by A. Zavarelli
“I can carry him,” she says as I hoist him up into my arms.
“I know you can.” I swat her on the ass. “But so can I.”
She narrows her eyes at me, and Kostya interjects, insisting on carrying the car seat as well. After I lock the SUV, he leads us out onto the secure airstrip and to our waiting plane.
Kat’s eyes widen, and she jerks her neck up to look at me.
“Is that for us?”
“The plane!” Josh squeals. “We’re going on a plane!”
“That would be the one.”
“A private jet?” she frowns. “How is this even possible?”
“I had to call in a few favors,” I admit. And dump a lot of cash, but she doesn’t need to know that part. Lucky for me, Alexei is well connected.
“Hello, Lev.” Pavel, the pilot, greets us from the stairway.
“Afternoon, Pavel. Thank you for flying us today.”
“It is no problem.” He shakes his head. “Whatever Lyoshenka asks, I will do. I owe him a great deal.”
I nod, and he gestures for us to board.
“Come, let’s get your family settled in, yes?”
He helps Kat up the stairs, and I follow with Josh. The benefits of a private jet are no security lines and a much quicker process than commercial. Within minutes, we are loaded onto the plane and secured for takeoff.
Josh squeals with excitement as the engine rumbles to life. Despite Kat’s nerves, I catch her smiling more than a few times as she watches our son experience his first flight. It’s an occasion I wish was under better circumstances.
The reality is, once we get to Philly, everything will change. There will be no more carefree moments like this. Not until I have executed my exit strategy with Alexei’s help. This could take time, and still involve many risks. Vasily is always temperamental, but lately, he has been a loose cannon. Keeping Kat and Josh safe while appeasing him will be the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced. But as I study their faces, committing them to memory at this moment just as they are, I know it will be worth every bit of pain I may endure.
We touch down in Baltimore just after midnight. Josh is fast asleep, exhausted from our big adventure of the day, and Kat looks well on her way too. But she is nervous as I load them into the waiting SUV that Alexei organized for us. She seems aware of my own tension as we hit the freeway and make the two-hour drive back to Philly.
Eventually, she falls back asleep, and I attempt to organize the thoughts running through my mind. For the past few days, I’ve managed to forget what coming back here would entail. But it is not so easy now. And when I finally pull up to the safe house just after two a.m., it feels like I’ve been punched in the gut as I consider what happens next. I have difficulty trusting others, but in this instance, I will have no choice.
Kat is still fast asleep beside me, unaware that I’m watching her. Studying the lines of her face, the fall of her hair. At that moment, the thought that I could ever lose her hits me like a punch to the gut. I want more than to simply call her mine. I want her to be my wife and take my last name and make me more beautiful children. I want all of those things with her.
But for right now, tonight is all we have. And I try not to let that sour my mood as I stir her from sleep with a kiss.
“Are we here?” She blinks and sits upright, glancing at the unfamiliar house in confusion. “What is this place?”
“It’s a safe house,” I tell her. “Come on.”
She doesn’t seem convinced that it’s actually safe, but when I get out and start unbuckling Josh, she is quick to follow. I carry him to the door, and Kat glances up at me nervously as I knock. When Pasha answers, he gestures us inside, but Kat is frozen to the doorstep.
“Who is this?” she asks.
“It’s a friend,” I assure her. More specifically, he is one of Alexei’s latest recruits. Still somewhat green, but highly trustworthy, and right now, he’s the only available option I have.
Kat doesn’t seem to warm to the idea of him hanging around, even as we enter the house and get settled in. I show her around the place, which consists of the basics. There are two bedrooms and a bathroom. Not a lot of furniture, but enough to stay here for a while at least. I also note that Alexei had the second room done up with a child-sized bed and plenty of books and toys. Probably something his wife encouraged, but regardless, I am grateful.
“Will he be okay in here?” Kat asks nervously as I lay Josh into the bed.
“Yes.” I point at the window, which has been sealed shut. “That glass? It’s bulletproof, Kat. And this monitor will let you see anything that goes on in this room from any part of the house. There is also a keypad on every door, which I will give you the code for.”
She swallows and glances down at our son, her eyes glassy and her face fraught with emotion. “Okay. As long as I can see him.”
After giving Josh a kiss, we exit the room and join Pasha in the living room. It’s late, and we’re all tired, but I don’t have a lot of time. Tomorrow morning, I will need to leave her here with him, and I need her to know that it’s okay.
Pasha seems to understand my unspoken thoughts as he offers her something to drink, and then proceeds to show her that the pantry and fridge are fully stocked. When Kat declines, he makes small talk, pointing out some other features of the house and asking her conversational questions to get her talking a little.
While they do that, I grab the bags and scope out the street. It’s a quiet suburban neighborhood where neighbors keep to themselves and the only prowlers to be seen are cats with bells on their collars. Alexei has done well by my family, and for that, I am eternally grateful.
Once I’m back inside, I thank Pasha for his help and take Kat to the other bedroom. She’s got the monitor in her hand, constantly checking on Josh, and I can tell she won’t be getting any sleep tonight in her current frame of mind.
“Is Pasha staying here too?” she asks.
