I see nothing in the living room space but a raised podium and a small leather bench. Around it the furniture has been arranged for optimum viewing, but at this point it is empty.
I tip my head back toward Ylofa and Naomi. Outside the door, I listen but hear nothing. Slowly I pick the lock, not wanting to make any noise to alert Ylofa to our presence. When I disengage the tumblers, I position the boy to the left of the doorway and indicate for him to open the door. This way the wall will protect him and should Ylofa come to the door, I can take his eye out with the manacle.
At my nod, the boy pushes the door open, the latch making a small snick. But even that small sound is too loud, for Ylofa jerks up from his chair, pulls out his gun, and shoots at the door. Both the boy and I jump back. Wood splinters as the bullet pierces the wooden door and lodges in the plaster wall. I motion for the boy to get down. He obeys immediately.
“Get to the study,” I shout, but point to the room we were just in. He nods and crawls quickly down the hall. Ylofa charges out. I jump up and ram my head into his stomach.
He grunts and shoots again but only manages to hit the floor behind me as the momentum pushes him back into the room. I keep running until his back strikes a wall or a bookcase. A few items tumble down, striking the both of us, but I barely notice. Adrenaline is pumping through me. I punch up with my chain-wrapped fist but manage only a glancing blow. He tries to push me off, bringing his knee up into my chest repeatedly but I hang on. This close, he will never be able to deploy a fatal shot.
But a ricochet bullet could hurt Naomi, who lies still on the lounger. I do not see any evidence of assault on her body, but it enrages me that he’s had his hands on her, that he has seen her unclothed magnificence. For that alone he should die.
I wish I could kill him a thousand times for her. My rage at her mistreatment empowers me.
His elbow digs into my shoulder blade, but this time when I strike him, I hit his cheek, and his face snaps into the wall. I get two more blows and bloody his nose before I pull him away from the case and then wrap my arm around his neck.
Dropping the gun, he pulls on my arm and then tucks his chin toward his body in order to bite me. With a flick of my wrist, I uncoil the chain and then, angling his body away from Naomi, I whip the chain around his neck. In one motion, I release him from my arm chokehold, catch the free end of the chain, and with both hands, draw the chain tight.
He claws at his neck. Ylofa is a big man, but he’s served Elena far too long. A young foot soldier on the streets may have been able to withstand my tranquilized and diminished strength, but not Ylofa. He gasps for air, but I only pull tighter and start to saw at his neck. If he doesn’t pass out, perhaps I will simply sever his neck from his shoulders.
The chain in my hands has turned red from my blood as the links bite into my skin.
“Vasily, he is getting his blood on you,” Naomi observes from the lounge. She has pushed herself into a reclining position but looks too weak to stand.
“Da, I will need to shower after this.” I strain against his resistance. “Get up, get the gun.”
She rises slowly. “What time is it?”
I shake my head. “The gun, Naomi.”
“I need to know the time.” She is agitated but I do not have a watch to answer her. At least she is responding, which tells me she must be okay.
“You are stupid pizda,” Ylofa gasps out. He has much air in him, this windbag. I bring up a knee and jab him in the back.
“I do not know the time, Naomi. Please, my dear, the gun.”
“I need the time,” she repeats.
She cannot help herself.
“We have been out two hours,” the boy says from the doorway.
“Oh, that’s not good,” she replies, but finally pushes away from the lounge and walks over to get to the gun. I maneuver Ylofa away from her but when his body finally goes limp, I let him go.
“We are leaving, though. That is good,” says the boy.
Naomi hands me the gun. I use it to shoot Ylofa. None of us flinch.
I gather her body against mine and bury my face into her hair. My knees are weak with relief that she is alive.
“Are you hurt?” I hold her slightly away from me and inspect her quickly. She does not appear to be harmed, but I know many injuries cannot be seen from the outside.
“No. You came in time, but Daniel won’t be here for another ten hours.” She rubs the top of her head like she used to do with her cap.
