by A. Zavarelli
Ghost
Boston Underworld #3
A. Zavarelli
Contents
Copyright
Synopsis
Foreword
Playlist
Glossary
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Epilogue
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Also by A. Zavarelli
Ghost © 2016 A. Zavarelli
Cover Design by Mayhem Cover Creations
Photo by Wander Aguiar
* * *
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
* * *
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Talia.
I have always been a bird. Caged by one prison or another when the only thing I ever wanted was to fly away.
Sold. Beaten. Starved. Drugged.
Nothing scares me anymore.
Until him.
He makes the numbness go away.
He is hazardous to me. It has nothing to do with his mafia lifestyle, and everything to do with what he offers.
A gilded prison.
A retreat from everything that I once knew. The reality I have no desire to return to.
He thinks he’s caged me, but soon…
I’m going to fly.
* * *
Alexei.
I live by a code. The Vory code.
In this mafiya world, there are traditions.
Expectations.
She does not care for these things. She does not care about anything.
She thinks she has me fooled with her haunted eyes.
What she can’t know is that I see her better than most.
She wants to fly.
But I’m going to clip her wings.
And make her my wife.
Foreword
Tanaka,
Thank you for your support, your friendship, and your kind words over the last few years. I hope this character will be worthy of your namesake in this book and those to come.
Playlist
Dark Paradise- Lana Del Rey
Angel of the Morning- Skeeter Davis
Enjoy the Silence- Denmark + Winter
Breathe Me- Sia
Sober- Pink
Dance with the Devil- Breaking Benjamin
Save Me- Shinedown
Hurt- Johnny Cash
Comfortably Numb- Pink Floyd
45- Shinedown
Paint it Black- The Rolling Stones
The Monster- Eminem
Born to Die- Lana Del Rey
The Sound of Silence- Disturbed
Dear Agony- Breaking Benjamin
Even Though Our Love is Doomed- Garbage
My Least Favorite Life- Lera Lynn
Beautiful Pain- Eminem
Lucky Ones- Lana Del Rey
What Lies Beneath- Breaking Benjamin
Unwell- Matchbox Twenty
Glossary
Avtoritet- authority, captain
Boevik- warrior, soldier, strike force
Pakhan- leader, boss
Lyoshenka, Lyoshka, Alyoshka- diminutive forms of the name Alexei
Solnyshko- little sun
Sovietnik- councilor, advisor to the pakhan
Vory v Zakone- thieves in law
Prologue
Talia
Hope is for suckers.
That’s what Mack and I always like to say.
So I guess I’m a sucker too.
Because when Dmitri asked me to go to Mexico with him, I couldn’t say no.
There was a part of me that wanted to. The part that keeps my shields up and my armor in place. We’ve only been dating for a month. Not enough time to vacation together.
Not that I would know. I’ve never even been on a vacation.
Mack and I have always done it tough. Growing up in foster care and then on the streets. Scraping by every day. When the majority of your life is consumed by the thought of your next meal or a safe place to sleep, places like Mexico might as well be on another planet.
But things are different now.
I’m twenty-two. And perfectly capable of taking care of myself.
Mack doesn’t agree.
And even though I’m here in paradise with this man who promises the world, I can’t stop thinking about her.
She’s like a sister to me. She’s the only family I’ve got. I hate that we argued before I left. We’re always arguing these days, it seems.
She hates my job. She hates all of my life decisions.
And it hurts. Because I miss her. She should be here with me, in this beautiful place, experiencing it with me. But instead, she’s back in Boston… completely oblivious to where I’m at. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about this vacation. I knew she would argue. I knew she would tell me that I was making another mistake.
She doesn’t like Dmitri, even though she’s never met him. Mack always sees the worst in everybody. It’s her way of protecting herself and me.
But sometimes, like right now, I just want to see the good.
Dmitri has done nothing but treat me well since I met him. And I have this crazy idea in my head that maybe someday Mack will meet him and understand that. That she’ll be able to see what I see when I look at him.
I want to call her right now. I want to tell her all about this place. How beautiful the weather and the drinks and the beach are. These last few days have been the best of my life, and I want to share that with her.
But my phone is up in the hotel room and Dmitri and I are down by the pool. So it will have to wait until tonight.
I’ll get the courage to call her tonight.
