All the same I jump for it with one hand, grasp hold of that pole and dangle there. Exposed. It’s a foolish move, and I only hope that their surprise is enough to save my ass. I can support myself with one arm easily enough, I’ve been keeping myself in peak condition for so long. The real weakness is in the sign pole, and on whether I can lift my gun up and take aim fast enough.
I see the two thugs immediately through the railing above. One doesn’t see me right away, but the other in back does.
I’m not motionless, so it takes a moment longer than usual to raise my gun and aim it right. In that time the pale dirt bag gets a chance to whip his own gun toward me. He fires first, but my bullet’s just a fraction of a second behind.
Fate’s sealed either way.
I’m hit, and I feel the bullet tear through my arm, the only thing holding me up. It’s like molten fire, but I don’t lose my grasp, it’s iron solid. I know it’s a grazing hit. I won’t let it take me down, not with her on the line.
The other guy, however? With a bullet straight through his left eye, he goes down and I’m able to take my second shot. Adrenaline courses through me, and I know I’ll get the girl. This is what I was born to do, what I was meant to do.
I’m a killing machine, and now that my head’s in the game, not even a bullet can take me back out of it.
I fire at the other guy as I let myself drop to the ground. He fires too, but he aims where I was, not where I am now. A moment later, I hit the pavement as I hear something move above. I can’t tell what happened to the guy, but I trust in my aim and sprint up the stairs on foot. Blood splatters from my arm onto the steps and as I turn, gun ready, I see the two men are both down. My aim was true.
As I rush toward Alicia’s broken door and see the shattered glass, my heart ices over. I leap through the glass and prepare myself to take on her assailants, but when I see a woman’s body on the floor and blood, my own vision turns red.
“Alicia!” I growl the name out in a bellowing shout as I surge into the bedroom toward the body. But it’s not her. It’s Eva.
The woman’s eyes flutter open as I look around the room, see the mess of the place, the ironing board and items strewn about, the blood staining the carpet and smearing toward the door.
“Get her…” Eva says weakly.
She’s burning up and badly wounded, but she should survive. I hope. They didn’t get her in the gut or any of the vitals, at least, so as long as the ambulance gets here quickly enough she’ll be alright. With a motel like this, I imagine there’s been at least a few calls in about the gunfight in the parking lot, so I give her a nod and a pat on the shoulder.
But I don’t know how to take her advice. There’s no sign of Alicia, and the room is in such a mess, it’s impossible to figure out what happened. There’s only one exit, though, and it’s the door I came in through, so I take a step toward it just before a scream pierces the air.
I only get a fraction of a moment’s time before a bullet whips past my head and I have to duck down, but I spot Alicia, being dragged through the parking lot.
I run back out of the motel room and race around the side of the building towards the back lot. Her blood is marking the way, and it’s making my body scream in anger, but I can’t let it distract me. I need to push it down, into my fist, let it make me hard. For so long, I’ve honed my body and my mind to be cold and ruthless, but now I’m burning hot with rage, and it’s a new sensation entirely.
The back parking lot is smaller and there’s only one car there, and just two guys. One pushing Alicia into the back of the car and another pointing his gun right at me.
The shot goes off as I dive forward, losing precious moments. But it saves my life, in two ways.
Not only do I dodge that shot from the goon below, but the third thug that’s rounding the corner with his gun held high instead finds me at his feet. In the seconds I have, I manage to twist and grab hold of his wrist, keeping the gun pointed away from me as I raise my own weapon and fire.
But my position’s not optimal on the floor like this and he’s able to grab my wrist as I did to him, and my shot misses his ugly mug by an inch or so. It comes down to a battle of raw strength, but I have the guys down below to worry about, too. I don’t have the time to fight him over this, not if I’m going to save Alicia from the other guys.
I hear doors slam shut, and thankfully no more bullets, but that only makes matters more urgent. I push up from my place on the pavement, and as I rise, I’m able to put more of my strength into overpowering this guy. I’m able to stare into his scarred face as he gnashes his teeth at me.