You came in time.
I hear nothing else. I press a kiss on the crown of her head. Then her forehead and then, because I cannot stand one more minute without reassuring myself she is alive and well, I capture her mouth and sweep my tongue inside.
She responds instantly, molding her body to mine and ravages me back.
We break away, panting from our passion.
“Daniel?” Her words finally sink in, but before she can explain, I smell smoke.
I check the magazine. There are only six bullets left. Ylofa is a fool, wasting seven shots on us. Down the hall, I see smoke coming out of the study. “Find a service elevator,” I tell the boy. He runs off.
The smoke is rising into the hall but through the doorway, I see the Caravaggio burning on the floor. “No!” I shout, running forward. I stamp on the flames but there are too many and the painting, old and fragile, is like tinder. The laugh of a madwoman trills out beside me. Turning on Elena, I grab her upper arms and shake her until her teeth chatter, but she laughs on.
“What have you done?” I demand. Horror is freezing my blood, turning me to stone. I hear the cold words of Dostonev proclaiming that he is wealthy and indolent and wants the painting. This stupid fucking painting. My sister’s life depends on this painting being given to him. I wish I could kill Elena a hundred times.
She cackles again. “You want the painting so badly that you would sacrifice your manhood for it? That you would tie yourself to another woman? No,” she sneers. “You can have the painting in ashes.”
I shove her aside and draw a hand over my mouth. The deal I made with Dostonev for the safety of my sister burns in front of me, and I watch the flames eat up her life until there is only smoke and ashes left.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
NAOMI
I’m still groggy from the tranquilizer as I follow Vasily into the smoke-filled room. Elena sits on one of her couches, laughing like a crazy woman as Vasily lays the Caravaggio flat and stomps on it with his boot. It’s really no use—the painting is five hundred years old and crafted from oil and canvas. If anything remains, it’ll be a miracle.
The item we have spent so much time searching for—Vasily’s holy grail, our reason for our wild quest across Europe—is now nothing but seared edges of a wooden frame and bits of curling canvas. It’s done for.
But as I watch, dazed and sleepy, Vasily tries to pick up one corner and hisses, shaking his fingers. He’s going to hurt himself.
What we need is a fire extinguisher. Practicality takes over and I ignore the crazily giggling Elena to go hunting for an extinguisher before my volk singes off his fingerprints. I leave the room and step over Ylofa’s body, racing down the hall. Two rooms and half a corridor away, I uncover a familiar red canister tucked next to a hutch full of Fabergé eggs, and snatch it from the wall. I race back to the room and unhook the hose from the extinguisher. Now one of the drapes is on fire and is being ignored as Vasily tries to piece together the charred edges of the painting on the floor, and Elena just smiles at him as if she’s won the lottery.
Why all this mooning over a single painting when the world is burning down around everyone?
I hose down the burning drapery with the fire extinguisher, getting rid of the worst of the fire. Now there is only smoke in the room, and the three of us.
“You are too late,” Elena says in a mocking voice to me. “The Caravaggio is burned into ashes, much like poor Vasya’s hopes for the Bratva.” She begins to laugh again.
Elena coughs and sputters as I head to Vasily’s side, the canister stuck under my arm. I peer at the pieces he’s trying to reconstruct, but there’s nothing that shows that this was once a triptych created by a master artist. There’s nothing to show a wolf, a Madonna, anything. It might have been a finger painting that he mourned for as much that remained of it.
“Vasily, what now?” I ask him.
He ignores me, and his entire body language is that of a man defeated. I think, perhaps, this painting symbolized more than he cared to think about. Either that, or being in the presence of the awful Elena has undermined his confidence to lead. Regardless, this is not the Vasily I am used to, this man picking through the soot. If it is this big of a deal to have a distasteful painting, perhaps we can buy another. Maybe with the donkey fucker.
Donkeys have been on my mind quite a bit lately.
