by Janae Keyes
“Walk!” one of the voices demanded. It was deep and held something different, a non-Russian Accent. I knew exactly who that was. Vadim had a habit of recruiting people who were useful and had knowledge of other nations, these people were from places all over the world and fit right into the organization.
“You call yourself making commands of me, Hui?” I questioned with snark. I’d spent many nights in the past, drinking with the man from Hong Kong.
“Shut up and do as he says, walk,” Mikayel commanded. I shook my head until the barrel of a gun came to my temple. Though I couldn’t see, I knew the feeling of a gun, and I knew Mikayel wasn’t shy on pulling a trigger.
Following the instructions of someone I used to know as a friend, I walked in the direction they steered me. A warmth enveloped me when we entered a building, I knew the chemical smells that assaulted my nose.
We were in one of the warehouses where Vadim packaged drugs to be disturbed. The man ran a tight ship and a detailed organization that expanded from drugs to government corruption.
“Come on, keep going,” Mikayel instructed, his gun now pressed to my back.
Only a few steps later, My butt was pressed to a chair and rope tied around my body before the bag pulled from over my head.
Letting my eyes adjust to the light, I looked forward to see the man that had apparently summoned me, but I knew that was coming.
Vadim sat in front of me, a scowl on his face as he observed me in my weakened state, that brought a smirk to the edge of his lips. I was known for strength and power, yet, I was weak.
“You have ignored me,” Vadim said simply.
“I have,” I answered with no irony. I wouldn’t stand for his bullshit. I wouldn’t be bullied into returning to my old life.
“Why is that?” He fucking knew why, but he was testing me and trying to get me to waiver, I wouldn’t, not when I had a new lease on life. I only shook my head in response. “Don’t do this to yourself, Alexei.”
“Do what?”
“You were given time to accept my terms, and yet you have made the choice to ignore me, nobody ignores me.” Vadim was irritated at my actions that many would call stupid, but I wasn’t a coward and was willing to face him head on.
“Vadim, we’ve had this conversation, I live my life separate from you now. You have no authority over me, and I have no desire to work for you nor your organization. I’m a businessman, and I intend to continue my success without you and—” Before I could finish, a pistol whipped across my face.
“You do not speak that way to the father,” Hui hissed at me, his face inches from mine as I felt the warm trickle of blood dripping from near my eye.
Vadim stood from his seat and came in our direction, Hui moved out of the way for Vadim to come into my face. I studied the wrinkles of the old man as my heart pounded, I wouldn’t allow him to see me this way though.
Before he could open his mouth, I heard the distinct click and felt the draft as the door opened and closed. Vadim lifted his head to see who’d entered and a smirk came to his lips.
“Look who it is, my most loyal son, how are you, Igor?” He asked as he stood upright as I heard the footsteps coming from behind me. “I think you know my guest.”
“Yeah, the traitor,” Igor’s voice made me rage. He was supposed to be with Katya for the night, she’d told me they had a date when I called to ask about what types of food Rae preferred.
“I’d rather be a traitor than a piece of utter shit,” I spat at the man who somehow held the heart of my cousin. I shook my head at him as he stood next to the man who had me taken from the outside of my club.
Vadim turned to Igor, they spoke in low voices, and though I tried to make out their words, I was having a difficult time doing so with the acoustics of the area.
My eyes landed on the face of Igor’s watch, it was just after midnight. Vadim turned back to me as he dismissed Igor who stood back as Vadim once again approached me.
“You know my reach, and you know what I can do. Your family, I can have all of them killed with the snap of my fingers. I know how much you care for your precious mommy, that grandmother, aunt, and sweet cousin. Though, I have taken wind of the beautiful American thing you’ve hand hanging around, sweet chocolate girl she is.”
“You keep your filthy hands away from her,” I snapped, anger rising in my body. Rae was mine and only mine, I would die fighting to keep her away from the vile reach of Vadim or anyone like him. She was far too precious.
