by Bella Rose
I saw her phone on the table so I knew I couldn’t even track him that way. What would he be planning? I began pacing big lines in Anya’s kitchen as I worked it all through in my head. Up one side of the kitchen and back down the other. Somehow it helped me settle down long enough to think. I had to be able to figure this out. The Orlovs didn’t have that much territory!
Then it hit me. “Marriage,” I grit out suddenly. “He’s going to try and marry her.”
I didn’t even want to contemplate how he thought he could get that farce to work in this day and age, but it was the bullshit scheme that made the most sense from where I was standing and I had nothing else to go on.
“Yuri,” I breathed softly. “He’s the one who does all the Orlov marriages and half the other Russian couples in the city who don’t want the traditional orthodox wedding.”
Okay. So I had the culprit. Where was the damn bar? I slammed my hand against the door so hard that it shivered against the hinges. I was nearly out of time. I knew it. Then I remembered that dive over on the other side of town where all the Russian men in the city headed after their factory shifts were over.
Mamushka’s.
Chapter Twenty
Anya
I would like to think that I’m a pretty nonviolent person. I’m a middle school teacher for goodness’ sake! I teach bored kids about the American Revolution and the constitution. I’ve always found that a bit hilarious since I’m Russian by birth. I was born here in the US, but I certainly wasn’t raised American. Our household was Russian. Especially since my father was the Pekhan of the Romanov mafiya.
I tried to get a good look at all the guys in the bar. I recognized about a dozen of the maybe thirty men standing about. That likely meant those I’d seen before were Antonin’s Romanov men. They’d turned traitor to their Pekhan. That made them my enemies, but the rest of these guys were probably Orlovs, and that made them straight-up trash in my book.
I glared at Antonin. “So why join forces with these lowlifes? Weren’t your men enough? Or did you need a bunch of Orlovs to make up for the fact that your men are traitorous cowards?”
“Nice.” Antonin shot me a withering look. “If you’re trying to play mind games, little girl, you need to work a little harder.”
“Do I?” I raised my voice and craned my neck around so everyone could hear me. “Because if the Orlovs in the room haven’t started wondering what it is they’re going to get out of this deal, they really should!”
“We’ve made our deal already.” A man stepped out of the Orlov ranks. I didn’t recognize him. He only twisted his mouth into a sick sort of grin. “My name is Kirill. I am the Pekhan of the Orlovs.”
“Newly made, hmm?” That was the only answer as far as I was concerned. The Pekhans were all old men from what I knew. My father had been the leader of the Romanovs for nearly forty years, and the other leaders were all about his age. If the Orlovs had a new Pekhan, maybe that’s why he’d decided to make an alliance with Antonin.
“It’s just too bad that you made such a bad choice of an ally,” I told Kirill. “This bozo isn’t getting anywhere near the leadership position he’s telling you he’s going to have.”
“Lady,” Kirill said derisively. “You aren’t in any position to say that.”
“Really?” I took a deep breath. It was time to pull out my wild card. “So none of you have ever heard of the assassin named Vasily?”
There were some murmurs. Weirdly enough, most of those uneasy looks and words came from the Romanovs, but there was a good bit of uneasiness in the Orlov ranks as well. These men were not held together by very strong stuff. That was evident. What was it? Money? I needed to find a pressure point. I needed a way to manipulate them into turning on each other.
“Vasily is a myth,” Kirill scoffed.
“Ha!” I laughed. My hands were starting to ache. They were tied behind my back, and the rope was cutting off my circulation. I had to stop thinking about that. It was making me envision a world where I had to have my hands cut off because they were so damaged from this bullshit incident. “Vasily is not a myth! He’s the man who was named as the next Pekhan of the Romanovs. I might have thought he was a myth, too, because he comes so silently and kills with such deadly accuracy.”
Now most of that was pure conjecture. But I did happen to know a little bit about Vasily. And I had no doubt that as much of a jerk as he was, the man was really good at his job. It could not have been otherwise. My father would not have made him assassin otherwise.
