Rezso

by Kat Parrish

  Rezso

  L.A. Nocturne: Book 2

  Kat Parrish

  Dark Valentine Press

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  REZSO

  L.A. NOCTURNE 2

  Copyright © 2019 by Kat Parrish

  Published by Dark Valentine Press

  Cover design by Indie Author Services

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews — without permission in writing from its publisher, Dark Valentine Press.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Also by Kat Parrish

  About the Author

  Even a lone wolf needs a pack.

  1

  I was in the garden of the little Craftsman house my mother had painted robin’s egg blue when I got the call from Michael Etebari. He only calls me when he needs me to come to Los Angeles for a job.

  I fucking hate L.A.

  For about a second, I thought about ignoring the call, but I owed Mickey and his clan a debt I could never repay so I picked up the phone and swiped right.

  “I need you here,” he said without preamble because Mickey’s the kind of annoying asshole who can’t be bothered to say hello because he assumes everyone recognizes his voice.

  “I’ll be there tomorrow,” I said.

  “Tonight’s better,” he said, which meant I was going to have to drive up to Seattle and catch a plane rather than driving down to L.A. in the air-conditioned comfort of my Cadillac CT6.

  It’s a long drive but I don’t mind. Driving calms me down. Gives me time to think. And if I don’t feel like being alone with my thoughts, I always have at least twenty hours of podcasts cued up to listen to. “My History Can Beat Up Your Politics” and “So Many Damn Books” are currently in heavy rotation. My drive-time is never wasted.

  Unlike time in the air.

  Last time I flew, the fucking complimentary headphones didn’t even work so I couldn’t tune in to any of the airline’s lowest common denominator playlists in the musical genre of my choice. And I wouldn’t feed an airline meal to my worst enemy. The Frankenfood they offer makes chicken nuggets look like organic delicacies.

  I fucking hate flying. I’m just not built for airline travel. Even the First-Class seats are too small for me and most of the time I’m flying coach. Mickey’s an asshole, but he usually accommodates my preferences, so the rush told me whatever problem was going on in Los Angeles was a big one.

  It goes without saying that I fucking hate problems. Because Etebari Security problems were never simple jobs. And the problems I’m brought in to solve always get messy. Always.

  My skillset Is pretty specialized and once I’m in the “zone,” it can be hard to get back to normal. Sometimes I don’t get all the way back for months.

  In general, it’s better if I just lie low in my little blue house and ignore the outside world.

  But as I said, “no” wasn’t an option when it was Mickey calling.

  “There’ll be a ticket waiting for you at the Alaska check-in desk,” Mickey said as if I’d already said yes to the job and things were already settled. It was a relief to hear I’d be flying Alaska, though. That meant I’d be flying Sea-Tac to Burbank and would at least avoid the clusterfuck that is LAX, so there was that.

  “I’ll need a car,” I said, without adding “please,” because I can be an asshole too.

  “Jon will pick you up,” Mickey said and ended the call without saying goodbye.

  I looked down at the dog frisking about my yard chasing butterflies and acting silly.

  “Looks like you’re going to be on your own for a while,” I said. She did not seem to give AF, but at the sound of my voice, she abandoned the butterflies and pranced over to me, putting her head on my knee so I could pet her. I didn’t. She is not my dog. It is not my job to pet her. She never seems to take my disinterest personally. She gave me a friendly bark—If you change your mind, I’ll be right here—and then went back to playing with the butterflies.

  It doesn’t take much to entertain her.

  The dog had shown up about a month ago, nothing but skin and bones, with fur so matted it looked like felt. She’d nosed around my garbage cans looking for scraps but found no joy. I keep my cans locked down to foil the raccoons that roam the neighborhood.

  But she kept coming back, kept getting closer and closer to my porch. She was wearing a collar, but no tag and I wondered if she was a dog one of the local college students had acquired as a puppy and then left behind when they graduated.

  People did stuff like that.

  I fucking hate people.

  I’d ignored the dog when she first came around because I wasn’t interested in taking on a pet, but she kept coming back like she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  And then one morning I’d found her stretched out on my front porch, right in front of my screen door. She was so still I thought she was dead. But she heard me come out and raised her head. Her eyes were bright but sunken.

  She looked so pathetic I went back in the house and fetched her some water and a bowl of leftover paella I was going to eat for lunch. The dog scoffed it down like she hadn’t eaten for weeks. She probably hadn’t. Afterwards, she came up to the porch glider where I was sitting and put her filthy paws on my leg and looked up at me with big brown eyes that were full of goop.

  “I’m not going to pet you,” I told her.

  So, she put her head down on my knee and we just sat there for a while, her body heat warming my legs.

  “You smell bad,” I told her. She wagged her tail. It was brushy, like a golden retriever’s.

  “I’ve seen Marley & Me,” I told her. “I know how this movie ends.”

  “Wrong movie bro,” my college kid neighbor said as he wheeled his bike out to the street. The college is like two blocks away, but he always takes the bike.

