THIEF (Boston Underworld Book 5)

by A. Zavarelli

I swallow, and the lie comes out with a choked quietness. “I am.”

  Nikolai tilts his head to the side, his lips curling into a cruel smile. “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do good girls lie, Nakya?”

  My heart thrashes against my ribs, and my stomach churns. I don’t know what he knows. He is toying with me, and the unpredictability scares me more than anything. In my own environment, I have come to know what to expect. But this is not my natural element, and I truly don’t know what this man is capable of.

  “No.” The word is a whisper. A hope that the simple acknowledgment will make him disappear.

  “No,” he agrees. “They do not.”

  The space between us looms quietly. Nikolai is not in any hurry to break the silence and the long stretch of time only compounds my nerves.

  “You seem intent on defying me,” he finally says. “And naturally, I am left to wonder why you are obedient to your father but not me. Do I look like the kind of man you want to trifle with?”

  I shake my head.

  “Use your words, princess.”

  “No,” I say, too loudly.

  And again, my instincts urge me to run. But Nikolai won’t allow it, and he makes it known when he stalks toward me. I screw my eyes shut because it’s always better not to see what’s coming. But the draft moves past me, and curiosity gets the best of me. When I open them again, he’s disappeared into my closet.

  He’s touching all my things. I am left to bear witness as he jerks my ballet clothes from the racks and bundles them into his arms.

  “Those are mine!” I move on autopilot, stealing what I can from the racks, tossing each piece into the corner and guarding them with my life.

  Nikolai turns and sizes up my pathetic little pile to the one he has already claimed. “It appears I haven’t made myself clear, pet. So let me do so now. I own you, and I can do whatever I like.”

  My head rattles, and I’m at a loss. It feels like he’s stealing my soul. I don’t know how to deal with this kind of insanity. “Please—”

  “You have disobeyed me. Save your begging for someone who might listen. Right now, you are wasting your breath.”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong,” I declare.

  His eyes tell me otherwise. “You flushed your breakfast down the toilet, did you not?”

  I flinch, and that’s when it occurs to me. He has cameras in my room. Possibly my bathroom. And he’s watching me. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.

  The truth is too raw to accept. I don’t want to know what he’s seen. My private moments. My grueling workouts, followed by the horrific breakdowns. My obsession with food. These struggles are mine, and they are intimate.

  “You are sick!” I yell. “How dare you watch me in my private moments? How dare you spy on me? You are filthy, and disgusting, and it’s no wonder you fill your life with meaningless encounters. Who could want you—”

  My tirade is cut short when Nikolai tosses my clothes onto the floor and produces a flask from his jacket pocket. I watch noiselessly as he douses the pile of leotards and tights in fluid and strikes the wall with a match.

  For a few stunned moments, I’m immobile, unable to fully comprehend the sight before me. He truly is a madman. He is without mercy, tossing the match onto the pile and igniting my life in flames. My thoughts are scattered and disconnected, and all reason has escaped me when I fling my body toward the flames in a desperate attempt to salvage what I can.

  Nikolai intercepts, capturing me around the waist and pinning me against the wall. I claw at his hands and then, when that doesn’t work, his face. I’m not thinking about the consequences. I’m only thinking about the crime he has committed against me. His actions have inexplicably split me wide open, stirring to life the dormant rage that lives inside me.

  When I draw blood, I’m quick to discover that I have the capability of stirring Nikolai’s rage too. All men want to be powerful, and my captor exerts his by collaring me around the throat with the meaty flesh of his palm. His methods are brutal and effective. I fall limp in his arms, waving the metaphorical white flag. He’s made his point, and I have learned my lesson. But he isn’t done. He isn’t even reachable right now. His dead eyes are looking right through me. My hands move to his, feebly attempting to remove the block against my airway.

  It occurs to me that I should beg. I should plead. Keep fighting. But between those thoughts, there are other, darker thoughts. What is there to fight for? My ankle is ruined. My losses and agonies have been greater than any contentment I’ve ever known. I would be a fool to withhold hope that I can control my destiny. I am bone-tired of facing each new day and the challenges it brings. And when blackness creeps into the edges of my vision, the decision is made for me. My body doesn’t have the strength to fight, even if I wanted to. All that I’m capable of now is watching the dying embers fade from the monster’s eyes before me.

  Fragments of reality pull me back into the world at a sluggish pace, stealing any hope I held for a peaceful death. My mouth is dry as cotton, and my head is thick with fog. Light flickers in and out of my vision, and when I see the blue of my monster, acidic tears burn the back of my eyelids. How could I ever believe in heaven when I am stuck in hell with him?

  I’m uncertain how much time has passed since everything grew dim, but Nikolai is still here. Only this time, he is beside my bed, wearing a tortured expression on his face.

  “Zvezda, I—”

  What sounds vaguely like the makings of an apology tapers off to nothing. Just as I suspected, he is a coward. I don’t want his wasted words. I want nothing further to do with him, and I find a bitter satisfaction in the claw marks left on his brutishly striking face.

