she left, I haven’t touched a drop. I feel like crap. Suffering the DTs, shaking and sweating. Craving sweet oblivion.
For the first couple of days after she left, I refused Leonid’s offer to get me medication. I deserve to suffer, for a million reasons. I tossed and turned all night. I could barely keep food down. I dragged myself around the house like a living corpse.
The only reason I let the doctor come over today to give me some meds is because I need to be able to function. Get my family on a plane this afternoon. Figure out what to do about the auction that is hours away.
I lounge in my office, struggling to come up with a solution. The Auctioneer is starting to get suspicious – he keeps calling and asking me why I haven’t dropped Anya off yet. And I keep lying, manufacturing vague emergencies, and promising him I’ll show up with her an hour before the auction starts.
My cell phone buzzes, and I snatch it up, my heart leaping with hope. It’s a blocked number. Anya? Or my mother, saying she’s safe?
But no. It’s the last pers
on I’d expect to hear from. Mikhail.
“Sir. Please don’t hang up on me.”
“What the hell, Mikhail?” I rage. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Sir, I think I’ve made a mistake.”
“No shit,” I say furiously. “I’ve been going out of my mind.”
“I don’t mean that I made a mistake rescuing the girls,” he says. “I know that you will have me hunted down and killed for it, but I will never regret it. What we were doing there is wrong, sir. And I am sorry, I hated throwing away the chance you gave me to advance in the organization, but it came at too great a cost.”
I suck in a breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not going to hunt you down for it. I give you my word, on my mother’s honor. I understand why you did it,” I say finally. “And I wasn’t going to sell Anya tonight. I’ve set her free.”
He hesitates a moment. “I know.”
Of course he knows. Anya’s with them – which means she always knew where to find Raisa. Jesus, this girl. Even her secrets have secrets.
But if Anya’s with them now – maybe it’s not too late for us.
“I need to talk to talk to Anya. I want to tell her that I’m sorry. The last time I saw her, I wasn’t myself.”
“She isn’t here. That’s the problem.”
“Explain yourself.”
“She...” he hesitates. “She’s going to do something drastic. She gave me a letter to send to you tomorrow, but I opened it and read it. Now Raisa is crying and she says I have to do something. I’ve had the letter delivered to Tovarish. We never should have let her leave the house. I should have knocked her out until the auction was over. That’s the mistake I made. I’ll call you shortly.”
And he hangs up.
Tovarish is a restaurant I own.
She’s going to do something drastic, like...try to kill my stepfather? Try to storm the auction? Damn it! I gave Anya her freedom, I gave her twenty grand in cash. Why wouldn’t she just go hide out and be safe?
With a frustrated groan, I gulp some painkillers, and then Leonid drives me to the restaurant.
One of my men hands me the letter when I walk in, and I hurry to the office and rip it from its envelope to read it.
I almost wish I hadn’t. Every word hits me like a bullet. And I would know, I’ve been shot several times.
“By the time you read this, I will be dead. This is my last chance to tell you the truth. Yes, I’ve been keeping secrets from you.
Do you remember the night of my father’s party? The last night you and I spent together? Apparently not – because that was the night you made love to me. We were both drunk. I didn’t realize how drunk you were until the next day, when you didn’t even remember that we’d been together. And one week later, you killed my father. Soon after that I realized I was pregnant. When I was four months along I began bleeding – very heavily. I wanted to go to the hospital, but Masha locked me in my room and it took me hours to escape. She said it was too risky. I was furious at her, I told her she’d killed my baby. And when I got home, she had died in her sleep. It was the guilt that did it.
I am poison, Kostya. I don’t know why, but I kill everything I touch. I am responsible for the death of our child. You told me that I should hate you, but it is you who should hate me.
I have made terrible mistakes in my life. I can do one last good thing, Kostya, and that is why I am going to the auction tonight to kill as many of those men as I can, and maybe even save a few girls.”
My heart goes cold.
She is planning on doing some kind of suicide mission.
I can’t let her go! I need to talk to her. I need to tell her that I love her, that I’d die for her. The death of our child was never her fault. It was the fault of me and my family – hunting her and Masha like animals, so she didn’t feel safe going to the hospital. And at four months, even if she had gone to the hospital the moment she started bleeding, there was still very little chance they could have done anything.
Our child. I feel as if I’ve been punched in the gut. This is a grief she’s carried with her all these years. A grief that she felt she couldn’t share with me, even after things smoothed over between us.
All right. I have to focus. I’ve let her down so many times before – it won’t happen again. She’s going to the auction.
I mentally run through everything that I know about the auction. It’s being held in an old warehouse building an hour and a half from Chicago. There will be guards at the front and back doors. The women are held, naked, in a cage area in the back, and the men all bring vans that are specially modified to transport the women after they’ve been purchased.