  “Marley was a lab,” he added.

  He studied the dog for a minute as she sniffed at his shoes and the tires of his bike. “Though he might have some lab in him somewhere.”

  “She,” I said, correcting him—not because it mattered, because the dog wasn’t going to stay—but because he was annoying me. I fucking hate being called “bro.”

  He nodded like he’d known that all along because he’s a sophomore and college sophomores fucking think they know everything.

  “When did you get her?”

  “Not my dog,” I said as the dog returned to me, tail wagging happily.

  “If you say so,” he said and laughed.

  I fucking hate college kids. But this one, Trey, is mostly okay despite his douchey name. He has a sense of humor and he mostly treats me with respect, which is pretty much all I ask of a human being. He’s been doing odd jobs for me on and off since he first moved in a year ago.

  Whenever I have to leave town on one of Mickey’s errands, I pay him to pick up my mail and packages and if I’m gone more than a week, mow my lawn.

  I had no idea how long I’d be gone to L.A. this time.

  I told Trey I’d need his services for at least a week. He’s got a key to my place and a debit card linked to one of my accounts, so if any emergencies come
up, he can take care of them without involving me.

  “What about the dog?” he asked. “Do you want me to feed her?”

  “No,” I said.

  Trey looked at the dog. She looked at him. A moment of what looked like intense communication ensued. Then Trey reached out his hand the dog high-fived him.

  “Do not feed her,” I said.

  “Dude, of course I’m going to feed her.”

  I hate being called “dude” more than I hate being called “bro.”

  I scowled at him. I can be pretty intimidating when I want to but Trey’s immune. He just laughed again. “Have a good trip,” he said and mounted his bike.

  The dog and I watched him pedal away.

  I looked at the dog again and sighed.

  “Go home,” I said, for probably the one millionth time since she’d shown up.

  She gave me a look like, Dude, you had me at paella. I’m not going anywhere.

  Fair enough.

  I left a few extra bucks on the kitchen counter so Trey wouldn’t have to buy kibble on his own dime. He was conscientious about how he used the debit card I’d given him. I appreciated that. But I also know that college kids always need money. Doing chores for me sure beat the hell out of donating blood or other bodily fluids, which is what me and my friends used to do for pocket money when we were his age. He didn’t need to be buying dog food when he was living on ramen noodles and peanut butter.

  The dog licked my hand to remind me she was still there.

  I hate that. Dog tongues are slimy and gross.

  “Go away dog,” I said.

  It upset Trey that I hadn’t named the dog and he’d started calling her “Merida.” I asked him why and he said it was because she had reddish fur. Which didn’t really answer my question, but whatever.

  I told him he should take the dog himself since he liked her so much, but he said he couldn’t, that she’d chosen me.

  He’s from Sedona. He really thinks like that. I worry about what’s going to happen to him when he gets out into the real world.

  As promised, there was a ticket to L.A. waiting for me at the Alaska Airlines desk. The open-ended return gave me pause. I don’t like spending an hour more than I have to in Los Angeles. It was also another sign that Mickey was rattled by whatever situation was gong on. Mickey doesn’t rattle easily.

  Once on the plane, I tried to settle down and read, blocking out all the chatter of my fellow passengers, waving off the flight attendant who trundled the beverage cart down the aisle. The flight was almost empty, so I spread out across the three seats and angled my legs out toward the aisle and tried to make myself comfortable.

  I had a couple of books loaded up on my phone but couldn’t concentrate. Instead I thought about the many and various ways I loathed Los Angeles.

  I was born in the city of the angels; the place holds absolutely no allure for me.

  My mom had loved it, though. She’d come of age in the early 80s and she’d had a good time.

  Some of her club clothes still hung in her old bedroom closet, the room I used as my office. All of the outfits sparkle and spangle and glitter and glow in colors not found in nature. There’s even a custom-made gold lame Member’s Only jacket in there. Over the years, she’d told me the garment had belonged to any number of guys, from Eddie Money to David Lee Roth. I’m inclined to believe the former rather than the latter. From the pictures I’ve seen, “Diamond Dave” had a more flamboyant style. But who knows? I’ve seen pictures of my mother from before my father ruined her face. She was so beautiful that in the old days, wars would have been fought over her. And it probably didn’t hurt that she was a girl with a little something extra, with a weak strain of witchcraft in her blood that had come from God knows where.

  Didn’t help her when she met my father, though.

  She never saw the trouble coming.

  Instead, she saw a beautiful bad boy she thought she could tame. She knew about bad boys. She’d seen them in movies, Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, Aidan Quinn in Reckless, Christian Slater in Heathers. Where she came from, being a bad boy meant ditching school to smoke cigarettes and drink beer in the woods. It meant guys who wouldn’t be content just getting to first base but would settle for a hand job if a girl wasn’t into anything more.

