Russian Mafia Boss's Heir

by Bella Rose

  “We don’t involve women and children,” Mikhail said in a low, angry voice. “We don’t do that.”

  Tori wasn’t going to point out the obvious, which was that they obviously did involve women and children. Her stepfather had just ordered her execution. She was a woman carrying a child. Obviously Stanislas’s paranoia was far more important to him than the woman he had called daughter since her infancy.

  “I have to go.” Mikhail strode toward the doorway, refusing to look at her. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t go anywhere. You’ll be safe here. Outside the house, I can’t guarantee anything right now. Please don’t go anywhere. All right?”

  “Fine,” she agreed. “But you have to take that book with you and at least promise me you’ll look into it. If I’m wrong, that’s good. I’ll be thrilled! If I’m not, you might find the answers you’ve been searching for all along.”

  Mikhail grunted something beneath his breath and then finally made a frustrated noise somewhere between a groan and a growl. “Fine! I’ll look into it. But that’s all I’m promising.”

  Tori didn’t say anything else. She let him go and listened to his boots in the front hallway and then the slam of the front door. Somewhere in the house Mrs. O’Connell was puttering about. Tori caught the scent of fresh bread and knew the woman had been baking. The rest of the place was silent.

  Then the doorbell rang, and she got a very bad feeling in her stomach.

  “I’ve got it, Mrs. O’Connell, thank you.” Tori waved the housekeeper away and flung open the front door.

  There was nobody on the front steps, but there was a package waiting. She picked it up and carefully opened the box. It hadn’t been sealed. Inside was one of Alexei’s gauges from his ear. She recognized it instantly because of the intricate Celtic design. It was covered in blood as if it had been ripped out of her stepbrother’s ear.

  Tori was ready to throw up, but she needed to see the note. She had to know if this meant Alexei was alive or dead. The note said only one thing. It gave the address of an old warehouse in downtown Boston by the harbor.

  Tori already knew she was going. It was very clear that she had no other choice.

  ***

  MIKHAIL SAT DOWN at the computer terminal in Stanislas Vasiliev’s office. He had Tori’s little black book of horror in hand and had every intention of trying to find some corresponding information in Stanislas’s personal files. He was just hoping to discover something that would exonerate the man who had been like a second father to him for so many years.

  It wasn’t that Mikhail didn’t respect Tori’s intelligence or her ability to ferret out information that had been hidden. She was actually very good at that sort of thing. Mikhail just wasn’t ready to believe that Stanislas Vasiliev had been responsible for the murder of Mikhail’s mother and sister.

  Mikhail double clicked the icon for Stanislas’s personal files. They were ordered by year going back nearly twenty years or more. Mikhail glanced at the entry Tori had highlighted in her mother’s cipher. He found the corresponding entry in the regular journal. The entry was completely mundane. Stanislas had been away that day on business, presumably visiting his businesses in the warehouse district near the Neponset. That was in the Allston area. The journal mentioned something else rather cryptic, which was that Stanislas had sent Mikhail’s father on a long errand upstate. There was also a sentence that said simply, “Stanislas suspicious of Boris Ivanov.” Had Stanislas been questioning Mikhail’s father’s loyalty? Why?

  Feeling confused, Mikhail clicked on the computer file. He found the date and opened that document. To his shock, it was a journal entry from Stanislas, who apparently kept electronic journals.

  “Mikhail,” Stanislas said, entering the office. “What are you doing?”

  “Right now?” Mikhail couldn’t help it. He glared at the man who had been his boss for so long. “I’m looking at an entry in your personal journal that speculates that my father was very likely conspiring against you with two of your other men who were also his best friends.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Stanislas waved his hand. “That was decades ago. There is nothing in that journal that suggests anything other than suspicion.”

  “You’re right,” Mikhail agreed. “Or at least you would be if it weren’t for the fact that my mother and sister were probably murdered that night by those same two friends of my father’s. The three of them never spoke again, and I don’t think my father ever left town again. Not even when ordered.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Stanislas scoffed. “That I had your mother and sister murdered? That is preposterous!”

