by Zahra Girard
“They water down their beer, too,” I say.
“Are you shitting me?”
I shake my head.
“That’s fucking low,” Angelo says. “If you would’ve told me that, I would’ve got here sooner.”
Silence settles between us while we wait to make sure everyone is in position. Angelo looks at me, I nod, and then he puts two fingers to his lips and lets out one quick, piercing whistle.
Shouts erupt from the rear of the building and there’s the unmistakable sound of wood splintering as our boys kick down the back door.
We give them a second or two, enough time for them to have some fun on their own and kill a few Russians before we make our entrance. Angelo and I have plenty under our belt, to the point where numbers don’t even matter.
There’s a loud crack and someone — a Russian, definitely — lets out this almost womanly scream of pain.
Angelo snickers. “This is going to be fun.”
I don’t say anything, but I’ve got my gun out and I can’t suppress the smile that’s starting to break out on my face. I can already picture Vladimir, face down against the filthy floor of his own bar, bleeding out under my heel.
I’m going to enjoy this.
One more second, a score more gunshots, and then the two of us kick down the front door.
Almost a dozen Russian heads whip towards us. Two go down the second we enter. One shot from me, the other from Angelo.
It’s a bloodbath.
The old bartop is covered in crimson. Three men lay face-down against it, blood streaming from ghastly holes in their head.
Two more are dead near the back entrance.
Another couple die the second I see them: one takes it in his right eye, the other in his heart.
Everywhere, it’s bullets and blood flying in misty clouds as men take ounces of red-hot lead in the face and chest.
I scan the room.
Where the fuck is he?
“Vladimir, you fucking bastard, get the fuck out here,” I bellow.
I hardly pay attention to the chaos around me except to fire lead into to another hapless motherfucker who, for some goddamned stupid reason, doesn’t have a fucking gun and tries to charge me with a knife.
That shit doesn’t even work in the movies.
I put three in his face and spit on his corpse.
Stupid son of a bitch.
“What’s this asshole look like?” Angelo yells to me from across the room.
I’m stalking through the place, kicking over tables and dealing bloody murder.
“A dead man, that’s what,” I yell back.
“Anything more specific?”
“Russian. Track suit. Looks like he needs a bullet in the face.”
He just smirks and shrugs his shoulders.
“There’s at least seven guys here that match that description.”
We rip the place to pieces. Every last bloody inch.
I am going to find him and make sure there’s no chance in hell he can hurt Stephanie ever again.
I scour the small back office, the stockroom, all of it, and there’s no fucking trace of the Siberian shitbag. Fifteen Russians and one of our own die, and all for nothing.
“He’s not here,” I growl as I storm out of the office and into the main room of the bar.
Angelo’s got his foot on the chest of the bartender, the same drunk-as-hell Russian from the other day. “This one’s still alive. Kind of. You want to talk to him?”
The Russian’s babbling — praying, maybe — in that swampy mess of consonants they call a language.
I kick him in the face and watch a tooth of his sail across the room.
Angelo keeps his boot on the guy’s chest and I kneel down to come face to face with him.
“Where’d your boss go?”
A glob of blood and mucus is his answer, spit right onto the leg of my slacks.
“Fuck you.”
That does it.
I didn’t have much patience when I came here, and I sure as hell don’t have any right now. I ram my fingers into the bullet hole in his side.
He screams and squeals as I drive the lead deeper into his body with my fingertips. Blood spurts out of the wound and I keep poking around in there for good measure. His life is spilling out between my fingers and fuck does it feel good to put this Russian piece of shit through pure agony.
“He’s going to pass out if you keep that shit up,” Angelo cautions me.
I pull back and get eye-to-eye with the Russian again.
“Where’s Vladimir?” I say, taking a fistful of his hair and lifting his head off the ground. “Tell me, or I’ll rip your kidneys out through that fucking hole in your side and force feed them to you.”
His eyelids are fluttering and all I can see are the whites of his eyes lolling about in their sockets.
I punch him square in the face. “Pay attention.”
“He went for the bitch. He knew she was leaving. He’s probably got her right now. Hell, he’s probably balls deep in her cunt and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I snap.
“You have no clue who you’re fucking with. Tell me where he took her.”
I ram my fist into his wound, again and again, until his screams shake and I know he’s totally.
“Please,” he gasps.
It’s pathetic.
I kneel down and he manages to whisper an address in my ear.
“Worthless scum,” I spit.
Then, I throw the man’s head into the ground and boot him in the side so hard he passes out. I put a bullet in his brain for getting my pants dirty.
“Damn,” mutters Angelo. “Well, that makes things inconvenient.”
I glare at him, then kick the Russian’s limp body again.
This is more than just inconvenient. I’d hoped to end everything at once — to kill these Russians, get Stephanie and her family out of their debt — without her having to see any of it.
But now, Vladimir has her.
And not only is she in danger, I don’t want her last memory of me to be of me killing someone right in front of her.
Even so, I don’t have a choice.
I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure she’s safe.
