I don’t say a word. Ivan raises his arms up over his head in surrender.
“Search me, if you please. I have no weapons on me. I would never hurt you, Katy,” he tells me in a low, deliberate voice.
“Bullshit!” I burst, brandishing the gun. Ivan doesn’t even blink.
“I’m telling the truth,” he retorts. “Search me.”
“Ohhh, no you don’t,” I reply, my voice shaking a little. “I’m not going anywhere near you, ever again. I know how strong you are. You’re just itching to snap me in half, aren’t you?”
“Katy, please. Let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain, Ivan!” I cry. “I know exactly what you are and what you’ve done, and there’s not a damn thing you can say that will change it. You’re here to kill me like you killed my father!”
Ivan shakes his head and holds up his palms in front of him. “You’ve got it all wrong, mishka, I swear to you.” That affectionate term — I looked it up, it means a perfect woman — is like poison on his tongue.
He takes a step closer and I put both hands on the gun, holding it level.
“Don’t go any farther or I swear I’ll — I’ll do it.”
“You’ll what? Shoot me?” Ivan says. “You’re really going to shoot me in your father’s cottage, Katy? How do you think he’d feel about that?”
Anger rises like hot steam in my chest. “Don’t you dare mention my father. You have no right to say shit about him, you murdering piece of scum,” I growl. “How do you think he felt about being killed in cold blood, huh?”
“You’re right. I am a killer,” Ivan admits. “Because it is my job, Katy. And I don’t kill good men. I kill bad ones.”
“Was my father a bad guy?” I demand.
“No, that’s what I’m—”
“Exactly. And you killed him anyway. I know what happened. You didn’t do it because you were ordered to. You did it because killing is nothing but a game to you. Taking a human life is nothing to someone like you! I bet you even enjoy it, don’t you?”
At that, Ivan’s jaw clenches and my own blood runs icy.
“There is no aspect of my job that I enjoy. I did not choose this life,” he replies quietly.
“Oh, poor you. It must be so hard having all that money and power, being able to take out anyone who rubs you the wrong way. What did my father do to provoke you, Ivan?” I ask.
“Nothing. I never met him.”
“There you go with the lies again!” I shout, my arms aching from having to hold the gun up for this long. “You were so careful to keep this hidden from me, you even made up that whole sob story about being stuck in Russian prison.”
“That was the truth,” Ivan protests, but I shake my head.
“You made me think you were some kind of fucking hero, Ivan! Going off to the motherland to save some poor beat-up girl from the big evil bad guy. I bet none of those people even exist, do they?” My rage is fueling me at this point, and even if I die tonight, I am determined to have the last word.
“Look them up. Research the case. It made headlines in Moscow.”
At this I can’t help but laugh bitterly. “Oh, you’re unbelievable. Or maybe just delusional. But I refuse to believe in those delusions anymore, Ivan, okay? You don’t control me anymore and I know that just kills you.”
“Put the gun down, Katy, before you hurt yourself,” he pleads softly, genuine concern on his gorgeous features. There was a time when that look might have melted me, but not anymore.
“I mean, how sick can you be? You killed an innocent man and fucked his daughter! And what’s even worse is that you fooled me into it. I never suspected a thing. I mean, sure, I have been afraid of you all along because of what you do for a living. But I never once thought, oh hey, this guy I’m sleeping with might have murdered my father. So, bravo. Congratulations. You really played me,” I confess, and now the tears are rolling down my cheeks in hot streaks.
Ivan looks truly pained. The look in his beautiful dark blue eyes is filled with heartbreak. But it has to be an act. I know by now that he is a good hit man and a very good actor.
“And you know what, Ivan? You know what I don’t get?” I start again, emotion making me voice sound all wobbly and weak. “You claim to only kill bad guys. But the world isn’t that simple, is it? It’s not black and white, like you said. Every ‘bad guy’ starts out somewhere. He probably has a family. Even if you don’t like him, somewhere out there, there’s gotta be someone who loves him. So when you kill a bad guy, do you think about that? Do you even stop to think about his family? What did they ever do to you?”
“It is not my place to decide right and wrong, Katy.”
“But when you sentence them to death, aren’t you playing judge, jury, and executioner?”
Ivan stares up at the ceiling. “No. I am just the executioner.”
“Then how do you know if what you’re doing is right?” I press him, my arms now tingling from the effort of keeping the gun held up.
“I don’t!” Ivan explodes. “I follow orders, Katy! I do my job! But I try my best to seek out justice, not revenge. I want to balance the scales, solnishka, not tip them. But in the end I am just an employee.”
“Then what is your excuse for killing my dad, huh?” I shoot back. “If you’re just following orders then why did you go after him? I know for a fact that it wasn’t an order. So, what, did you just decide to do a little freelancing on the side?”
“You are correct about that, Katy. The Bratva did not order your father’s death,” he agrees gravely.
“Then why?” I implore, my arms wide open. I don’t even care about holding the gun anymore. I already know it’s hopeless. I don’t stand a chance against this man.