  “Is it any more preposterous than you ordering your men to execute my wife this morning?” Mikhail snarled the words, no longer caring about keeping up the pretext of respect. “She’s carrying my child. You would be murdering yet another mother and child. What is so different about that?”

  The man had the nerve to wave his hand as though he didn’t care at all. “Does it matter? They’re all just a means to an end. Women and children are nothing more than the instruments by which men like us are murdered.”

  “You’re insane,” Mikhail said bitterly. “You need help, Stanislas. You do. Let us help you. Let us take you someplace where you won’t be paranoid all the time. You’ve driven away your son, and now you’re trying to murder your stepdaughter. You’ve been like this for decades. Don’t you want to stop?”

  “Stop what?” Stanislas pulled out a gun. He leveled it at Mikhail and pulled the slide to put a bullet in the chamber. “I really cannot have my men talking about the sort of insubordination you are responsible for starting. You’re stirring up trouble and making bad decisions, Mikhail. I thought better of you, but I was wrong.”

  “Were you?” Mikhail was letting his hand inch toward his own gun, which he’d foolishly left on the corner of the desk. It was within reach and yet so very far away. “Because I was under the impression that I was keeping the drama very subdued in our syndicate. You’re the one who consistently makes it worse. You’re paranoid. You believe all of the bad press and more. Worse, you murder people without reason just because you’re sure they’re conspiring against you!”

  “It’s time to stand up and forget about that weapon, Mikhail.” Stanislas waved the barrel of his weapon. “Besides, you don’t want your wife to worry about you, do you? She’s already waiting for you. If you go quietly, you’ll be with her very soon.”

  Mikhail’s heart leaped into his throat. Stanislas had Tori? How? And how was Mikhail supposed to be able to decide if the crazy man was bluffing or not? Mikhail couldn’t afford to take that chance. He had to cooperate. He could only hope that by doing so, he somehow found a way to get past the loony mafiya boss with the gun before the man completely lost his mind and started killing more people.

  “Move along then,” Stanislas said with an inordinate amount of glee. “We’ll go get in the car and take a little drive. Just the two of us.”

  “You don’t want to bring Dimitri?”

  “No, I don’t.” Stanislas made a sound with his tongue. “That boy is next on my list of those who must be tested. I don’t believe he’s loyal to me at all.” Stanislas glowered at Mikhail. “In fact, I believe you’ve turned him completely against me, Mikhail. So he’ll have to go. I’m sure you understand.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Hey! Can you please answer just one question?” Tori shouted at the men lounging on the other side of the warehouse.

  They ignored her. Or actually they continued to ignore her. She had no notion of time since they had taken her cell phone away, but it felt as though she’d been held inside this cold, cavernous space for hours.

  There was no telling time here. Perhaps time didn’t exist. The only thing that did exist was the persistent dripping of water from a large overhead beam to the cement floor of the warehouse, and the murmur of voices speaking in Russian. The temperature was cold. The New England fall weather was quickly win
ding down, and soon the brutal winter would be upon them. Tori could almost believe it was already here. She expected to see frost on the inside of the windows high above the floor.

  Her fingers were numb. Of course, that was likely due to her awkward position and not the cold. She hung from a chain that had been thrown over a beam high above the warehouse floor. Her wrists were shackled, and her toes barely touched the floor. Her shoulders and back were screaming in agony as soreness and muscle cramping set in from remaining for so long in that painful position. Too much longer and she would probably sustain permanent nerve damage.

  The thought made her angry. “Hey!” She spoke in Russian. “What right do you dogs have to hold me here without even telling me who you work for? This makes no sense! I’ve done nothing! What’s my crime?”

  She continued to rail at them in Russian, scraping her toes on the floor to try and lift her body just a little bit higher and ease the tension on her hands. The worst part was that after she managed to succeed, the blood rushed back into her fingers and wrists and the throbbing began.

  Tori finally lapsed into silence. She forced her brain to think rationally. Mikhail would be coming for her. Eventually. Right? He would notice that she was gone. Mrs. O’Connell would call him. Or he would try to contact her and then want to know why she wasn’t answering her phone.

