by Lana Sky
“Show some respect,” another man interjects, dark-haired and solidly built. His eyes hold an eerie sense of calm that negates the impatience of the other two men vying to speak above him. “Nikolaus. Yohan. You forget your place before your Pakhan.”
That word has the effect of a whip. The two men stiffen in their seats. Their glares remain, but they hold their tongues.
“Now, Mischa,” the calmer man says, meeting his gaze from across the table. “We’re listening.”
“It’s time we head off the Winthorps at the fucking head,” Mischa declares, his voice reverberating to the farthest reaches of the room. “And I don’t speak out of some petty fucking feud,” he adds. “This is about survival.”
“Survival?” Nikolaus, the older man, scoffs. “You mean greed. There have been rumors, Pakhan. That you went after the man himself. Robert. His daughter. Considering the little bitch is on her honeymoon with one of the most powerful money lenders in the world, I presume that you miscalculated.”
“I did lead an attack on her,” Mischa admits without a shred of shame. “Robert was prepared. He used a decoy. Some disposable toy of his son’s.” He shrugs with a malicious jerk of his shoulder. “I gave her to my men and left her body for the bastard to find—”
“And found yourself a distraction, I see,” Nikolaus snidely interjects, turning his attention to me. He sneers in disgust at what little of my face he can see through the curtain of my hair. “You’re getting more blatant, Mischa—”
“Show some respect,” another man cuts in, forcefully slamming his hand over the table.
“Enough.” Mischa sits forward, his smile dismissive. “This bitch is more than a distraction.” He grabs my wrist, tugging me closer to the table, until I have no choice but to sit on his lap.
The other men tense, warily watching the display. He’s never brought a woman to their meetings before, I suspect. Not like this. His arm possessively encircles my waist from behind, but there’s tension coiled into every strip of muscle. A warning, broadcasted solely to me. Play your role, Little One.
“She’s more like a lucky charm. She’s skilled at spotting liars, you see. Traitors.”
The way he stresses that word sends a ripple of unease throughout the room. Through one man in particular. My eyes go to him automatically, though I’m not sure why at first. He is standing just beyond the table, his face partially hidden by shadow. But his shape is familiar.
“Should I explain?” Mischa’s fingers trail my cheek, turning my face toward him. The look in his eyes takes my breath away: hot, molten anger. For me? No… For once, his ire has a new target. “Show them, Little One,” he goads. “You think there are any traitors in our midst?”
With his thumb pressing forcefully against my bottom lip, I sense what he doesn’t say out loud once again: Here’s your chance. So, gamble.
“Is this a game to you?” Nikolaus demands, his irritation visibly echoed by at least six of the other seated men. “Just who are you trying to accuse, Pakhan—”
“I don’t know,” Mischa says, his voice deceptively soft. “Just who among us would dare betray our families. Our blood. Our lives?”
With each word, his volume rises while a hush simultaneously falls over the assembled crowd. Out of shock. Disbelief.
“I suppose that you have more than some ‘lucky’ whore to bring charges against someone, Pakhan,” the calmer man wonders.
“What do you think?” Mischa tilts my chin down toward him. “Do you sense a fucking liar, Little One?”
Slowly, my gaze drifts across the room to the man in Nikolaus’s section. He’s moved deeper into the ranks, almost as if attempting to stay out of view. But I can smell him even from here; there is no escaping memory.
“Kostas!” Mischa declares warmly, zoning in on the same shadowed figure. “Come closer, brother.”
“Mischa—” Nikolaus rises to his feet with both hands braced against the table. “You wouldn’t dare accuse my son.”
Several murmurs of concern rise, creating a chorus. You’re crossing a dangerous line.
Mischa smiles, revealing nothing. “Let’s hear it from the man himself,” he declares, beckoning Kostas closer with a wave of his hand. “You wouldn’t dare consort with an enemy, now would you, brother?”
Gradually, Kostas comes forward to stand behind his father, and I can’t fight the instinctive tensing of my muscles. He hasn’t changed much since his last meeting with Robert. Except for the fact that he’s lost his mocking smile.