But Ivan doesn’t lunge for me like I expect him to. Instead, he calmly explains, “The man who killed your father did not do it because he was instructed to do so. Your father was a good man, and he did nothing to deserve such a cruel end. His killer was not acting out justice. He was filled with misplaced rage and frustration, and he dealt with it the only way he knew how. I promise you, Katy, your father was a good man, and his killer knew that. Perhaps that is really why he wanted him dead. In this business, we are surrounded by darkness, by evil and danger. We do not trust anyone or anything but our own sense of right and wrong. And there are things we cannot have — peace, stability, love — it comes with the territory. We live between the black and white, Katy. We are the gray. It is our lot in life, and only as long as we can accept that can we survive. The man who did this… he looked at your father and saw all the things he could not have, and resented him for it. Envy is a monstrous thing, my love. It creates monsters out of mere men. This man did not take your father’s life to balance the scales, to remove an evil from the world. He did it because he was jealous and angry and because killing is the only thing he knows how to do. Violence is his only outlet. And because he stepped outside the gray for a moment to stand in the light which does not belong to men like him — like me — your father died.”
“Is that a confession?” I ask darkly.
“No,” Ivan says firmly. His gaze is steely and true. “In fact, I can prove to you that I am innocent. After you told me of his death, I did some research of my own. Katy, I know who killed your father. And if you let me, I can show you the proof.”
17
Katy
I can already feel tears in my eyes as the old VHS player starts to load the tape, like a sense of dread building up in the pit of my stomach. Everything in me wants to tear my eyes away from this, to just bolt out of the cottage and run away.
But I keep my eyes steadily forward, my knuckles white as I ball my hands into fists from the pent-up storm of emotion brewing inside me. I want to believe him. More than anything, I want to be wrong about Ivan.
The screen lights up as the tape begins to play.
I see Dad sitting in his office, now my office, shuffling through paperwork. I feel a tug at my heartstr
ings as I watch him, looking just like I remember him before leaving for college. This feels like watching a ghost. It feels wrong. At my side, I can sense Ivan wanting to put a hand on my shoulder, but he restrains himself. Instead, he narrates through the silent footage.
“As you know, your father owed protection money every month,” he starts. “Like you, he was always punctual. It was a close call, sometimes, but from what I’ve heard of him, he was as diligent a bookkeeper as he was a manager.”
The next thing I see makes my heart plummet. The door of the office gets kicked open, and my dad nearly jumps out of his skin at who walks in.
Konrad. Oskar and Nic are close behind him, though they hang back as Konrad moves straight for Dad’s desk.
“But sadly, he was assigned to collect from you,” Ivan continues, “Konrad collected from your father. He used to be in charge of collections instead of Oskar, a fact he’s still bitter about to this day. And just like with you, he got rough the one time your father was unable to make his monthly dues.”
There’s no sound on the video, but I can almost hear Konrad’s horrid voice yelling at Dad.
“You went to college that year, and your father insisted on paying your tuition. That’s what cut into his income just enough to bring him short of his dues. When your father couldn’t make his payment, Konrad demanded a different form of compensation,” Ivan says with disgust in his voice. “He demanded you, Katy.”
My eyes widen, and I tear my eyes away to look up at Ivan incredulously. His stony gaze holds no deception.
“This was not the first time he’d made such an advance, the animal,” Ivan says, looking back at the video ruefully. Konrad is still stomping around and shouting at Dad. “He has lusted for you for a long time. Your father hid it from you so well, but Konrad has been circling you like a vulture for years.”
I want to vomit, and I put my hands to my mouth as I watch Konrad order Nic to turn the table over, sending papers flying everywhere as my dad stumbles backward away from them. Konrad takes him by the scruff of his collar and tosses him into the center of the room.
“Now, Konrad thought he had his chance at you. It would be you, or dire consequences.”
A gasp escapes my lips as I see Konrad throw the first punch into my dad’s stomach, and as he stumbles back, Nic catches him and holds his arms back while Konrad squares up for more pummeling. I want to turn away, but I owe it to my father to see the truth.
“Konrad demanded to know where you were. He was going to collect on you himself. Your father would not budge. They had already searched his house, but your father had been shrewd enough to hide which college you were away at. He endured terrible things, Katy.”
Ivan’s voice is a little thick as he watches my innocent father get tortured by the thugs that are now inflicting awful things on my dad. I can barely watch, cringing and feeling my gut wrench at every blow.
“Despite everything that happened, your father wouldn’t speak. He was silent during the whole interrogation.”
I bite my lip and feel tears welling up in my eyes as I see Konrad cross the room and take down a baseball bat Dad had mounted on the wall of his office. I finally have to turn my eyes away when I see him use it to pummel Dad’s stomach.
“You don’t have to watch this, Katy,” I hear Ivan’s thick whisper, but I foolishly keep my eyes locked on the screen.
Konrad’s face is red, and he’s clearly utterly lost his temper. His motions are wild and uncontrolled, and when he raises the baseball bat high and brings a fast, hard swing at the side of my dad’s head, I reflexively shut my eyes and turn away, unable to hold back the sobs in my chest as I instinctively know what just happened.
I’m a trembling wreck when I feel Ivan’s hand rest on my shoulder.
