Smirnov Bratva 04 - Dismissed

by T. L Smith

  “Sam, we need to talk. You’re hiding something from me, and I need you to tell me.”

  Freya watches me, not saying a word.

  Then it flows and drops from my tongue like it wasn’t me who said it.

  “He raped me.”

  Both gasps are loud, and both their eyes are wide. Both walk toward me, their hands are now touching me.

  “Sam.” Raven starts crying.

  I don’t want to cry. I’m sick of crying, it hurts way too much. I just want to take a deep breath without feeling my chest crack each time I do. It hurts, he hurt me. Everything hurts too much.

  “I should go, let you be.” Freya touches my arm, giving it a light squeeze of reassurance.

  “I need to go, I have to finish up my shift today at the café.” I put it off all week, rang in several times saying I was sick. Going to one job was enough, but I have to finish my last shift and today is that day. They have been good to me, the café, and I have to do the right thing by them.

  “I don’t think you should be working.”

  I pull away from Raven, reaching for new clothes to get changed into.

  “It’s fine… well, no, it’s not fine. But what can I do? I’ve put myself in a virtual grave this past week because of him. For something he did… it’s eating at me Ravs.”

  “Okay, please let me walk with you at least then.”

  Freya offers to walk with me too. They both wait until I have a quick shower and change, even if I don’t want to wash Anton’s smell off me because for some reason it brings me comfort. What a strange but consoling feeling—Anton comforting me.

  They’re both talking quietly when I enter the room, Freya stands, and her hand reaches for me. “You didn’t say who, it wasn’t… well, it wasn’t Anton was it?” She seems unsure about asking me. “I mean I did shoot him once, and he never killed me, but I have to ask.”

  She shot him. That’s, well…

  “No, never, no.” I shake my head fast. Anton doesn’t touch me without my consent.

  “Phew, okay. Because I would shoot him in other places if he had, not that I think he would have, but just in case, you know… you need someone to shoot him.” I half smile with her ramblings, it’s the first time my gloomy face has smiled in over a week. It still hurts, though.

  “Thank you. But he was compassionate.”

  We start walking, and Freya talks about how Viktor is becoming more and more possessive of her, and how she and Elina have formed a strange friendship. I wouldn’t have even known they hated each other unless she said otherwise. Death is there when we arrive. I give him a short wave but keep walking, and he follows, paying for his order, then walks back out to his car where Freya and Raven are waiting.

  Starting my shift, my boss hugs me and tells me to never leave. I’m sure he doesn’t want today to be my last shift. Smiling back, I pull away and start making Death’s order for him, and when it’s done, I walk it out to him.

  They all turn to face me.

  “Did you say Anton was with you?” Freya asks.

  “Yeah, last night,” I answer, handing Death his order.

  “Did you tell him?” Raven asks.

  “He worked it out.”

  Freya turns to Death, some kind of conversation happens between them silently.

  Her eyes come back to me. “Was he mad?” I nod my head. “Does he know who?”

  “Yes,” I say in a small voice.

  “He’s going to kill him.”

  The pen in my hand drops to the ground.

  Death puts his cell to his ear, and when he doesn’t get an answer, he calls someone else.

  “Is he there?” Death’s silent while listening.

  “Have you heard from him?” He puts the phone down then looks to me.

  “Who is it?”

  I shake my head.

  “You need to tell him,” Freya says.

  “Jamie.”

  “The cop?” Death asks and Freya groans.

  “You’re fucking kidding me. He’s about to kill a cop?” She turns, stepping into Death’s car as he walks around it, leaving Raven and I standing in the same spot watching them.

  “He wouldn’t,” I say again.

  “Oh… but he would,” Freya says through the passenger window before they pull away and drive off. I look to Raven who shakes her head.

  “He wouldn’t. What does he even do for work anyway?” Raven asks, walking back inside the café with me.

  “Works for Kazier.” It’s all I really know. What they all do is still a mystery to me.

  “Well, it’s not like they’re mafia or anything.” She laughs, sitting down before I walk back to the counter.

  “Do you plan to sit there all day and babysit me?”

