by Nicole Fox
He looks up at me, dog-tired but eternally loyal. “I swore to your father that I’d protect you, Nikita. It seems I’m failing.”
I slump into the seat across from him and scan the map of the city for the umpteenth time. It is littered with red Xs and outposts circled and then crossed off. Death and destruction at every intersection, every depot I once controlled. The last remaining territory is where we are now. Enemy arrows are aimed at us from all directions.
We’re sitting ducks.
I wonder what my father would say if he saw me right now. He’s dead, buried six feet under the ground, and yet I can almost feel the weight of his sadness. I’ve stumbled so far from the course my father set. And what bothers me most is that I don’t know how far I’m destined still to fall.
“We have scouts on the college campus keeping an eye on movements near Gino’s headquarters. The school, at least, seems safe enough for now. If anything happens there, the police and government will be on it. They’re keyed up as well. Too many bodies in the news lately,” Eitan says.
The moment he mentions the college, my thoughts go to Annie. Who am I kidding? One of the reasons I haven’t been sleeping well is because I can’t stop thinking about her. Wondering if she’s safe. Wondering what she’s doing. And wondering if she’s even thinking about me.
“Nikita?” Eitan’s voice cuts into his thoughts.
“Just thinking about ... nothing, actually. I want those men to stay posted there. At the very least, we can keep our watch trained on Gino himself. Better pray that there’s an opportunity to cut off the head of the snake. Otherwise, our options are limited, and dwindling in number.”
“Do you want to send someone to keep an eye on her?” Eitan asks. I know who he’s talking about, of course, just like he knows what thoughts are running through my head. Neither of us has said Annie’s name out loud in three weeks. It’s like she’s cursed us.
Do I want her to be protected? Yes. Should I send guards to watch over her? Probably. But I’m hesitant. She already thinks of me as a monster. Sending someone to watch over her might make her think I’m trying to own her again. That I don’t care about her, when nothing could be farther from the truth. I don’t want to suck her back into this war, into this world. But my enemies are all around and it’s only a matter of time before they figure out where she is. What she means to me.
And if that happens, she will truly be in danger from which she can’t escape.
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “No,” I whisper. “No.”
Eitan eyes me kindly. “Nikita, I’ve been with the Lavrins since your father first took over. I’ve seen a lot, been through a lot myself.” He shakes his head. “I’ve had a good life, a wonderful wife, may she rest in peace, and children, all grown with lives and families of their own.”
“I’m not in a mood to be lectured, my friend.”
He leans forward onto his elbows. The bare bulb overhead flickers once. “But not all have benefited from this world. Would you bring children of your own into it? Knowing what you know? Knowing the risks you’ve taken?”
My own children? I’ve never thought about having a family. Never thought about bringing a life into this world. But if it happened, I’m also not sure if I’d want them to take over the family business or get as far away as possible. I sigh and my shoulders slump forward.
“Let me tell you a story.”
“I’ve heard all of your stories, Eitan.”
“Not this one,” he says. “Listen: a long time ago, when I first met your father, I was with a woman—my high school sweetheart. We were in love. Planned on getting married once she graduated college.” Eitan looks away, taking a deep breath in. “She meant the world to me. Made my heart beat faster the moment she walked into the room.”
My tension evaporates. I’ve never known Eitan to be with anyone outside of Maria. I lean back in my wooden chair and fold my arms across my chest.
“I remember her voice still. She was an amazing singer, unlike me. I can’t carry a tune if my life depended on it. Yet, she’d always want me to sing along with her. One day, she was on her way home from college. I had set up a grand romantic gesture where I’d ask her to marry me. I wanted to give her the world.”
Fuck. She left him. Cheated on him. Had to be. Why else wouldn’t he have married her?
“The bus never made it. Some freak accident, engine trouble. It exploded. Everyone on board died.”
Neither of us talks for a minute. I can see the pain etched in his face, like it happened yesterday. Maybe, in his mind’s eye, it’s always happening, again and again, like Chinese water torture. Drip. Drip. Drip.
