But, this time he wouldn’t stand in the way. If Klaus wanted him dead, it was only a matter of time…
Someone place a gun in Luka’s hand and the sight of it did nothing to change the way he felt inside. He couldn’t help but look at Klaus, the question clear in his eyes. He merely nodded, not offering an answer, but Luka could guess.
This was for him as much as it was for Klaus.
As he looked over at his former friend, someone he had known for far too long, he finally began to feel something other than the emptiness that had taken hold of him since he’d been here.
Staring down at him, Luka didn’t doubt the bond between them, one that probably could never be broken, even in death. He knew that Fatos cared about him in his own way and had always wanted his love and approval. But Luka had learned the hard way that Fatos was a bit obsessive, and no matter what Luka did, it wasn’t enough.
Luka should have put him down years ago before it had come to this, but in a way, Luka had loved him too much to see his life ended.
“You won’t do it,” Fatos taunted from his position on the ground. “You never could.”
But that was the thing about love. While it could never completely disappear, his love for someone else gave him the strength to do what he should have a long time ago.
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” Luka said beneath his breath. “And you should have never touched her.”
Fatos was losing his smile, aware that there was something different about this time than the last. Before Luka could talk himself out of this, and before Fatos could plead for mercy that he wouldn’t get, Luka pulled the trigger.
Only once, but it was enough, the bullet ripping through the middle of his forehead, leaving him slumped in the dirt, his eyes still open, his mouth frozen in a semi-smile.
A life of sordid hell, all over within seconds.
Luka dropped the gun, almost like the weight of it was too much for him. He swayed on his feet as what little energy he had left drained away. The last thing he had seen before unconsciousness took him was Klaus reaching to break his fall.
____
Klaus took a swig of his beer, gaze still trained on the bed where the giant lump had yet to move since he’d been deposited there several hours ago. They had worked Luka over pretty well, and from the look of him—from the top of his shaved head to the bottom of his dirty feet—he hadn’t had a decent meal in all that time. He was noticeably thinner, and he looked like he was circling the drain.
All the times Klaus had seen him, he’d always looked so hardened, the killing machine that he’d been turned into. But now, Klaus was seeing him at his lowest, or at least he had. He didn’t think he would ever be able to get the image of Luka ready to slash his own wrists out of his head. Remembering that, how he’d had to physically stop him from doing it…that was one thing he wished he could forget.
Groaning, Luka came awake slowly, then all at once as he shot upright. He immediately regretted the decision as he touched a hand to his side, feeling the bandages that had been wrapped around his torso.
“At least tell me we made it out of the fucking country,” he grumbled, turning bloodshot, watery eyes to Klaus.
Nodding, Klaus said, “We did.”
“And Fatos…he’s really dead.”
“Burned his body just to be sure.”
Luka lay back, his eyes already drifting closed again. “Must’ve been nice.”
Klaus smirked. “Take it easy. Get some sleep. You probably need it.”
But he had already passed out again.
48
____
Goodbye
Pain was the one thing, the one physical entity that Luka could count on.
Despite waking up in a bed of soft down, the agony throughout his entire body was so great that it didn’t matter the comfort. Disoriented, he tried to get his bearings, turning over as carefully as possible. His arm went around his torso so he could feel the bandages wrapped tightly around his ribs.
Luka didn’t have the luxury of not remembering his time with Fatos and the others. He remembered the torture, every single time Fatos entered that room, his ensuing rescue, and even putting a bullet in Fatos’ forehead. But everything after that was a blur.
Looking around the barren space, there was only the bed he was on, a small table to his right that held a couple of bottles of unopened water and another that was empty. It reminded him of his own home…at least before Alex had turned it into something worth living in.
Shifting to the side of the bed, he dropped his feet to the ground, groaning at the sharp stab of pain that shot through him at the movement.
Breathing in deeply through his nose, he fought past it, trying to get to his feet, but the sound of a metal door sliding open gave him pause.
“Good. You’re awake. I thought you were dead.”
Luka turned watery eyes to Klaus as he came into the room, wiping grease off his hands with a small hand towel.
“Where am I?” His voice sounded foreign to his own ears, scratchy and hoarse from sleep.
“Safe house.”
“Right.”
Struggling to his feet, Luka slowly made his way over to the stained windows, glancing out. He knew New York like the back of his hand, so he could tell with one look that they weren’t in the state.
“How ya feeling?”
Like he’d been tortured relentlessly for months on end. “Fine.”
Klaus took a seat on the bed, laying his hands on his knees. “Look, I know you’re in shit shape, and the last thing you want to talk about is Fatos, but we need—”
“What were you doing in Berat? Why do all of this?” he asked with a wave of his hand, encompassing the entirety of their situation.
“An assignment.”
“An assignment?” Luka didn’t know why that bothered him so much.
…Or at least he didn’t want to acknowledge why. Maybe a part of him had hoped that someone, whether it was Klaus or Mishca, had helped him because they cared…not because he was an assignment.
