Saving Anya

by Nelson, Latrivia

  Renee put her index finger over Anatoly to silence him. She could see that he was getting worked up – far more worked up than he had ever been before. It was then that she realized that he had thought about this possibly more than she had. “Baby, I thought we agreed that we were going to do us,” she reminded.

  “We did agree. But I know you.” His eyes were sincere. “I’m not going to get this right.” It was the first time in his adult life that he had ever admitted to not being able to do something and it even shocked him to hear it come out of his mouth.

  Renee’s worry began to ease. “So all of this is because you are worried about being a good father?”

  “All of this is because I know that he or she will deserve a hell of a lot more than what I can give. I mean, I love Anya and I treat her like a princess, but I don’t have to watch her. I don’t have to see her more than ten times a year. And now, with this kidnapping shit, I’m going to have a paramilitary force watching you and this kid every day.”

  Renee laughed. “Ana…” she shook her head. “You’re going to do fine, baby. We’re going to do fine. No parent is perfect. I’m going to miss the mark just like you, but the most important thing is that we are here for this little person, no matter what.”

  “If anything ever happened to him or her, like what just happened to Anya, I would…”

  “Do everything that your father is doing. It happens to people all over the world. People with no money at all get their kids stolen every day. Anya is lucky to have parents with means.”

  Anatoly couldn’t argue. Taking a deep breath, he looked over at her then threw his hands up. “I hate trying to be right with you.”

  “Looks like now, we’re going to have to be right with each other.” Laying her had down on his chest, she pursed her lips. “Are you happy at all about it?”

  Anatoly rubbed through her hair. He knew that he had not done a good job so far of welcoming this new life into their lives, but he vowed quietly to begin to try. “We’ve created something special, something that is a part of you and me, my mother, my father, your mother, your father. We’ve created life. And for a man who has only taken it, I can say that I’m undeservingly happy.”

  Renee looked up at him with a tear in her eye. “Really, baby?”

  Anatoly pulled her up to him and kissed her lips softly. “Really,” he whispered, holding on her plump backside. He moved his head so that he could take a closer look at what he was holding on to and squeezed it tighter. “Do you feel that?” he asked, pushing his erection in between them.

  “How could I not feel that?” she asked, undulating over him. Kissing the mole on his neck, she purred in his ear. “We’re down to one hour and fifteen minutes.”

  “Fuck the clock. I’ll be down when I’m done,” he said, rolling her over in the bed. “I guess there is no point in using a condom now.”

  Chapter 22

  Dmitry hated to use top-dollar assassins to dig holes, but considering that he had sent all staff away from the house except Stepan, who was too old to be outside performing manual labor, he had no choice.

  Near a large lonely oak tree lining the crystal blue lake about a mile from the chateau where he had impregnated Royal nearly a year ago, there was a singular stone, unmarked but intentionally placed.

  For years, it had been groomed to make sure that no weeds grew around it, but no one knew the reason for the marking. The grounds workers had speculated, but no one had got it right in their guessing.

  Some had said that it was Dmitry’s former wife, but she had in fact been buried in her family plot in London. Some had said that it was the burial plot for Ivan, but there was an urn that was in Dmitry’s study that held his ashes. He guarded it carefully and never let anyone, especially Royal, near it.

  No one had ever guessed the real body that lay unmarked under the tree. It was Boss Evgeny Smirnov. The man who had run the Vory underworld for over thirty years and the man whom Dmitry had assassinated by an eager young girl over twenty years ago in the study that he now uses daily. No one had guessed that it was Dmitry’s father. Many found it amazing that the man even had a father.

  Now beside Evgeny’s last resting place there was another hole being prepared for Davyd. As three men dug into the earth, six feet deep, Dmitry watched from the hill with a stone look of grave pain on his face.

  When he had buried his father, he had felt only relief, but the agony that he suffered silently as he put his dearest friend into the ground now brought him nothing but despair and an unquenchable desire to get revenge.

  Two hours after Dmitry had dismissed his son and nephew, they emerged on the landing, walking side-by-side in the breaking sunlight. The rain had stopped and the clouds parted to reveal a bright day with deep blue skies.

  Dmitry took it as a sign of hope.

  The boys were too tired to notice, however, because to them the days were starting to run together.

  Unsure of why the old man wanted to meet outside and still exhausted from their lack of rest, they approached quietly dragging along one step at a time.

  Dmitry turned, wind in his blonde locks streaked with silver and watched them approach. He wore dark shades to fight the cold winds that ripped past him and to hide the occasional tear that dripped on his marble skin.

  As the boys got closer, a strange pride consumed him followed by solemn envy. How he wished that he and his brother could have had a second chance at things in another life where they were not sworn enemies set on a collision course to kill each other. How he wished that none of this blood feud had ever happened. He wished that Ivan could have seen what a fine boy he had helped conceive and the heights in which he would take him. Cutting off his emotions before they got too close, he took a deep breath and exhaled his thoughts.

  Drugging through the wet grass, Gabriel felt shabby in his black tactical gear in comparison to his uncle who stood a few feet from him looking like the poster child for GQ. Tugging at his black top, he looked over at Anatoly and smirked. “Does he always dress like that?” he asked.

