by Vic Tyler
I shrug nonchalantly. “You’d know about that better than anyone, wouldn’t you?”
His mouth stretches into his piano–key smile. He zips his hand up to the back of her neck, wrapping his fingers threateningly around it.
The others at the table look on with varying degrees of intrigue, vigilance, or both.
“How old are you, girl?”
Hackles raised, I grit my teeth.
She needs to get out now before Ubo does anything drastic. Before West notices. Before she gets hurt.
When the little maid doesn’t answer, Ubo grabs the sharp steak knife and twirls it in his hand, the strobing glints of light reflecting off the steel. “Answer, or I’ll pry it from you.”
“Ubo,” Richter interrupts with chastising annoyance. “We promised West the only bloody thing on the table would be the steak.”
Without taking his eyes off her, Ubo responds, “Then I’ll just make sure her blood doesn’t get on the table.”
“Technicalities got you in trouble last time, Ububu.” Kitty laughs, throwing a cherry tomato at him.
His knife swipes through the air, catching it on the point, and he pops it into his mouth.
The little maid yelps suddenly, and I see his fingers digging into her neck.
“Ubo,” I snarl, my voice rising sharply. “Let her go.”
Crushing her cheek against his, he turns to look at me as a menacing smile overtakes his face.
“I want to know why the Dog’s so interested in her. Do you like them young?”
My fists clench. I know he’s picking a fight, but if it’s a fight he wants, he doesn’t have to bring other people into the middle of it.
“Eighteen,” a sudden hoarse sound cuts through the tension.
Everyone turns to the scratchy whisper that grated out of the little maid’s mouth.
“Eighteen,” Ubo repeats, tapping the point of the knife against his jaw. “That’s no fun.”
I keep my expression stoic.
This whole situation is going to shit. It’s too obvious a lie. No matter how malnourished she is, there’s no way she’s eighteen.
“I like liars.” Ubo slants his head as he watches her, unfazed. “But I like good liars.”
He leans in until his nose is almost touching hers, his watery eyes unblinking.
“Sixteen.”
I can feel her confusion from here. I want to tell her not to fall for it, but the numbers spill out of his mouth.
“Fifteen.”
“Fourteen.”
“Thirteen.”
Her body twitches as she squirms to get out of his grasp.
“Thirteen,” he says triumphantly, whipping the knife up in celebration. His smile falls as a frown crowds his face. “I’ve never fucked one that young.” Ubo inclines his head, staring off blankly like he’s confused. “Why haven’t I fucked one that young?”
When I tense, on the verge of pushing to my feet, Kitty grabs my arm in a vice grip, keeping me in my chair with strength unparalleled for any woman her age or size.
“Don’t start now,” Richter says dryly.
Ubo shakes his head. “No, no. I have fucked one that young. But it doesn’t count if I was the same age. Can’t even remember it.” He peers at the little maid. “Maybe I should give it another try.”
Jura shoots him a dirty look. “Disgusting.”
Ignoring them, Ubo watches me as he bares a sinister grin. “What’s that saying? Not on the clock, good for the cock?”
My hand’s already around my knife, flipping it into a familiar grip. When I launch to my feet, my chair jerks back and thunders against the floor.
As soon as I move, Ubo yanks the little maid into his lap, wrapping his long, slimy fingers around her jaw and neck.
The entire hall has gone dead silent as they watch us, excitement buzzing in the air, anticipating bloodshed.
They won’t be disappointed.
The bastard tips the knife into her ear, taunting me, looking down on me.
“I’m going to kill you,” I hiss.
But we both know that at this distance, if I make a single move, he has enough time to drive it straight into her head.
I can’t make it in time.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, FUCK.
“What’s wrong, Dog?” Ubo whispers. “You know, it doesn’t suit you. Playing the protector of little girls. The weak and defenseless. Do you think helping her will redeem your failure to save your sister?”
A guttural roar rips out of me, but before I can do anything, his hand slaps over her face to yank her hair back, exposing all of it. He stares straight at me, unflinching.
I keep my eyes on him, watching for an opening. Any opening.
Deep down, I know there won’t be one, but there has to be. Even a sliver of an opportunity.
“She’s a looker, ain’t she? Bet her pussy fetches a pretty penny. Good enough to fuck and eat.”
The wooden handle doesn’t bite into my hand with how hard I’m clenching it.
It won’t do. This knife won’t fucking do.
“She’ll feel even better once she’s broken in. The flesh gets so tender when it’s bruised. Want to give it a try?”
My vision floods crimson, and everything else around me starts to fade away.
“Damien.”
When West’s voice rings out throughout the hall, my hand freezes around the gun in my holster, my finger already disengaging the safety.
“Ubo.”
I want to kill him. I want to fucking kill him. I will kill him.
But my body won’t listen.
Every single muscle fiber vibrates with taut tension, threatening to snap under the impending explosion, but West’s voice locks me in place.
Damn him.
But on the other side of the table, Ubo is paralyzed too.