“You have a pretty little bitch,” he mused once about me, his accent crisp and American. “She’s almost as sexy as that sister of yours.”
Robert, ever the businessman, laughed at the insult to me. Right before he formed a fist and punched the younger man’s jaw for the insult to his sister. Blood was everything to a Winthorp. The blood they deemed worth protecting, anyway.
Mischa’s words keep echoing through my thoughts. You don’t know a damn thing about your fucking Winthorp.
“What is the reason for this, Mischa?” Kostas wonders, drawing me back to the present. His scowl betrays the same apparent lack of respect his father has. But, as his eyes flicker across me, they widen ever so slightly.
“Have you seen this whore before?” Mischa wonders, tilting my face in the other man’s direction.
Kostas scoffs dismissively. “I don’t remember every bitch I’ve fucked, Pakhan.”
Mischa just chuckles. “This one remembers you.” He casually flicks a strand of hair behind my ear, exposing more of my face. “She was a particular favorite of Robert Winthorp, the younger. Do you remember now?”
Chaos erupts.
Reddening with rage, Nikolaus nearly lunges across the table. “You’ve crossed a line, Mal’chik.”
“Have I?” Mischa wonders.
This close to him, I feel the subtle changes in his body before they unfold across his face. The dangerous tensing. The faint flames of rage prickling against my skin.
“Then let me ask him directly. Kostas…have you been selling to Robert Winthorp?”
Redness blossoms over the younger man’s cheeks. “You even have to ask?” But his eyes cut in my direction again, slower this time. In recognition. His throat bobs slightly as he swallows. “I’d never—”
“I assume you have your personal accountant on call,” Mischa says over him, directing the question to his father. “Have him run these numbers through your accounts. See if any holes match.” He fishes the crumpled notebook page out of his pocket and shoves it toward Nikolaus.
The older man sneers and then spits at the table. “How fucking dare you.”
Mischa doesn’t display any hint of regret. Instead, his smile turns feral around the edges, his eyes less mocking than before. “If you don’t want your son’s treason to reflect badly on you, Nikolaus, then I suggest you run the goddamn numbers.”
For a tense few seconds, they eye each other with only the polished sliver of wood between them. Then Nikolaus snatches the page up and hands it off to one of the men behind him. “Do it,” he commands. “And when my son is vindicated, I will demand more than blood in compensation for sullying my family’s name.”
Mischa nods as if to convey, As you wish, though he radiates tension like a furnace. Each wave of quiet, smoldering anger feels different from the rage he directs at me. It’s colder. Harder. Terrifying. Being this close to him is like having the veil that usually shielded off my emotions ripped away. I feel it all. Fear. Uncertainty. Anger?
Survival.
Think, Ellen. My memories contain a different detail about Kostas, beyond something as intangible as money. Without giving myself the time to rethink the action, I lower my mouth to Mischa’s ear. His jaw clenches at my nearness. The visible disgust is almost enough to make me flinch back in fear. Almost. Before I do, I whisper something so quickly that I fear for a second he misheard me.
He narrows his eyes further, processing the hurried words. Then…he throws his head back
and laughs. “If your son won’t come clean, Nikolaus, then perhaps we can settle another way?” He nods toward the younger man’s waist. “The woman claims to remember something about your son. Something personal. Should I tell everyone just what that is?”
“I could have fucked that bitch from anywhere,” Kostas snarls.
“Oh, but you couldn’t have…” Mischa stands, jostling me from his lap and rising to his full height. Nikolaus may be taller, but it’s clear who has the upper hand: Mischa isn’t the one forced to bow in reverence.
“Do you want to know why?” Mischa pulls me closer. “Look at her face. Look closely. You couldn’t have met this whore anywhere else because, as of four days ago, she belonged to Robert Winthorp.”
“How can you know that?” the dark-haired man wonders, standing as well. His expression is more curious than hostile as he scans my face. He blinks. Frowns. Leans closer. There’s a slight tilt to his mouth, betraying an emotion I struggle to name. Recognition? “The Winthorps wouldn’t sell one of their women to you—”
“Because I’m the one who ripped her from his grip,” Mischa says. “Isn’t that right, Kostas?”