“She’s just yanking your chain.” Antonin was standing at the bar with Yuri, arguing over what I could only assume was the marriage certificate. I was horrified to think that my name would appear on such a document, but I couldn’t think about that right now.
“I’m not yanking anything.” I jerked my chin toward Antonin. “He’s lying to you all. Can’t you see that? He’s jerking you around just like he betrayed my father. Why would you ever trust a man who betrayed one master?”
I could see that I was getting through to Kirill. He looked uneasy. Passing several significant glances toward his men, he began backing toward the rear of the room. Then Antonin swung around and realized what he was doing.
“Hey!” Antonin shouted. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Just checking to see if what the bitch says is true,” Kirill muttered. “And I think we need to settle on the terms of our agreement now, instead of later.”
“Are you kidding me?” Antonin roared. He flung up his hands and swept his gun off the bar top. Stomping toward Kirill, he raised his weapon and fired.
The entire room seemed to freeze as we all watched red blood and gray brain matter spray the bar top. The macabre scene happened so quickly that I nearly lost the contents of my stomach for the second time that night. Blood dripped from the bar. Kirill fell to the ground. He didn’t really collapse. It wasn’t that simple. It was sort of like he just lost the ability to stand. His body kind of folded into a pile on the floor, facedown.
My stomach heaved as I saw the huge hole in the back of his head. The bullet had entered through the forehead and completely blown away the back of his skull. Several of his men had been behind him. They were covered in pieces of bone and bits of sinew and blood. The horror on their faces only very slowly turned to anger.
“You murdered Kirill?” One of Antonin’s men shouted at him. “Why would you do that? We had him exactly where we needed him. You’ve ruined everything!”
“No.” Antonin swung his weapon around. He made threatening motions toward Kirill’s men. “I’ve just claimed the Orlov assets for our own. I’ll declare myself the Pekhan of their family, and we will just absorb them into our ranks.”
“You’re crazy,” I whispered. “You’re completely, batshit crazy.”
Vasily
From my place in the shadows of the bar, I heard the shot. I had been creeping closer and closer to the upper-story windows. Now I crouched and ran. My heart was racing, and I felt a surge of adrenaline that nearly made me lose my composure. If that fucking bastard had murdered Anya, I would—hell, I didn’t know what I would do. Anya’s death would end my world. I don’t even know how I was aware of that fact. But I knew that it was true. I had totally underestimated that woman’s importance in my life. It was something that would never happen again.
The night wind was cold on my face. It wasn’t pleasant. It felt like there were tiny shards of ice pelting my cheeks and forehead. There was a storm coming in. I could feel it. The air was electric, and in the distance I could see lightning from a fall storm rolling in. It wasn’t just dark either. It was inky black. Thick clouds obscured the moon. It was just as well. We were going to have to leave this place fast, and there was no better cover than a dark night when it came to evading the enemy.
I eased open one of the windows on the building’s second story. The place was practically derelict. The bricks were crumbling away, and three of the six window panes were broken. I
had to be careful as I lifted the narrow rectangle lest the thing shatter in my hands.
Once I was reasonably sure the window wasn’t going to fall and cut me in half, I ducked inside. My feet scraped against old newspapers. The place was covered in them. The room was long and narrow. It appeared to be the entire second story. The skeletal walls were only framed. The drywall and plaster was shredded and torn away. In some places it seemed rotted, and as I shined my penlight on my surroundings I wondered if there had been water damage at one time. The place reeked of mold.
I heard voices below me. There was a hole in the floor just a few feet away. I crouched down and shifted my body carefully as I got close enough to peek through.
“You shouldn’t have shot him!” One of the Orlovs was pointing a gun at Antonin. “He was our boss! You murdered him. You think we’ll just let you go? Think again.”
“You’ll let me go if you don’t want to die.” Antonin was talking fast. I knew that racket. He’d been doing that since grade school. It had been his standard operating procedure for avoiding bullies.