“Look, Luka—”
“It’s Valon, remember?”
Whatever kindness had been in Klaus’ face disappeared as a mask slipped over his features. “How could I forget? But you spent the better part of six years trying to erase that past, no? In fact, you made it a point to avoid or kill anyone who might have blown that past up.”
Luka ground his teeth, wishing he could block out his words.
If his past could have been buried with the least amount of casualties, Luka would have taken up that offer years ago. But he had let fear, along with misplaced loyalty, cloud his thoughts. To the point that if he acted like they didn’t exist, that none of it had ever happened, then it wouldn’t ultimately affect what he had in his new life.
He should have known better. No, he knew better, but he just hadn’t acted on his impulses.
Now, here he was thousands of miles away from the piece of life he’d built for himself and even further from the one person he burned to be with.
But what did any of that matter now?
“You got your revenge, no? Everyone from that day is dead. Unless you’re planning to kill me, too? If so, I think this assignment was a lot of working for nothing.”
“Like I told you before, if I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. Besides, I think we’ve come to an understanding since then, yeah?”
“So what was the plan? What was the assignment exactly?”
“Extract one ungrateful ass Albanian and kill anyone else.” Klaus tapped his leg with his fist. “And when I say that, I mean everyone.”
Luka looked back at him in disbelief. “There’s no guarantee that you got to every single person in the Organization. It isn’t possible.”
“No? You seriously underestimate what my team is capable of.”
“Your team?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember the others? They’d be offended.”
Luka started to
respond, but caught himself, realizing a little late that they were bantering. “What are we doing here?”
“I figured you wanted some time to yourself before we got back.”
“I’m not going back.”
Klaus frowned. “Come again?”
“You heard me.”
“Yeah, I heard you, but considering that’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard you say—and trust me there’s a lot—I needed to make sure.”
“There’s nothing left for me in New York.”
“No? There’s your Bratva? Lauren? And Ale—”
Luka laughed bitterly. “Right. I know Mishca practically gift-wrapped me for Fatos. How am I supposed to work with someone I can’t trust?”
“We got on just fine, I thought.”
Ignoring his comment, Luka said, “Don’t tell them.”
Klaus looked confused, readjusting the beanie covering his hair. “Do you actually hear yourself right now?”
“After the first week in the hole, I thought maybe I was still wrong, that there was a plan in place, some shit I didn’t know. Three weeks, I started to doubt everything. Then, when I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept of time, I stopped believing in anything.
“So, no. When I leave this place, don’t follow me.”
Luka had nothing left. He didn’t have any access to money, and he didn’t even have the energy to continue this conversation any longer.
So, turning his back to Klaus, he headed for the door.
“What about Alex?”
He paused, steeling himself. “I’m doing this for her.”
He would rather her believe him dead than see the betrayal in her eyes.
49
____
Bargains
Eight Months Ago…
Following the hostess to a table in the center of the room, away from the other diners seated nearby, Mishca pulled his Blackberry from his pocket and saw his wife’s smiling face staring back at him from the vibrating device. Before it could ring too long, he switched it off. For this meeting, he didn’t need any interruptions, nor did he need any distractions.
And then there was the fact that the man he was meeting had insisted on it.
He declined the menu offered to him but did order two fingers of Scotch, needing something to take the edge off. It wasn’t making it to the top that was hard, it was remaining there that the work came in.
Mishca had never thought it’d be easy taking over where Mikhail had left it. There was the constant monitoring of accounts, ensuring everything ran smoothly, not to mention the sheer amount of people he had to account for. And with the men Mikhail had under them, Mishca had spent the better part of the last year rebuilding and bringing in people he trusted.
But the last person he’d thought to doubt was Luka.
Before he’d left for Italy, there was no reason for him to think that once his guy finished digging into everyone’s pasts, there wouldn’t be anything about Luka that he didn’t already know. Maybe the body count was far higher than he’d anticipated, but that was just the price of working with someone like him.
Except the night he got the call, the last night of his honeymoon, in fact, he didn’t believe it. But no matter how it was repeated to him, no matter how he’d asked for the facts to be reevaluated, the answer was still the same.
Six years ago, when he’d gone to that house in the middle of nowhere and found the brother he hadn’t known existed—the torture he’d been through was Luka’s work.
Of course, he’d never thought the two were related. It wasn’t as if Luka had appeared immediately after Klaus had gone off, and after all, Luka had worked under Mikhail for more than a year before he’d come to Mishca. Of course, now he could see it. No one Mishca knew was as good with a blade as Luka was.
Even stranger was the fact that Klaus hadn’t spoken a word about it, and while there was always that animosity between him and Luka, Mishca had just thought it was because of Luka’s personality.
He might have felt betrayed by what Luka had done, but in the end, he couldn’t be any angrier than Klaus was, and more than that, he had only been a pawn in the grand scheme of things. Mikhail had truly been behind it. And if anyone was going to beat the shit out of Luka for what he’d done, it would be Mishca.
