Yegor was amazed that after the beatings Gabriel had taken, he still had the propensity to be an asshole. “Why don’t you focus on trying to stay alive?”
“Are you rooting for me?” Gabriel asked, shoving the food into his mouth. He snickered. “That’s rich.”
Yegor was done defending himself, both to Yuri and this American. “Regardless of what you think of me, I’m doing this for my country.” Even as he said the words, he felt deep inside that they were now a lie.
Gabriel wasn’t convinced. “So you’re a patriot?”
“Yes, just like your precious Valeriya.”
Gabriel didn’t like Yegor saying her name. The scowl that crossed his face showed it. “Men like you hide behind your ideals, but deep inside, you’re all just a bunch of cowards and hate mongers preying on the ignorant. I mean, didn’t you learn that with Hitler? The guy put a bullet in his own head.”
“It’s so easy to simply see it from your side. A rich man with a rich, powerful family who will stop at nothing to secure his interests. What do you know about sacrifice? Every time that you’re remotely forced to face yourselves, you simply put on another face. You change to fit the times, change to fit the circumstances, change to fit the world. You’re always changing, so you never know who you are.”
“If you want to get philosophical, Yegor, adaptation is the key to man’s survival.”
“People like you don’t just survive, you prey on others. You kill and destroy everything and everyone around you. You’re like a cancer.”
“Kill or be killed,” Gabriel quipped. “It’s the Medlov way.”
“So we see.”
Gabriel paused. Without another word, he knew that his uncle had found a soft spot in their operation. He glanced up at Yegor and put down his food. “You seem like under all that bullshit that you’re a smart man. So, can I give you some advice?”
Yegor sneered. “What advice could you possibly have for me?”
“Don’t go down with the ship,” Gabriel said quietly. “My uncle is not going to stop. By the look on your face, I’d say that he’s not only found me, he’s found you as well.”
Yegor’s face told on him. “We’ll be ready.”
“No, you won’t,” Gabriel promised. There was no point in hiding the truth. Yuri didn’t want to tell Gabriel about the arrangement, but Yegor didn’t see the point in hiding it. “He’s made a deal for you, and we’ve accepted it. You for Valeriya…Dead Valeriya as in a bullet in her head. So your family gets what they want and we get what we want.”
Gabriel looked down at his dirty hands and balled them into fists. “There is one thing about me that is very much like my uncle.”
“What’s that?” Yegor asked.
Gabriel locked eyes on him. Without blinking, he clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I don’t ever stop either.”
***
Medlov Compound
Prague, Czech Republic
After the call had been made to Marat in Ukraine, the second call had come to Anatoly back in the compound from his father. Evidently, they had been given the green light to head to Donetsk. He didn’t want them wasting time sleeping. Instead, he told them to head out tonight. With Renee already in bed, he slipped out of his bedroom and called his men to prepare to leave.
There was one final stop that had to be made.
Standing over Valeriya as she slept, he debated on leaving her. He didn’t want the liability of keeping her alive while trying to get Gabriel, and he wasn’t sure if she was as good in war as she claimed to be. Still, his father had given him orders, and despite his desire to disregard the order, he followed through.
“Hey, wake up,” he said, nudging Valeriya.
Her eyes flashed open and she looked up at Anatoly in confusion.
“What is it?” she asked, sitting up in bed. She had gone to be fully dressed, ready for the next day.
Anatoly stepped back from the bed. “We’re leaving within the hour for Donetsk. So get up and get ready. Do your hair or whatever you women do and be downstairs and ready to board the helicopter with the rest of us. Don’t be late.”
He turned to leave, but Valeriya pulled the covers from her legs. “Why do you hate me so?”
“I don’t hate you,” Anatoly said, stopping in his tracks. “I don’t trust you. I trust even less that you’ll be any help to us in Donetsk.”
Valeriya got out of bed and turned on the lamp to see him better. “You shouldn’t underestimate me, Anatoly. I’m not weak, and I’m damn sure not fragile.” She glared at the back of his head until he turned toward her.