  I meet his gaze and hold it. “You may burn my clothes, Mr. Kozlov, and I will still dance naked. You may beat me or touch me in ways you have no right, and still, you won’t break me. I’m telling you this now, so if it is your intent, then go on and do your worst to me.”

  Nikolai shows no visible reaction to my statement, and if he weren’t looking directly at my face, I might not even be certain he heard me. I wish he would just leave so I could get back to my work. But he doesn’t. He lingers wordlessly, his eyes moving over my tender throat with painstaking precision.

  It’s only when I attempt to sit up that the muddled situation becomes clear. He has no need to argue. When I struggle with the imprisonments on my limbs, I feel as though I’m being strangled all over again. He has bound me from moving at all. I jerk against the restraints in vain, and Nikolai flinches.

  “You can’t do this!”

  But he can, and he has. He won’t look at me. Why won’t he look at me anymore?

  He issues a subdued request in Russian, and a woman in a white lab coat wheels in an IV stand.

  “What are you doing?” I thrash against the restraints. “You can’t do this!”

  Nikolai speaks to the woman in Russian, and it doesn’t take me long to understand that she is a Vory doctor. He issues his orders, and she obeys.

  When her eyes fall on me, I shake my head and plead for any scrap of mercy she might possess. “Please, you can’t.”

  She purses her lips and reaches for a medical bag. “Is for your own good. You will see.”

  A high-pitched sound vibrates off the bedroom walls, and the shock on Nikolai’s face is the only indication I have that it’s originating from me. I’m screaming. Crying and begging and kicking, desperate to break free.

  This time, it’s the doctor who issues a command to Nikolai. Across the room, his eyes move to mine, and for a few fleeting seconds, he spares a glimpse of his humanity. He is hesitant. It’s fast, only a flash in time, and if I blinked, I would have missed it, but I didn’t. I saw his moment of weakness, and I’m desperate to nurture it.

  “Please,” I beg.

  I become nonexistent to him again when he falls into order and holds my arm firmly in place as the doctor establishes the IV. I stop thrashing, but only
because I’m afraid of the needle.

  “What are you giving me?”

  They both choose to ignore me, but their responses aren’t necessary. The effects of the sedative make themselves known around the time the doctor begins making her preparations and understanding dawns on me slowly. It isn’t just a sedative I’m getting today.

  It’s a feeding tube.

  In the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston, my Audi R8 idles just down the cramped street from the address written in my file. Standard and unassuming, the apartment building on Essex is about what I would expect.

  My fingers drum a solo over the steering wheel as I contemplate turning around. There are other ways. I could send Tanaka and her emotional baggage back home to her father. Torturing him for answers would be just as effective and less of a headache than dealing with her obvious mental issues. It would save me from the constant frustration I have felt since she entered my life.

  But it would not be justice served. Manuel can’t comprehend suffering until he experiences it for himself. This is the whole point of vengeance. Since I was a boy, I have vowed the day would come when I would discover the truth about my mother. If she was a liar and a whore who abandoned us, then so be it. But if she wasn’t, then I would avenge her and know for certain the true nature of my father.

  If Sergei knew my intentions, he would laugh in my face. He would say that I have never forgiven her for leaving and I am only clinging to the hope that she loved me when she never truly did. Like my father, he raised me to believe that he would always be honest with me, even if it hurt.

  His words didn’t inspire warm feelings, but as a boy, I accepted the only reasonable explanation for my mother’s abrupt departure from my life. I admired my father for his strength. For his ability to carry on without her when inside I felt as though something had shattered and it would never be put back together again. But with age came perception. Over time, I came to understand that Sergei was not exactly the hero I had always painted him to be.

  Carrying on without answers is no longer an option for me. The torturous dreams that visit me in my sleep demand to be solved. Her ghost has long haunted me, tainting every aspect of my life. Triggering fears that no grown man should have inside.

  You are filthy and disgusting, and it’s no wonder you fill your life with meaningless encounters. Who could want you?

  Perhaps, the beautiful little dancer was right. Perhaps, there was truth in her words, and that was why I was so desperate to silence them.

  I shut off the engine and look up the street.

  The maid’s apartment is not far removed from Nonna’s living quarters at mine. Sparse, with only the essentials for a comfortable living and little else. The space is absent of the usual racket in modern homes, and it smells like tea and freshly baked bread.

  I find her rocking in a chair at the end of the hall, her hands making quick work of two knitting needles and some yarn. The woman who I’d estimate to be in her seventies barely blinks when she notices me looming on the threshold of her room. The bedside lamp illuminates her pajamas and the pistol she keeps beside her.

  “What do you want?” she asks.

  She doesn’t care to know who I am, and I don’t imagine this is the first time she’s had an unexpected guest. Nor will it probably be the last. If Manuel Valentini had any consideration for his former employee, he would have sent her off to a warmer climate where nobody knows her name and she could enjoy her retirement properly. But as it stands, it doesn’t look like this woman received much of a severance package.

  “My name is Nikolai,” I tell her. “You have no reason to fear me.”

  Her hands pause long enough for her to look up and study my features. And more notably, my visible tattoos.

  “You are Vory,” she observes. “Thief in law.”

