Reckoning

by Elizabeth Knox

  “How many did you lose?” I ask.

  “A little over four hundred.”

  Four hundred women died because of Ramirez.

  He is as good as dead.

  “You two know what to do. Reach out to our affiliates and to our clients. Assure them that all is well, and their product will be delivered on schedule. They must know that this does not slow us down, it is only a mere hiccup in our plans. We are still strong, and they will get what they were promised.”

  “Sure,” I comment, walking past Sergei to the door. I put my hand on it when he speaks.

  “Katya. I did not dismiss you. There is more business we must discuss.”

  “No, there is not,” I inform him, turning back to look at him. “We have discussed many things through text. You can text me, unless it is as sensitive as this is. There is nothing more left to talk about between us.”

  “That is where you are wrong.”

  “No, I am many things, but wrong is not one of them.” I exit the room, pushing on the door until I reach the elevator and make it into the lobby of the building. My day has just begun, and now I am on my way to see my dear sister.

  The one who probably has no knowledge of my existence.

  Chapter 16

  At the end of the day, our hearts just want to be home, but our homes aren’t always where we rest our heads.

  - foolish-vibes

  Katya

  I almost went straight from Sergei’s building to where I know I would find my sister and brother in law. I decided against it, going to a local coffee shop to get a warm cappuccino and think about what it is exactly that I would say to them. I know that there is no way I can barge in and explain who I am to her, but in a way, how else am I supposed to do it?

  I sit next to the window, sipping on my cappuccino that I asked the barista to mix a little bit of vanilla in. It tasted smooth, the froth giving it a subtle sweetness that I needed after my already chaotic morning. Thousands of people passed me by minute after minute. Whenever I would be in the city, I would never really take everyone in, as I am in this moment. I was always too busy, in a rush. The world always felt like it was on my shoulders.

  My phone buzzes on the small glass table in front of me. I pick it up, turning the phone over and see Junior’s name come across the screen. Putting my thumb to my home button, my cell phone unlocks, and I go to my messages.

  From: Junior

  Won’t be back when you come into town. Being sent up to MT on an errands trip. I’ll be back in a week, maybe less.

  To: Junior

  I’m a little disappointed. I was hoping to see you soon. I may just have to come to you now.

  I smile. It isn’t hard for me to get a flight. I can’t deny that I want to see him again, and him being gone for a week throws a wrench in my plans.

  The little dots appear on my screen, notifying me that he is typing back.

  From: Junior

  You mean, come for me? We can arrange that, Viper.

  I laugh to myself quietly. There is no denying that he is a straight shooter. I appreciate a man with bluntness.

  I don’t bother replying, just wanting to get finished with this long day. I know where I’m headed next, to see Mariana.

  Luckily, the coffee shop I went to is right across the street from the home that Ion Petran owns. He and my sister had a few properties, and I can understand why. It was dangerous to just have one primary residence, especially for situations like today, where an unexpected visitor might pop by.

  I did my fair share of research, noticing how there was a park right around the corner. The Upper West Side was one of the better parts of the city to raise a child. My sister chose well. She and Ion did not have a child together, however she did from a… previous relationship, if that’s what I can call it. I shouldn’t call it that. There is no sugarcoating that she was raped, and one of the times she was raped resulted in her daughter, Bianca. From the photographs I saw, she was a spitting image of her mother.

  I still did not have much of a game plan of what to say. There was no right way to prepare for this. No matter what I did, I would not be received well. It would be dumb of me to think otherwise. I could only hope that Mariana takes it better than my brother and sister did.

  Before I went in, there was one order of business that I could take care of. Something that I could do now and get out of the way, and that would be contacting the Arcane. They have a very disguised point of contact. You call a bakery in Chicago, leave a message asking for ‘almost burnt sugar cookies like your momma would make them’ and from that point a time, date and location would be sent. No one knows how they did it, but they did. I called Mamma Maria’s bakery and left the message.

  Now, all I had to do was wait. While I waited, I could go talk to my sister.

  I pull my black pea coat closer to my body. It’s hardly as freezing at it can get this time of year in New York, but the wind is blowing in big gusts. I make my way across the street and walk up to the brownstone that my sister calls home. Immediately, I see two of their goons come from the shadows. I should have thought more about this, right now I am kicking myself.

  “Can I help you, Miss?” one of them asks me.

  There is no point in lying in my reason to be here. “Yes, I am sure you can. My name is Katya Kolosov, and I am here to see Mariana Petran. It is important and cannot wait. I apologize for my unannounced arrival, but as I have said, it is urgent that we speak.”

  I wait while the two goons talked in hushed whispers. One of them disappears through an alleyway, to what I presume leads to the back of the house while the other stands and watches me like I am his prey.

  Minutes pass us by before the goon returns, and shortly thereafter the front door opens, and I am met with no one other than Ion Petran. He takes a few steps down onto the street, looking over me closely. “I am wondering what business a Kolosov has with my wife.”