  “Always,” Anatoly answered.

  “Why?” Gabriel probed. “Is it to intimidate? It fucking works.”

  Anatoly chuckled. “Just the way that he is,” he said, reaching into his pocket to pull out of stick of gum.

  Anatoly was always comfortable in his jeans, in fact, he preferred them. But his father insisted that he dress more appropriately, thus the more-often-than-not suits and dress pants that he wore when he wasn’t gallivanting around the globe chasing kidnappers and killing pedophiles.

  Today, however, he wore the tactical gear with ease, like an athlete in a sweat suit. It was a break to him from the normal bullshit. It made him remember when he was just a soldier in his father’s army. Life was simpler then. He didn’t have to think so much, be responsible for so much. Now, it felt like the entire world was on his shoulders.

  Meeting Dmitry at the top of the hill, they looked west to see what Dmitry was staring attentively at. Davyd’s final resting place. The realization made Anatoly sick to his stomach. Davyd had been like his grandfather. Every memory of his father had Davyd somewhere in the background even when he was here holding down the European front when Dmitry was in the states courting Royal.

  “Damn shame,” Gabriel said, squinting in the sunlight. His green eyes flickered as he gazed across the serene landscape of snow-capped mountains in the backdrop and hills surrounding them in the valley. It was like someone had painted the place on a canvas and they had walked into a vision.

  Dmitry brought them back into his reality with the clearing of his throat. “I’m having them dig two additional holes,” Dmitry said, walking towards the plot. “One for Balthazar, one for Manon.”

  Anatoly walked up to the site and visibly counted with his fingers. “Uhh, there are four holes here,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Davyd. Balthazar. Manon…”

  Dmitry sucked his teeth. “One may be for Khalid.” He looked down at his so
n but said nothing.

  Anatoly raised his brow. That was a hefty undertaking. Khalid Sidorov was the second most powerful member of the council and had never had one real run-in with his father. Now, after all these years, they were discussing taking him out? Things had gotten bad quickly and there was no turning back; this he was certain of but had it gotten this bad?

  Gabriel listened on attentively. He had met Khalid on a couple of occasions when he was undercover, and his first impression was that the guy was pretty solid. Evidently, his first impression had been wrong, just one more reason why he didn’t need to be a federal agent in the first place. His senses about people were still way off.

  “Under that rock is your grandfather. I say your grandfather, because no one knows if he was my father or my uncle,” Dmitry said, pointing at the marking. His gazed lingered for a minute. It was the first time in his life that he had ever told anyone that truth. It felt good to get it off his chest. A weight instantly released from him with his confession.

  Gabriel and Anatoly looked up confused.

  “I buried him here as a reminder to me of how close you should always keep your enemies, and how blood can be thicker than water or more deadly than cyanide.” Dmitry slipped his hands in his pants pockets and rocked on his heels. “My father had many secrets, but the one he kept closest to his chest was the birth of a girl named Manon whom I fired from The Red Square Hotel just a few miles from here after I killed him and took over all of his properties. She has a vendetta, gentlemen. This is as fucking personal as it gets. The power behind her at this point is Khalid’s son. Vladimir was supposed to have been killed over fifteen years ago. But that didn’t happen and it didn’t happen because I trusted someone else to do the job. I won’t make that mistake twice. Keep your lips shut tight. Filter all Intel through me and make sure that you watch each other’s backs out there no matter what. We all come home when this is done, and we come home with our little girl.”

  Anatoly shook his head. His father’s pep talk had given him the rejuvenation that his nap could not. Tapping his foot anxiously, he looked over at Gabriel. “You getting all of this.”

  Gabriel fought a sincere yawn from tiredness. There was no way he was going to fuck up that speech. His eyes watered as he answered, “Oh yeah,” Gabriel said coolly. “Kill everyone, leave no one. Get Anya back safely.”

  “That’s about it,” Dmitry said, turning his back to the plots. “They’re going to ask for the money, and we’re going to give it to them. But they’re only holding it for us. Right now, they don’t know that we know who they are, and they don’t know that we know that they exist. If it had not been for the very delicate information that Langston gave us, we could have been running in the dark here, but now we know everything. I’ve arranged for helicopters and jets to be on standby 24-hours a day. We do the final part together. For now, I want you to walk back over to my office with me and get the information on Balthazar’s lover, who is currently residing in Geneva, Switzerland at their mountain-side loft with their Akita. His name, the lover that is, is Sven, and he’s a twenty-seven year old art enthusiast with a love for deutch-marks and Nazi contraband. I guess that explains why Balthazar doesn’t like little Anya. She’s a half-breed in his eyes of two races he loathes - Russians who kicked the German’s asses with snow during World War II at Stalingrad and Blacks, a race they thought to be sub-human. I cannot express to you how badly I want to get my precious little angel away from the sick fuck. But I don’t want him harmed by anyone else. That’s my job. And we all know how I love my job.”

  Gabriel turned up his nose. A gay Nazi? What the fuck?

