by Bella Rose
Leaping up, Mikhail bolted toward Tori. He didn’t even try to unshackle her. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her slender frame and lifted her up and off of the hook. She was limp in his arms, but she rested her face against his chest.
“I knew you’d come,” she whispered.
Mikhail was already headed toward the door. “Let’s get the hell out of here before this gets worse.”
One more shot rang out through the warehouse, but it hadn’t come from Stanislas’s gun. Everyone froze, and Mikhail watched in stunned silence as Alexei sauntered through the doorway holding his own weapon at the ready.
“Now that we’re all here,” Alexei said smoothly. “I think it’s time we get a few things straight.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You?” Stanislas wailed, his voice high pitched and so grating that Tori wanted to clap her hands over her ears. Stanislas pointed at Alexei. “You invited this dog?”
Alexei looked from his father to Antonin Orlov and smirked. “Papa, you really must get over this obsession you have with the Orlovs. They aren’t conspiring against you. Nobody is. And you could live a very peaceful life if you would stop believing that everyone was out to get you.”
“They are!” Stanislas argued shrilly. “Look at all of these people!” He waved toward Tori and Mikhail, Orlov, and the men—who were presumably working for Orlov. Stanislas pointed at Alexei. “You say there are no traitors trying to take what is mine, and yet I am standing in a whole room full of them.”
“But you’re the one who made them that way, Papa!” Alexei said, his expression suggesting that he was getting more than a little irritated. “Nobody tried to take you out. But you’ve been trying to murder anyone who might be considered your successor since the first time you declared an heir. I know. I did some research after you turned on me.”
“Turned on you?” Stanislas put a hand to his chest, looking affronted. “You were plotting my murder!”
Orlov rolled his eyes. “My God, is he always like this?”
“Yes!” Tori, Mikhail, and Alexei all answered at the same time.
“Can we just shoot him and get it out of the way?” Orlov pulled the slide back on his weapon to put a bullet in the chamber.
Tori’s gut tightened until she felt an almost undeniable urge to vomit. She pressed her face to Mikhail’s chest and inhaled deeply of his familiar and comforting scent. That was the only bonus of this entire situation. Nobody had yet seemed to notice that Mikhail was holding her in his arms. They weren’t so far from the exit. If the others began to squabble, she and Mikhail would be long gone.
“It’s all right, my love,” Mikhail murmured. “It’s going to be all right.”
Tori could hear his heart beating slow and steady beneath her ear. It helped to center her. Her wrists were so sore, her hands and arms throbbing as the blood settled into her limbs and started circulating once again. Had Mikhail put her down, she would have fallen. He seemed to realize this on some level, because he was making no moves to set her on her own feet.
“We’re not going to kill him yet,” Alexei told Orlov, gesturing to Stanislas. “He has to admit a few things first.”
“What?” Orlov rolled his eyes like a bratty teenager. “He’s bat shit crazy. What could he possibly have to say?”
Alexei raised his weapon and began walking toward his father. “He could tell us who killed Maria Orlov Vasiliev.”
“Alexei, my son,” Stanislas stammered. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I know you killed her!” Alexei snarled. “She was the only mother I had, and you took her from me!”
Tori felt her heart seize as she realized that what Alexei was saying had more truth to it that she’d ever considered. Maria Orlov Vasiliev had been Tori’s mother, yes. But she had also been more of a mother to Alexei than Tori had realized. Alexei had been ten when Stanislas married Maria. Tori had only been an infant a few months old. Even in her journals it had been apparent that Maria had taken the motherless boy under her wing and loved him as though he were her own.
“Alexei,” Tori called out weakly. “It doesn’t matter who killed her. She’s gone. Just leave it be.”
“No!” Alexei shouted. “He murdered her, and he’s going to tell me how. I want to know the truth!”
“I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t!” Stanislas was actually jumping up and down and stomping his feet like a petulant child. “It was the Orlovs. They did it!”
