by Tabatha Kiss
“I didn’t, Ma,” I say, my eyes locked on the door. “He jumped me…”
She stands up tall and crosses her arms. “I know… I believe you.”
“You do?”
“My son only lies to me when he’s protecting himself…” She nudges my chin and smiles down at me. “Not little girls.”
“What did he mean?” I ask. “He said when they grew up, she would be his wife…”
“Oh…” she nods. “They must be betrothed.”
I furrow my brow. “Betrothed?”
She waves a hand. “Old custom. Our family doesn’t do it anymore but some still do.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means Giovani and Sofia are promised to each other,” she explains. “When they grow up, they will be married.”
I cringe. “Doesn’t she have a choice?”
“Usually, no.”
“That’s stupid.”
She laughs. “Well, that’s the Zappia way.”
I look at the door again. “Will she be punished?”
“Hopefully not, but…” She shakes her head. “That’s not our business, Luka.”
“But she didn’t—”
“I know…” She leans down and cups my face. “That’s the Zappia way. We have our own. There’s no need to get involved in what you cannot control. Do you hear me?”
I nod, forcing the lump in my throat down.
My mother stands up and points at my hand. “What do you have there?”
I open my palm and Sofia’s red ribbon curls between my fingers. “Nothing…”
I squeeze it tight and shove it back into my pocket.
Chapter 2
Luka
Twelve Years Later
I yank the handkerchief from my breast pocket and wipe the crimson blood off my knuckles.
The thick air around me smells warm and metallic. It bleeds onto my tongue and I spit out the taste of raw, dirty pennies onto the concrete floor.
Yuri steps forward and motions me away from the chair. He looks down at the man in black tied to it and smiles. “Now, did that feel nice?” he asks him.
The man barely lifts his head. He manages a slow shake and thick blood drips down from his nose into his lap.
I wince as the cotton cloth swipes across my thumbnail and I notice the cracked edge digging into my skin.
This fucker broke my nail.
Yuri scratches his scalp, softly ruffling the black hair on his head. “I want you to know, stranger,” he says, “that we do not enjoy this. Isn’t that right, brother?”
“That’s right,” I say.
“See? We don’t enjoy it.” He steps closer and leans down to look him in the eyes. “But sometimes, it’s necessary. Tell us who you are and what you’re doing in Moscow and the pain will end.”
The man takes quick, labored breaths while I pick at the torn cuticle on my thumb. He’s not talking, that much is certain. I’d wager that this isn’t the first time he’s been beaten on and probably won’t be the last — assuming we let him leave alive, of course.
No crime happens in Moscow without the Lutrova family seal of approval. Big, small. Light, dark. So, when two politicians end up with bullets through both of their eyes, it didn’t take long for us to find out about it. He didn’t even make it out of the building before our guys scooped him up and brought him to the warehouse outside of the city. No cops, no saviors. Just snow and wilderness for miles. Even if he does manage to escape, there’s no way he’ll survive the exposure.
He opens his mouth and slurs his words, dripping even more red droplets down his chin.
“What’s that, stranger?” Yuri asks, leaning in.
I step forward, keeping a cautious eye open as my brother eases closer to him. Again, the man’s lips move but I can barely make out his words.
Yuri tilts his head and peeks back at me. “He’s hissing.”
“Hissing?” I stuff the handkerchief back into my pocket as I glide in closer. I hear it louder now; that sharp push of air through his red teeth.
“Yeah…” Yuri straightens up. “Like a snake.”
The man laughs. His face contorts with pain but it’s almost as if he enjoys it. He looks up at the two of us with amused eyes and spits blood at our feet.
“You might want to get down…” he says.
His eyes flick to the wall behind us and my ears perk to the sound.
Beep beep beep.
I grab Yuri and shove him aside as the wall explodes.
Concrete and debris knock us back and I shield my brother from the rapid pop of suppressive gunfire. We dodge the blaze and tumble down to the floor as two other men in black come charging inside. I pull Yuri with me and toss him behind the crates in the corner.
Yuri reaches for the gun on his hip, ready to go down in glory but I grab his wrist to stop him.
I watch the gunfire strike the crates and wall behind us. At this range, a true marksman wouldn’t miss so much. They don’t intend to kill us now.
I peek out and make eye contact with the gunman as the other man cuts our prisoner free. He lowers his weapon and stares back at me through his black mask, silent and cold.
The three of them run off into the snow, leaving my brother and me alone to breathe in the fierce winter blowing in from the large hole.
“You’re bleeding…” Yuri points to my side.
I raise my arm and feel the sharp pain fire throughout my back. “It’s just a scratch,” I say, looking into my shirt. “Are you hit?”
He stares back at me with worry and shakes his head. “No.”
“Then, I did my job.”
Yuri breathes a laugh. “Is that all you care about?”
I pick us both up off the floor without answering and wander over to the blast in the wall. There’s no sign of anyone; not even tire tracks in the snow to tell us where they came from or where they went.
“Markov!” I shout, listening to my voice echo through the darkness. “Markov!”
His groan travels from around the building. “Over here…” he grunts.
