by Bella Rose
“Oh, I will.” I shoved the front door open and flounced right by the jerk.
How dare he insinuate that I wasn’t family anymore! Yes. I had taken a step back from this life a long time ago. Why wouldn’t I? Any child—especially a girl—would have nothing to gain by hanging around. Wasn’t it natural for a child to make their own life doing their own thing?
The house was just as crowded as the driveway. What was going on? I dodged several little knots of men having discussions in low tones. Their Russian was thick and fast, the accents pronounced. Were these my father’s soldiers? Why would he call together what appeared to be every man in the ranks?
Not that it was any business of mine. I kept telling myself that over and over again as I ducked through the foyer toward the sweeping second-floor staircase. Most of these guys looked pretty young. How many orphans had my father brought over to the US anyway? At some point didn’t they stop issuing visas and allowing them to become citizens? Were the Romanovs trying to start a mail-order husband service or something? Whew!
I trotted up the carpeted steps, remembering so many other times I’d gone up and down this staircase. I’d stomped up here, stomped down, I’d run, I’d crawled, and I’d even ridden the big ornate banister more than once. This was the place I’d grown up. It had been home for a really long time. But now I wanted something else. I wanted a different life. I didn’t want everyone in my life speaking Russian day in and day out. I wanted my job and my tiny house and my quaint neighborhood and my trips to the library.
At the top of the steps I was surprised to see that the place was pretty much empty. Weird. I would have thought that a crowded first floor would mean an equally crowded second floor as people waited to be admitted to my father’s office. But there was nobody there by his door.
I walked closer. There were voices inside. I recognized my father’s deep rasp immediately. He’d been drinking. At least that’s what the cadence of his voice suggested. The other voice though. I tried to place it. The cadence and timbre were familiar, but I didn’t know the speaker. Maybe my father was having a meeting with someone new, a contact or an informant. Or maybe he was hiring an assassin to do some of his dirty work. Sometimes I had a really hard time with my father’s business. It just wasn’t right. Killing people because they pissed you off was wrong in so many ways.
Sucking in a deep breath, I knocked on my father’s door.
“Who is it?” he called out.
I pressed my ear to the wood and tried to hear his companion. “It’s Anya. Can I come in? I have to ask you something.”
“Of course, child.” There was a pause. I kept pressing my ear to the door, but I didn’t hear anything but the sound of someone moving around. Then the footsteps grew closer, and I leaped back just in time. My father threw open the door. “Please come in.”
“Thank you,” I said quickly. Hopefully he wouldn’t realize that I’d just been eavesdropping, not that I could make out any actual words, but still.
Vasily
So it had come to this. I was hiding in a closet in Boris’s office because he insisted that Anya not be told I had been sent to protect her. It was crap. A big heavy load of ridiculous crap! I sighed and tried not to breathe in the scent of moldy old coats. What did Boris keep in here anyway? The place was in dire need of a good cleaning. And why was I even thinking about that anyway? I was supposed to be a feared assassin of the Romanov crime family. I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about this house that I was about to inherit with its too many years of clutter and no proper upkeep.
“Father.” I heard Anya enter the office.
By pushing the door open just a crack, I could also see just a sliver of what was going on. By this I meant her knee and most of Boris’s face became visible.
“Were you in here with somebody?” she asked. I saw her move as though she were casting a good long look around the room. “I thought I heard you talking to someone.”
“Nobody,” Boris said, waving his hand. He was already pouring himself another glass of vodka. “I was talking on the phone. That is all.”
“What’s going on downstairs?” Anya asked next. “It’s like every one of your men is down there whispering behind their hands.”
Anya was no dummy. Didn’t Boris realize that she was going to know that something unusual was going on? Today was the day Boris announced the succession to his men. It promised to be tense as hell. Especially since Antonin still wasn’t on board with the idea of me leading the Romanov family.
“I have a big announcement to make to the men, that is all.” Boris threw back the drink. I wondered suddenly when he had started drinking so much. Had he always? I remembered that he had always seemed to have a bottle of vodka at his side, but I had never thought anything of it before.
“Father, did you send a man to look out for me? Did you send a bodyguard?”
Anya’s question was abrupt, and it had the desired effect. Boris coughed on his drink and had to take another big sip just to get the first one down the pipes. I wondered if he had expected this, and why he wouldn’t have. Anya had grown up in this family. Whether she had chosen the life or not, she had to have absorbed some of the habits. And one of those should have been suspicion—of damn near everything and everybody.
“Why would you say that, child?” Boris slammed back another drink. “I would never lie to you.”
“You always lie to me!” Anya retorted.
The note of exasperation in her voice made me smile. Then a dust mote tickled my nose, and all of a sudden I was trying like hell not to sneeze. That would have made things a thousand times worse.
“So you didn’t send Vasily?”
“You met a man named Vasily?” Boris sounded politely interested. “Is he a nice man?”
That noise she made was so damned adorable, and yet I could hear the complete disbelief in her voice. “Papa, please don’t bullshit me. If I find out that you’re lying to me, and Vasily is your man, I will cut off his balls.”