I start towards the door.
“Get your things. We’re going to find her,” I say.
Nobody moves.
“What the fuck are you waiting for?”
White-hot pain sears through my left arm and the hot, coppery scent of blood explodes in my nostrils.
“We’re not going anywhere, Luca. We’re done here.”
I look from the oozing hole in my upper arm to Angelo. I start to raise my gun and stop as every other living person in the room cocks the hammer back on their own guns and points them right at me. My confusion must be plain on my face, because Angelo keeps talking.
“Do you really think we’d fly all the way across the country to help out someone who abandoned us? This is — and always has been — about business. We’re here to clear this place out, seize every asset we can fucking find, and, hell, maybe set up shop for a bit before we head back to New York. Don Durante said to let you live, but only because he feels sorry for you after your chickenshit brother sucked the lead out of his own pistol.”
I don’t stop to gape, or argue, or fight back. I leave and stagger back to my car.
As soon as I’m inside, I rip off my shirt and tear it into a set of eight hundred dollar bandages. As much as I want to kill that son of a bitch Angelo, I’ve got a through-and-through to patch up and the love of my life to save.
Somehow.
* * * * *
“Fucking hell, kid, what happened?” Jose says the second I stagger my dumb, bleeding ass into the back office of the gym.
I’m on the edge of passing out. Expensive shirts make terrible bandages. Who would’ve known?
Ana Maria’s there in the office, too, and she breaks into a rapid-fire string of Spanish profanit
y the second I pull back my makeshift bandage to give Jose a look. She’d probably slap me if I weren’t bleeding so much.
“The Russian thing just got more complicated,” I say, and Jose nods, knowingly.
Ana Maria starts digging through the office for a medical kit, while Jose digs a bottle of tequila out from a drawer in his desk and hands it to me.
I take one long pull and then he takes it away.
“Slow down, kid. That’s Don Julio Real, the good stuff. I bought it to celebrate selling the place,” he says.
I stare at him. “So, what you’re saying is: you paid for it with my money? Give it back — I’ll buy you another.”
Jose shrugs, takes a drink for himself, and then hands me back the bottle. I’m not planning to get smashed, but Ana Maria’s dug out the medical kit, along with some surgical needles and thread, and I have a feeling my pain is about to get a lot worse before it gets any better.
And I’m right.
The needle goes in and there’s this drawn-out, tugging sensation as she guides the needle and thread through my skin.
Ana Maria stitches me up in the way that only she can: straightforward and all business. The needle goes in, she pulls it just tight enough, and she continues on and on until the job is done.
“You’re a fucking idiota, you know that?” she says, as she ties off the final stitch.
“Yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty accurate statement right now.”
She punches me in the spot she just stitched up and pain lances through my body.
Even with that, the bleeding from my arm has started to slow down.
“All you had to do was be honest with her. One simple thing. That’s it.”
I look at her in disbelief. “It’s not that simple.”
She moves to punch me again, but I put my hands up in the way. “You think I don’t know some of the stuff you’ve done? And yet, I keep showing up here day after day, because I believed that the person you are now is not the same person who did all those things back in New York.”
“Sure. Fine. I fucked up. I should’ve started out our first date by sitting her down over a nice glass of wine and saying ‘hey, so, now that we’re alone, you really should know that I used to be a hired killer for the Mafia’. Great plan, I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”
She belts me again.
God damn, she can punch.
I open my mouth to say something, but Jose puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Your Stephanie fell in love with the man who runs a boxing gym, who taught her how to hit things, and cared about her enough to put on a stupid apron and sell hardware for her. But right now, she’s thinking that the man she knew was just a lie.”
“Great. But none of that is going to save her. Jose, do you know anyone among our members who might be willing to join me in getting their hands a little dirty?”
He stares at me for a second, and his eyes narrow.
“You’re not asking me what I think you’re asking, are you?”
Ana Maria hits me again and mutters something that makes me glad I don’t speak enough Spanish to understand.
“To save her? Fuck, I’ll kill ever last one of them if I have to. Whatever it takes, Jose.”
“Then you can do it alone. I don’t want any part of your fucking murder spree, kid.”
“Haven’t you learned a god damn thing? It’s about making the right choice, you idiot. And the woman you love wants you to choose not to be a fucking Mafia hitman.”
Jose and Ana Maria both leave, and he tells me to ‘keep the fucking bottle’ before he shuts the door.
It hits me, then.
I’m alone. Truly alone in this.
“Fucking hell,” I grumble.
I set the bottle back down on the table and leave it alone. Not even expensive tequila tastes good right now.
There’s nothing about this that feels right.
I’m bleeding out in the back room of a gym, with a bottle of liquor and this gnawing hole in my heart. This is where killing’s taken me. This is the culmination of the ‘old me’ making decisions.
I feel helpless. I can’t kill my way out of this. Because if I even try, Stephanie will either wind up dead, or she’ll survive and spend the rest of her life with her last memory of me as a murderer.
She deserves better than that.