Yuri follows me outside and we kneel down beside Markov as he sits up in the snow.
His wrinkled eyes jut back and forth, searching for answers that he won’t find. “What the fuck just happened?”
“You didn’t see them?” I ask.
“See who?”
There’s a note pinned to his jacket. I snatch it off and fold it open.
Our man’s life for yours. We’re even.
I hand it to Yuri and he sighs. “You’re one lucky, old man, Markov,” he jokes. “A few minutes later and he would have been dead.”
“You find out who he works for?” he asks. “I would very much like to have a nice chat with him and the bastards that hit me…”
“Unfortunately, no,” I answer. I hold out my hand and pull Markov to his feet.
“I should have seen them…” He shakes the white snow out of his gray hair. “They were like ghosts.”
“We’ll keep looking,” I say. “No one pulls this shit in Moscow and gets away with it.”
“We should get out of here,” Yuri says. “Send a crew in the morning to clean this place up.”
Markov nods. “I’ll lead it myself…” He looks at me. “Did he bleed?”
“He did.”
“Good.” Markov growls softly. “Blood leaves a trail. We’ll track him down.”
It’s been ages since I’ve seen Markov so pissed off. He’s usually a rather pleasant guy but I’d never want to be the man that crosses him.
When I was a kid, a boy in my class gave me a black eye. Markov asked what happened when he came to pick me up after school and I pointed the boy out.
This happened on a Friday. On Monday, the boy was gone. His family had left town without a trace.
I got up the nerve to ask Markov about it soon after and he just smiled down at me. I never brought it up again.
We walk off into the falling snow towards the car, eager
to get as far away from this place as possible.
***
“Bozhe moi!” Our mother cries out as we step inside and stands up from her place at the kitchen table. “What the hell happened to you?”
I glance at my side, following the red splotch of blood creeping down my abdomen. “I’m fine, Ma,” I claim. “It’s just a graze.”
She scans Yuri for similar wounds but he has none. I did my job, after all. “Sit down and take off your shirt, Luka.”
“Ma, it’s fine—”
“Sit down.”
I surrender and take a seat at the table across from my father. He stares up at us with expectant eyes, no doubt just as eager as she is to hear what happened.
“Who sent them?” he asks me.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
Yuri falls into the chair beside me. “He wasn’t telling,” he explains.
“Where is he now?”
“Gone,” I answer, unbuttoning my shirt. “Taken back by his men.”
My father blinks. “You let him go?”
“Niko—” Our mother returns with two items in hand: a first aid box and her sewing kit. It’s the second one that makes me cringe. My mother is adept at many things but her needlework leaves much to be desired and I don’t want her messing up my tattoos. “He’s wounded. Obviously, they put up a fight.” She slaps Yuri on the shoulder, forcing him to move down a chair and she slides into the one beside me.
I toss the bloody shirt to the floor. “It won’t need stitches, Ma.”
“You let me be the judge of that,” she replies. “Raise your arm.”
I sigh and do as she says, ignoring the striking pain firing through my side. “He was calm the whole time,” I tell my father. “He bled well, knowing that his team would come for him.”
Yuri nods. “They were organized. Like soldiers.”
Father sits back and crosses his arms, drawing his bottom lip between his teeth.
I hiss as my mother’s claws scratch along my wound. “Careful, Ma—”
“Pipe down, boy.” She grabs a bottle of alcohol from the first aid box and I turn away from her again to avoid watching.
“These men… did they have tattoos?” my father asks, chewing on his mouth.
“They wore black,” Yuri answers, shaking his head. “Head-to-toe.”
I note my father’s worrisome expression. “You know something, Pops?”
He’s silent again for several moments before he tilts his head. “There was a time in Moscow… long before you boys were born,” he begins, “when your grandfather met a similar encounter.”
I furrow my brow, torn between paying attention to his story and cringing at the alcohol spread across my open flesh.
“A man came to the city, dressed in black,” he continues. “He killed a woman. Young, beautiful, but full of secrets. I remember hearing my father speak of it — the man shot her through both eyes, just like the politicians tonight. Before he could leave Moscow, my father and his men caught him but several died in the process — the man was too well-trained. He tried to swallow cyanide but they stopped him and brought him back alive to be questioned.”
My mother reaches for her sewing kit and I slide it away. “No, Ma.”
“Luka…”
“I don’t need stitches.”
She throws up her hands. “Fine. I hope you bleed to death.” She stands up and plants a kiss on my cheek before she walks away to throw out the bloody cloths.
I snatch a bandage from the kit, along with some tape to attach it. “What did they get out of him?” I ask my father.
“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “I remember… when they brought him in. I was only a boy. It was the middle of the night but I heard them dragging him downstairs. I followed the sounds of him screaming to the cellar and when I looked inside… that’s when I saw the kobra.”
I glance at Yuri and he stares back at me. “The kobra?”
“A tattoo,” our father explains. “From here to there.” He lays his hand on his chest and slides down to his navel. “I ran back to my room and never told anybody what I saw, but the next morning… my father pulled me aside and he said to me, ‘Nikolai, never let a snake loose in Moscow.’”