Vadim only laughed, maniacally as if he knew my thoughts, as if he knew threatening Rae would get me riled up.
I pulled against the restraints that held me down. My heart pounding in my chest, feeling as if it would pry through my chest cavity and my skin. I would not allow him to hurt my family and especially the woman I loved.
“You like this one, don’t you?” Vadim questioned as he came in close. “What if I got her and brought her here? What if I slit her throat right in front of you and you watch the blood come through her neck, spluttering with each pulse?” I couldn’t listen to his nonsense, his ramblings. Rage, it was the only thing I felt.
“Alexei, you listen to me,” Vadim demanded, but I was too busy working to break free. I wouldn’t hear this bullshit.
“Fuck you!” I growled as the skin of my wrists were slit by the plastic tie. The pain, it didn’t phase me, I only needed to get out of there, to save my girl. I had to keep her safe no matter the risk to my own life.
I was hit again, hard enough that I fell with the chair to the floor. Black shoes in front of my face, standing over me. I peered up. From the ground, Vadim looked larger than he was.
“My son, you do not challenge me. Now, I will give you some leniency, the morning of New Year’s Eve, I need my answer. The answer will be yes, or I will wreak havoc on your entire life, and you will wish you were never born. Do you hear me?”
I refused to answer him.
“I asked a question. Do you hear me?” He was angry, but before I could make a decision about answering or refusing, his boot struck my face. I wanted to reach out and grab my face, but remembered I was tied.
Blows came at me from every direction, I saw Vadim walk away and towards where Igor had stood, but I couldn’t focus on them as boots, fists, and pistols struck me. The pain that ricocheted through me was intense, but I kept my conscious with every blow to my head. I closed my eyes, I saw Rae’s gorgeous face, keeping me together, keeping me from falling away. I knew they wouldn’t kill me, I was too precious to them—for now.
Staggering out of the warehouse, I was shoved forward by the gun of Mikayel. I struggled to keep my footing through the pounding pain in my head. I swallowed down bile, and I was once more pushed forward.
The lights of a car came on and spun off, I barely spotted Igor in the driver’s seat and the hair of a blonde, I knew it had to be Katya and anger rose, he’d brought her to work, he’d put her fucking life in danger. When I killed him, I vowed to do it with my bare hands, to see the light leave his eyes.
We arrived at the car we arrived in, but this time I was permitted to sit inside, hands tied in front of me before we left. Effectively, though we’d driven around for hours, we were only a short distance from my club.
Nobody spoke during the drive, and I struggled with the blood dripping down my face and into my mouth. My lip was busted, and I knew there were cuts and gashes all over my head.
I was nearly tossed from the car where they picked me up, my keys and phone followed, and there was only one thought on my mind, see Rae. If I was to breathe, it would be with her, if I was to live, it would only be with her. Everything was only her.
Honestly, I didn’t know how I managed to drive there, I just did. I arrived at the apartment building and leaped from the car. Rae, she was my destination.
The elevator ride took an eternity, but soon I was pounding on the door of my aunt’s apartment, pounding with all my might until it swung open to my grandmother with wide eyes.
�
�Moy rebenok!” she cried as she pulled me inside, I knew I was a mess, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered, even if it would be the only time I was able to say it before facing an uncertain future, I had to tell Rae I loved her.
“Let go, Babushka. Where is Rae?” I frantically asked her.
My aunt arrived, wrapped in her robe. Her hands were over her mouth as she saw me and rushed away, but there I saw my beauty. She’d been awoken from her slumber, hair curls were on top of her head, and she wore her pajamas. Even with no makeup, she was a goddess that I had to love on.
“Rae!” I called to her, ripping away from my grandmother’s grasp and to the woman who was confused and frightened at the same time.
“Alexei, what happened to you?” she asked me right away, her hands reaching out, but not touching me, afraid to touch me.
“I love you. I must tell now, I love you,” I confessed to her, tears and a weak smile as my aunt returned with her first aid.