And I recognize him. He’s no ordinary goon, he’s from Brighton Beach. He’s one of Vasili’s men. And that makes me realize the guy in the gaudy suit below, the one that shoved her into the car was Vasili himself.
“The girl’s ours,” he says to me with a sneer, and I bash his nose in with a vicious head-butt, sending a spray of blood all over the both of us. That’s all I need to get my gun pointed back at his face and blow an inch wide hole through his skull.
I rise up, wiping the blood from my face and eyes so I can see, but the image that greets me fills me with rage. The black sedan is pulling away out of the parking lot, with the image of Alicia in the back window looking at me, panic in her emerald eyes.
I raise my gun to try and shoot out one of their back tires, but their erratic movements, the distance, my blood-blurred vision, and Alicia’s precarious position at the rear of the vehicle mean it’s a shot I can’t risk taking.
Instead I watch in horror as my girl is hauled off by Vasili. A sick, sadistic bastard whose only intent will be to torture her to get her to incriminate me to Gregorovich, and then murder her.
Alicia
I can’t see where I am anymore. At some point, I’m not entirely sure when, they got sick of my screaming after watching Mikhail vanish in the rear-view mirror. The one cruel thug forced a gag in my mouth and a sack over my head. It felt like hours ago that happened, but I’m no longer sure of time or pretty much anything else, either.
I was trying to memorize the turns, as if that’d help me instruct Mikhail if I ever got to talk to him again, but I long ago lost count. It certainly didn’t help that it felt like we kept veering off the road and driving erratically. It’s any wonder we didn’t get pulled over, but then I guess there’s not a lot of cops wherever they’re taking me.
I just know that as we get to the end of the journey, they’re hauling me out of the backseat and I feel my feet dragging over cement once we’re inside. Which means we’re not in some cozy place. We’re probably in some dank, abandoned factory. The kind of place people end up right before they get shot by the mob.
The kind of place I never even knew to dread dying in. This isn’t the life I ever could have expected for myself, not by a long shot, but now I suppress a sob. That’s all the bit of pride I can muster, to at least meet my death with some grace and dignity.
“Tie her to the bed,” says the snarling voice of the man who hauled me into his car, the cruel little goblin of a man.
There goes the last bit of my resolve, and I’m screaming again. I can handle the idea of being killed, my body never found, my mom left to mourn a daughter she doesn’t know is dead. I could, at least, make peace with that.
But being put on a bed by these goons, I know that spells trouble of a far greater magnitude, and fear jolts through me. I struggle, my arms nearly torn from their sockets as I yank against them, but they’re both taller and stronger than me by quite a lot.
What greets me isn’t the soft cushioning of a bed, however, not even the rough fabric of some dingy old mattress. It’s just hard metal springs of a bare bed frame digging into me as I’m pushed onto it and stretched out.
I’ve never felt so degraded and so terrified all at once. Every last bit of me wants to scream but my voice is hoarse. I can barely even breathe, and the throbbing of my bullet wound seems even worse now. I don’t know if it’s all
in my head or what, but every part of me aches, like I’m being pulled apart.
“Shaddup!” screams the voice of that cruel one, the leader, right before he hits me across the face, knocking the feeble sounds from my lips.
As I sputter and cough from the blow, the two men tie me up so tightly that my poor wrists feel like they’re being sawed through by the rope. Every part of me is either in pain or in extreme discomfort, and I find myself just wishing I could disappear into the ground and be back home.
But when the word comes to mind—home—it isn’t my apartment I’m picturing. It’s Mikhail’s safehouse. Boring, bland, and filled with such red hot lust and passion I can barely contain myself. My home is him, now.
“Let me go,” I beg, almost sobbing the words out. But for my misery the leader yanks my hood off, ripping a few hairs from my head in the process.