  I nod, unfazed by her sharpness. Her many years of service to Manuel undoubtedly gave her an intimate education of the many different criminal factions on the East Coast. The answer to be determined is where her opinion falls on my brotherhood.

  “So, thief?” She squints at me in the dim light. “I will ask you again. What do you want?”

  “Answers.”

  Her attention once again diverts to her knitting, effectively dismissing me. “Then you may as well leave. Or kill me if you intend to try, but I will warn you not to judge me by my size or age. I am a quick draw, and I will not succumb to torture, try as you might.”

  Her response warrants respect, and I intend to show it. While there is a time and place for violence, it isn’t with elderly women. Or women, in general … if I can help it.

  The pretty broken doll haunts my memories, her body limp in my arms. She is so strong of mind that I did not anticipate her body to be so frail. The incident further proved the need to rectify her behaviors before she dimmed her own light forever. It also proved that I am incapable of defending myself against the toxic words she flings my way so carelessly.

  Filthy. Disgusting.

  Who could want you?

  My fingers itch for a cigarette, but it isn’t the time. I need to focus. I need to remember why I’m here.

  “Your name is Aida, yes?”

  The maid doesn’t answer. Her hands are absorbed in her knitting, but I have no doubt her mind is conscious of every movement I make.

  “I believe you worked for Manuel Valentini for a number of years, and I have some questions about his mistresses.”

  She snorts. “Then you are better to ask him yourself.”

  The creaking of her chair is the only sound left between us, but it does not deter me. I understand her reluctance to talk. If she even entertained the idea of snitching on Manuel, she could easily be dead come tomorrow.

  It is not often that I change my approach. If a Vor wants answers, he simply commands them by any means necessary. But women are softer, and I know I must find a way to appeal to this side of her. If I had to venture a guess, this woman would have been in Tanaka’s life at the time she needed a mother figure most. It’s not the thing I want to discuss, but for now I will entertain the notion.

  “Perhaps you can assist me with something else. What about Tanaka Valentini?”

  Aida stops knitting. “What about her?”

  “She is a temporary guest at my home,” I answer. “But it has come to my attention that she doesn’t like to eat.”

  It’s minor, but I don’t miss the drooping of her features. Tanaka was special to her. There was a connection there. And I need her to tell me everything about it.

  She sets her knitting aside to rest her hands in her lap. “How do I know you are telling me the truth?”

  I fish the phone from my pocket and access the live feed of Tanaka’s room. The doctor is gone, and she is resting, the trauma of earlier events forgotten in her sleep. She looks like a goddess on her white satin sheets, but it pains me to see the tube taped to her nose.

  I show the image to Aida, and she studies it for a few moments to be sure. When she has drawn her own conclusion, her attention returns to my face.

  “What is she doing with you?”

  “It’s only until her father pays his debts. But I can’t in good conscience allow her to desecrate her body.”

  Aida shakes her head. “Then you will try until you are blue in the face. If you want her to eat, I am not the person to ask. To be frank, I’m amazed she has survived for this long.”

  “Then perhaps you can tell me why she does it.”

  “What difference would it make?” She shrugs. “The girl is sick. She needs help. But her father never allowed it.”

  Her indifference is forced. It would be a weakness to admit she cares, but her will is close to bending. I need her to keep talking.

  “Why wouldn’t he allow it? I was under the impression that she was special to him.”

  Aida purses her lips. “She is a mafia princess. You should know these things, thief. Her life has been sheltered. No outside influences. That is the only way, I suppose, to ke
ep her safe.”

  “I am open to suggestions.”

  The old woman sighs, shoving her bottle thick glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Try minestrone. Her mother used to make it for her as a child. She would always eat it when I made it too.”

  My lungs expand, and I feel lighter. Perhaps it’s relief, but every scrap of information I gather about Nakya only fuels the fire inside me demanding to know more.

  “You can’t force her,” Aida adds. “It’s not the way with her. She is obedient but stubborn. If you tell her she must do something, it will only encourage resistance.”

  There is no question I forced the feeding tube on her. But after the doctor’s examination and report, we both agreed it was necessary. I don’t like forcing nourishment on Nakya, but if I must do it to keep her alive, I will.

  “Can you tell me more about her mother?”

  Aida’s brows knit together. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I have heard rumors, and I am curious what happened to her.”

  “The same thing that will inevitably happen to Tanaka,” she says. “It’s the mafia way.”

  “Her mother killed herself,” I argue. “Tanaka is not of such weak disposition.”

  “If you know already, then you have no need to ask these things of me.”

  “I only want to know more about her so I can help.”

  “Sure, you do.” Aida snorts. “You want to help as long as it benefits you.”

  She is right, and to deny it would be an insult to her intelligence. Aida is done with this line of questions, and I’m out of angles. There are other avenues. It will take more time, but she is not the only possible lead.

  I turn away, and her voice fills the silence.

  “I’m an old woman. I just want to live out the rest of my days in peace.”

  “Nobody will know I’ve been here,” I assure her. “You have my word.”

  “What good is a thief’s word?”

  I pivot to meet her cloudy gaze. “You tell me.”

  She points down the hallway. “Go to the kitchen and I’ll make us a cup of tea.”