  Dmitry continued with more ease in his voice at the thought of what he would do to them. “Bring our little girlfriend here to me immediately – snatch him up before they even realize that he’s gone. I want to interrogate him in my house to see how much of this he is aware of and see if he might serve as leverage with his sugar daddy, who is away working.”

  Anatoly grinded his teeth at the thought of someone abusing his sister because they thought that she was less than them. He balled his fists up and stuffed them in his pants pockets.

  Gabriel could feel the angst from both of them, which made him want more than ever to just get the people responsible for this and end them.

  “We have to keep Vladimir alive. He’s going to have half a billion dollars of my money. That could get him the ends of the earth very quickly. So, once we lock on, we don’t lose him,” Dmitry ordered.

  “How are we going to get the money back?” Gabriel asked.

  “Persuasion,” Dmitry answered. “It’s one of my best skill sets.”

  “Okay,” Gabriel said, wanting to hear no more on that subject. He had watched, with a shaky stomach, as his cousin beat, burned, gutted and finally shot Upheil a few hours ago and knew that if Dmitry was better than Anatoly at interrogation then he didn’t want to be in the same city when it took place.

  “It’s there move now, but the great thing about good strategy is knowing their move before they make it,” Dmitry said, headed back towards the chateau.

  Chapter 23

  Balthazar watched the breaking news in utter dismay. According to flashing reports on all the important news channels, his contact, ex-colonel Upheil Kalensko, had been found hours earlier chained to the front gate of his estate with his entrails pulled out and the words butcher in Russian cut into his forehead while the back drop of the scene was a burned down mansion with over thirty additional dead bodies burned to a crisp inside.

  The current news anchor standing outside of the estate with a microphone clutched in her hands said that authorities thought the attack could have been orchestrated by Ukrainian ex-pats who were retaliating against the former colonel for his alleged illegal activities during and after his time with the military, but it was too early to say for sure.

  He hoped that they were right.

  Balthazar watched the television like a child seeing it for the first time. Clinging to every word, he felt the contents of his breakfast nearly leap back into his mouth. He was nauseous and nervous all at the same time.

  Authorities said there was currently an open investigation and officials were still trying to identify the other bodies, but all Balthazar wanted to know was did the fucking child molester squeal before he died.

  No one knew about his impending second deal, one that would secure a small fortune in the event that his new friends chose to cut him out of their kidnapping farce. However, now it seemed that he had put them all in peril. If Vladimir and Manon found out, they would surely do more than cut him out. They would see him dead. But he could not jump the gun. The call would be made today, and it was possible that the money could be collected and the child returned before anyone was the wiser. He simply had to play things very carefully for the time being.

  Hearing the familiar clink of stiletto boots behind him, he quickly grabbed the remote and turned off the television. His shaking hands nearly giving him away, he stuck it under the table and stilled his quickened breaths.

  Avoiding conversation about Upheil would be a necessary thing for the current time. The television would only broach the subject and with the sweat that formed on his bald head, he would only create suspicion.

  With as much charm as he could muster, he turned with a painted on smile and pushed his worry down in his trembling gut. “Are you joining me for a bite to eat before we make the call?” he asked, motioning towards his unfinished breakfast.

  Manon’s gaze was critical. The lines around her lips showing as she pursed her lips, she breezed past him, her perfume lingering shortly behind.

  For once, she was alone instead of flanked with bodyguards. Her eyes were set ablaze with fury and her fists were clenched around a piece of paper. A hiss escaped her lips. “Have you seen this?” she asked in a shrill voice, throwing down a wire that had gone out to various powerful organized crime syndicates worldwide. Her palm lay flat on the paper, nails gleaming blood red. “Thi
s is a photo of the both of us with a bounty on our heads of 100 million dollars. It just came out…just.” Her bottom lip quivered in both fear and anger.

  Balthazar pried the paper from her hands and looked at it. He blinked. “It can’t be,” he whispered, knowing now that Upheil had given him up before he died. Fucking traitor!

  Manon gripped the end of the island, grasping its coldness so tight until she chipped her nails. “Vladimir is on the way as soon as he picks up the money. We have to regroup,” she said, sitting down on the barstool. “I told him that it was unwise for all three of us to stay together in the same place, but he disagrees. He thinks our only leverage may be the girl at this point. We’ve been pushed into a fucking corner!”

  “Does anyone know how Dmitry found out?” he asked, hiding his true knowledge.

  “No,” she said absently. “Vladimir plans to reach out to his father to find out himself.”

  “Won’t Khalid become suspicious if Vladimir suddenly appears to show concern about someone other than himself?” Balthazar asked with a hint of venom in his voice.

  The woman ignored him. “Now might not be a good time to fall apart, considering that we cannot even trust the men who help us to hold the girl. $100 million is a hell of a lot more than we are paying them,” she reminded. She looked across the room at the guard standing outside of the door and took a deep breath. For all she knew, they were already under attack.

  The thought sobered Balthazar. “So are we to stay here and wait for one of our own to stab us in the back or will we be leaving soon?”

  “We continue as planned,” she said, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “We make the call for the money. At least with that, we have more ability to go mobile.”