He glanced over at her thinking that she was too small to be a threat. “If you want to help, stay here.” He knew that if anything happened to her, Gabriel would never forgive him. The time to measure dicks had long since passed.
“No,” she said adamantly. “I’m going. Dmitry already promised me.”
Anatoly rolled his eyes at her. He knew what his father had promised. He still didn’t agree with it. “Stupid little woman.” He brushed her off. “Just be ready in an hour.” Leaving her alone in the room, he closed the door behind him.
Valeriya didn’t want to wake Andriy to say goodbye. She knew if she did, he would be awake and worried until she returned. Going into the bathroom, she looked at herself in the mirror. Tired eyes glared back at her.
“Do my hair,” she said, mocking Anatoly. “Cocky bastard.” Is that what men saw when they looked at a woman? Hair, breasts, ass? Were they all just liabilities for them? All the sacrifices that women made, all the torture that they were put through simply because they dared to be individuals. The idea infuriated her.
Reaching under the sink, she pulled out Gabriel’s clippers, plugged them in and turned them on. She adjusted the blade to level one and then pressed it against the soft curls at the front of her hairline. With one careful, slow movement, she shaved the long curly tendrils off. Strand by strand, they fell into the sink, pooling in a large black pile as she worked her way over her entire head.
One liability gone.
***
Thirty minutes later, Valeriya stepped out of Gabriel’s bedroom with a low, fresh fade, no makeup and dressed in tactical gear. Making her way with the guards to Anatoly’s office, where the rest of the team who had not already been sent out, was waiting, she shed her insecurities and prepared for battle. One way or another, she was getting Gabriel back, and no one was going to stop her.
As she walked through the door, the men stopped and turned to look at her. She knew what they were doing. She knew that they were judging her.
Let them judge, she said to herself. Before this was all over, she would prove to them that she was no one to trifle with.
Anatoly sat on the edge of the desk talking to the men as she approached. Looking at her new hair, he smirked and shook his head. She had balls; he’d give her that.
“Sorry it took me so long,” she said, putting her hand on her hip. “I had to freshen up.”
Anatoly raised a brow. “And that little piece of information helps us, how?”
“It’s not for everyone. Just you,” Valeriya taunted.
Anatoly pointed at the chair across from him. “Sit down and listen.” He clenched the paper in his hand. “Now, back to what I was saying. We leave here in 20 minutes.”
Valeriya listened on quietly, but she knew her point had been made. She was in this to the very end.
Chapter Eleven
Strategy is Everything…
Yuri Danko had finally arrived at a crossroads. With Viktor Davidovich now dead, he had lost his one true ally for the Right for Donetsk. The Right for Ukraine, the larger entity governing them, was applying all the pressure that they could on his compound to find out exactly why he had Gabriel Medlov and exactly what efforts had been made to get him out of their country. It also had been made very apparent per the phone call he had just received that the Medlov Crime Family was not a primary target and holding the Boss Dmi
try’s nephew was not authorized.
“Get this done now!” the man had ordered before he hung up in Yegor’s face.
Cowards. All of them.
Yuri was beside himself. Even in his own organization, he had to fight the politics of the Western world. Only because he was forced to, he had told them that a deal had already been arranged with Dmitry Medlov, but quietly he was still dead set on his plan to lure Dmitry into the country and kill him during the exchange.
Dmitry Medlov, after all, was just a man. If he could get his hands on Gabriel, he could get his hands on Dmitry. It was all a matter of strategy.
However, in order to follow through with his plans, he had to get more munitions, munitions that the Right for Ukraine refused to send. It was as if they wanted them to fail, but he wouldn’t. He was too smart to fail, too close to stop.
It was a good thing that he still had the high jacked load that they had stolen from the Donetsk Revolutionaries when they killed Alexei Nenya. The cargo was stowed away at Faddei’s old warehouse. Now, he had to make preparations with his men to acquire those munitions to use against the very men they were purchased from.