“Hey.” Dmitri reaches over and touches my face, turning my attention to him. “Why so sad, kitten?”
“I’m not,” I lie.
He smiles, and I do too.
“Good,” he answers in his Russian accent. “Because tonight, I am taking you
somewhere you will never forget.”
My heart rate slows and some of the anxiety in my chest ebbs away. I feel like I could trust Dmitri. And I haven’t felt like that in a long time.
“Tell me, Talia,” he brushes his fingers down my arm and breaks away, watching me carefully. “Have you enjoyed our time together so far?”
“Yes,” I answer.
And that isn’t a lie. I feel like he’s different. Like he can read me better than most. I’ve told him things about my life that I’ve never told anyone. I’ve opened up to him. I’ve given him a piece of myself that nobody else has ever earned.
It isn’t just my body, but a part of my heart too.
“I’ve enjoyed our time together as well,” he says wistfully. “Very much.”
The expression on his face confuses me, but it vanishes quickly. A moment later, he’s checking his watch and taking me by the hand.
“Come,” he says. “The car is waiting out front.”
I follow him through the resort and into the back of the car. He gives instructions to the driver in his native language, which surprises me a little. I didn’t realize that he’d brought anyone else down here with him. But it is apparent that this man works for Dmitri.
Something nags at the back of my mind. A sinking feeling takes hold of me as we drive, and I can’t be sure what it is.
When I glance at Dmitri across the seat, he is lost in his own thoughts. And distant. He is never distant. It worries me. As does the landscape up ahead. Which is looking less like a tourist area by the moment.
Dmitri seems to sense my panic though as he always does.
“It’s okay,” he assures me.
He reaches out and takes my hand in his, and I try to focus on organizing my thoughts. I’m at war again. In my mind. Looking for demons in everyone the way that I always do. I told myself that I wasn’t going to do this anymore. I told myself that I was going to forget the past.
“You trust me, don’t you?” Dmitri asks.
I look up at him and give him a nervous smile. Half of me is screaming no while the other half nods on autopilot.
“Good,” he says. “Because you know I’d never do anything to hurt you, Talia. I’d never put you in danger. You have nothing to worry about when you are with me.”
I allow his reassurances to calm me as the car pulls to a stop. But one look outside the window, and all of his words mean nothing.
There isn’t time to protest or question him. When I turn back, there’s a flash of movement in which the only thing I see is his fist. Flying at my face. And then blackness.
Only blackness.
When I wake again, I am naked. And my senses are distorted. I’m dizzy and confused by the overwhelming sense of dread coursing through my body. There is vomit lying next to my face, which causes me to wretch. But nothing comes up. And I realize, it is mine.
And then I realize something else. When I feel movement on top of me. Inside of me.
There is a man’s face above me. One I do not recognize.
I try to move. But my body isn’t cooperating. It’s sluggish and heavy. Something is wrong with me, but I don’t know what it is.
There is a low murmur. And some movement. Hands on me, shifting me around. There is shock and pain at another intrusion. From behind.
There are two of them now. Two strangers inside of me.
And then I hear Dmitri’s voice. My confusion and panic halts for a split second in which I believe that he’s going to fix this. That he’s going to make it right.
But when he enters my blurred vision, distorted from my swollen face, I remember the car. His fist. The place he took me to.
He’s in front of me now. Expressionless as he unzips his pants. It isn’t the same man that I knew. The same man that I’ve spent the last month with. He rubs himself on my face, and I try to pull away when he seizes my hair and slaps me in the same spot he hit me before.
The shock of pain causes my mouth to fall open, and he shoves inside, gagging me.
“You better get used to it, kitten,” he tells me. “The pain is your new best friend. This feeling is what you will know now. The only thing you will know. It is better to accept it than fight it.”
I can’t move. I can’t fight back. They’ve drugged me with something, I realize, as Dmitri watches the tears spill down my cheeks. He knows my resistance is futile as well. And he doesn’t care.
“Now give me one more gift,” he says as he uses my mouth. “For old times’ sake.”
He is rough with me. Rougher than he’s ever been. And when he finishes, he does it on my face, smearing the liquid around with his palm before he spits on me and rubs that in too.
And then he’s kneeling in front of me. Patting me on the cheek.
“It’s just business,” he tells me. “That’s all, kitten. Don’t make it any harder on yourself.”