“I said shut up!” he shouts, and I’m looking up at his beady-eyed face, so wild with anger, his hand garnished with a ton of glittering gemmed-rings upon it, poised and ready to hit me. “You speak when I tell you to, da?” he asks, getting up in my face, grinding his teeth.
I turn away from him, able to see around the building I’m in. I notice weird details about it, like how it’s not an abandoned factory as I thought, just some near-empty warehouse. I try to drink it all in, memorize every inch of it, just in case.
Just in case you discover telepathy? My inner voice asks, and I don’t even have the energy to fight back. I’m going to die here, and this disgusting man’s beady eyes are going to be the last thing I see.
But I guess instinct kicks in, some sense of self preservation, because I nod. I can’t die in here, and I’m going to do whatever I need to in order to survive.
That glaring troll grabs my face and twists me toward him, his own lips curled in an almost freakish manner.
“Tell me who was protecting you, huh? Who saved your ass from the hotel that night?!” He screamed that last question at me, trying to intimidate me in his pinstripe suit with his fist in the air.
I shouldn’t be so surprised by the question, but I am, and it takes me a second to even realize what he’s asking. He wants me to incriminate Mikhail, to say something against him. I don’t know why, but I guess it’s because he protected me, and that these were the guys that he’d warned me about. It sends a shiver down my spine, but I shake my head.
“I don’t know! I blacked out!” I say, and it’s truthful enough. I just hope I sound honest saying it.
“Don’t lie to me!” he screams at me, grabbing hold of my hair and wrenching my head forward to the limits of my bindings. “Tell me who it was!” he bellows, pulling out a knife from his pants pocket.
I feel like I’m going to be sick, even though I haven’t eaten in a long time. I can’t help it, I just start coughing, my stomach constricting with how scared I am. I’ve never been so afraid in all my life, and I beg myself just to tell him, to give him Mikhail’s name, but I know I could never do that!
I’ve fallen hard for my former kidnapper, and I know he was trying to save me. I saw him, wanting to protect me again from these thugs. How could I betray him after all we’ve been through?
Tears sting my eyes as my retching subsides, but I keep shaking my head. I don’t know when the words start spilling out, over and over, but I’m aware of myself saying, “I don’t know, it’s the truth,” over and over again.
“You’re lying!” he screams at me again and pushes the knife up into my face, letting the metal cut into my cheek, cold and piercing. “Just give me his name! It’s that zasranec Mikhail, isn’t it?! Just say it!”
My body is in anguish, begging me to just tell him. Let Mikhail’s name tumble from my lips, and let this all be over. Maybe he’ll even just let me go, even after all of this, if I just obey. But I can’t pretend I’m even considering it.
There’s no way I’m going to betray Mikhail. There’s no way I’m going to turn my back on my only real chance at love.
It’s like suddenly everything he told me kicks into place. The reason why Mikhail had been so cold and distant, the reason he felt he needed to protect me. I now know he wasn’t bluffing just to keep me in place.
He’s been honest to me this entire time, and my heart thuds with fear and love, the emotions mingling into a twisted warmth. I’m going to get out of this. I’m going to survive so that I can tell him that he was right.
“I have no idea! I was drugged!”
Then I hear it, a voice coming in a little tinny. My abuser is looking at the phone upon a nearby box as the voice rises out of it. It’s all in a foreign language I don’t understand, Russian I think, but one name stands out from all the talk: Mikhail.
My captor speaks back, but suddenly all his anger and venom is gone and he has such deference in his voice. It doesn’t last long, though, before his full attention is back upon me as rage flares up in his eyes.
“I am going to give you one last fucking chance to tell the truth,” he says with barely contained anger. “And if you don’t tell me what I want, then I am going to start cutting off fingers,” he says, and he grabs hold of my hand, which is by now already partly numb, twisting my finger so hard I hear a crack and cry out in pain.
It’s like a lightning bolt through my brain, and I can barely even think. All that remains is pain and hurt, and even when I try to squirm, the jagged springs of the bed prod my back and offer no relief.