“Alexei, let me clean you up,” she fussed at me in Russian.
“Net,” I roared.
“Alexei,” Rae’s soft voice whispered to me, her hands finally touching me, her warm touch nearly took my pain away. I relished of her hands on my skin.
Rae silently reached to Sofiia with her other hand and took the first aid kit from her. She began to move up the hall towards the small bedroom she was staying in, Katya’s old room. I went with her, I’d go anywhere with her.
In the room, she sat me on the bed and go to work. Though none of the products had English on them, she still knew what to do, and what to use. I flinched as she began to clean up my split lip.
“You’re such a baby,” she whispered as she continued to wipe away the blood. I gave her a soft smile, but it hurt to do so. “Don’t, just let me get you all fixed up.”
Her face was still damp from the tears she’d sported earlier. I reached my hand up and wiped them away, she leaned into my hand and fluttered her eyes closed. It was too much for me, my heart swelled in my chest, and I caught myself wanting to cry.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. How’d I end up there? I’d never had feelings for any woman that brought out my unused emotions.
“I was coming for you. Then, my past, it caught me,” I tried to explain to her the reason I didn’t make our date.
She shook her head, “It’s okay. You don’t need to explain. I’m just grateful you’re alive. You took one hell of a beating, Alexei.”
“I know.”
“I’m nearly done cleaning you up, and then I will add some bandages. You’ll be good as new.” The optimism she held in her voice, it was nothing like I’d ever heard before, it was pure, and it made me believe too.
I needed something to believe in. I needed a savior to change my destiny. Vadim wasn’t budging, and Rae was in his crosshairs. Rae and my entire family. The transgressions of my past were haunting me, and there was no going back to fix it. I had to find a way to face mistakes to keep the lives of those I loved safe.
“Why didn’t you go to the hospital?” Rae asked as she applied a bandage to my forehead, her slender fingers grazing my skin. I took her hand into mine.
“Hospitals mean police, and I don’t need attention,” I said dryly. I saw an understanding in her eyes, an understanding to not ask any more questions, at least not for now. “The only thinking I could have was you.”
“Alexei,” she whispered softly as I slid my hands around her waist and pulled her towards me, my lips grazing hers.
“This feelings are new. I have never felt love for any woman, but I love you. I know we have a limit of time, and I try to remind self of that, but I cannot,” I told her as tears dripped from her eyes. She fluttered her lids closed and opened them back up.
“I love you too,” she confessed, anxiously. I knew she was just as confused and lost as myself.
Pressing my lips to hers, I winched in pain, but I ignored it as best I could, I needed Rae. We had a road ahead of us. There was a long-distance relationship to navigate in our future and plenty of uncertainties.
A gentle knock came from the door. Rae moved away and turned to the door as it opened. My mother stood in her bathrobe, her eyes wide as she saw my beaten state.
“What happened? Are you okay? Who did this?” she asked a million questions immediately in hurried Russian. Rae’s hand gripped mine as my mother flew into hysterics.
“Mama, I’m fine. It’s fine,” I said trying to calm her before I turned to Rae and planted a quick kiss on her cheek. “Can you give a minute, Kisska?” She nodded in response and stood, I squeezed her hand before allowing her to go.
Once Rae shut the door, my mom rushed to me. There were tears falling down her face at a rapid pace. I hated seeing her that way. That was one reason I left the family in the first place, I never wanted to see my mother cry the way she was, she’d done it too many times from my father to me.
“It was that man, wasn’t it?” my mom asked as she sat next to me on the bed. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close.
“I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise,” I pledged.
“I don’t care about me. I could never care about me. I don’t need my son losing his life. You are so different from your father, you’re smarter, and you found a way out. Losing him was the hardest thing I’d ever have to face, but if I lost you, my world would end. Do you hear me, Alexei?”
“I hear you.”