The younger man says nothing, his jaw clenched, his eyes blazing.
“And even if you don’t believe me, can you tell me how she knows that you have a butterfly tattoo on your right hip?”
“I will not stand for this!” Nikolaus brandishes a fist, his voice booming. “How dare you—”
“Well, does he?” the dark-haired man interjects.
Nikolaus sputters. “S-Sergei?”
“Do you, boy?” Sergei presses, turning to Kostas.
“I… I…” The younger man can’t even get a word out in his defense.
Not that Mischa seems to need one. “Run the numbers,” he says. “If they are off by even a cent, I’ll step down right fucking now. But if not…”
The murderous tone has the effect of casting a hush over the room again, thicker and heavier than any brief silence before it.
“If not, I demand retribution—”
“N-no,” Nikolaus says, visibly deflating. His shoulders slump, his eyes widening with horror. “He is my son. Pakhan—”
“We put it to a vote,” Sergei says, gesturing to the men around him. “If what the Pakhan says is true…then I second his suggestion. This would be beyond treason.” His voice betrays an unsteady note: the only hint as to the rage lurking beneath his otherwise calm exterior. “The Pakhan should decide his punishment.”
“No!” Nikolaus glances from man to man, searching for an ally among the sea of faces.
Two men nod solemnly in agreement, but they are vastly outnumbered by the quiet consensus. Before the decision can be reinforced out loud, however, one of the men behind Nikolaus taps his shoulder and hands him the slip of notebook paper. The look on his face is grim.
Without even waiting for the results to be read out loud, Mischa nods and two of his men circle the table for Kostas.
Before they can reach him, Nikolaus stands protectively before his son. “This…this is a setup,” he snarls. “Revenge. How dare you—”
“Nikolaus,” Sergei says sternly. “I suggest you use your head.”
“Yes,” Mischa says coldly. “I don’t want to declare your entire family as my enemy. Step aside.”
For several tense seconds, Nikolaus doesn’t move as Mischa’s men close in. Finally…he concedes, stepping back. Mischa’s men, including Vanya, grab Kostas on either side and muscle him toward the back of the room.
Punishment. I shiver at Mischa’s interpretation of the word.
“I suggest we end this meeting here, Pakhan,” Sergei says, inclining his head respectfully. “This is more than enough excitement for one day.” He eyes me once more before turning and marshaling the men loyal to him into action.
“Dismissed,” Mischa says before exiting the room pulling me along after him.
My heart hammers a painful rhythm as he hauls me out into the hallway and through the rest of the house. He takes me directly to his room at the top of the stairs, closing the door behind us.
“You gambled big for your first time, Little One,” he says, his voice low and grated. Here, the tension he wore like a cloak downstairs gradually reveals the exhaustion lurking underneath. His shoulders relax from their tense line, his jaw less hard.
The subtle changes aren’t enough to humanize him though. Not even a little. But they keep my surging pulse at bay. I can breathe, at least.
“As promised, I’ll uphold my end.” He faces me, half in shadow. “Ask something of me, Little One. What do you want?”
It’s a dare more than it is a legitimate question. He’s curious. It’s almost enough to counteract his earlier rage. Almost.
“I won’t release you, of course,” he adds. “But…tell me.”
It should be impossible to settle on one thing. He won’t uphold any request—I know that. Yet my mind hovers over a million different things I could ask. Tempting things. Irrelevant things. Before those thoughts can even take hold, reality shoves its way to the forefront.
“The girl,” I say, picturing the waif from Nicolai’s. “Don’t sell her, regardless of what you do to me…”
I trail off as Mischa laughs. He throws his head back, choking out the vicious, hollow sound. It’s still echoing on the air as he fixes the brunt of his gaze in my direction.
“You really thought I’d go so far as to sell a child, Little One?” Another laugh escapes him, sharper than the first. “The girl didn’t ask for this. I have no reason to sell her. But you…” He approaches me, running his hand along my injured cheek once he’s close enough. “You have a wealth of sins to atone for, Robert Winthorp’s wife. Your fate is far beyond any mercy I could spare.”