I tried to catch a glimpse of Anya and finally saw her tied to a chair near the center of the room. The first story of this building was incredibly low ceilinged. The whole place was odd. I sat back on my heels and shined my light around the room. The floor was rotten. Each step I took wasn’t creaky. It was squishy. One good thump and the whole thing would cave in, which would make a stellar distraction.
I began gathering the heaviest items I could find. Phone books, large bound stacks of newspapers. I stacked and stacked until I had made huge piles that sat like dominos all over the room. They only lacked a catalyst. The floor was practically groaning beneath all the weight. When it went, it was going to go.
I moved toward the hallway in the center of the building. I could only hope that by standing so near a structural post, I would be spared the fate of all this crap I was about to send down the hatch.
Downstairs, things were growing even more heated. I heard slides pulled as bullets were chambered. I had to act now. If I didn’t, they were going to start shooting and my Anya was going to get caught in their crossfire.
I took a deep breath. The mold floating around in the air made me cough. I’d just completely given away my presence in the building, but it no longer mattered. I kicked a heavy pile of bundled newsprint and watched it topple over. It took out the next stack, but it also slammed against the floor. Each successive pile added to the weight until I heard the timbers give way. The subfloor crumbled and everything abruptly fell through like some Hollywood stage set gone horribly wrong.
There were shouts and even a shot. My gut knotted as I hoped to God that the bullet hadn’t gone anywhere near Anya. But I had my own problems for the moment. My plan to stay safe in the hallway completely failed when the entire wall by my left shoulder gave way.
The drywall and two-by-four framework fell forward into the abyss I had created. I scrambled backward, but it was too late. I tumbled through the hole into the mess raining down onto the bar floor. I had the impression of newsprint, phone books, trash, and moldy building materials. It lay strewn about in piles. The rest of the second story was giving way. The screech of nails giving up was followed by the crash of the bar being completely filled in by debris. Men screamed as they were buried alive. Then my ears filled with refuse and I could hear nothing. The dust burned my eyes and my lungs. I struggled to breathe. I coughed but could not catch my breath. I needed to move. I was a sitting duck. Anyone could take a shot, and I would be helpless. My gun was trapped in the holster in the small of my back, and my hands were pinned to my chest as I was slowly buried alive.
Chapter Twenty-One
Anya
It felt as though the world was ending. One second Antonin and one of Kirill Orlov’s men had been arguing. They were waving their guns in the air and screaming like spoiled children denied a toy. The next second the ceiling seemed to fall in. It started with the flutter of stray newspapers through a small hole I hadn’t noticed until that moment.
Next, there was a horrific crash and everything seemed to come apart. I watched as Yuri dove behind the bar. Antonin scattered like a rat just in time. A huge chunk of plaster came down right on top of the Orlov soldier’s head. His skull burst like a ripe melon. There was more blood, so much blood as he writhed on the floor beneath the construction waste.
The building shuddered. I could feel it in the post at my back. My hands were tied to the support beam. I heard a whimper and realized that it was me. Would I be crushed? I was sitting in the middle of it all. The entire place was caving in. Clouds of mold and drywall dust filled the air. I coughed and my eyes burned. I grabbed at the neck of my shirt with my teeth and tried to pull it up over my mouth. My lungs were screaming. It was as if I could get no air. There was no air in the room, only death.
Orlov men scattered only to be crushed beneath more falling beams and pieces of two-by-four. Then I saw something very odd. I glanced up not far from my spot and spotted a man falling with the debris. He was filthy, but I would have recognized that chiseled face anywhere.
Vasily!
I wanted to cry out, but I didn’t want Antonin to know that Vasily had come. I didn’t want to give away the ruse, if this was such a thing. What was Vasily thinking? He was going to be killed. I struggled with my hands, trying to get loose. I needed to go to Vasily. He was being buried. I saw the trash come down. It covered his form, the dust obscuring my view of his face. He would be lost forever in this ruined building.
“Get out of here!” Yuri appeared by my side. “The gas lines will burst! The place is going to go up.”