I’m contemplating this when someone shoves me from behind, knocking me to the floor. Elena’s screech of anger barely registers. She’s knocked me onto the fire extinguisher, and it slams into my ribs, causing them to creak painfully and for the breath to be forced from my lungs. I gasp and choke on the carpet, even as she climbs over me like a malevolent spider monkey.
“Whore,” she shrieks. “Pizda!”
She must not have liked being hosed in the face with the extinguisher, I think dully as I try to get my breath back.
Hands claw into my hair and she wrenches my head backward, and I moan in pain. “Vasily,” I cough. “Help!” I’m not good with physical fighting. My weapons have always been bots, scripts, and code. I flail uselessly on the carpet, trying to get her heavy body off of me. “Vasily!”
“Get off her, Elena,” Vasily says and I recognize the danger in his voice. I scrabble to grab her with my hands, but she’s pulling my hair and flexing me backward in a way that spines don’t bend.
Then, there is a loud crack, and for a moment, I think she has snapped my back. But I fall forward, and she lands on top of me, still.
I cough. My ribs feel like they’re on fire. Maybe they’ve caved in. I moan, and then Elena rolls off of me, and Vasily’s big hands are helping me stand upright. He caresses me, his hands moving over me in that tender way I’ve come to recognize as his touch.
“Are you hurt, lapochka?”
I press a hand to my ribs even as I lean against his big, reassuring chest. “I think my lungs caved in.”
“Nyet,” he says in a curiously flat voice. “Else you would not be able to scream my name.”
He doesn’t sound like himself, so I look up. He’s not even staring at me. His gaze is on the woman huddled on the carpet. Elena’s eyes are open but her neck is at a weird angle, and she’s not moving. That snap I heard was her neck. Vasily has killed her.
I’m not even sorry. She was a bitch. “Good job,” I tell him.
“It was so easy,” he murmurs tonelessly. “Just one quick snap, and all problems are solved except one. Now the Bratva has no leader. We will crumble into dust, like ants without a queen.”
I frown. This sounds defeatist, and this is not my Vasily. I pat his arm and wipe a smudge of soot from his sleeve. “Sounds like you’re in charge, to me.”
“Nyet,” he says, and his voice is so soft even as he continues to stare at Elena’s dead body. “The painting is destroyed. With it, I could have shown them that I am no mere foot soldier. Now, I am simply another upstart with no claim.”
“You still have the painting,” I point out. “It simply needs some restoration work.” I think of the meme on the Internet about the elderly Italian woman who tried to restore a priceless painting of Jesus and utterly destroyed it. Her painting looked more like a melting head than a masterpiece, and I think of the Madonna and the Volk given similar treatment and giggle madly.
Vasily touches my cheek, his thumb stroking my skin. “Now is not the time for laughter, lapochka.”
His touch is gentle, but those are words used for reproach. I’m unable to tell if he’s upset at me, so I try a different angle. “Tell me what the painting changes, Vasily?”
“What do you mean?”
I nudge the burned canvas frame with one shoe. Even that small movement makes my ribs protest, but I ignore them. “Tell me what the painting does,” I repeat. “How it makes you the leader.”
His eyes narrow at me but he is looking more like himself, the dazed look in his gaze disappearing. His fingers continue to stroke my cheek, smoothing his germs on me. I don’t mind in the slightest. I have decided I like his germs, and I like him. “The Petrovichs owned the Madonna for years. It was a symbol of our strength.”
“She had the painting,” I point out. “And now she’s lying on the carpet with her neck broken.”
His lips thin, a sign that I am learning that Vasily does not like my argument.
“Wouldn’t your, um, group respect the man that had the painting and burned it? It’s a huge rebellion. Plus, ding-dong, the witch is dead, and you killed her. You can’t be the only one who hated her. Heck, I knew her for five minutes and I hated her. And what about emptying the bank accounts of all your enemies and filling your own pockets? Wouldn’t people get behind that?”
He continues to stroke my cheek, saying nothing. At long last, he says, “Perhaps . . . you are right. Perhaps.”