Tears flood my eyes and I feel them dripping into my hair, but I shake my head. My voice trembles, my mouth filled with saliva and making it harder to talk. “Please stop. I don’t know anything!”
“That’s it,” he growls and he presses the blade into my finger and I see blood well up. “You brought this on yourself,” he declares, working on severing my index finger.
Mikhail
For the first time in my life since I was but a boy, I find myself at a loss. There are no other cars in the back lot to steal, and going back around front to get something to take, and then to navigate around to meet the speeding Vasili, would take far too long.
It’s all falling apart before me.
But I have to try, and I turn and run back all the same, because I won’t give up. That’s not who I am. I’m no quitter. However, the sight of Eva stumbling out of the room, clutching her side gives me pause.
“Wait,” she says, and I stop to help her.
“Will you make it? I have to go and try to rescue her, I can’t afford to stop,” I tell her, because as much as I want to help this brave woman out, Alicia’s life is forfeit if I don’t find her as soon as possible.
“Don’t worry about me,” she says, fishing into her pocket and pulling out a phone. “I gave her my GPS tracker,” she says, opening her phone and activating the tracking app before handing it to me. “Go get her,” she says with grim determination on her blood spattered face.
I pause, thankfulness welling up in me for what this woman has done. I want to ask her one last time if I can help, but I see already two of her gang coming up the stairs toward us.
“I’ll bring her back safe and sound,” I pledge.
“You better,” Eva tells me.
I head back to my stolen ride as the sounds of sirens slowly filter toward us. We all need to get the hell out of here soon, regardless, unless we want the police to screw everything up for us.
I run my fingers through my hair as I tear out of the parking lot, then instantly force myself to slow down. I’m not going to do her any good by getting the attention of the cops. Especially after clamping my hand down on the wheel and seeing the trail of blood down around my forearm. I’d completely forgotten I’d been shot.
I put the wheel between my knees as I tear at the bottom of my shirt, ripping a strip off and wrapping it around my wound. I’ll need to get fixed up later, probably a couple stitches, but for now, this’ll do. I flex my hand, testing to see how much mobility I have, and find that the shooter must’ve missed every important nerve. I still have full range
of motion, and that’s good, because I’ll need it. Still, I’ve lost a lot of blood, and I can feel the effects. My reaction time won’t be at its peak.
I glance at the little beeping GPS tracker, and I can tell I’m getting closer. It’s not pinpoint accuracy, but it’s close enough. Eventually I track Vasili to the industrial part of town, and there’s only so many options for him to hold someone hostage.
Or murder someone…
I shake my head free of the thought. I saved her once from my own wrath, and now I’m going to save her from Vasili’s torturous little hands.
Finally I come upon the black sedan I was looking for, parked alongside an old warehouse, but across from another. It’s one of the two, but my bet is on Vasili being too lazy and stupid to take even the slightest bit of care in hiding his destination.
I pull to a stop down the road slowly, so I won’t be overheard approaching. Getting out of the car though, I nearly stumble. I’m lightheaded from the loss of blood, more so than I anticipated. It’ll be a tough time making up for it, but there’s no turning away from it now. Not when my girl’s life is on the line.
I do my best to focus myself, push away the daze, but it’s not something easily done. The light-headedness from blood loss isn’t a pain I can simply push past, it’s something at a base level, beyond my control. I can’t ignore it, because ignoring it lets it control me. Best I can do is try and compensate for it, take into consideration the way it affects my movements, the loss of focus.
Making my way to the door I try to keep my senses peeled. Vasili isn’t a mob boss, and the number of guys he had at the motel was big. It must’ve been every thug he had under his thumb, and maybe a few extra he paid for the occasion. Which likely meant it was just down to him and that one guy he has with him.
Two on one are not odds I’m afraid of, generally speaking. I take on much worse as usual business. But with my head like this, it’s a risk. A big one. And if I fuck this up, it’ll be both Alicia’s and my life.
Mafia Romance Page 129