I smelled it then. The hiss of natural gas was accompanied by the acrid odor. He was right. One spark would set it all off. Worse. The sky opened up and began to pour rain. Apparently the moldy second floor had come from a leaky roof because it was pouring down on us now. Rivulets of poisonous dust ran everywhere.
Yuri was still jerking at my bonds with his knife. Finally my hands came free. “Go!” he told me.
“Not so damn fast!” Antonin grabbed my wrists and held on. “She comes with me!”
He was limping and there was a huge gash on his forehead. But only a few feet away Vasily might be dying in the wet remains of this cursed building. Antonin pointed his gun at Yuri.
Yuri put his hands up and muttered something in Russian.
“You’re coming with us,” Antonin announced. “And we’ll take your car.”
Antonin began dragging me toward the front door. Yuri went with us, Antonin’s gun still pointed at his head. We had made it nearly outside before I heard a crumbling noise behind us. Antonin whipped around, but he was too late. We hadn’t gotten out before Vasily came to my aid.
“Let her go!” Vasily shouted. “Get your useless ass out of here, or I’ll blow your head off. And believe me, I am so sick of you right now, I don’t care that I’ve known you almost all my life.”
Vasily was still half-buried in muck. It was in his hair and streaking his face with grime. But his gun was steady, and he looked mad as hell. Still, Antonin only laughed. I wondered if the events of the night had finally unhinged him.
“Go ahead!” Antonin raised his hands and gave Vasily a double dose of the middle finger. “You shoot and we all go up in flames.”
I saw a moment’s hesitation on Vasily’s face, but it was there so quickly I thought I might have imagined it. Then he shrugged. “You’ll still be dead!”
“So will your precious, Anya,” Antonin taunted.
We got another shrug from Vasily. “Not my Anya. If she and you both die, then the Romanov property is safe.”
What? I struggled not to open my mouth and scream with outrage. Was he serious? He didn’t care what happened to me? He was going to blow up what was left of this shithole and he didn’t care if I was hurt in the process? I didn’t understand. Vasily couldn’t be that indifferent to me. He couldn’t!
Antonin was looking a little less sure of h
imself. Both he and Yuri were now edging closer to the exit. They wanted out. That much was obvious. The place was done, and there was nothing to be said for it.
“Fine,” Vasily said cooly. “You lose.”
I heard the shot, but that was it. The ignition was instant and devastating. The blast went up from the center of the building. What was visible of the ceiling seemed to disintegrate. The blast flung me backward, through the door and out onto the pavement. I hit the ground and could not breathe. The pain was excruciating. The heat on my face was so intense I could feel the hair on my eyebrows singeing away. Even my eyelashes felt charred.
I lay on the ground, stunned and unable to move. If Vasily was still in that building, he had to be dead. My eyes began to water even though I’d thought all the moisture in my body had just been burned away.
Vasily
The whole world was on fire, and I was in the pit of hell. I had taken a calculated risk, and now I was afraid that I had lost the gamble and the whole war. Nothing existed for me in that moment but the flames belching high above my head. My ears burned as the gas burned off on the lower level of the bar. The scent of burning hair overcame everything else. My scalp was so hot I could not dream of touching it. I thought my brain might boil inside my head. I closed my eyes and covered my head as best I could. Most of my body was still buried. It was the only thing that saved my life.
But I was still alive. I had to breathe in and out and tell myself that over and over again just to believe it was true. I shoved a piece of plywood away from my head and stared around me at the carnage. As I had thought, the blast went up. The natural way for the release of pressure was through the path of least resistance. The damn ceiling was so useless that it was already gone.
The hiss of torrential rain on smoldering building materials was a stark counterpoint to the pulsing hammer of my head. I was shocked I could still hear. Everything in my world was topsy-turvy. I felt disoriented and very sore. Every muscle in my body hurt. Had I not been covered in drywall and wet newsprint, I would have been toast. As it was I could barely pull myself out of the muck toward safety.