I take a hard look at myself.
It’s not pretty. And I don’t just mean the bullet wound in my arm and the blood that’s caking my clothes. I start to see myself as she did and I realize the man I am right now is one twisted piece of work.
If I try to solve this the way I used to solve things, I’ll lose for good the one woman I’ve found that makes a decent life worth living.
I have to change. I have to fix this mess as the man she wants me to be.
I get halfway through the bottle before I have an idea that just might work.
I pick up my desk phone and dial.
It rings twice before they pick up.
“Who the fuck is this?”
I clear my throat and force myself to concentrate through the pain. “Luca Moretti. How would you two assholes like to be heroes for once?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Stephanie
“Wake the fuck up, bitch.”
Pain stabs into me and my teeth vibrate with the full force of a backhanded whallop.
They’re trying to wake me up by knocking me unconscious. These are probably not the smartest gangsters out there.
I force my eyes open because I know that if I keep them closed, they’ll just hit me again and maybe knock me out, which mean’s they’ll probably hit me again after that just to wake me up. That’s a cycle I want to keep out of.
I look around.
I’m tied to a chair in a dingy back bedroom with cracked paint on the walls, a bare light bulb in the ceiling that looks like it’s on it’s last gasp, and a bed I wouldn’t want to touch under any circumstances.
The doorway’s ajar, Vladimir and another Russian leer over me like two hyenas ready to feast, and through the half-open door I can see a living room with a dirty couch and a busted TV set that’s currently playing what looks like a Russian version of one of the old Lethal Weapon movies. Spread throughout that living room are the boxes Vladimir stashed at my store. He doesn’t trust them there anymore.
It sinks in, then. I’m broken and I’m in hell and things are only going to get worse.
“I knew you were guilty, you bitch,” Vladimir growls and hits me again. “Why else would a whore like you try and run away?”
My lip splits in two places and the warm, coppery taste of blood fills my mouth. My whole body pounds with pain and, as my brain begins to wake up from what I’m sure is a concussion, I start to become aware of just how beat-up my body is. That car-crash wrecked me.
There’s pain in my chest that feels like my heart is broken twice over — once from some shattered ribs, and once from leaving Luca the way I did.
The man I loved and trusted turned out to be a violent, unrepentant killer. And now, I’m going to either die knowing my last words to him were calling him a toxic piece of work, or I’m going to be sold off and spend the rest of my life wishing I was dead.
“Tell me where you put Yuri’s body,” he says, bringing hi face level with mine. “Tell me where it is and this will go a little easier for you.”
For some reason, I don’t believe him.
When I don’t talk, he seizes my bruised and battered face and squeezes. My jaw pops and I scream.
“Tell me,” he says.
“I don’t know,” I answer, my voice a pathetic whimper.
“Do you really expect me to believe that? How fucking stupid are you? The last place he went was to pick up the cargo at your worthless fucking shop.”
He shakes me and I stare back at him. “I. Don’t. Know.”
There’s a part of me that has a pretty good idea what happened to Yuri. Luca happened.
But even now, I can’t rat him out.
I can’t even say his name. Just thinking about him makes me remember the way he treated me; the way he did everything he could to help me with my store; the way he planned and orchestrated an entire day just to give me a vacation from the mess that is my life; the way he looked at me like I was the only woman in the world when he told me he loved me.
I know that, even though so much else about his life might be a lie, he meant it when he said he loved me.
That’s what makes this so hard.
If I tell Vladimir about Luca, that’s just going to lead to more killing, more violence, and whether he wins or loses, whatever good is in Luca will have died.
“You’re lying,” Vladimir spits.
He lets go of my face just long enough for me to shut my mouth before he hits me again. My vision goes dark for a second and returns in fits and starts. Wet, thick blood drips from my forehead and into my left eye, forcing me to keep it shut.
“It amazes me how fucking stupid you are. Dumb cunt. You must want me to fuck you. But don’t worry — I’m going to wet my dick with your blood before I fuck you up the ass. Then, when I’m done with you, we’re going to stuff you in some shipping container and send you off to some fucking whorehouse in Thailand to suck off locals for twenty bucks a pop.”
I just stare at him, one eye open one eye shut. I can already feel myself going numb, my body shutting down for what I know is going to happen.
I’m done. My dad thinks I’m gone, and I made it clear to Luca that I want no part of him.
I’m on my own and I’m already wishing I was dead. I just want this done with.
Chatter erupts from the living room and one of the thugs barges in with a frantic look on his face.
“Boss,” he starts, the word slowly fading off as it’s obvious this guy doesn’t want to have anything to do with Vladimir right now.
Vladimir whips around to face him. “Can’t you see I’m fucking busy?”
The thug hesitates a second, and then lets loose with a flurry of mumbled Russian. It all sounds like babble to me, except he says one word ‘Volgograd’ over and over again.
Vladimir snarls and punches the thug in the stomach, before turning around and smacking me again across the face. Hot blood seeps from a fresh laceration across my forehead.