I press the bandage in, making sure it sticks. “We couldn’t see a tattoo,” I say, “but he did hiss.”
He tilts his head. “Hiss?”
Yuri splits his lips and lets out the sharp sound. “Right before his men showed up.”
Our father nods, once again losing himself in memory. “My father spent years trying to figure out what the kobra was; what it meant. Finally, it caught up to him... and my mother found him in a pool of blood with two bullets through his eyes.”
My mother grows tense and I look up at her silent face. There’s only one thing my father rarely speaks about and that’s the death of our grandfather. Yuri and I knew he was murdered — as is the case with most men in our business, unfortunately — but our father has never gone into specifics on how it happened or why.
He looks between the two of us and taps a hard finger against the table to make sure we’re listening. “You two… let this go.”
I blink. “But, Pops—”
“No buts.” He points at me. “They come and they go. That’s the way it is.”
“This is our city,” I argue. “You can’t just let them run loose.”
“I have before and I will now. Doing so has allowed me to live long enough to watch my sons grow up, unlike my father. Do not get involved, Luka.”
“Markov won’t be happy about that.”
He sits back. “You let me talk to Markov. He will understand.”
I slink in my chair and look to Yuri to back me up but he stays silent. He never dares to disagree with our father and he sure as hell isn’t going to start right now.
My mother lays a hand on my shoulder. “Luka, you should get some rest,” she says, her tone soothing and calm. “Both of you. It’s late and we have a flight to catch in the morning.”
I’d almost forgotten about the Zappia wedding. Judging by the looks on my brother and father’s faces — they did, too.
She flicks a finger against my father’s shoulder. “None of that, now…” she warns us all. “This will be a nice, quiet weekend, even if I have to murder each and every one of you myself...”
My father nods. “She’s right. It’s only a few days and the Zappias will return the favor if either of you get married. It’s part of the truce.”
“When either of you get married,” my mother corrects him, flashing stern eyes at my brother and me. “This family might be a business but unless the name continues—”
“Yes, yes, Nina…” My father waves a hand at her, gently smiling to placate her. “I think they realize how it works…”
“And who knows…?” She grins down at the two of us. “Maybe you’ll meet a nice girl at the wedding. Hmm?”
Yuri scoffs. “Meet a nice girl in Italy? I’m more likely to piss a rainbow.”
I chuckle. “Or shit bricks of gold.”
Mother narrows her eyes at us and we stop laughing. “Get the jokes out of your system now,” she warns. “I doubt the Zappia boys will find them funny.”
My brother scoffs. “The Zappia boys wouldn’t know a good joke if it bit them on their tiny—”
“Yuri.”
He clears his throat. “Okay, Ma…”
“You will be pleasant. You will be kind and respectful,” she says. “The Zappia way may be a bit…”
“Medieval,” I suggest.
“Psychotic,” Yuri adds.
“Outdated,” she says, “but that is their way. Even I feel for the poor girl but it’s not our place to try and change them.”
My father shrugs. “Zappia girls have been the same for generations. I’m sure Sofia is no different.”
Sofia.
The girl in the garden shed with adventure in her eyes. She enters my dreams now and then, r
acing through the trees in the corners of my vision. I look and she’s gone but I often wake and wonder if her family’s way has changed her in the decade since I last saw her.
It doesn’t matter, in the end. Changed or not, she’s getting married this weekend and Yuri and I are Giovani’s reluctant groomsmen.
I stand up, pushing through the dull pain in my side. “Goodnight, Ma,” I say.
She pops up onto her toes, stretching as far as she can but I lean over to help her land the kiss on my cheek. “Spokoynoy nochi, Luka.”
Moonlight lights my path down the hall, shining through the tall, stained-glass windows. Falling snow leaves shadows on the walls as I pass them by, creating movement all around me and I once again see that little girl rushing down the corridor. I don’t bother looking; I know she’s not really there. She probably doesn’t exist at all anymore.
I close the door to my room behind me and walk over to the fireplace to toss a fresh log on top. The wood sparks and the fire hisses with life.
Never let a snake loose in Moscow.
The Lutrova name isn’t as powerful as it used to be. My grandfather, Viktor, ran this business with an iron fist. He never cowered away from anything or anyone. Nikolai Lutrova should be the same way. He should be just as eager as I am to find out who the men in black are, especially since they killed my grandfather, and yet, he yields to them — just as he yields to the Zappias and their ways.
Blood leaves a trail.
If there’s anything to be found out there, Markov will find it but he’ll surely destroy it the second my father orders him to. There’s no one more loyal to my father than Markov. They grew up together; went to war together.
I’d have a better chance at meeting a nice girl in Italy than I would be of convincing Markov to help me hunt down the kobra.
Chapter 3
Sofia
Ever since I was a child, I pictured what my wedding would be like.
I suppose every girl does. The bouquet of pink roses. The white dress. The black veil you have to wear that covers every inch of your skin for two weeks before the wedding so you look like a goddamn porcelain doll on your wedding day...