  Raven nods her head rapidly. “Bring me a juice too, please.” She smiles, picking up one of the many books we have lying around and starts reading it.

  ***

  Raven stays the whole day like she said she would, and on our way home, she starts asking questions regarding what I know about Anton. Weird questions like how rich are they? Do they carry guns and knives?

  “Raven, what’s with the twenty questions?”

  She smirks. “I was reading a mafia book, I was curious.”

  “Oh God, Raven, they aren’t part of the mafia,” I say, shaking my head.

  “It’s actually Bratva since they’re Russian,” she replies.

  Pulling out my phone, I ring his number. I should talk to him now, apologize for telling him something that’s too heavy to put on someone else’s shoulders.

  Maybe he will want to stay friends.

  It rings, with no answer.

  Then I dial Freya’s number. She answers out of breath, “Hey.”

  “Hey, it’s Sam. Have you heard from him?”

  “Yeah, umm… look, we’re on our way to him now, but he doesn’t know because I’ve tracked him.”

  “Can you pick me up? Please, I want to come.”

  She huffs into the phone. “I don’t think that’s smart, Sam. I’m pretty sure he has your cop.”

  “Pick me up, Freya,” I demand, ending the call.

  Raven looks at me in shock.

  “You aren’t going,” I tell her while grabbing a sweater. She stands, but I shake my head. “I need to see him and do this myself.”

  “Do what?”

  I shrug my shoulders because I don’t really know, but I do know I plan to go to him. If he is doing what they say, I should be there to stop him. A horn honks and I one-arm hug Raven before rushing out the door to a car full of people, with another car behind them. Freya smiles when she sees me, and Elina waves as I get in, then drives off straight away.

  “The boys are behind us.”

  “They put up a fight for us to go, but I know the address so I, of course, won,” Freya says.

  “He didn’t answer my call.” I press call again, expecting no answer.

  Then his voice comes through. “Sam.” My name sounds casual on his lips.

  “What are you doing, Anton?”

  “Oh, you know, barbequing.” He laughs.

  “Barbequing?” I ask, not understanding.

  The girls all gasp from the front.

  I’m guessing that isn’t a good thing, him cooking.

  “Are you a bad cook?”

  Anton laughs, and the sound makes me happy, just the slightest amount.

  “No, Sam, no. I can’t cook for shit. That’s what Mama is for.”

  “What are you barbequing then?”

  “Just some meat.”

  “Anton. Where are you?”

  Anton’s quiet before he speaks again. “I’ll see you sometime this week, Sam. Talk soon.” He hangs up on me. I look up to the girls, and they’re both watching me, Freya from the rear-view mirror and Elina is turned around in her seat.

  “Are you sure you still want to come?” Elina asks, looking at me. “You’re about to see who he really is.”

  No answer leaves my
lips, I have no reply to that. Elina turns around, speaks on her cell, then the car comes to a stop. They all get out, and I notice the only missing person is Pollie.

  Kazier stares at me, then walks past me to his wife. Death nods, while Viktor walks to Freya. I follow behind them with Death next to me as we step into a house. It’s a very quiet area, and the neighbors are very distant with a lot of land between them. The house itself is old and worn. It almost looks abandoned, but the yard is mowed and tidy, so it can’t be.

  “They own it, have for a while,” Elina says as I look around. “Never come here unless one of them bring you. This isn’t a house you want to be an uninvited guest in. Do you understand?” I nod my head.

  The front door is opened by Kazier, and they all walk in. The smell hits me first—it’s rotten, bad, smells like something’s burning. My hand goes up to cover my mouth as I walk behind them. Then I stop, and hear his voice echoing through the hall. And it’s not friendly, it’s not even the Anton I know.

  “I’m going to make you scream, then I’m going to make you my bitch.”

  A loud gasp leaves my mouth. All eyes turn to me, so does Anton’s and Jamie’s, who is tied to a chair, half naked. Fuck.