  “Important business,” I respond, putting my hand on my crossbody bag which causes the men around me to get a little jumpy at their guns. “Relax, boys. I do not have a gun.” I put my hand on the latch and continue to open it, pulling out a baggy filled with a few strands of my hair.

  Ion looks at me with a confused expression.

  “I did not expect to be so forward, but I will be. Right now, we do not have the luxury of me babying you both through what is coming. You need to get this tested against your wife’s hair, I assume you will want to run a DNA test before you have to hear the rest I have to say. I will keep it simple. Volkolv is going to be coming after Mariana, for she is so much more valuable to you than you have ever imagined.” As I speak he takes the bag, looking down to me, assessing everything it is that I am telling him. “I am Mariana’s older half-sister. Do what you need to do, and contact me once the test results are in. We have much to discuss, and soon. We have no time to waste, Ion. There is a war headed our way, and because your wife shares the Volkolv blood, she is in it as much as I am.” I reach back into my bag and pull out a business card with my cell phone number on it, handing it to him.

  “My wife does not have any siblings, she is an only child,” he tells me matter of fact, assuming that he has all of the information.

  “No, she isn’t. My brother, sister, and I are from a prior relationship that our mother was in.” Ion doesn’t believe a word that I am saying. I can see this in the way he looks at me. Many men in our life hold the same expression when they are calling bullshit on something. What Ion doesn’t realize is that I am not bullshitting him, and this is much too real. If he isn’t careful, he will find this out sooner rather than later.

  “I don’t know what kind of games you are trying to play, but we take no interest in them. I suggest you get your Louboutin ridden ass off of my property, and don’t you come back,” he grumbles, striding back up the stairwell and into his home.

  This was not how I expected this day to go, however, I can’t complain. For it could have gone much worse.

&n
bsp; Chapter 17

  Life is a bitch, so learn how to fuck it.

  - Anonymous

  Slasher

  When Reed told me that Chaos and I would be escorting the girls up to Montana, I don’t know why I thought that meant I’d be riding my fucking bike. What we actually ended up doing was taking two big ass vans, each of us driving one.

  In the back of my mind, I thought that the girls would complain or even argue with us about going away. If I were them, I would have. But nope, they were eager to go to someplace different. The only place they’d really been since they were in the States was Tennessee. I remember a couple of them went to Nashville for a day trip, but other than that, they haven’t been anywhere.

  Chaos and I started our travel the next day. It was a long trip. We ended up arriving in about twenty-six hours, only making a few stops for bathroom breaks and getting fast food the entire time.

  All of the girls were introduced to everyone briefly, and then we all hit the hay. That trip sucked the life out of every single one of us. Whoever thought driving for that long was easy, well, they were fucking crazy.

  Morning came quicker than I expected, if that’s what I can even call it. I looked over at my cell and it was just past seven in the evening. I got out of the small twin bed I was shoved in and walked out of it, heading towards the kitchen. The Reapers layout was a bit different than ours. They kind of lined booths like we have at Bubba’s all the way around the outer wall of the joint, while having a few couches, pool and foosball tables randomly placed. There was a bar, with seating for a few brothers in front of it, and the kitchen was directly behind that.

  I just sat out in the center of the clubhouse, fucking around and texting some of the brothers from the Skulls.

  From the corner of my eye, it’s like I’m seeing double. She’s got that tan skin like no tomorrow, the same black hair falls down to her ass, and her eyes could kill someone dead in their tracks. Reed had told me in confidence that Maria’s younger sister, Camila was here. He and Fist had some sort of arrangement to keep her out of Rafael’s eye, especially since he’s been so avid about getting Maria “back”. There wasn’t any telling what he’d do, and honestly, I feel like shit is about to go down with Maria soon. Something fishy is in the air, and I just don’t like it.

  I don’t have all the details of what happened when Maria came into the Skulls, but from what I can understand there was a lot of shit with Rafael Ramirez, who is the leader of the Mexican Cartel, and Maria’s father. I think he might have worked for him or something. Who the fuck knows. Anyways, Camila has been sitting her pretty ass up here at the Reapers clubhouse for a little while. I understand why Reed made sure she was here and not with the Skulls. There’s already a magnifying glass on Maria and adding Camila to that mix wouldn’t help anyone.

  “Yo, brother.” I look up to see Boog, or Booger as some of the brothers call him here. He might be a year or two younger than me, but still has that baby face that the ladies go nuts over.

  “Nice to see you again,” I comment. I’ve seen Boog a few times. One of the things I loved about being a Nomad is my freedom to get up and go on the road. I wasn’t a Skull, which meant I had the ability to come and go as I pleased. Reed had made me aware that I was more than welcome to trade in my patch and be a Skull, but something inside me knew that wasn’t the right decision for me. It’s not like I didn’t think about it. I still do. Part of me thinks that it was just back then that I didn’t think it was a good idea. Now, though. That’s a different story. “What you been up to since the last time I seen you?”

  “Aw, nothing much. Trying to keep my ass outta trouble. Lemme just tell you how hard that shit is,” he comments, looking over in the direction where Camila is speaking to a couple girls.

