Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Also By…
HM Playlist
Dedication
Blank Page
Only until this cigarette is ended
Part 1
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
PART 2
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
PART 3
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
Part 4
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
Epilogue
Acknowledgement
HIDDEN MONSTERS
LONDON MILLER
Hidden Monsters
Copyright © 2015 London Miller
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental.
Cover Image Copyright Valeri Potapova
Used under license from shutterstock.com
Other Titles by London Miller
Volkov Bratva Series
In the Beginning
Until the End
The Final Hour
Time Stood Still
Valon: What Once Was
Hidden Monsters Playlist
1. Tove Lo - Talking Body
2. Imagine Dragons - Warriors
3. Hozier - Work Song
4. Hozier - Arsonist’s Lullabye
5. Banks - Waiting Game
6. Sam Smith - How Will I know
7. Ed Sheeran - Give me Love
8. Ed Sheeran - The a Team
To H,
You know why…
Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.
“Only until this cigarette is ended”
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Second April, 1921
PART ONE
And it hurts that I can’t be
What everyone wants
Or what anyone needs
-a.d.r.
Prologue
__________
7 months ago…
Outside the dive bar in the heart of Brooklyn, three men stared down at the mutilated body that was no more than a shell of the person it had once been. The man’s tongue had been cut out and each of his fingers was gone just below the second knuckle, but these injuries were nothing compared to the state of the man’s back.
There were long gouges cut so deep and ragged that if one were to look at it for what it might have been, they might have thought it was an animal attack. It was abundantly clear that whoever had taken the time to cut him up this way either enjoyed it immensely or hated the man viciously.
The Albanian in the well-fitted black suit knew that it was a combination of the two.
He almost smiled, proud of the craftsmanship that had gone into cutting up the body. Just from the wounds alone, he could tell that the man had been alive for most of it. With only a cursory glance, he’d been able to discern who had done this—the others could guess—but the reason behind these particular markings was a fact known only to himself. He knew firsthand that each stroke of the knife was a story being told. One born of fury and bloodshed.
It had been because of him, after all.
More than that, he knew that this particular calling card was that of Valon Ahmeti. Only he possessed this particular skill set and had the patience—and the stomach—to see it through.
Valon had merely been an orphan when he’d walked into Bastian’s, a former associate of the Organization—and the unfortunate soul to be on the ground at their feet—home years ago, hoping for a kind heart and a place to stay. What he had gotten in return…no one would ever ask for that.
Whether he was just fearless, or he was hoping that one day he would die for his sins, Valon had fought in the Pit for weeks on end, honing his skills until he was practically a walking weapon. That was the reason Jetmir had come to him for a job that no one else would have wanted.
Well, him and Valon that was…
Like his friend, he didn’t scare easily.
He still didn’t know why Valon had chosen to walk away from everything they had built, aligning himself with fucking Russians, of all people. The bodies he’d buried that day… The others had wanted to kill him, slowly and painfully, but Jetmir had called them off for reasons only he knew. There had been rumors, of course. Rumors that the boy they had taken wasn’t the right target, but because of Valon, no one knew the truth.
And now that Jetmir was dead, there was no one left to tell the tale.
And with his death, Valon was no longer safe from the rest of the Organization who wanted him dead.
“You think it was those fucking Russians?” Tasirov asked from his position just behind the leader of these pack of men. “Trying to send a message?”
There was a message here, yes, but not the one they suspected. “One of their associates, actually,” the leader said as he got to his feet, brushing off his suit jacket. “I’m sure you remember Valon Ahmeti.”
“That’s who…” The man paled as he looked back to the body, his earlier bravado gone now that he knew the real culprit behind this.
It was still amazing, the effect Valon’s name had on some of them.
“I think it’s time we brought Ahmeti home,”
He loved nothing more than gruesome acts performed just because they were beautiful to see. But for what he had planned for Valon…no, that would be epic.
“Fatos.”
The leader turned as his name was called, looking to one of the men who couldn’t handle the sight of Bastian.
“When do we start?”
He’d waited a long time to find and go after Valon, even longer for no one to stand in the way of what he had planned.