Finally, the oppressive silence is too much for him to bear, and his gaze slides to the Cardinal. “I was having a bit of fun, but the Dog lacks a sense of humor.”
“Explain what’s humorous about threatening the staff, Ubo.” West’s voice takes on a dangerous tone.
“Joking, joking.” Ubo quickly extracts the knife and chucks it at the table where it stabs into the surface at an angle. Dropping the little maid, he delicately pats her head with a look of mock innocence. “No worries, West. We’re all friends here.”
My molars grind viciously.
“Damien,” West warns.
Breathing deeply, I engage the safety before forcing my hands down and away.
Goddammit.
“Both of you will behave.”
A warning. A threat. An expectation.
Berating us like we’re his fucking children. But we’ll get more than a time–out and a spanking if we disobey.
And then to everyone’s surprise, the little maid runs.
Dashes.
Sprints.
Towards West.
chapter five
Already on my feet, I intercept her path in a quick step.
With one swipe, she crashes into the marbled floor, a choked cry breaking out of her.
My knee digs into her back as I pin her head to the ground.
I grimace inwardly. She’s so fragile I could shatter her skull effortlessly right now.
Stupid girl. I might have already fractured a bone or two. But that’s the least of her problems now that she’s made a move on West.
“Please,” she cries out in a pathetically strained voice. She struggles to lift herself from under me. My body weight on its own is crushing her, never mind how I’m exerting enough force to potentially crack her ribs. “Please, Cardinal Westlake, I have a request! I have money! I’ll pay!”
The bodies of the Twelve near him already stand between our Cardinal and the little maid, and I can feel her dismay growing as her sight of him diminishes.
“Move.”
His human shield parts, revealing West’s rotund frame settled comfortably into his leather chair.
>
He’s the picture of power and class, donned in a grey, lightly pinstriped three–piece suit, complete with a handkerchief and all that fancy bullshit. He looks like he belongs in a traditional gentleman’s club with a cigar and a glass of scotch in hand rather than with this ragtag crowd of violent nutcases and deviants.
With his expression devoid of any emotion, even the mechanical cordial upturn of his thin lips missing, West studies the little maid trapped under my knee.
When he waves his hand for me to move, I rise to my feet.
For a few moments, she stays frozen in place, and then, she slowly crawls a little closer.
Curled against the floor, she kneels — half–worshipping the ground before the Cardinal and half–braced for impact.
Gazing blankly at her, West rests his jowl in his palm, his black eyes shining among the sparkling of his gem–studded rings.
And he waits.
Although there had been a trace of fear in her expression all night, it disappears as she steadily stares back at him.
Her face empties, mirroring West’s impassivity but with a ringing hollowness. It’s vacant — not of empathy like the man before her — but of any attachment to life.
She came prepared to die. In fact, she probably expects to by the end of the night.
Monotonous, hoarse, but clear, her voice is barely audible to my own ears when I’m right next to her. “This is all I have.”
Her fingers aren’t trembling anymore as she starts to unbutton her shirt in practiced swiftness.
A few chuckles ring in chorus from around the room.
The deviants ridicule and sneer in layered mockery.
“You said you had money, kid, not that you wanted to make it.”
“Came to the wrong place to do that too.”
Even as the volume of the heckling rises, West remains motionless, still watching the child in front of him.
She reaches under the flap and pulls out her fist with something clenched in it.
All eyes follow the first crumple as it hits the ground. The money is so tightly wadded that they ping off the ground in a dense rustle of raining cash.
She reaches in again, pulling out fist after fist until she’s surrounded by the dirty presidents.
As she opens and lays the bills out flat, people start to shift around, and other noises join the mix.
Glasses clink and fingers tap impatiently on the table, although they don’t dare to speak above a whisper. The lieutenants’ attention spans are already worn thin by the foreplay of her actions.
When West speaks, the muted background noise of the room dives into silence. “What is it you desire?”
She moves slowly and meticulously, straightening each bill into piles by denomination. Piles of $1, $5, $20, with the rare $50 and rarer $100.
“Death.” The word echoes throughout the room.
A rumble of laughter and snickers joins the fray.
“If you wanted to kill yourself, you could do it for a lot cheaper.”
“Maybe she wants to hire a hit.”
“On the local raccoon? Hah, sure.”
The piles of money stack rapidly, elevated by the teased textures even though she tries to flatten them.
After the initial glance at her payment, West ceased to look at the money, unfazed in his excess of it. “Whose?”
She irons out the bill under her hands, peeling the folded corners back carefully. And then her palms flatten it again.
And again.
And again.
“Feliks Stepanov.”
Laughs and scoffs of incredulity ring all around the hall.
“The Obshchak of the Stepanov Mob?”
“She wants us to start a war with one of the oldest Russian families?”
“You aren’t the only one who wants that scum dead, sweetheart.”
Stepping forward, Turan scans the money. “The fee for something of this magnitude doesn’t fit in the lining of your clothes.”
“I’ll pay it.” Her lip trembles, but she’s so frail that her entire head clatters.
He regards her carefully. “You don’t even know how much.”
“I don’t need to.”