He disappears from the room, and from my life, as another man takes his place. It hurts for a long time. But the lines are blurred and I can’t be sure if it’s the physical or emotional. It never seems to end.
I don’t know how many there are. I don’t know anything but the pain.
And when I close my eyes, I try to find a way to transcend it. Thinking that it will help. But the only thing I can see is Mack’s face. My best friend and my sister and the only person on this earth who loves me.
She doesn’t know where I am. Because I was too angry to tell her the truth.
There’s a well-known saying about everything becoming perfectly clear in hindsight.
In hindsight, I never realized exactly how pivotal that moment was. My best friend and I, sitting in a café together, eating lunch. About to have one of our many arguments. It was the last time I saw her.
People always say they wish they’d known what was about to happen before disaster strikes. I would have said that too, at the time. I would have told Mack where I was going. And then I would have let her talk me out of it.
But looking back on it now, I don’t think I’d say the same.
I had to go to hell to find the person I am today. And in the end, the road through hell led me straight to him.
1
Alexei
Human emotion is not a linear experience. That which provokes emotion in one may provoke little, if anything, in another. I came to understand this at a young age.
I understand it even better now. As I trace my finger over the rough, cracked wood of the rook that sits atop my desk in these late evening hours. The profound pleasure I feel is at war with equal amounts of rage. And yet, to anyone else, it is merely a worn chess piece.
A chess piece I find myself revisiting far too often.
A shadow falls over the desk, alerting me to a presence in the doorway. When I glance up, Franco is there. He speaks in slow and succinct intervals, giving me adequate time and attention to read his lips.
“Katya is at the door again,” he announces.
“Send her away.”
He leaves without a response and I retrieve the bottle of cognac from my bottom drawer. By the time I have poured and finished the glass, Franco returns. He takes a seat across from me, his eyes on the chess board.
“Your move,” I tell him.
He takes his time, examining every piece. I have already taken control of the center and captured his rook. In several more moves, he will be sunk completely. The thing that Franco always seems to forget is that in his desperation to protect the King, he often leaves the Queen vulnerable.
I would never make that mistake.
“Is everything in place for tomorrow?” I ask.
He looks up at me and gives a simple nod. “It is all in place. The shipment will disappear and Arman will be in your debt.”
“And what of Viktor?”
“I’ve arranged for dinner tomorrow evening. You can speak to him then.”
He makes his move on the board, a careless one at that. I follow suit with an equally careless move because I’m bored of thi
s game and I’d like him to challenge me, at least once.
“He will be reluctant to have you leave the country,” Franco notes. “He won’t want to risk you.”
“Then I will give him no other choice.” I shrug.
“What do you have in mind?” Franco asks.
“A problem with the Russian bank. Frozen accounts, perhaps.”
“Ah.” Franco rubs his chin in thought. “A problem only you can fix. Then you will suggest… two birds, one stone?”
I nod, but it’s only a matter of moments before Franco speaks the rest of what’s on his mind.
“Do you believe this is wise, Mr. Nikolaev?”
“Are you suggesting I am unwise?” is my reply.
He shakes his head. “You are many things. Unwise is not one of them. But I feel as though you might be acting impulsively. It is out of character for you.”
Out of character for me is leaving the sanctuary of my home. This is what Franco refers to. There have not been many occasions where I felt the need to leave. Every time I do so, I risk exposing my secret to those around me. To my fellow Vory.
Leaving the country is an even bigger risk. However, it is one I must take.
I meet Franco’s gaze. “Sometimes we must do things that we’d rather not. Is part of life, yes?”
“You have lied to Viktor,” he answers. “If he ever uncovers what you have done to retrieve this girl, there could be a war…”
“Considering that you and I are the only two souls who know, I find it highly unlikely. And besides, who would replace me?”
Franco makes a gesture with his hand, conceding.
“Nobody can replace you. This is why you take such risks. But this girl, I worry about her.”
He does not need to tell me the many ways this could go wrong. I have gone over them myself ceaselessly. It will undoubtedly strain my relations with Lachlan Crow and our Irish alliance. I gave them my word I would find her, and I did. But neither the Irish nor Viktor are aware of my true intentions with the girl. He will be angry, as Franco so obviously reminds me. But my position within the Vory is secured for life. Perhaps this is why I take risks. But I have weighed all sides of this matter carefully.