  Chapter 17

  Anton

  Jamie thinks I won’t hurt him, he thinks I’m playing a game. “She was mine,” Jamie says it on repeat, and it makes me angry, and angrier. She was never his, ever. I laugh at him, because that’s all I can do while I prepare for what I’m about to do. He shakes his head as my hands grip the metal. “She wanted me, she has since the beginning.” He soon fucking changed his mind when I burned his skin, when I charred it so badly that it bubbled and turned black.

  Now he knows better, he knows not to mock me and talk about Sam any longer because I’ll fry the fucker until all that remains is his charcoaled skin.

  “You aren’t so smart now, are you?” Cutting his pants off he’s now butt-ass naked in the chair. Over his lips is duct tape, so I don’t have to listen to his pleas or his threats.

  Heating up the metal cleaver, I step closer to him again and that’s when I hear it, her gasp.

  It’s right near me this time—she isn’t on the phone any longer.

  Turning around, I notice a large audience, and hers is the most shocked look. Sam looks to Jamie then back to me, then she drops to the floor. I dive for her, dropping the cleaver, and just manage to catch her head before it slams to the floor. Elina pushes through and touches her neck as I sit up, cradling her in my arms.

  “Sam.” Her eyes start to stir open, and when she sees me, she tries to pull away but can’t because I have a firm hold on her. “Calm down, Sam.”

  She takes a deep breath. “You’re in the mafia, aren’t you?”

  I look back to Kazier who’s watching us.

  Fuck it.

  “We are the Bratva, sweetheart.”

  “Fuck.” She swears, and it’s damn cute. She tries to move away from me, but I won’t let her. “You can’t kill him.” Sam looks past me as she sits up, and over to where I have Jamie tied up. “Maybe a little,” she whispers, making me laugh.

  “You need to leave.”

  “We need to talk,” Kazier says, looking down at Sam then back to me. I know what he’s going to say, I shouldn’t have done what I did. What I am about to do. But right now I don’t care. Yes, we are despicable. Yes, we have hardly any morals. I know all this. Though, if you hurt those close to us then be prepared, because not even God himself can save you from us. Not even a badge that gives you special privileges will make me stop.

  “Talk.” Kazier looks down to me then back to Jamie.

  “He’s a cop, Anton, a fucking detective.”

  “I know.” His eyes go to Sam.

  “She’s a civilian, Anton. You know what happens to those that talk,” Kazier tells me.

  I feel her shaking in my arms.

  “She won’t talk.”

  “She better not.” Kazier looks back then reaches for his wife. “You have today to get rid of this mess you’ve created, then you’re not to work for a month, Anton… a fucking month.” He walks out, the rest following him apart from Death who stays where he is.

  Sam looks up at Death gratefully—she doesn’t know the real reason he’s stayed behind, and it’s nothing to do with her. It’s all to do with the body I’m about to turn to ash.

  “Go with Freya.” I pull her to a standing position, and Jamie moans loud in the back of his throat making her look past me to him. “Ignore him.” She looks back to me. “Go to Freya, and go home.”

  “You’ll come after?” she asks in desperation.

  “I’ll be there later.”

  Sam turns, dropping my hand from hers, and starts to walk out of the house. I wait until the door is closed and the car starts up before I turn to face Jamie. Death stays where he is seated on a chair and tapping away on his cell phone, not caring. This isn’t his favorite part. His favorite part is to come, once my favorite part has played out.

  “You’re in love,” Death mutters without looking up from his cell. I look at him and shake my head. He’s playing my game—Clash of Clans. Smartass picked on me for days for being addicted now he’s totally hooked himself.

  “You don’t know shit,” I say to him as I walk off.

  “No, maybe I don’t. But right there is a man tied to a chair, because what? You don’t care for the woman he hurt? Or you want to hurt him because of the woman he raped?”

  My feet stop walking as I look down at Jamie. He was easy to capture, the fuckhead was parked outside of her house when I walked out. I was about to walk back in, but seeing him there made me even angrier. So a knock on the head and he was mine to take. His car was ditched and now here he’s tied to a chair and at my fucking mercy. Right where he fucking belongs.

  “Shut up and play your fucking game.”

  He grunts but doesn’t say anything else. The cleaver I was using on his skin is now on the floor. I rip the tape off his mouth and he looks up to me.