Without any pity, he says flatly, “Even if you work for the rest of your life with the generous pittance you make in West’s household, you’ll never make that amount of money.”
West holds his hand up, silencing all.
“What was his crime?” There’s a hint of curiosity that slips into his tone, although he doesn’t sound surprised.
None of us are. The Obshchak and heir to the Stepanov Mob, Feliks Stepanov, has a notorious reputation, known to take advantage of women and to frequent illicit sex rings.
His tastes are of the violent and non–consensual variety, but from what I’ve heard, he’s a sick bastard whose preferences align closer with Ubo’s — of women knowledgeable and experienced in pain — rather than underage girls.
Unfortunately for his victims, those women will never know justice since the Pakhan pays the right wrong fuckers to protect his son.
A father’s love is strong and sometimes wrong. Something most here don’t understand.
The little maid is statuesque as she stares through all the piles of money surrounding her. The sight is so oddly natural that I imagine this is her ritual every night.
“Rape and murder.”
For a few seconds, West taps his fingers on the armrest listlessly as his gaze bores into her.
When he casually flicks his hand, Turan stands and commands everyone except the Twelve out of the hall.
Without another word, the exodus is quick and efficient but not without a few curious glances back towards us.
The double doors slam shut, the sound echoing in the massive marbled space before it’s overtaken with heavy silence.
“Whose?”
She squeezes her fists tightly in her lap. “My family.”
When no one says anything, she swallows hard and continues, “He raped my mother and my sister before killing them. And he murdered my father.”
“That isn’t the work of one man, especially Feliks Stepanov.”
The mafia underboss likes his audience — one of those scumbags constantly trying to prove his manhood by beating the defenseless. He’s too much of a wussy fuckwad to do anything on his own, always flanked by his men or his family.
The little maid continues staring at the ground without any response.
“Child, are you certain?”
“Yes,” she answers without hesitation.
“Why?”
Her gaze lifts, and something pained flickers in her dark eyes. “I saw them.”
“Them?”
Her throat bobs violently, and panic flashes across her face. But she finds her resolve, her voice hoarse and shaky. “The Stepanov brothers came to my home during the night and killed all the servants. They beat my papa and tied him down and made him watch —” Her voice breaks, and she chokes on her unshed tears, halting only to breathe in deeply and level herself again. “They made him watch as they did things to my mama and my sister. And then, they killed everyone.”
West regards her silently as he mentally reels through what he knows of the Stepanovs’ activity.
One of the more powerful mafia families in the area, their list of misdeeds is longer than Santa’s naughty list.
Even during my short career, there are a few names I’ve heard through the grapevine of the underworld where the Stepanov brothers rampaged random families on a whim. Usually those of a woman who scorned one of them.
Although those events weren’t nearly this violent, and the deaths were few and rare, usually occurring in the hospital and deemed as unfortunate ‘accidents.’
“What is your name, child?”
For the first time tonight, the little maid is seized by pure fear. Her eyes widen, and her shallow breathing quickens through her trembling lips.
When she finally speaks, she whispers in a fearful brea
th, “M–my name is Adriana Wintrehall.”
The name sounds strangely familiar, but I can’t place it quite fast enough.
From behind West, Mach snorts loudly. He sneers, “The Wintrehalls were all found dead.”
“Their corpses were burned beyond recognition, and with Stepanov’s connections, it isn’t impossible to switch the records,” Turan says, glancing at the short, stout man.
That’s when it clicks. I remember seeing the Wintrehall Massacre on the news before my parents abruptly turned the television off. They talked about it in hushed voices whenever they thought Elena and I weren’t listening.
It’d scared them enough that my father adamantly insisted we move far away, even though we lived nowhere close to the Wintrehalls.
Maybe we should’ve left since shortly after, our own family home was attacked and razed to the ground.
“And you think Feliks Stepanov —” Mach spits with scornful ridicule. “— premeditated something of this caliber?”
“He is an idiot,” Kitty pipes in, swinging her legs from her seat on the table.
“She said all the brothers were there,” Richter reminds, his tone blasé. “The second brother, Ivan Stepanov, inherited all the brains in the family.”
“The youngest isn’t to be disregarded either,” Jura says from his post leaning against the wall. “Rodion.”
When West suddenly stands, everyone’s mouths seal shut.
With long strides, he makes his way to her, stepping on the money like it doesn’t exist.
The little maid stares as he towers over her, his Italian leather shoes two inches from her dry, skinned knees.
“Move your hair,” he commands.
She does, and for the first time, I see her.
High cheekbones and an elegantly sloped nose, daintily pointed. Brown eyes so dark they almost look black, sunken wide–open by the gauntness of her face and emphasized by her pale skin.
At thirteen years of age, her face should be full and rosy, not hollow and grey. In better circumstances, she would’ve been adored and spoiled, and in a few years, she would’ve stopped every man in his tracks.
Regarding her carefully with a blank expression, West asks, “And what did they do to you, little Wintrehall?”
The lines in her body stiffen, and she shakes her head wordlessly.