This was going to be special. He would make sure that Valon learned his place once and for all, and before he
was through with him…
Fatos would make sure there was nothing left.
1
____
Lost
There was an art to faking happiness—carefully concealing truths behind tight smiles, quick glances instead of vacant expressions, and false cheer hidden in crass jokes. It might have been less taxing to just share the pain instead of burying it, but that wasn’t who Aleksandra Volkov was.
She carried on dancing even as her feet cracked and bled, smiled when she was disappointed, and found a way to lose herself in anything near when it all became too much.
It had worked, for far longer than it probably should have all things considered, but like most illusions, it had soon run its course. When the time had come that a smile was no longer enough to fix what was broken, she hadn’t known what to do, not when she was used to solving her own problems.
But this problem wouldn’t go away, not when it clung to her in a way only death could. Alex had never thought herself immortal or immune to the effects life had on a person, but there was nothing like watching her own mother die in front of her that made her achingly aware of her own mortality and just how easy it was to lose.
But more than that, she learned the price she was willing to pay to protect those she loved.
Since that night—a night that no matter how she tried to ignore it, always found a way to plague her—Alex had tried, for her brother’s sake, to smile and go through the motions of moving forward, but the days had grown increasingly harder. If not for the fact she spent most of her nights alone, it was growing much harder to hide her pain from everyone else…until she had found something else to ease her through it.
She had grown up relatively quickly, especially living overseas and away from her family. She’d more than happily imbibed because, even at that time, she had struggled with loneliness and depression. It was exactly two years ago, she thought, when she’d first taken Valium.
It had been a single, solitary night in Paris when she was feeling particularly nostalgic and missed being surrounded by people who loved her—or the closest thing to it— back in New York City. The Volkovs weren’t perfect, and there were days when she questioned whether they truly could stand one another, but they were hers and they were all she had.
Alex had been out alone on the terrace of the dorm-style apartment she shared with two other girls. The stars were like tiny pinpricks of light in the blanket of deep navy that covered the sky. It was beautiful. It was endless. But it also felt rather empty, much like she did when she wasn’t on stage or at rehearsal.
“Why are you sulking?” asked Josephina as she came out with a glass of orange juice in hand, her dinner for the evening.
Jospehina was very much like Alex, both American and only sixteen, living like adults in a city full of passion. She was the daughter of a congressman from Georgia and a mother who served on boards and attended charity events whenever possible. Their worlds might not have been totally similar—Alex’s father was a criminal, after all—but trying to live up to parents’ expectations was something they both understood.
Alex shrugged. She didn’t know how to describe what she was feeling. Only that she wished it would end. Things were different when you were a child and didn’t understand the true nature of the life your family was involved in, but after a few years, it was hard to stay blind.
“You’re thinking too much,” she went on. “We’re on break. Why don’t you live a little?”
After their show the night before, they had a rare few days off. Normally, Alex would have taken the opportunity to fly home and spend time with Mishca if he were free, but according to the last conversation she’d had with Anya, he was seeing someone—someone who was ignorant to their world. Since the NYC Ballet Gala was only a month or so away, she figured she could wait until then to meet this person.
The other girls in their company were celebrating off in the apartment, drinking wine and flirting with much older men. Alex wished she were that carefree.
“Try this,” Jospehina suggested, pulling out the cigarette holder she always carried.
She placed it on the small, wrought iron table between them, popping it open. Inside were a number of cigarettes lined neatly on one side, but on the other were two small zipped packets filled with at least a dozen little yellow pills in one. The other held white ones.
Alex knew the girl smoked, most of them did though Alex had only just taken up the habit, but she knew nothing about the pills or what they were.
But she couldn’t help her curiosity.
Jospehina opened the baggie with the yellow, round-shaped pills with a V stamped on them, shaking out a couple. She dropped one into Alex’s palm, placing the other on her tongue. It was gone in a second.
“Go on,” she urged. “You’ll be fine.”
Alex could have denied her—she more than likely wouldn’t care—but as Alex looked down at the decision in her hand, she desperately wanted to feel better; she wanted to feel more than just like a lost soul.