  In the meantime, she needed to find out who these goons worked for. She didn’t recognize them at all. There were two skinny ones, a really overblown guy with big shoulders, and a fat one who looked as though he could eat his way through an entire donut store in an hour without batting an eyelash.

  “Hey!” she called to the fat one. “Blini boy! Who hired you?”

  Finally. Finally. The man glanced over at her, a sour expression on his face. It was apparent that she’d hit a soft spot, which gave her an idea. “What?” she taunted. “That’s what gave you that belly, right? Did you eat all the blini you could find? Or does your mother still cook all your meals made to order with an extra side of fat?” Yes. That pretty much qualified as mean.

  Blini Boy got a little angry. He started to walk over to her, but the overblown muscle man grabbed his shoulder. The two guys argued in terse Russian. Blini Boy was all for knocking her around a little bit. Muscle Man reminded Blini Boy that the boss was on his way right now and wouldn’t appreciate it if she was all banged up.

  Boss. Great. That did almost nothing to give Tori a hint as to who the boss was. “Hey, Blini Boy! You know that your muscle bound idiot friend is just bossing you around because he doesn’t think you’re strong enough to argue with him.” When in doubt, poke the male ego. That was Tori’s motto.

  Blini Boy shouted at her. “Shut your mouth, bitch!”

  “Real original,” Tori said, purposely sounding bored.

  Blini Boy stomped in her direction, throwing off the arm of his muscled friend. Muscle Guy took great exception to this. He grabbed Blini Boy and swung him around in a big half circle, using Blini Boy as a counter weight to the pendulum effect. The result was that both men went flying across the room. By the time they hit the ground, they were already smashing at each other’s faces.

  “That’s it, Blini Boy!” Tori encouraged. “Sit on him! Squash him flat! Oh, I bet your boss is going to love this!” Tori watched as the two skinny men glanced at each other and then made an obvious mutual decision to let these two beat each other senseless.

  “Hey!” Tori shouted to get the other two men’s attention. “Who do you work for? Come on! Just tell me your boss’s name.”

  They gave her no answer. And perhaps that was why she was so incredibly surprised when Antonin Orlov stepped into the room. Tori blinked in surprise. In fact, she had pretty much already decided that either her stepfather had taken her hostage, or some other family entirely was trying to cash in on her disappearance.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” Orlov told her with a smug smile. “You had to have had your suspicions. The way I snuck around and went behind your family’s back to talk to you didn’t tip you off that my intentions were less than pure?”

  “I just can’t understand what would be in this for you?”

  Antonin cocked his head to one side, gazing at her with unbridled curiosity. “You know, you were supposed to be our ticket into the Vasiliev syndicate.”

  “And I’m somehow responsible for that not happening to your satisfaction?” Tori raised her eyebrows, wishing she could look just a little more dignified. She was hanging from the ceiling like a drowned rat. “I’m so sorry that my mother was killed and I had to figure out a way to survive in that family without her.”

  “Don’t worry.” Her cousin waggled his eyebrows at her in a most disturbing fashion. “You’re going to have another chance to fulfill your potential.”

  ***

  MIKHAIL PULLED UP in front of the warehouse and exhaled a sigh of relief. Driving the entire way there with a semi automatic handgun pressed to his temple had been unnerving. He’d kept waiting for the car to hit a bump and Stanislas to accidentally squeeze the trigger, which would have been the end for Mikhail.

  “You can put the weapon away now,” Mikhail said darkly. “I’m not going to do anything to endanger Tori. If she’s really in there, then you have plenty of leverage and you don’t need that weapon.” That and Mikhail really didn’t like the idea of Stanislas having his finger on a trigger. The man was already a ticking time bomb.

  “You don’t know what’s coming,” Stanislas said cryptically. “Now get out of the vehicle and let’s walk inside real nicely.”

  “Okay.”