  Sure, maybe some of the guys she knew boosted cars or sold a little weed, but they weren’t into anything really bad. Back home in Washington, she’d never met anyone like Oleg.

  He wasn’t just bad, he was evil, but his menace came wrapped in a thick, insulating veneer of charm.

  She’d met him at a party thrown by a friend of a friend of a friend of her roommate. She’d gone because the party was in the Hollywood Hills and she’d heard the owner had a great art collection. And besides, it was Saturday night and who stayed home on a Saturday night?

  Oleg had spotted her the minute she came in, wearing a short shiny dress and a purple faux fur jacket. She would have stood out from the crowd of jaded party girls like a diamond in a gravel pit. Oleg had taken one look and claimed her for his own.

  He’d told one of his wingmen, probably his cousin Timofei, to peel off her roommate so there would be no cock-blocking. He’d had another of his guys ask around until he finally found out her name was Alice.

  Then he’d slithered up to her looking like sex on a stick and said, “Alice, let me take you to Wonderland.”

  I know, cheesy, right? But it was the 80s and between the Bon Jovi on the stereo and the wine coolers on ice, my mother was ready to head to Wonderland.

  She just didn’t realize she’d fallen into the clutches of the Mad Hatter.

  By the time she knew about Oleg’s shady business, it was too late. The first time she tried to leave him, he had Timofei break one of her legs. The second time, when she was pregnant with me, Oleg caught her and the unfortunate guy who’d tried to help her.

  You know all those stories about what the GRU does to spies who turn traitor? How they’re dropped into cauldrons of molten steel or cremated alive? Oleg loved those stories. The poor guy who’d tried to help my mother had died hard and Oleg had made Alice watch.

  And then he’d slashed her face to ribbons with a blade made out of horn.

  The story he told the doctor in the E.R. was that the injuries were the result of a boating accident, that she had fallen face first into the blades of the outboard motor. The doctor wasn’t stupid, but his father lived in Oleg’s territory, so he pretended to believe it and didn’t ask any questions. The doc did a pretty good job of patching her up. There were scars, of course, but nothing so gruesome it would make you look away.

  Oleg thought the incident had broken her spirit and there would be no more attempts to escape. When I was born, he told her she could leave if she wanted, but that he would keep me. She chose to stay, even though by then there were other women in his life, women who were willing to risk his mercurial temper for the material perks of being the consort of a crime lord—designer clothes, vintage jewelry, trips to exotic beaches and Swiss ski resorts, tickets to all the Cirque du Soleil shows.

  Oleg left my mother alone in a big house in Hancock Park. He ignored her but he had plans for me. Plans his younger brother Leo didn’t share. Leo wasn’t content to be his brother’s right-hand man and he wasn’t content to see his son Grisha cut out of the action in favor of me.

  Leo thought I was a soft target.

  And so did Grisha, my cousin.

  The plan was to drown me in my father’s swimming pool. Accidents like that happened all the time. In 1979, O.J. Simpson’s daughter had drowned after falling into the family pool. No one would look twice at Leo or Grisha if I should meet a similar tragic fate.

  Except the one thing Leo and Grisha didn’t count on was that although I hadn’t yet shown a talent for shifting into the monstrous minotaur-like monster all the men in my father’s clan carried inside them, my bull was already lurking in my DNA.

  And when Grisha tried to drown me, the bul
l died to protect me.

  Grisha made the mistake of leaving me floating face down in the water while he went to summon the adults, screaming, “Nikolas isn’t breathing.”

  Except by the time my father and Leo and three of my father’s bimbos came stumbling out of the party my father was hosting, I had caught my breath.

  When I pulled myself out of the water and stood up on the mosaic tile that surrounded it, it was like the “resurrected villain” moment in a thriller. Grisha was so scared, he peed his pants.

  Leo was furious. Not just that Grisha had failed in his task but also that his son had peed his pants out of fear. Grisha had just been trying to please his father. I didn’t even blame him for that. Fathers and sons. It’s complicated.

  If we’d been older, we could probably have gotten past it, gone out to a titty bar, gotten shit-faced, and spent the night bitching about our fathers.

  But we were just kids and what I did next made him my enemy for life.

  I laughed.

  “Grisha peed his pants,” I crowed. And some of the men laughed too, because they didn’t like Leo and were jealous of his position within the clan. That laughter enraged Leo even more. It made him angry enough that he hauled off and hit Grisha, hit him so hard he knocked him into the water.

  Grisha hit his head on the side of the pool as he went in and as blood billowed from the wound, everyone stood around and watched him sink to the bottom. When it was clear that no one was going to pull him out, I dove in. Grisha never forgave me for that either. But he’d had the last laugh. Though he hadn’t killed me, he’d killed my bull and that sealed my fate as an outsider.

  Without my inner animal, I was just a boy.

  And a boy who was just a boy was of absolutely no interest to Oleg Rezansov. And certainly not someone who would one day inherit his criminal kingdom.