It was Antonin’s turn to look incensed. “My father didn’t murder his own baby sister! He loved Maria! My father always maintained that you either put the gun in her hand and forced her to shoot herself, or you simply had it done.”
“I—I don’t...” Stanislas lowered his gun hand and used it to scratch his head. “She was in her bedroom. She was writing in a little black book.”
Tori watched in fascination as her stepfather began pacing large concentric circles. Why was she only now realizing that when he didn’t do this he began to get agitated. He actually seemed to need to do this in order to remember! He was scratching the side of his head with the muzzle of the gun. It was so obviously absentminded that it was as if he didn’t even realize that he was doing it.
“I loved her, you know.” Stanislas looked up suddenly, pegging Antonin Orlov with a hard stare. “You and your father never believed that.”
Tori inhaled sharply. “I believe you.”
“What?” Stanislas gazed at her as though he were seeing her for the first time. “Tori, why are you all chained up? That wasn’t the plan, you know?”
Tori ignored that for the moment. It wasn’t important, but this was. “I believe that you loved my mother. You loved her as much as you were capable of loving anything. But her heart already belonged to another man, didn’t it?”
“Your stupid, stinking father,” Stanislas said bitterly. “He was dead, and Maria still loved him more than she loved me.”
“Did you go to her room that night and find her writing about my father?” Tori prodded. “Is that what you were saying?”
“Yes.” Stanislas bobbed his head. His eyes were glazed over. He looked mentally unbalanced in a very frightening way. “I went to her room, and I read over her shoulder. I know she knew that I was there. Don’t you think it made it worse than she would write such things when I could see them?”
“It must have hurt you very much.” Tori squirmed out of Mikhail’s arms. He set her gently on her feet but kept his arms circled around her. She was glad. She wasn’t certain she could have stood on her own anyway. Taking a deep breath, Tori waded into what was probably going to be a very difficult confession. “What did you do, Papa? When you saw what my mother wrote, what did you do?”
“I grabbed her neck.” Stanislas blinked. His hands were clenched, one of them still holding the gun. “I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. She made horrible choking noises, but I didn’t let go. She scratched me!” He actually sounded puzzled by this fact. “It hurt, but I kept on.”
Tori felt the tears streaming down her cheeks. A few yards away, she could see Alexei crying as well. For his part, Antonin simply looked ill. It probably wasn’t every day that even a hardened Russian mafiya man heard the story of how his aunt was murdered in cold blood.
“Then what happened, Papa?” Tori pressed. She had a feeling that she knew, but she had to hear it firsthand. “What did you do?”
“She was dead.” Stanislas gave a shrug. His face was so vacant and his voice detached. “I didn’t mean to kill her. It just happened.”
“What did you do?” Tori needed more. She needed to hear the rest.
“I knew that I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened.” A dark frown crossed Stanislas’s face. “So I made it look like a suicide. I wrapped her neck in rope and hung her from the ceiling. It was simple. I took her down and told her family she’d killed herself. We buried her without a police autopsy. Sometimes the mafiya way is the best way, you know?”
A
lexei made a strangled sound of horror. “You murdered her! You bastard! You killed her, and then you made it look like she took her own life and deserted her children! What kind of man does that? What kind? I want to know!” Alexei sank to his knees on the floor. He put his hands over his face though he still clutched his own weapon.
Antonin raised his weapon. The muzzle was shaking.
All four of his men carefully approached their boss, obviously searching for direction.
“What’s happening?” Blini Boy demanded softly. “What do you wish us to do?”
Antonin seemed incapable of answering.
Blini Boy looked even more worried. “Boss?”
“Just go. All of you. Go home. Tell my father what you heard here tonight. Tell him also that I will handle this.” Antonin swallowed, watching his men retreat. Once the door was closed, he spoke again. “My father is old. He would not survive a night like this one. He still insists on handling the day-to-day business, but not this. I will spare him this horror.”