“Nikita, I’ve seen the way you look at Annie. I see the torture in your face any time you think about her. It’s the same look I had with Emily. She was my world, the love of my life,” Eitan says.
I shake myself. “I don’t love her. She’s just an innocent person who got caught up.”
Eitan snorts. “No one is perfectly innocent, Nikita. Just as no one is perfectly guilty. We are, all of us, a mix of everything.”
Before I can respond, a soldier bursts into the room from down the hall. “Just got word that the guys in East Los Arcos got hit, hard. The rest of the stash, all the week’s take—gone.”
Gino.
I’m up on my feet immediately. My fingers clench and unclench as I spring toward the front closet to grab a jacket and my holster. I’ll kill whoever’s there. Once my jacket is on, I grab the keys from the hook in the foyer and head out the door, part of me relieved to leave Eitan and the whole conversation behind.
Soft rain paints the car windows as I drive onwards. Lavrin soldiers—what’s left of them—follow closely in two Jeeps. The skies are overhung with a blanket of gray, so much so that I can barely tell the difference between the sky and clouds. I watch raindrops race down to the windshield as I fly down the road, hoping for a distraction so I can get my mind straight.
But the drive to the office only brings thoughts of Annie to the forefront. I can’t deny how perfectly she fit into my arms. Or how many times I’ve jerked off to thinking of her. Multiple times throughout the night on some occasions, like my dick just couldn’t be satisfied.
I make a right turn and pull into the empty lot, my foot on the brake and my fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel as I scope out the scene. This could be a setup.
But there aren’t any other cars, no lingering shadows, no lights that are out. I kill the ignition and step out into the rain. Removing my gun from its holster, I walk the perimeter of the building, my eyes scanning every blind spot, every tree, and even the roof above until I get to the front door of the corner bodega where the crew sets up shop.
It’s wedged open.
I wait, peeking in through the crack. No sounds. No movements. The alarm is off and no one knows the keycode except my men. I snarl as I wonder if I’ve been betrayed again.
I push the door open slowly, keeping my body against the wall as I move through the small office. The store is empty, but the computer and cabinets in the back office are all trashed. Files are strewn about, chairs overturned. What the hell were they looking for?
I don’t keep anything sensitive in here. Not when some cop with a hard-on for justice can kick down the door at any point in time. Not when the feds can raid the place if they want, looking for something to pin on Lavrins.
Just as I turn the corner into the main part of the bodega, my shoe squelches. I look down to see a dark puddle. Blood. The metallic scent stings my nose. Someone was here. My gut churns. Who was killed?
Slumped in the candy aisle is one of my men. Dead. Skizzo ran the crew moving drugs out of here. He also kept an eye on things for me. He had the code to the place. He knew I didn’t keep anything of value here.
Shit.
I can hardly stand to look at him. He’s strapped to a chair, his fingers jutting at gross angles and a bloody stump where his tongue once was. The motherfuckers even ruptur
ed his eyeballs. Gino is one sick fuck, I’ll give him that. And ruthless. Blood is sprayed against the rows of candy across from him and spread like a carpet around his feet. It looks like he tried to crawl away while bleeding out. They made him suffer.
I lean against the desk, unable to look at him and unable to look away. Tears form in my eyes, both from sadness for my loyal soldier and from anger at Gino. None of the families are safe from him, yet none of them have stood against the Italian. Instead, they sided with him.
Meanwhile, I’ve made them rich. I’ve kept them safe. But they’re greedy and opportunistic. And they only respond to cruelty. Well, they seem to have forgotten the person I am. The person who seized power and controlled this damn city. They made an enemy out of the one person they should’ve kept happy. Gino might be crazy, but there’s nothing more dangerous than a Lavrin.
It’s time the underworld remembered that fact.
Chapter Twenty
Annie
Nothing is the same anymore.