Life was poetic at times.
Huddled up with his men in his office, he sat on the edge of his desk, going over their plans. This had to be done without drawing the eye of their larger body. It had to be done swiftly, and it had to be done quickly.
“This information cannot leave this room,” Yuri said, eyeing each of his men. He searched for conviction in their eager faces. “We will send a team to Faddei’s warehouse tomorrow to get the munitions and have them brought back here under the cover of night. I will mark it as an urban training exercise. So we must have our people do it quickly.”
“I don’t understand,” one of the men said, holding up a hand. “I thought that we were only turning this guy over. Why do we need more munitions?”
Idiots!
There was a long, pregnant pause in the room. Yuri had not told everyone what his plan was, the only person outside of him that knew for sure that they were preparing for a full-on assault was Yegor.
“These thugs are capable of anything. They might very well retaliate,” Yuri said, eyeing Yegor, who sat stone-faced in the corner. He looked as compelling as possible. “You’ve seen what they’ve done to the rest of the compounds. We’re one of the last ones standing. We must be prepared for anything.”
The collective nod around the room, let him know they were on board.
But the same man who had posed the first question, still wasn’t convinced. “If we think that there will be an assault, should we not call in the Right for Ukraine? We have less than 80 men on base. Many of them are still training. If we know…”
Yuri cut him off mid-sentence. Just the sound of his voice was like nails on a chalkboard. He did not need detractors cutting away at his plan. Tone more aggressive, he pushed off the table and stood up. “I am still your leader,” he said, putting his hand on his chest. “I know what is best. If I thought that we could not handle the exchange, I would have already spoken to them about it. I’m simply being as prepared as we possibly can.”
Seeing that the questions were agitating his superior, the man submitted without another word.
Yuri knew that this was his last stand, but he was willing to bet everything on his next move. Dmitry Medlov and the entire Medlov Crime Family were symbols of why this country had failed. Even if his superiors could not see it, he could. Something had to be done about it, and he had to do it.
“Sometimes, as a patriot, you have to be willing to sacrifice everything, my brothers.” He looked off in the distance as though he could see the future. “When our war is won and our country is free, the same people who doubted us, will lift us up on their shoulders and celebrate our names.”
Yegor looked over at his friend with daggers in his eyes. Yuri spoke like a truly brainwashed fool. He had heard about it before, superior officers going off the deep end. But up until the last two weeks, he was not aware of how much Yuri had changed. This fight with the Medlovs was not about the war with Russia. It was not about their shared vision for Ukraine.
It was personal. He hated Gabriel Medlov and was determined to take everything he had from him.
At the end of long, drawn out speech, he concluded with a confirmatory nod. “Dismissed,” Yuri said, taking a seat behind his desk.
Thank God, Yegor thought to himself. He wasn’t sure how much more of Yuri’s neurotic babbling he could take.
As the men got up from their seats and filed out of the door, Yuri stopped Yegor. “Not you,” he said, placing his elbows on the desk. Running his finger over his swastika ring on his right middle finger, he narrowed his intense gaze on his friend. “Close the door. Let’s speak alone.”
Yegor closed the door behind the last man and turned. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he leaned against the wall and propped his boot up against it. “What is it, Yuri?” He didn’t even have the strength to be official anymore.
“You seem like something is bothering you,” Yuri said, trying to act concerned. The truth of the matter was that he didn’t care at all how Yegor felt, but he needed to keep him in play until the assault.
Yegor knew his friend better than to tell him the truth. He shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m on edge. I want this to happen without any problems.” He had to bite the inside of his mouth as he lied, because the words turned sour on his tongue.
“I understand your concern. There is a lot on the line here, not just for me, but for you.” He eyed Yegor. “We either win or lose together in this.”