“Yes.” I remove her coat and slowly undress her, helping her into her nightgown and pulling back the covers for her to climb into bed.
“Where are you going?” She frowns as I move toward the door.
“I’ll be right back.”
When I return a few moments later, with Josh cradled in my arms, she looks relieved as I lay him beside her.
“Just for tonight,” I tell her. “Until you feel comfortable here.”
Kat kisses his forehead and watches as I remove my shoes and coat, and then lay down on the outside of the bed, still in my shirt and jeans.
“Do you think this is a good idea?” She worries her lip between her teeth. “If he wakes up and sees us all sleeping together—”
“Then he will start to understand that we are a family.” I lean over and kiss her lips. “Now go to sleep, sweetheart. Tomorrow is a new day.”
22
Lev
After a long-winded talk and many assurances to Kat that she would be safe at the house with Pasha, I find myself back at Delirium, awaiting Vasily’s arrival. Already, Andrei is studying me, a smirk playing across his lips like he knows something I don’t. If I could, I would wipe that smirk clean from his face with a rusty knife.
“Levka.” Vasily slams the door behind him as he enters the private room upstairs. The same room where I first brought Kat into my life.
“Uncle.” I greet him with a nod.
He sits down across the table from me, his gaze meeting mine. Neither of us speaks as we size each other up. I know better than to be too eager with information. And now that I’m aware he’s been going behind my back to find his own answers, I must maintain my poker face. A part of me still hopes he will come clean and admit it. That he will prove he isn’t the man I’m beginning to think he is.
“Any word on the girl?” He shatters my hopes with a single sentence.
“I tracked her for a few weeks, but she seems to be ahead of us.”
He scratches at the stubble on his chin, cocking his head to the side. “Wh
at made you believe she was in Florida?”
“She has a connection there,” I say. “A friend.”
He considers my statement, which he knows is a lie, but I wait for him to call me on it.
“And the drive?”
“Still nothing.” I stare into the dark abyss of his eyes, wondering if my own blood could really be responsible for my mother’s death. His own sister. But even as I question it, I don’t doubt that he would kill Kat without a second thought. Vasily is only loyal to one thing, and that is his own selfish desires. He may be a Vor, but he won’t hesitate to forsake his beloved brethren if it saves his own skin. Of that, I have no doubt.
“You have disappointed me,” he says without emotion. “I expected this to be taken care of long ago. It has gone on too long, and I can’t afford to spare you any longer. I need you back to work.”
My jaw grinds together as I consider what he has planned. But all I can do is simply nod. It’s what he expects of me. What he has always expected of me.
“What do you need me to do?” I ask.
“You can start by helping Andrei with some cleanup this afternoon.”
My stomach churns as I nod. “Done.”
Vasily dismisses us, and I follow Andrei out onto the street. But when he heads for his car, I shake my head.
“Let’s take mine.”
He hesitates for a moment before getting inside. Typically, I wouldn’t want my car near anything we might be about to encounter, but right now, it’s imperative I have it available at all times. On the off chance that Kat does call me with an emergency, I can dump this moron on a street corner and get to her fast.
Andrei fiddles with my stereo and tries to light up a cigarette while I start the engine, which I quickly pluck out of his hand and toss out the window.
“What the fuck?” he grumbles.
“Not in my car. Where are we going?”
“My place,” he says.
Fucking great. I spend the entirety of the twenty-minute drive to his house wondering what kind of mess he’s left for me this time. Whatever it is, it can’t be good.
My theory is regretfully proven correct when he leads me into his bedroom, and I find a woman still handcuffed to his bedframe. Her face is beaten so badly she’s unidentifiable, and there’s blood spatter clear up to the ceiling. The body is already starting to smell, and it’s obvious this happened some time ago.
“Fucking Christ.” I turn to him with so much repressed rage, it takes all of my willpower not to cave his skull in right now. “What the fuck did you do, Andrei?”
“Things got out of control.” He shrugs. “Nothing I can do about it now.”
I grind my jaw and pace the length of his bedroom. Fuck this shit. Andrei is so goddamned out of control, Vasily has to see it. He has to know there’s no coming back from this. Every time I turn around, he’s destroying something else. Or someone else. The only logical conclusion is to put him down like a rabid dog.
It’s a certainty I feel deep in my gut as I take in the scene before me. I don’t know who she is, but that’s irrelevant. This woman didn’t deserve this. And I’m sure she has a family out there somewhere. People who will wonder what happened to her. Now I have to make her disappear, and they will never find peace in their lives.
“How do you want to do this?” Andrei asks.
He’s too fucking dumb to come up something on his own, and as usual, it’s left up to me. But this time, I couldn’t care less about cleaning this up properly. Bringing some heat down on Vasily can only help me. Any distraction will work in my favor until I can get my shit sorted out. It’s a risk, but right now, it’s one I’m willing to take.
“Go grab the bleach and some gloves,” I tell him.
Andrei disappears into the kitchen, and while he’s doing that, I snap a good fifteen pictures of the scene. Enough that there are identifiers of his bedroom. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s another insurance policy.