“Harsh,” Boris commented. “But not my problem since it is not my balls you are threatening.”
The man had a point, although I didn’t appreciate being thrown under the bus like this.
“Fine.” She stood up. “Then I’m going home, and I better not see Vasily again.”
“What Vasily are you talking about?” Boris slurred. God the man was drunk! “I have three Vasilys I think. No. Four. That name is like Dimitri in Russia. They are all called Dimitri or Vasily or Sasha.”
“Bye, Papa.” I heard the door click, and she was gone.
I shoved my way out of the closet and stood before Boris’s desk, glowering down at him. Not that it did me a bit of good to be angry or indignant. The man was piss drunk. He only laughed at me, pointing and managing to bob and weave in his chair as though he were about to pass out.
“And what happens when she finds out that you’ve been lying to her?” I demanded in a low voice. “What will you say then? She will turn away from you and never want anything to do with you again.”
“She can’t know,” he said stubbornly. He actually folded his arms over his chest like a petulant child. It was aggravating as hell!
“Why not?” I threw up my hands, frustrated, and threw a few choice curses at him. “What would it matter if she knew that you had sent someone? She would have been grateful to you a few days ago when the attack was fresh on her mind. Now she will just feel betrayed. And why wouldn’t she? You’re lying to her and treating her like she’s a child!”
“You seem awfully interested in my daughter.” He sat back in his chair and looked at me with watery eyes. “Are you falling for my Anya?”
“No.” I tried to be nonchalant, but there was too much emotion in my chest. It felt constricted. Air whistled in and out of my lungs, but I could not seem to get enough. Was I panicking? The idea was preposterous.
“You should not speak that way to your Pekhan,” Boris said drunkenly. He swayed in his seat, nearly face-planting
onto his desk.
“You’re just about ready to announce that I am the Pekhan,” I reminded him. “You’re retiring. You cannot have it both ways.”
I took a breath to say something else, but there was no point. Boris had passed out right there in his seat.
Chapter Fifteen
Anya
My father was lying. He had to be. Or maybe I just wanted him to be lying, because if he wasn’t, then I didn’t know what to do with Vasily’s appearance in my life. He was powerful, with a commanding presence that threw me off. It felt as if I were two people. I was the young woman who could go in and make demands of my father and be brave and assertive with what I wanted. And then I was this other creature who still felt afraid of being attacked on the street in front of my home. Vasily made me feel things. He made me want things. Things that weren’t normal in my world. Until Vasily, my existence could have been described as pretty vanilla.
I had to plow my way back out of my father’s house now. The lower level was even more crowded. Someone had apparently unlocked the cellar because there was liquor everywhere. Men were fast on their way to getting drunk. I wound my way past them, garnering almost no attention. They knew me even if I did not know them, which meant for the most part that there was a hands-off policy.
Of course, this did not extend to Antonin. The ass was still lounging about on the front steps as though he owned the place. What we needed was a No Loitering sign. Not that it would have done much good. Antonin wasn’t the type to follow any rules but his own.
“All done talking to Daddy dearest?” he said mockingly.
I gazed at him, suddenly realizing that he might be the one to tell me what I needed to know. He would certainly know the answers. It would just be whether or not he thought it was in his best personal interest to tell me.
“What?” He frowned, but the sarcasm was gone from his voice. Beside him, his two lackeys were looking on with undisguised interest.
“Do you know Vasily?”
“Little girl, I know a lot of men named Vasily,” Antonin retorted.
Something in his manner tipped me off. He was acting shifty. The bravado had faded a bit, and he was actually looking wary. Strange. I tried again. “This Vasily has been hanging around my house for the last several days. The Orlovs were bothering me, and he put a stop to it.”
Antonin looked only mildly interested. “Did he?”
“Do you know him?”
“Let’s say that I did.” There was something almost careful in the way he was talking. “What would it matter? The man is protecting you, is he not? Shouldn’t you just be thankful and let him do his job?”
“So he was assigned to protect me!” I crowed. I didn’t know why I felt momentarily triumphant about that. It was horrible. If Vasily had been assigned to me, that meant I was nothing but a toy he was stuck holding for the moment. “Was he assigned to seduce me too?” I asked bitterly. “I find it difficult to believe that my father would go that far, but sometimes I’m very wrong.”
“Seduce you?” The wheels were turning inside Antonin’s head. I could practically see them. Something was not right. Then a slow smile spread across his face. There was something undeniably cruel about his look. “If your father knew that there was seduction involved, he would have Vasily drawn and quartered.”
“No.” The word slipped out before I could choke it back. Why had I said anything at all? The expression on Antonin’s face told me he wasn’t kidding. Vasily was in deep trouble, and I was the reason. Or perhaps his own lack of self-control was the reason. I couldn’t be sure.
“Do you have feelings for him?” Antonin began to pace a slow circle around me. His voice was all mocking sarcasm. “Were you falling for him? Did you think that you could love him? How sad that he was only screwing you to pass the time since he was required to keep watch over you anyway.”