The things that once entertained me are now lifeless. The things that once seemed routine are now terrifying. If I’m not looking over my shoulder to make sure I’m not being followed, I’m bored out of my mind. I can’t focus enough even to watch something stupid on TV, and I can’t walk to the grocery store without my heartbeat jumping up to two hundred beats per minute and making me break out in hives. I don’t want to go out and I don’t want to stay in. I just want things to be the way they used to be.
But I know damn well that that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Mostly because, every time I close my eyes, I see him.
Nikita.
Staring at me, with those black coal pits for irises. Is it rage that I’m seeing in his face, or lust? I can never tell. Truth be told, I’m not sure I want to know. There’s no telling what lies down the tracks of that particular train of thought, and I have no interest in finding out. I won’t. I shouldn’t. I can’t.
I pull out the stack of papers the professor handed to me to grade. Being a TA is just oh so much fun. But it helps pay the bills as I search for a job. In these last couple of weeks, the majority of lecturers just finish out the senior-heavy classes. They want the semester to end as badly as any of the students do, so unless someone does something to really get on a teacher’s bad side, everyone is graduating.
The TA job is mindless and easy. Mostly, it involves red pen scribbles with a coffee close at hand. But the simplicity is dangerous, because it lets my mind wander. I try to keep it focused on the here and now, and above all, things that are in my control. Things like: what the hell am I going to do with my life? All the dreams I had about being an accountant, working with numbers, and being able to go home at the end of the day—like a normal person, to a normal family—have all mutated into something ugly and repulsive. I don’t want safety or certainty, at least not in the way that I used to crave those things. The monotony is no longer appealing. Maybe it never was. I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything anymore.
I know pretty much this and only this: I have to finish grading or I’ll lose my TA position. And, though so much else has vanished from my life, the bills I need to pay have not.
My phone rings and I glance at the screen before answering. My stomach plummets. It’s Griffin & Sons, Incorporated. I interviewed with them last week. Everything went so well. I knew the job was mine; they more or less told me as much in the interview. But as I walked around the office afterwards, staring at the cubicles and the fluorescent lights and the hideous carpet, I just wasn’t sure I wanted the job anymore. It didn’t feel right.
Even thinking that is crazy. A month ago, I would’ve been jumping with joy in the streets to get this call. Griffin & Sons is a massive, powerful accounting firm with offices nationwide and a roster of clients to die for. Good benefits, lots of opportunity for upward mobility, competitive pay, and ... blah blah blah. I can’t even bear to think about it. The checklist for why I should pick up this call and give an enthusiastic yes to the job offer is a mile long.
Which is why one little voice in my head is screaming bloody murder at me when I let it go to voicemail.
I pick up my mug and gulp down lukewarm coffee as I watch the rings die down. Yuck. No amount of sugar makes this crap taste any better. The bitterness is too reminiscent of my own life. Grabbing my pen, I open the first test and start grading.
Time passes, one page at a time. How the hell do teachers do this every day? After the twentieth test, I’m convinced the students in Accounting 101 are all stupid. None of them have passed so far. It’s just one wrong answer after another. I glare over at the rest of the thirty tests I still have to mark. Ugh. Why the hell did they ever get rid of scantron tests? It would be so much easier to run this through a machine.
“Hey there, girlfriend.” Jenna strolls in, dropping her purse on the table and nearly knocking over my stake of already graded exams. “Uh-oh. I know that face. What’s eating you today?”
“Got stuck grading again.”
“You sure that’s the only reason?” Jenna raises an eyebrow as she stares at me.
My roommates have been all over my case, asking questions about the guy I “left the club” with, wondering why he hasn’t called. I try to deflect and demure—anything to change the subject. But if Jenna and Wendy are anything, they’re persistent. It’s the same conversation over and over again: a weekend getaway in the mountains with a handsome mystery man? How can you NOT be dying for a call back? Every time they bring it up, I just smile and look away, hoping they’ll get the hint soon and let it go. Fat chance of that, though.