  “I’m betting that translates to her,” I add, and Boog nods his head, wiping his hand across his face.

  “Fuck. Fist told me to stay away from her… and you know I’m not the kind of man to disobey my Prez, but fuck… how in the hell am I supposed to stay away from that?”

  “You just do,” I mutter, knowing that it doesn’t fucking matter what Boog wants to do. It’s about what he needs to do, and since he’s patched with the Reapers, his ass needs to listen to what Fist is telling him.

  “C’mon. You know shit isn’t that simple. You can’t sit here and tell me that you’ve never been with a chick that you were supposed to stay away from.” He’s right. I can’t sit here and tell him that cause I’m doing it right now. Every part of me knows that Katya in all sense of the word is off limits, but does that matter to me? No. I also get what it’s like to have an undeniable attraction to someone. There’s something about her that I can’t quite pinpoint, but it’s there. I’m hoping through time, I’ll be able to figure it out. All I know is that I want to crack past that outer shell that she leaves on for everyone else. I know why she does it, so she doesn’t get hurt.

  I just wonder how she was hurt in the first place. When I think hard about it, I don’t know too much about the girl. I can tell you one thing, that’s about to change.

  “There’s no fucking way I’m gonna leave Camila alone, bro. No fucking way,” Boog tells me in confidence. I get why he doesn’t want to leave her alone. She’s gorgeous as fuck, and certainly not like the other girls in the club life. She looks like she walked straight out of a magazine or something.

  “Didn’t think you would. All I’m saying is that you’d better be careful with her. You not listening to Fist isn’t going to turn out well for either of you, and I mean that. You might just be thinking about yourself right now, but don’t you forget that it affects her as much as it does you,” I’ve never completely disobeyed a Prez before, granted, I’ve never been patched into a club. I have always been Nomad, from pretty much the very first day I started riding. “And brother, if you do this. You’d better not fuck it up. You go hard or go home. You hear me?”

  “When in the fuck have I ever backed down? I ain’t going home.” Exactly. I doubted he was going to back down. She’d better be worth it, who knows what the hell Fist is gonna do when he finds out what Boog is doing with Camila.

  I guess I should be asking myself the same thing about Katya. What’s going to happen to me when Reed finds out I fucked her, and that it’s not just a one-time thing? I’d be lying straight through my fucking teeth if I said I didn’t just want another taste of her, but I wanted to learn more about her. Something is there drawing me to her, and if I’m right something is drawing her to me too.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, when I pull it out I see her name come across the screen.

  From: Katya

  How far from Billings are you?

  To: Katya

  Not far. What’s up?

  From: Katya

  I’m here. Meet me.

  Yep. No way in hell am I wrong. Something is pulling her to me too, and I plan on finding out exactly what that is.

  Chapter 18

  Two damaged people, trying to heal each other is love. - R. H.

  Katya

  I don’t know why, but I had to see him again. Thoughts plagued my mind over again and again, and I could only come up with one conclusion. Seeing Sergei killed me. There wasn’t any preparation for it. I don’t think that there ever would be. I hate him so much, and yet I am stuck with him in my life if I want to ensure that I live a good one. So, I am stuck in general. I either say fuck you to him and live on the bottom, homeless, cold and hungry, or continue to work with him and hate my life every single day for it.

  We all know the road I have chosen to take, and yes, I do hate myself for it.

  Junior is different. He does not judge me so as the others do. He sees a woman and not a monster.

  It has been far too long since I have been looked at in this light, and it warms my heart. I crave it. For once, I just want to see someone who doesn’t hate me nor fear me; just someone who sees me.

  When he texted and told me he wasn’t going to be back in Tennes
see I didn’t think anything of it. My plan was to go right back and then come back to New York after a week. A week was the most amount of time I was going to give Ion to sort his shit out. We couldn’t be dumb right now, and I refused to allow that to happen. There was no telling what my uncle was planning, and honestly, that terrified me. All through my life I have had to live in some aspect of fear, the only good thing was that I could anticipate most things. However, I couldn’t foresee what was about to happen.

  I ended up renting a small A-frame house just outside of Billings, in the dead of the woods. I wanted something private. Most of the time I was surrounded by people, especially when you consider how much I work – which is all of the time. It is so rare that I get to take time away, or time to myself where I can relax.

  Every wall on the inside was wide plank wood, covered in white paint to make it feel open and airy. There was a stairwell in the center that had built-in bookshelves on both sides, and it lead up to the bedroom which just housed a king-sized bed with white, fluffy sheets covering it.

  Across one side of the bookshelves was a plush, old fashioned couch, and a few feet down from that was a very small kitchenette. It wasn’t overzealous, but enough to get the job done. You could tell that the homeowners spent their money in the bathroom, it housed a double vanity with a white counter top, and a huge soaking bathtub which overlooked the hills of the countryside. If you looked down far enough, you could just see a small river which cut through the woods. This place was beautiful, so much more beautiful than many places that I have been before.