But word had gotten around that Fatos and his minions were on the hunt for Luka, and Mishca knew it wasn’t just because of Bastian’s death. There was too much history there. Too much left unfinished. Bastian was the excuse. Maybe, in a perfect world, if Luka hadn’t butchered Bastian, the Albanians might not be plotting to take him, but Mishca knew that it was all a waiting game.
So long as Luka lived, they would be waiting to take him out. The only way they could prevent a war was to use the excuse of Luka killing Bastian to take him back to their homeland. He didn’t think any of them would bring up what Luka had done to Klaus all those years ago— that was what deals were for—but there was one other thing that Mishca didn’t understand about Fatos.
Why he was so determined to get Luka.
But whatever the reason, Mishca had always hated making deals with the Albanians. And he wouldn’t have to now that he was in charge.
There was only so much Mishca could do without this turning into an all-out war. He’d weighed the odds and agonized over them, but if he wanted Luka to make it out of that—not to mention his wife, his sister, and his organization—then he had to play this the only way he knew how.
That was why Mishca called the only person capable of what he needed done. From what Mishca had learned about the Albanian Fatos, his strange obsession with Luka might be beneficial.
As the waitress returned with his drink, she wasn’t alone.
The man Mishca was meeting was as much a mystery as he was a legend in the black market. Unlike Mishca, who still had a very public profile, as he owned a couple of nightclubs and other businesses, this man practically lived and thrived in solitude.
The only thing Mishca knew about him was that he owned The Den, the organization in which Klaus worked. In fact, this man was Klaus’ handler, at least the new one from what Mishca understood. He was the only person who had enough power that he was able to retain a team of mercenaries that were only loyal to them, especially when mercenaries tended to follow the highest dollar.
Oh, and the name he went by.
The Kingmaker.
Mishca stood out of respect, accepting the extended hand before he reclaimed his chair. He thanked the girl for his drink before she hurried off.
The man sat, his gaze rapt on Mishca. While intense, there was still something his gaze that seemed bored by this. “Volkov. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”
“We haven’t…” he trailed off, not knowing what to call him.
He smiled. “Names have power, Volkov. I won’t give you mine. Tell me, how can I help your predicament. If I were in your place, I think I would have handed over Valon Ahmeti to the men who want him. Just to save myself the trouble.”
Mishca blinked, hoping his surprise didn’t reflect on his face. He shouldn’t have been—not when this man was in the business of information—but having someone know the particulars about something that had been an ongoing secret for the better part of six years, especially when there were so few people left who actually had firsthand knowledge of that day…well, Mishca wasn’t prepared.
“In all due respect, how I conduct my business is for me to worry about.”
Men could be fickle, and some might have still taken offense to Mishca’s words, but the Kingmaker was no such man.
“Fair enough. Here’s how I can help you, Mr. Volkov. I know Fatos has an unhealthy infatuation with your Albanian underling, and for that reason, we know that he will not kill him immediately. If anything, he would rather keep him alive and torture him for a bit, just because he enjoys it. When the heat of your incursion has worn down, my men will go in, retrieve him, and destroy anything within a mile of the compound.”
“By the time they finish, there will be nothing left. Your Albanian problem will cease to exist.”
Mishca nodded, finishing the last of his drink. “And how long after he’s taken will the mission begin?”
“Twelve weeks.”
His fingers tightened around the glass as he brought it back down onto the table, meeting the eyes of the man across from him. “You want me to allow one of my men to be tortured for twelve weeks?”
“This is not a simple smash-and-grab as you Russians are so fond of. It takes patience, skill, and a knowledge of the complex organization that you want destroyed, all of which you do not possess. Either you accept the deal as it stands or leave him there, but remember that after those six months, either he will die or you save his life. Make your choice.”
Now, Mishca understood why Klaus disliked his new handler. The man was an asshole. A powerful one and nearly untouchable, but an asshole nonetheless.
And regretfully, he was Mishca’s only choice.
Nodding once, Mishca agreed.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Volkov.” He stood, buttoning his suit jacket. “Word of advice.” He didn’t speak until Mishca was looking at him. “Sometimes the men you get back after torture are not the same as they went in. Be careful that you don’t bring something back that you can’t control.”
____
Staring down at his son’s sleeping form, Mishca hoped for peace. He longed for it after the strain he’d been under over the last six months, but it didn’t come. Just for a moment, when Lauren had delivered the baby, sending a sweaty and tired smile his way once the baby was in her arms did he feel the lone emotion that had eluded him. Happiness. But it was fleeting, and while he did his best to ignore that longing he felt, it was hard.
Not once in the twenty years Alex had been alive had she ever truly been angry with him enough to sever all contact. Upset? Occasionally, and there had even been that one time when they hadn’t spoken for a couple of days, her giving him the silent treatment, but she had come around as she always did.
Hidden Monsters (Volkov Bratva Book 4) Page 35