“But do you hear me? My world would shatter without my only son. And have you thought about how this is and will affect Rae?” My eyes shot up to her, and she gave me a weak smile through her tears. “I know how you feel about her. You make a beautiful couple, and I know she feels the same about you.”
“If anything else besides you was a reason to put that life behind, it is her. I feel fucking alive with her.”
“Well stay fucking alive—for her.”
Chapter 13
Rae
What we were doing made no sense at all, but I couldn’t pull myself away from it. I loved him and just thinking about breaking my ties with him began to shatter my heart. We both knew I had to leave soon and we avoided the subject at all costs as we laid together in Katya’s bed.
I don’t think either of us slept. We stayed awake, spending our time wrapped in one another, just talking, and in moments of silence, appreciating what we had. He’d told me he loved me, and I knew he meant it. There was this spark I saw in his eyes, and it told me he did love me and it told me we would somehow manage a long-distance relationship.
My trip to Russia wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to fall in helpless love with my best friend’s cousin. I wasn’t supposed to feel like when I left, I’d be leaving my heart in the foreign country, but I did.
I planted a kiss on Alexei’s bare chest before I sat my chin on his shoulder and peered into his face. I hated to see him how he was though, beaten, bloodied, and bruised. Though I had a million questions, I kept them to myself.
Alexei insisted that if he went to a hospital, the police would get involved and it wasn’t a situation for the police. That aspect scared me, was he in some kind of trouble? I knew he had a past that had him in prison when he was younger, but he’d turned his life around. He wasn’t a criminal.
“I must go to club soon,” Alexei announced to my frown. He smiled and pulled me in tight. “Your sad is cute.”
“My sad doesn’t want you leaving me,” I pouted. He’d only just told me he loved me hours before. I wanted to spend just that much more time with him. There were only two weeks left in my trip, I needed every moment of those two weeks.
“When I finish with work, I come for you. You can have day to rest,” he told me as he twirled a strand of my hair between his fingers.
I observed his face as he toyed with my hair. The swelling at his lips was going down, and the skin around his eye was going from red to blue. As the night went on, it was obvious that the bruises on his body were made by boot
s as prints were left on his skin. There were at least three patterns I could make out, at least three people has beaten him.
The door to the bedroom opened, and the two of us maneuvered to find Katya coming into the room, she looked exhausted as she tossed her purse on the dresser. Her head finally came up and her eyes locked with Alexei and I in her bed.
Her eyes were red and puffy, she’d been crying. Of course, Igor had fucked up, he always did with her and eventually, she was a mess.
“Katya, are you okay?” I asked her instantly as I sat up anxiously, wondering the state of my best friend.
“What?” she asked instantly as she wiped her face.
“Something’s wrong, what’s up?” I inquired.
“No, I am fine, there is no problem,” she insisted as she gave me a fake smile.
Alexei shifted next to me, and I turned to find him getting out of the bed and slipping his shoes on. He turned back to me and bent over the bed, took my chin with his fingers, and he gave me a chaste kiss before pulling away.
“I see later, Kisska.”
“Mmmhmm, later.”
He barely looked at Katya on the way out, and she avoided his eyes. Something was off with both of them. I didn’t understand why my friend and boyfriend who were normally very close and talkative were avoiding one another. Did Katya know why Alexei showed up beaten up?
“We had a crazy night,” I mentioned to Katya as I watched her grab a few things from her suitcase in the corner. “I thought Alexei stood me up, but he showed up just after 12:30, and he was a mess. He won’t tell me much about what happened, but I’m just happy he’s okay.”
“Yes, that is good,” Katya said as she pulled a floral notebook from her bag.
I knew that notebook, it was her journal. She wasn’t one to write in her journal often and mostly did so when she was emotional, and something was going on. I watched her closely as she threw her hair into a ponytail and changed out of her tight dress into a simple t-shirt and jeans.
“What’s wrong? You’re so quiet, and that’s not you,” I noted as she put her journal into a tote bag and threw the bag over the shoulder.