There’s a main room with a stage, where the women are paraded in front of several dozen buyers who are allowed to come up on stage and fondle and molest the merchandise.
I know all that; does Anya? How much information has she gotten from her sources? What would her approach be?
The men are wealthy and will have bodyguards. Guns everywhere. I have to find a way to stop Anya before she gets there, and reason with her. We could work behind the scenes to undermine future auctions. But taking on the auction by herself? Suicide.
Not only that, but I haven’t heard back from my mother, and now I’m starting to worry. Did my stepfather figure out what she was up to? I put in a call to her cell phone, and it goes to voicemail.
I have a message saying that my sister was safely picked up, at least. I can’t do anything else for my mother from here. Tomorrow, if I haven’t heard from her, and if I haven’t died, I’ll figure out what my next move should be. Tonight I’ve got to save Anya – and possibly, what’s left of my soul.
If I weren’t trying to hide the truth from my stepfather, I would have put the word out to all of my Russian contacts, to try to find Anya, Raisa, Mikhail and the girls.
What to do, what to do...I’m seriously considering calling the Italians to see if there’s anything they could do to help me find Anya, when my phone rings. And instantly I’m on alert.
It’s one of the Elders. Vladimir. For him to call me, personally – it must be bad news.
“Kostya, I am so sorry,” he says to me. “Assassins have struck your family today. Someone poisoned your family’s breakfast this morning.”
“Poisoned?” I echo him, my mind going blank.
“Yes. They didn’t make it, Kostya. I am very sorry.”
“Who died?” I choke on the words.
“Your mother, Yeger, Pasha, the chef, and six members of his security squad.”
“You’re sure.”
“And who is responsible?” I have to ask the question, pretend I didn’t know. But of course I know who did it. It was my mother.
She said, “This ends now.”
And she meant it. She knew that just leaving wouldn’t be enough. Yeger would pursue all of us into hell if he had to. This way, my sister and I are both finally free – and by eating the poison herself, she made it look as if it was an outside job.
“We don’t know. But I promise you, we will find out.” No, they won’t.
I summon up the strength that I know he expects of me. Bratva don’t cry, we plot revenge. “Thank you for telling me. I know this was a difficult call for you to make. I will be in Moscow no later than the day after tomorrow. And whoever did this will pay,” I vow.
“We will not announce this right away,” Vladimir says. “It will give us more time to investigate.”
When I hang up the phone, I am reeling. My beautiful, sweet mother, the woman who read me bedtime stories and checked under my bed for monsters when I was a little boy, is gone. In the end, she had reserves of strength I never suspected. I want a drink. I need a drink. Every cell in my body is screaming for one. My hands start to shake.
I clench my fists and slam them down on the table. No. I have to keep my head clear. I have to save Anya.
I keep a small armory in my office, just in case. I call in Leonid, and tell him of my pl
an to intercept Anya. And I give him the option to drop out, which earns me an indignant look.
“What kind of soldier won’t follow his general in to battle?” he says, as he straps on a holster.
“Good man. If we survive, I owe you big time.” I’ve already holstered up, with guns strapped to various places on my body, as well as clips full of hollow-points.
“I accept donations of cash, Bugatis, and Beluga Epicure vodka,” he says cheerfully.
We walk out to the car, with Leonid following me. When I get there, I stop in my tracks. Mikhail is standing there waiting for me.
“Now there’s a surprise.”
“You gave me your word,” he says warily.
“And I will keep my word. But I’m in a hurry. I’ve got to get to Anya before she gets to the auction.”
“I would like to come with you. Raisa asked me to.” I see it in his face – he’s fallen for the girl. Idiot. Then again, who am I to talk.
“If you even think of screwing me over again, in any way...”
“I know,” he says quietly. “But this is rescuing a girl, not sending her off to be raped and tortured. Sir.”
We lay out our plans quickly. Mikhail knows that she’s driving a rented blue Volvo. The auction house is located at the end of a long dirt road, in a remote rural area. The dirt road runs into a paved rural road. Mikhail will drive his car and park by the side of the road and watch out for her from the east, and Leonid and I will do the same and watch for her from the west.
My heart is hammering in my chest the whole way there. We find a thicket of bushes to park behind, and watch the road with binoculars. I keep getting phone calls from the Auctioneer, increasingly angry, asking me when I’m showing up with Anya. I reply with more lies. Stuck in traffic. Might not make it for the start of the auction but definitely still coming.
He even tells me that he’s left several messages with my stepfather. He doesn’t yet know that my stepfather is dead.
Every car that approaches gives me a brief swell of hope, and then despair again when I see that it’s not her. Most of them are buyers for the auction; we’re in the middle of nowhere and there’s no other reason for anyone to be here.
Kostya A Dark Bratva Hate Story Page 18