When he returns, I strip off my jacket and get to work. Andrei uncuffs her and rolls her up in the bedding while I hold back the urge to vomit all over his bedroom. When he’s done that, I point at the gloves and the bleach and tell him to get to work. He can’t clean for shit, but that’s exactly why it needs to be him.
“What are you going to do with her?” he asks as I start dragging the rolled-up bedding out of his bedroom.
“We’re going to plant a garden. Brighten up the place a little.”
“In the backyard?” He frowns.
“She’s not fucking going anywhere in my car.” I glare at him. “You should have thought of that before you did this.”
He doesn’t say a word, and it’s settled. Vasily never asks what I do with the bodies. He just asks if it’s taken care of. Unless Andrei decides to open his fat trap, there’s a good chance he’ll never know about this sloppily executed job. At least, not until I need him to.
Once I have the body in the kitchen, I open the garage and start digging through the piles of shit Andrei has accumulated over the years. I don’t know why he’s even bothered to keep half of it. There are at least a dozen boxes full of junk that I have to kick out of the way to get to the shovel. And it’s just my fucking luck that one of them rips at the side, scattering the contents all over the concrete floor.
For fuck’s sake.
I kneel and start shoveling the contents back into the box, but as I’m doing that, something catches my eye. At first glance, I don’t know why I pause. Only that it feels familiar. It isn’t until I pick up the small hand-carved trinket box that it comes back to me. The etching on the top is exactly like the one that sat on my mother’s nightstand. But this couldn’t be hers.
Even as I tell myself that, I’m hesitant to open it up. To confirm what I never wanted to believe. Because if it was hers, this would be a betrayal of the worst kind. A betrayal I could never come back from.
The hinges creak as I lift the lid, my lungs frozen as I peer inside at what is undoubtedly my mother’s jewelry. Her rings, a necklace, a bracelet. But I still don’t want to believe it. I can’t accept it until I pop the locket open and see a photograph of our family staring back at me.
I claw at my neck, tugging the collar of my shirt down. I feel like I can’t fucking breathe. What the fuck? How did this get here? How the fuck did this get here?
The echo of Andrei’s footsteps in the house snaps me out of my delirium. Slamming the lid shut, I stuff the wooden box into my pocket and leave the rest of the shit on the floor. When he opens the door to the garage, I have the shovel in my grasp and a wild look in my eye. That I can be sure of.
Andrei gives me a questioning look but seems to disregard my sour mood. “I’m done cleaning. What should I do now?”
I stare at him for a beat too long, considering how bad it would be if I tortured him right here in his garage. If I cut off every one of his goddamn appendages and stuffed them down his own throat before I jammed a knife through his skull. It’s what I would have done. Two weeks ago, before Kat and Josh, I wouldn’t have hesitated. But right now, things need to go smoothly. This needs to be a clean break. And I need to fucking think before I act on my impulses because right now, I just want to beat him until his blood explodes across the ceiling.
“Go to the store and get some plants.” I toss him my car keys. “Whatever the fuck you can find this time of year.”
He nods and heads back for the house. But before he does, I stop him.
“Who was she?” I ask. “The woman in your bed?”
“Just some slut from the club,” he says, confirming my suspicions. While it’s likely that Vasily has already deleted the video of that night, there is a strong possibility there is other surveillance from the street. Something I’m counting on.
“Don’t take too long,” I tell him. “And don’t get any fucking blood in my car.”
He stumbles out the door and leaves me to my thoughts. I just want to get the fuck out of here. I need to check on Kat and Josh, and I need
to sort through the facts before I do anything rash. There’s also still the matter of meeting with Alexei this week. The sooner I can get out of this shithole, the better.
I haul the shovel out into the backyard and use my simmering rage as motivation. Three hours later, Andrei has a new garden. A hodgepodge of plants and flowers that will certainly be dead within the week. But for now, it’s enough to satisfy the bare minimum. At least until I can figure out how to destroy this sick bastard for good.
23
Kat
Pasha spends the day trying to keep to the background, but Josh is curious and somehow manages to snare him in a game of hide-and-seek in the afternoon.
I get one text from Lev all day. It’s brief, telling me he’ll miss dinner and that he’ll be home late.
I want to tell him this isn’t home. I feel anxious and the opposite of safe even though this is supposed to be a safe house.
But taking Josh and leaving, I can’t do that. I know that. Not that I’d be able to. I have a feeling Pasha is here to make sure we stay in as much as to keep the bad guys out. The few times I’ve walked to the front door, he’s turned up at my side in an instant, reminding me to stay away from the windows.
I think back to our drive after landing in Baltimore. I felt Lev watching me when he thought I was asleep. Well, I was asleep, and I’m not sure what exactly woke me, but all I can recall was the intensity of how he was looking at me.
And I guess what he said more than once is hitting me.
I’m his.
We’re his.
“Mommy?” Josh looks up at me from where he’s sitting on the floor at my feet. I realize the cartoon has ended, and his eyes are sleepy.
“Time for bed, sweetie,” I tell him, standing.
On cue, Pasha turns the corner, coming toward us to take him.
“I got him,” I say.
He nods, stepping backward, and returns Josh’s sleepy smile. I didn’t realize Russian men were so chivalrous.