I lifted my chin. I was better than this. I didn’t have to believe this asshole. Although there might be a good bit of truth in the idea that my father wouldn’t have approved a seduction. Still, Antonin had his own reasons for telling me what he had. “I don’t believe you. Vasily would not seduce a woman for sport.”
Antonin’s low laugh raised all the hair on the back of my neck. I felt a chill slip through my body. The sound was cruel and harsh. “Such an innocent, aren’t you, Anya? I wonder how a woman like you could have satisfied a man of Vasily’s appetites. You’re too weak for him anyway.”
“I’m not weak,” I said through gritted teeth.
Why was I standing here dealing with this? I could leave anytime I wanted. Was I hoping that Antonin would let some bit of valuable information slip? What did I have to gain by standing here and allowing him to mock me?
“You’re an ass,” I told him quietly. “You’ve always been an ass, and you will always be an ass, and that is why you will never go any higher in my father’s organization than you already have. I know what you are. I know what kind of man you are behind all of that bravado you wear.” I stared at him straight in his face. “You’re pathetic and I feel sorry for you and anyone foolish enough to get mixed up with you.”
With that parting shot, I marched down the stairs and all the way to my car. I got inside, maneuvered my way out of the crowded drive, and headed home. I needed to be home. I was shaking and my teeth were chattering and I didn’t even know if I was scared or angry. What was wrong with me? I needed to get a grip and fast. There was something strange going on. If I kept losing my damn mind and cowering in the corner, I was going to get burned.
Vasily
I tried to rouse Boris, but he was snoring so loudly I almost expected someone to come running to see what the racket was. With a sigh, I picked up the bottle of vodka. Barely a smidge sloshed around the bottom when I tilted the bottle. He’d drunk it all. I’d always been aware of the fact that he drank a lot. But I had never thought twice about it.
The door opened and Antonin swaggered inside with a shit-eating grin on his face. His expression burned me. Obviously he felt like he’d gotten one over on me. When had my friend turned into more of a pain in the ass than someone I could count on?
“Did the old lush finally pass out?” Antonin snorted. He poked at Boris and laughed.
I didn’t appreciate the disrespect. Boris was still our Pekhan. Even if he was a bit of a drunk. “You should show some respect,” I growled.
“What? Like you did when you fucked his daughter?” The sly expression on his face suggested he knew more. I was having trouble figuring out how he knew what he did.
I remembered the strange characters watching Anya’s house and following her. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one giving orders to all those men spying on Anya.”
“What are you blowing about?” Antonin scoffed. “Anya told me you fucked her. She asked me if I knew you. I told her that I did, but that I couldn’t believe you’d settled for some innocent piece of fluff. Especially considering which direction your appetites lean in.”
“You bastard!” I could not believe he’d said such a thing to an innocent young woman. “What is wrong with you? Why would you say something that you knew would make her feel dirty and used?”
He only smiled. It occurred to me then that he had orchestrated this on purpose. “What did I do to you?” I whispered. “We were friends. We grew up together like brothers. What did I do that made you so angry that you would try to destroy me like you’re doing?”
“You think you’re so good, but you’re nothing but a bastard like the rest of us.” He spat the words at me like venom.
They rang familiar in my ears. I searched my brain and realized where I’d heard that before. “The men who attacked me near the pub. You’re the one who sent them.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The asshole was actually batting his eyes like an innocent.
“Don’t play dumb. It isn’t becoming,” I retorted. “Then men who attacked me earlier used those exact same words.”
&nbs
p; “Probably because they know you and those words are true. You do think you’re better than the rest of us. You’re not. You’re just a thug like we are. Only they gave you a license to kill, and you think that makes you better than everyone.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but the truth was that I could see why he would think that. “Just because I was made assassin doesn’t make me better than you.”
“In the ranks you answer to no one but the Pekhan, and that stupid fuck”—he gestured to Boris—“wants to make you the next Pekhan. You’ll answer to no one but yourself, and you’re no better than the rest of us. Tell me, how is that right? Why should we follow you?”
“Because I’m the one appointed by our leader,” I argued. “It’s the way we’ve been doing things for decades.”
“Then perhaps it is time for a change.”
Antonin turned and stalked out of the office. He was heading toward the balcony where Boris often addressed the men. I think I realized from the start what he was doing. My gut knotted with tension, and I could not make a decision about what I should do.
Antonin paused by the railing. He lifted his hands and whistled at the men. I could not count the number of times he had done this same thing in the past. He had been running things behind the scenes, dealing with Boris’s drinking problem for years. What had caused him to snap? Boris’s decision to have me protect Anya? Or was it more complicated than that?
“My comrades!” Antonin shouted.
There was a roar as they answered in unison. The sheer volume of their voices drowned out the words they spoke. The Romanovs’ ranks had never been this full before. I wondered if that was Boris’s idea or Antonin’s. I suspected the latter.
I leaned casually against the wall. At this point I could do nothing without making matters worse for myself and for Boris. Or maybe my inaction was more deeply rooted than that. Perhaps I did not want the mantle of leadership. I was happy working alone—in the shadows. I liked my job and my function within the family. What would I do with a position of leadership like Pekhan?