  Mikhail exited with his hands lifted into the air. Twilight was just falling, and the sky was indigo with pinpricks of light that would eventually become stars. Mikhail had the odd thought that it was too beautiful outside on this fall evening for something so incredibly horrible to be going on right beneath his nose. It was like déjà vu. He and Ivana had been playing. Dinner had filled the air with beautiful scents of home and warmth. Then someone had burst into his world and destroyed it.

  Mikhail spun around quite suddenly, facing Stanislas and looking grim. He well understood that this could be his last moment on earth if Stanislas decided he’d had enough.

  Mikhail stared his boss straight in the eye. “Did you order my mother and sister killed?”

  “Does it really matter?” Stanislas waved his gun airily. “You are so obsessed with finding out the truth. No? Fine! Your mother and sister have been dead long years. Since before you became a man. Their deaths served as a warning. It kept your father from betraying me. He knew then that I could take whatever I wanted from him without his consent and right under his nose. He wanted to take you far away from me, but I wouldn’t allow it.” Stanislas actually laughed with almost demonic glee. “I wanted you close. I needed him to know that if I wished it, I could kill you too. At any time.”

  Mikhail was sick, absolutely sick. Tori had been right. In fact, his wife had been dead on about a lot of things. It was just too bad that he wouldn’t get the chance to let her know he believed her.

  Mikhail swallowed back the bile that threatened to overwhelm him. “Where is my wife? Where’s Tori?”

  “Closer than you think.” Stanislas waved at the warehouse. “In fact, she should be inside by now, I think.”

  “You think?” Mikhail wondered what was really happening. There were an awful lot of players on the board.

  Stanislas prodded Mikhail in the back with the gun. Mikhail threw a baleful glance over one shoulder and then started walking toward a man door set into the side of the warehouse. The place looked derelict. A few pallets were piled in the alley to the right of the entrance, and there was a loading dock on the left. The exterior lights were beginning to flicker to life. The orange glow cast the entire place in an eerie, sinister light.

  “Open the door,” Stanislas ordered.

  Mikhail obeyed. He had no choice. If Tori was in there, he needed to get inside and hopefully get them both out alive. M
ikhail had no idea how long it would take Dimitri to track them down. His friend was good at running down leads, but Mikhail had never seen this warehouse on any of Stanislas’s invoices or business ledgers. The place obviously wasn’t his, which meant he wasn’t working alone.

  The gun prodded Mikhail forward, and he stepped through the doorway. Stanislas yanked the door closed behind them, and Mikhail found himself in a huge warehouse. The drafty space was frigid, and there was a prisoner hanging from a chain suspended from the ceiling.

  “Tori,” Mikhail breathed.

  To his relief, she squirmed around in search of something. She must have heard the sound of the door opening and closing. That mean she was still coherent and functioning. Mikhail was relieved first, and mad as hell next.

  “How dare you do this to my wife!” Mikhail snarled at Stanislas.

  Stanislas actually looked confused. The gun drooped in his hand. “I didn’t do that!”

  “That would be me.”

  Mikhail watched in shock as Antonin Orlov strolled into view. It made absolutely no sense. Stanislas was working with Orlov? He hated the Orlovs. Unless it was all an act and the old man was more diabolical than paranoid.

  “What are you doing here?” Stanislas shrieked.

  The intensity of Stanislas’s response and his complete loss of control made Mikhail realize that Orlov and Stanislas were not on the same team. Stanislas was now waving the weapon in emphatic circles while he spun around and moaned in Russian about traitors that needed to die.

  “Hey, old man!” Antonin shouted. “What the hell is your problem? You’re going to shoot someone!”

  As if Antonin had been reading the future, Stanislas’s gun went off, and Mikhail and the other goons in the warehouse hit the ground. There was shouting and screaming and then another wild shot as Antonin tried to grab the weapon out of Stanislas’s hand.

  Mikhail gathered himself and prepared to sprint toward Tori. He had to use this diversion and get her free. This was the perfect moment to get away. He could still hear the two lifelong adversaries shouting and arguing over the weapon and pretty much anything else. Antonin was roaring at Stanislas that he was a wife murdering bastard, and Stanislas was just screaming the word “traitor” repeatedly.