“What Konrad did was officially an accident, he reported to his superiors. He was never supposed to commit such an act. Covering Konrad’s tracks before investigators arrived at the murder site cost them a lot of money. Paying off the investigators cost even more. It cost Konrad his position, which is why Oskar runs collections now.”
Through teary eyes, I see Nic hoisting my father’s body up while Oskar checks for a pulse, shouting something angrily at Konrad, and I can watch no more.
“Turn it off,” I ask Ivan through a choked voice.
He obliges, and I hug myself, leaning over in my seat.
“How did you find all this out?” I finally manage after taking a few moments to muster the strength to speak in an even voice. “If all this is true, why did you imply you didn’t know who killed my father when I told you about it?”
“There were only three men who handled your business before me,” Ivan explains. “Oskar, Nic, and Konrad. A demotion like Konrad’s is not a common thing, so I investigated.” His serious face allows a small smile to form. “I wasn’t joking when I said I know Konrad’s dear old matushka. She was more helpful than anyone else.”
“What do you mean?”
“The circumstances of this murder were incriminating enough for Konrad. He wanted this tape we’re watching kept even more secret. If his superiors had watched this, his consequences would have been far more severe. So he kept it with him, lied to say that he and the boys had disabled the security cameras before beginning their interrogation. He kept it in a safe at his own mother’s house, along with the murder weapon — your father’s baseball bat.”
I’m reining myself in better now, and my swollen eyes look up at him with determination, anger, and confusion. “So why is he coming after us now? Why me?!”
Ivan closes his eyes, his hand balling into a terrible fist. “The bastard knows we’re together, Katy. It infuriated him from the moment I brought it up to our superiors, and the beating I gave them only soured him more. He’s a petty, wretched man, and this was a feeble move to try to incriminate me. He thought you might go to the police with this letter and spark an investigation that would have me arrested.”
I look up at him evenly for a few long moments, then I stand up, and his gaze down at me is open and sincere. All of this information has been overwhelming. I don’t even know what exactly I want to do — punch him, kiss him, run away, or maybe all three.
Finally, I let out a long breath, glancing at the blank screen once more before speaking.
“I believe you, Ivan.”
I can’t keep myself from embracing him the next moment, and he receives me with his strong arms, warming me with a hug I so desperately need as he buries his face in my hair.
“I’m so sorry I doubted you,” I say in half a sob.
“You had every right to, Katy,” he whispers back, “you had every right to never speak to me again after being put through so much.”
I pull back a touch and look up at him, my lip trembling before I feel a weight lift from my shoulders as I look at what I can now believe more than ever is an honest face.
“Let’s go home, Ivan,” I whisper.
On the way back, something feels different between us. There were always times when the silences between us held some kind of tension, like between the moments of fleeting bliss together, there was this reminder that I’m with him as part of a deal. A transaction.
But as we drive back to Brighton Beach in his car and I lean towards him from the passenger’s seat, wanting nothing more than to embrace him, that tension seems just...gone. Like it was a spell that’s been broken, and we can breathe freely together.
I look over at him, and despite looking to be deep in thought, I can see some kind of relief in his face as well.
He’s a hit man. He kills people for a living. But...he loves me, doesn’t he?
The realization hits me suddenly. He didn’t have to do all this. He could have left me to hide in my cottage forever, or until Konrad found me. But he came for me.
And I realize that I wanted him to, desperately.
I swallow the lump in my throat just as he looks over at me and speaks.
“There’s something on your mind.�
�
I nod quietly, then look forward at the road as we drive closer to the place that feels more like home than anywhere else in the world could.
“Konrad is still after you, Ivan. After us. What happens now?”
“You’re right,” he nods grimly, “he isn’t going to stop.” He then looks at me with a cool, steady gaze that at once thrills me and raises the hair on the back of my neck.
“That’s why I took the liberty of showing this tape to my superiors. They agreed with me on what needs to be done.”
My face blanches, and I feel my hands go cold at the implication. “You mean…?”
“Konrad needs to be dealt with,” he says with finality before looking at me again, “and I’m going to need your help.”
My mouth is dry, but something else in me is stirring. Determination. I look at Ivan, the cool confidence with which he’s approaching this, and I want him so badly in this moment. I want him to pull over and fuck me in the back seat of his car, but I know that will have to wait. I have a family to avenge.
“Well, hit man?” I say with a feeling that thrills my whole body, “What do you have in mind?”
“Konrad is passionate for you. Mad, really,” he explains. “Such lust-ridden men act irrationally, viciously, and impulsively. The sooner we act the better.”
I nod, suspecting where this is going. “So we’re going to set a trap for him, and you want to use me as the bait.”
He looks at me with a tenderness and concern I didn’t think to expect, and he hesitates a moment. “Katy, I wouldn’t ask this of you if I weren’t going to be watching over you the whole time. But I understand if you—”
“No,” I stop him, resolution in my face even as I wring my hands, “I want this.” Every part of me is trying to resist, but there’s a part of me in the back of my mind fighting its way to the front, thrilling my entire body. I need this.
Ivan looks long and hard at me as we stop at a red light, then nods.
“Then listen carefully.”
Saved by the Outlaw: A Bad Boy Romance Page 53