  “Let me go, the police will be here soon.”

  I shake my head with a smirk, walk back to the fireplace and place the steel end into it.

  “She wanted it. You want to protect a woman that doesn’t want you?” He’s spitting words at me, but it’s not working.

  “You raped her.”

  Jamie’s head starts shaking.

  Giving a little time for the cleaver to adequately heat, I stand up and pull it from the hot coals. He looks from the cleaver to me and tears start falling from his eyes, so I step closer.

  “She wanted it?” My voice is deadly.

  He cries.

  “No, she didn’t, she didn’t fucking want it.”

  His nipple is the first to be fried this time, the skin on his arm dark and fiery from earlier. Jamie’s scream rips through the house as I hold it there even longer than what’s needed, and when I lift it, it tears some skin off his chest as well. His screams continue to fill the house.

  “My cadavers are so much better,” Death grumbles as I stand with the cleaver in hand. “They don’t scream,” he says, looking back to his cell phone.

  “That’s because they’re dead, fuckhead.” I shake my head at him while trying to block out Jamie’s screams. “Will you shut the fuck up?” I direct the next statement to Death. “When did you become such a chatty Cathy anyway?” I ask Death, who’s now watching Jamie, shaking his head.

  “Can you just shut him up? Better yet… kill him so I can go home.”

  I turn to face Jamie. “You see that fuck over there?” I point my finger behind me to Death. “He wants to slice and dice you. You see, he hates the sound of people’s voices, other than his own today it seems.”

  Jamie’s head starts shaking harder, his cries grow louder.

  “You see I’m in a predicament, I want you dead just like he does, but my quandary is because you touched something that wasn’t yours. Took it like you were entitled to it.” I lean in close to his ear, drop
ping the cleaver and grabbing my pocket knife from my back pocket. “I want you to know something…” his breathing stops, “… you weren’t entitled to her from the minute my cock slid into her pussy because from then on out she wasn’t yours to touch, to look at, let alone to stalk. She. Was. Mine.” I take his ear, my sharp as a scalpel knife slides through the cartilage like butter.

  “Fuck! You trying to take away my job?” Death complains from behind me.

  “Seriously, seriously… why do you choose this moment to talk?”

  Death shrugs then looks back to his game. “Maybe it’s ‘cause my cock is pierced, and I can’t get fucking laid,” he whines.

  My hands go up in the air. “Seriously? Go and eat your wife’s pussy and shut up.”

  He nods, smirking. “I do that… every night.” Then his forehead scrunches as he concentrates on the game a little more.

  I turn back to Jamie. “I think he’s right, I can’t play forever. Boss’s orders and all. So while it’s sad to say for me, because you know, no more play time. But you, my rapist ass, are about to end up in barrels of acid, compliments of Death over there.”

  Jamie’s cries stop. He sits up a little straighter, looking past me to the fucker behind me. Who now chooses to go back to his brooding. I just bring out the best in him, or maybe not, who knows, so I let out a chuckle.

  “My partner will be looking for you. You can let me go, I won’t say anything.”

  “Your partner can look all he wants, it doesn’t matter, he’ll never find you. No one ever finds our dead, it’s how we’ve survived all these years. We are that good at what we do, Jamie.”

  He tries to speak, but my knife touches his throat. I lean down to his face, so our eyes are searching each other. “I’ll see you in hell.” The knife slides and the blood pours. Running down his front and onto my hands while the gurgling sounds give me such joyful pleasure. His eyes are large. This is my favorite part, watching this. Watching how the life falls from someone’s eyes like it wasn’t theirs to begin with. Maybe that’s what will happen to me.

  “Harvest his organs,” Death says looking at his cell still. “Boss’s orders.” He walks off and comes back with a cooler full of ice. I start untying Jamie. There’s blood everywhere, even on me. The house will have to be scrubbed and bleached or whatever the hell they do. Lucky for us, we have specialized cleaners who mop up our dirty work. Cleaners who know how to make a crime scene so sparkling clean, that you could eat off the floor afterward. There’s never a trace of anything left once they have finished—it’s the reason we are never caught, there’s never any evidence left for the cops to find.