Yegor didn’t need to be reminded of what was at stake. “Like you said, we are patriots. We must sacrifice everything, if we truly want to win.” He hated himself for saying it, but he knew it was a means to an end.
“Tomorrow after the drop, instead of going home, I want you to stay here. Go spend one more night with your family. Kiss your kids. Make love to your wife. Eat your mother’s cooking. Then come back with your head in this.” Yuri didn’t trust Yegor at the moment, but then again, he didn’t trust anyone anymore. At least having him here in the compound would ensure his compliance.
Yegor nodded and stood up. “I appreciate it,” he said facetiously. “I’ll tell the family that you said hello.” Opening the door without being dismissed, he walked out.
“You do that,” Yuri said to himself, watching Yegor as he disappeared down the hall.
***
Rostov Oblast
Donetsk, Ukraine
Pulling into the dirt driveway of his small single-family home, Yegor parked and turned off his car. With so much going on, he had to reprogram himself every night before he entered his house, so that the strain of his life didn’t affect his family. But that had become a lot more difficult lately.
It was hard enough to fight the Russians, to sway the Ukrainian people, to continue on wearing the colors of the Right for Donetsk, but now that Yuri had involved the Medlovs, he lived every day on eggshells, praying that the next compound to be blown up didn’t have him in it.
Yuri had lost sight of their vision, and he wasn’t sure that he had not lost his mind as well.
Yet, Yegor knew that he had no choice. He had to move forward with Yuri’s plan, even though he didn’t at all support it. It was clear the moment he laid eyes on Gabriel Medlov that they were way out of their league. Every other hostage before him had been politically associated, poor or powerless. They had not been international crime lords and billionaires. No one had killed parliament members and bombed their compounds – not even the fucking Russians.
“I tried to warn you, you fuck,” he said, hitting his steering wheel. Blame laid squarely on his shoulders as well. He should have been firmer with Yuri from the very beginning. Now, things were past the point of no return.
After a few more minutes went by and the incessant chirping of the crickets drowned out his thoughts, Yegor finally opened the door of his car, stepped out and slammed the
door back shut to his raggedy Jeep Cherokee.
He looked at his home, a five-room shack of a wooden house with a patch of land in the back for growing vegetables and a tattered roof. It was nothing special, nothing elegant, but he and his wife had worked hard to buy it and furnish it. Unlike many of the houses on the long, narrow, rural road, they actually had shutters and curtains for their windows and even a small rose garden out front around the concrete porch.
This was where his future was, and even if he hated to admit it, he doubted very seriously that it would get much better for him, even if they were able to win this war. Everything was political. The haves would still have and the have-nots would still be left out in the cold.
He thought about that every day that he came home. He questioned whether or not this fight was his to continue, but he knew that if he backed away, cut himself off from the Right of Ukraine, he would have no allies or protection. It was this or nothing.
Pulling out the keys rattling in the lower pocket of his cargo pants, he slipped his front door key in the lock and opened the rickety wooden door.
“I’m home,” he said, stepping inside of the small wood-paneled front room. His boots barely crossed the threshold before he saw that he had company.
“Welcome,” Dmitry said, sitting in the corner with Yegor’s daughter on his lap. The window air conditioner rattled to a stop as it vibrated against the loose window pane.
Yegor’s heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach. Reaching for his sidearm, he looked in the hallway to see his wife standing with his mother at gunpoint. Marat stood behind them with no mask on. He wanted Yegor to know that there was no point in hiding who he was because whatever happened here, he would not live to talk about it.
“Come in and close the door,” Dmitry said, voice congenial for the sake of the little girl. “You’re letting the air out.”
From the child’s vantage point, she could not see that her mother and grandmother were in peril. All she did know was that a very nice man had given her chocolates and allowed her to sit on his very large knee. Her smile was as wide and bright as the sunshine. Eyeing her father, she frowned as he passed the gun to one of the men standing on the other side of the door.
Gabriel's Regret: Book Two (The Medlov Men 3) Page 19