“Horror?” Stanislas lifted his head, glaring at Orlov. “You turned my wife against me. Then you took my daughter.”
“Old man, you are babbling and rambling like a lunatic,” Antonin said. He sounded tired. “I want to kill you right now, but I’m not sure that would even make my point.”
“What is your point?” Tori asked her cousin. “You tied me up, chained me like an animal. Why? What did I ever do?”
Antonin’s face stretched into a grotesque smile. “According to your stepbrother, you were conspiring with Stanislas to murder me.”
“What?” Tori gasped. Her gaze swung to Alexei, who was still weeping quietly while he knelt in the middle of the floor. “I never.” Tori patted Mikhail’s arm to include him as well. “We never once conspired against you, Antonin. I only ever wanted to know the truth about my mother. Stanislas swore to me that the Orlovs had her murdered.” She gestured to her stepfather. “And we’ve seen how truthful that version of events was.”
“We have,” Antonin said quietly. “So where do we go from here?”
Mikhail stirred behind her. “We will see to Stanislas. My men and I have been preparing for this moment. He is a danger to himself and to others. Even the council will not disagree now that his actions have dragged you and your men into our family squabbles.”
“And the son?” Antonin made a gesture to include Alexei. “What will happen to him?”
“He is also our responsibility,” Tori murmured. “He is my brother. He has been separate from our family for a very long time. If he wishes to remain so, I won’t begrudge him that.”
“As long as he’s not a threat,” Mikhail growled. Tori could tell that her husband was not going to forget this incident anytime soon, if ever.
There was a pounding at the door. “Boss! Are you in there? Mikhail?”
“Come inside,” Mikhail shouted. “Bring the others with you.”
Dimitri and a dozen other Vasiliev men tumbled into the room. Dimitri immediately ran to Mikhail and gave him a one armed hug. “You’re safe! I was worried I would not find you in time.”
Tori glanced up at her enigmatic husband. “You knew? You knew this would happen, and you were all prepared for it?”
“It was Stanislas,” Mikhail reminded her. “There was absolutely no telling how the whole thing would end.” He gestured to the shackles still chafing Tori’s wrists, and then he pointed to Antonin. “Can you please remove these?”
“You planned this whole thing?” She was still thunderstruck by the notion.
Mikhail sighed and glared at Antonin. “We didn’t plan all of it. I had no idea Orlov had been brought into it.”
“We were just protecting our interests when presented with the opportunity to do so,” Antonin said with a shrug. Then he gestured to Alexei. “If I were you, I would hobble that little bastard. He’s a slippery one.”
No sooner had Antonin said it than Alexei leaped wildly to his feet and launched himself at his father. The force sent them both to the floor.
“You kill everyone I love!” He closed his hands about Stanislas’s neck and began slamming his father’s head into the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mikhail could only watch in frozen horror as Alexei beat his father. It took far too long for everyone else in the room to react. They too seemed transfixed by the sight of the son with his almost Goth-like appearance wrapping his hands around his father’s throat and trying like hell to squeeze the breath from his body.
Stanislas wasn’t about to go down without a fight, though. The old man rolled, trying to get Alexei onto his back. They grappled like schoolyard bullies, slapping, punching, and pulling hair. Stanislas grabbed fistfuls of Alexei’s hair and yanked his head back to expose his throat. Alexei seemed to gain new fervor as he fought for the upper hand.
“What do we do?” Tori whimpered. “They’re going to kill each other.”
Mikhail glanced over at Antonin and knew the other man was waiting on the outcome as well. At this point, the best possible thing that could happen would be for the two of them to wipe each other off the planet.
“Mikhail, stop them!” Tori was tugging on his arm.
“No.” This came from Antonin. “They need to get this out in the opening.”
“You killed my mother!” Alexei shouted. “And then you murdered Aloysha! I loved him, Papa!” Alexei was sobbing now. “I loved him!”