“Of course I’m right.” I’m a little miffed he has to even question it. I’m always right. My mind is a repository of knowledge. But I don’t point this out to him because he already knows this. Likely he is just distracted and has forgotten. “And what will you do?” he asks me.
“Wait for Daniel,” I tell him. “He will be here in a few hours, and I suppose we should be around to explain to him that we don’t need his services after all.” Even as I say it, I’m a little sad.
Because really, this is where our paths split. Vasily will take over his Bratva, like he has always wanted, and I will . . . well, I will do something with myself. Go home, I suppose. Return to a world of anonymous hacking and fucking with bank accounts that should not be fucked with, just to keep myself from boredom.
Vasily won’t like to hear that, but the truth of the matter is, with me at his side? His control will be undermined. People will think he has hooked up with a crazy woman, or an idiot, or worse, a “retard” in their eyes. I won’t be able to be at his side openly, because no one will understand me.
Vasily wants me nearby, of course. Tucked away in his dacha in the woods. To think that such a small frame of time ago, it sounded ideal. Peace and quiet and no disturbances, no need to do anything but work on my computer and help Vasily with any sort of hacking he might need.
But . . . I have changed my mind. I’m not sure I want solitary peace and confinement any longer. I think of my hours in Vasily’s apartment. It was surprisingly lonely. In a short period of time, I have grown used to my volk always being around, needling me with questions, teasing me, having sex with me. Touching me. Caressing me. Finding my G-spot. Fixing me specific lunches that he knows I will eat, because he cares for me. I think of a life hidden away in his dacha, only seeing him when he has time to put aside in his schedule and have sex with me.
That is no life, not really. I don’t want to be an afterthought.
So I shall go home with Daniel, and Vasily will rule his men with an iron, absolute fist, just as he’s always wanted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
VASILY
“Come, let’s go.” I gesture to both Naomi and the boy. The commotion has brought the caterers and staff hired to man the party down to the study. I wave the gun at them. “Be gone. There is no business here of yours,” I shout to them in Russian.
They scatter like flies.
“Why didn’t you kill her before?” the boy asks me.
“I had just killed her brother. Killing Elena so soon after would have destabilized the organization.
When the council presented the opportunity to take control if I fulfilled a small task, I seized on it. I would have killed shortly after. My mistake. I underestimated her and we all suffered.”
“But you are Vasily Petrovich,” the boy protests. “I’ve heard of you. The volk of the Petrovichs. Breathe wrong and he will kill you. It does not matter if it is even his own beloved sister.”
The mention of Katya makes my knees buckle. Killing Elena does not rewind time and make the painting magically whole. Today I have become the target of not only the Petrovichs but the Dostonevs as well. My sister is a target. The beautiful, brilliant woman I have come to love standing in front of me is a target.
I will go and sacrifice myself to Dostonev, plead for my sister’s life, for Naomi’s protection.
“If I go before the council empty-handed, I will be killed. It is better for me to leave. Naomi, I will be able to protect you until your brother arrives. And you, little one, can you scurry off to safety with your brother?”
“But you can still lead.” The boy is like a dog with a bone. He will not let go.
“I am no one now.”
“Who were you before?” he asks.
“I was no one before. I came from the mud, the dirt, the garbage.”
Naomi puts her soft hand on my shoulder. “I’ll follow you.”
“Me as well.”
“Me too,” pipes up the ten-year-old. The older boy had rescued him while Naomi and I were busy dealing with Elena.
I stare at them. “Without the Bratva, I have nothing. Everything I possess is owned by the Bratva.”
“What do you mean?” Naomi asks.
The boy interjects. “It is true. When the Bratva takes you in and gives to you, it is only temporary, for the period of time while you are part of the brotherhood. When you leave, you depart with only what you had when you entered.”
I show my empty hands to Naomi.
“I came in when I was ten and had nothing but my sister, so I leave with nothing.”
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