It’s surprisingly easy to accept my death sentence when it’s uttered so finally. Mischa doesn’t draw out his torture in games and riddles. He murmurs the truth into my ear and watches me tremble.
“What else?” His thumb nudges my chin, tilting it upright. “Ask.”
There’s more than a mocking curiosity tainting his tone now. There’s impatience. Desperation? He wants something to take his mind off of what happened below, I suspect.
Licking my lips, I spit out the first thing to come to mind. “Tell me. Was it really you? At Winthorp manor that night?”
“I won’t humor a fantasy,” Mischa warns. “Ask me something else.”
“I…” I rack my brain and settle on a pathetic whim. “Can you call me by my name?” The plea sounds so breathless when voiced out loud. My name. Not bitch, or whore, or Little One, or Robert Winthorp’s wife.
“Ellen?” Mischa wonders, drawing hard on the syllables. “What does your husband call you?”
I have to force the name off the tip of my tongue. “Elle.”
“Elle,” he echoes, tasting it. “Is that what you want me to call you?”
“No.” I cringe at the thought. Robert’s word, here. No. Even Mischa’s brutality couldn’t erase the dark memories clinging to it.
“Then what?” He’s even closer, his breath scalding my tender cheek.
“I… My mother called me Rose.” I didn’t mean to tell him that. A part of me despairs at having let something so sacred slip. “B-but you don’t have to—”
“Rose.” His nostrils flare as if inhaling the name itself. “Is that what you want me to call you?”
No, a part of me whispers. Rose is beautiful. Rose is untouched. Rose is one of the few parts of me Robert never desecrated.
“Fine Rose,” Mischa says after nearly a minute goes by without a response. He lets his hand fall but doesn’t back away. If anything, his heat soaks through the fabric of my dress, assaulting me just as brutally as his knife did. “Now, I want something from you.”
My breath catches in my throat. “Y-yes?”
“Your husband. Do you love him?”
“Yes.” My answer is more instinctive than anything. Loving Robert is akin to how I feel mos
t people would categorize worshiping their God—at least the one the Winthorp’s chosen priest described.
Robert was all knowing in my world. All powerful. He protected me when he felt the urge and punished me when he thought I deserved it. My life was ruled by his whims, and it was all I knew.
“Good.” Mischa nods in approval. “It should make it easier to die for him.”
“Does it?” Once again, words sprang from my lips without my soul’s permission. “No one decides how they die.”
Or anyone else’s death, for that matter. Robert controlled my life. I’d always assumed he’d planned it down to the very end. And now?
There are blank pages hidden in the twisted book he wrote for me. While Mischa dictates the narrative, I have some control over what goes on every page. Some say in the final chapter of my story.
“The man, Kostas?” I ask, once again speaking without permission. “Will you kill him?”
Mischa’s eyes lose what little patience they had, turning hard like flint. “I suggest you don’t trouble yourself with Kostastantin Vorshev,” he warns. “In fact, Rose…Vorshev should be the very least of your worries.”
My heart races, pounding against my rib cage. Hearing him call me “Little One” is chilling enough. But Rose? His lethal cadence sharpens the name, transforming it into a weapon more than a moniker.
“Do you know what you’ve seen tonight?” he asks, his voice still dipping toward that alarmingly low octave. “Do you?”
I shake my head, even as my mind spits out what few adjectives describe it. Ten groups of men gathered together who, for the most part, deferred to him. What is that word he said before? Mafiya.
“Every last soul in that room wants your husband dead, Little One,” he tells me, running his fingers through my hair without warning. “And not only that. They want his head on a pike, your family name ruined. You have no idea, do you?” He looks into my eyes and frowns at what he sees. “Even Vanya. He’s not as innocent as he seems. Once, he was in my position so don’t doubt for a second that he couldn’t return to his old ways if given enough incentive. The Winthorps killed his daughter, after all.”
He waits, watching as his words sink into my skull.