She took it.
And again another night.
And anytime she felt like shit after that night.
It was sporadic for a while, and then it became more frequent once Alex was exposed to a truth she had never imagined. But even then, she was careful, trading them for bottles of hard liquor. A drink here or there was how it began. Innocent, if anyone were to judge, but one had turned into five… and now? She could finish a bottle in only a couple of hours without a second thought. That should have been the worst thing she was exposed to, but a single night had changed everything.
A night when she’d killed her own mother.
Soon enough, even those bottles weren’t enough to escape her own memories.
Now that alcohol wasn’t doing what she wanted, she needed something more, but she didn’t really know what she wanted.
It was for this reason that Alex found herself wandering the streets of Brooklyn in the wee hours of the morning—or late hours of the night—restless, searching for something to take the edge off her frustration.
Dimly, she heard her phone chime, a series of staccato beeps that told her it was Mishca doing the calling. As his name continued to dance across the screen, she rejected the call, knowing that it would do her no good to answer in her current state. Despite his rather cool attitude toward everything, he worried more than he should, considering the life they’d been given. He was a good brother—she would never say otherwise—but some things he couldn’t fix despite his desire to try. Besides, he had a new wife to think about, not whether his little sister was coping well after killing her mother.
Sister.
The notion always brought with it a bittersweet pain because, while no one would acknowledge the truth, she was no more his sister than he was her brother. Actually, she had only met her brother on a few occasions.
There was a time when Alex had despised Lauren, Mishca’s wife, and all the problems she had brought with her just because of her name alone. When they had been introduced at the gala—it seemed like ages ago now—she had seemed so innocent, a far cry from the kind of women the men of the Bratva were drawn to. Alex had taken an instant liking to her, if only because of the sheer happiness she’d seen in Mishca’s face. It was only months later that Lauren had revealed a long kept secret that had proved deadly to a number of people involved.
On that day, Alex hadn’t just lost a mother, a birth father she had only known as an uncle all her life, but also the man who had raised her who was now too ashamed even to acknowledge her existence, but she’d also lost a brother because, despite his intentions, she and Mishca had fallen on opposing sides.
She knew he had tried to remain neutral for her sake, she believed, but it became rather clear that Mishca would always choose Lauren above all others. A part of her knew that neither she nor Lauren were really at fault because of her mother’s indiscretions, but as it seemed she was the only one suffering because of it, she’d needed to turn her
anger somewhere.
With time, Alex had hardened herself against that, as well, and had learned to ignore it all again. She was genuinely happy when the pair tied the knot, but with their hard-earned happiness came the acknowledgment that she couldn’t confide in Mishca, not the way she wanted, because he would take that pain on himself. Lauren as well.
Alex wouldn’t—couldn’t—do that to them.
Lost in her thoughts, Alex found herself on the corner of Brisbane and Turner, the sound of thumping bass drawing her attention to the warehouse-style building where a dozen or so motorcycles were parked on the street in the front and a few men in black leather cuts hovered nearby. Besides a couple of streetlights illuminating the sidewalk, darkness shrouded the majority of the street.
In the time that it took Alex to reach the entrance, drawn in by the loud music and the rather obvious dangerous nature of the place, a few women had come stumbling out, all in short skirts and high heels, claiming the attention of the men standing guard over the bikes, giving Alex the opportunity to slip inside.
From the street, the warehouse had seemed rather narrow, but upon entry, it was far bigger than what she had imagined. There were at least four pool tables set up on the left side—though it was quite clear that they weren’t actually being used for the games, since one was currently occupied by a couple having sex, and a small but considerable crowd watching and cheering them on. The others seemed reserved for women in next to nothing putting on a show, one nearly toppling off as her foot slipped on the felt. On the other side were a cluster of tables and against the back wall was a rather impressive bar, a makeshift dance floor taking up the rest of the space.
As a man stumbled past her, his gaze intent on a woman who looked like she was close to passing out, Alex read his vest, and then eyed the patch on his back as he went by.
Hidden Monsters (Volkov Bratva Book 4) Page 1