Mikhail had forgotten that one detail. Alexei had that one additional motive to see Stanislas dead. Behind him, he felt his men’s restlessness. Then Alexei lunged for the gun that he’d lost. His fingers closed around the butt of the weapon and he lifted it.
Time seemed to slow down. Alexei pointed the gun, taking aim at his father. Yet when the shot rang out through the warehouse it was Alexei who gasped and grabbed his middle. A red spot appeared on the front of Alexei’s shirt. It spread rapidly, blooming like a weed gone out of control.
Alexei fell back, his head slamming into the concrete floor of the warehouse as he stared up at the ceiling with eyes that immediately dimmed. Someone was screaming. It took Mikhail a moment to realize that it was Tori. She was clawing at Mikhail’s arms, trying to get free. He tightened his hold. He wasn’t letting his wife get anywhere near Stanislas. Not now.
“My son!” The old man shrieked. “My son is dead!”
“Holy shit.” Antonin muttered a stream of curses in Russian.
Mikhail had no sooner decided to remove the weapon from Stanislas’s possession than the old man lifted it to his own head.
“No!” Mikhail held up a hand, begging his boss not to do this irrevocable thing. “Don’t! It isn’t necessary!”
“My son is dead,” Stanislas whispered hoarsely.
It was like a movie that could not be stopped, slowed or altered in any way. Stanislas stared bleakly across the warehouse. Tori lunged at him. Mikhail’s arms were all that stopped her from flinging herself at her stepfather.
The sound of the gun was deafening. So many shots that evening, some wild, some not. And yet this one ended it all. Stanislas crumpled to the ground and was completely still.
Tori stopped screaming and began crying softly in gut wrenching sobs that shook her whole body. She slipped from Mikhail’s grasp and sank to the floor. She crawled to her stepbrother and stepfather’s bodies and laid a hand on each one. She was kneeling in a pool of their combined blood and didn’t seem to notice.
“Gone,” she sobbed. “It’s all gone. Why?”
Mikhail caught a whiff of the coppery stench of blood. It brought back memories of his mother and sister. He recalled that hopeless, helpless feeling that had so paralyzed him just after their murders. He did not want that for Tori.
“Dimitri.” Mikhail gestured his friend forward. “Have the men take care of this. We’ll have a private ceremony for both of them. No cops. Natural deaths. Make it happen.”
Dimitri put his hand on Mikhail’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze to show h
is solidarity. “Yes, Boss.”
Mikhail went to Tori. He scooped her up in his arms, not caring about the bloody mess on her legs. He cradled her against his chest and pressed a kiss to her forehead. She was still crying. Her eyes were closed, and her cheeks were flushed. She was exhausted and heartbroken, and he understood every bit of what she was feeling in this moment.
“Let’s go home, my love,” Mikhail whispered to her. “You will be safe there. You can take a bath and go to bed and be safe. I swear it.”
“They are gone,” she whispered.
There was nothing he could say to change the facts or do away with the pain she was going to have to process in her own way and in her own time. But he could offer comfort the best he could. “I love you, Tori,” he told her. “And we will get through this somehow. That is all I can promise you.” Then, because he wondered if she needed a reminder, he tossed in one more thing. “You have a tiny life inside of you to think about. Be strong for that baby, and I’ll be by your side the whole way. I swear on my honor.”
***
TORI HEARD HIS vow. She heard the words that preceded it, and she had the inane thought that it was so unfair that he should say such a beautiful thing now of all times. Her family was dead. Sort of. At least the people she had spent her life thinking of as family were dead and gone.
She was still reeling after Alexei’s seeming betrayal. There were so many things she didn’t understand. Why had Alexei gone behind her back and done something like this? Her wrists were still burning from the shackles. In fact, she still hadn’t even begun to process what had happened. She had been bound and hung by her hands like some common mafiya thug.
Mikhail carried her out of the warehouse and toward his SUV. The cool air helped to clear her head. It was so odd. The breeze was cool, and yet it seemed a good twenty degrees warmer out here than it had been in that horrible warehouse.