“Annie, talk to me.”
I open my mouth to say something, then close it again. What is there even to say? No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about him. Most days I wonder if he’s alive. I scan the internet, the newspapers, and even the local news broadcast. I’m pretending that it’s a newly sparked interest in the comings and goings of the city where I’ve lived my whole life, but I’m not kidding anybody. I know I’m looking for him, to see if his name pops up. It never does, though. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead, in the city or gone for good. He’s a ghost.
Until the moment I go to sleep. Then, he haunts my dreams.
But not in the dangerous way. Not in the threat-to-my-life way. No, it’s worse. They’re sex dreams. And every time I wake up my body craves him. Some days I even find it hard to eat I miss his touch so much.
“I’m just tired, Jen. Accounting is putting me to sleep these days, that’s all. I’d better take a nap before I ruin some kid’s future on accident.” I force a lopsided grin and hope that it doesn’t look as fake as it feels.
She reaches out and pats my hand with an all-knowing smile on her face. She’s sweet, and her heart is in the right place. It always has been, since the day we met, two giggly, nervous girls at freshman orientation. We clicked right away, and then Wendy came along a few weeks into our first semester at school, and it was like we’d known each other all our lives. Jenna is as kind as they come.
But she doesn’t know what I’m wrestling with. The thoughts by day, the dreams by night, the memories all the time. It’s not her fault—I’m the one who is keeping secrets, after all, and I know without a doubt in the world that she would be the first one to listen and give me a shoulder to cry on, if I asked.
I just can’t let myself do that. I don’t know why, but every time I try to tell Jenna or Wendy about what happened to me—what really happened to me—it’s like my lungs stop working and my throat closes up.
“All right, yeah, you deserve it, girl. Go lie down. I’ll be quiet out here; you won’t hear a peep.” She smiles again and searches my face. I wonder if she knows I’m hiding something or if she’s just being kind. Either way, a nap sounds really good right about now, before I face-plant on this towering stack of exams.
I sigh and stand, cracking my neck in each direction, before tossing my pen on the table and shuffling back to my bedroom.
> I’m half asleep by the time I reach the door. And when I hit the pillow, I’m out like a light.
***
Nikita appears. He’s not wearing a shirt. The ripple of his muscles through his chest and shoulders looks like wires held in tension. He’s angry that I didn’t answer my phone earlier. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” he asked. “A job? Security? A normal life? You should have answered that call, kitten.” He pulls off his belt as he tells me what a bad girl I’ve been.
My teeth sink into my bottom lip.
I slide my hand under the waistband of my shorts, and down across my panty-covered sex. My fingers do a slow and steady dance along the folds of my labia, gently rubbing toward my clit and when my fingers make contact, I close my eyes and let out a huge sigh. My hand keeps stroking my pussy through my panties, while my left hand slides below my shirt to caress my breasts. I alternate from one nipple to the other, pinching each one and twirling it between my fingers as the hand on my sex picks up its pace. I’m hot and wet, each image of Nikita pushing me closer to the edge.
I rub faster circles over my clit, causing my knees to come together. Two fingers bury inside me and I begin driving them faster into my sex. My back arches and my legs shake as my sex tenses around my fingers. My body begins to jerk in spasms as my orgasm washes over me and I fall back against the pillows, satiated.
While the orgasm was good, it’s not the same as the ones Nikita gave me. My touch doesn’t compare to the way he works my body over. I groan and turn onto my side, closing my eyes and wishing my brain would just shut down. The confusion and frustration make me so tired and, every day, I pray the two emotions will stop haunting me. But tonight, they’re stronger than ever. At least the orgasm tired me out enough and my breathing starts to slow as I drift off.
***
The sun in my face wakes me up. Slowly and reluctantly, I uncover my face. I blink, close my eyes, and blink again. Sunbeams sneak through the gaps between the slats in my blinds, aimed straight at my face, like Mother Nature poking me in the eyeballs and telling me to get my ass out of bed.
