Killer Love

by Drake, Tabatha

  Chapter 2

  Luka

  Twelve Years Later

  I yank the handkerchief from my breast pocket and wipe the crimson blood off my knuckles.

  The thick air around me smells warm and metallic. It bleeds onto my tongue, and I spit out the taste of raw, dirty pennies onto the concrete floor.

  Yuri steps forward and motions me away from the chair. He looks down at the man in black tied to it and smiles. “Now, did that feel nice?” he asks him.

  The man can barely lift his head. He manages a slow shake and thick blood drips down from his nose into his lap.

  I wince as the cotton cloth swipes across my thumbnail, and I notice the cracked edge digging into my skin.

  This fucker broke my nail.

  Yuri scratches his scalp, softly ruffling the black hair on his head. “I want you to know, stranger, that we do not enjoy this. Isn’t that right, brother?” he asks me.

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “See? We don’t enjoy it.” Yuri steps closer to the chair and leans down to look him in the eyes. “But sometimes, it’s necessary. Tell us who you are, what you’re doing in Moscow, and the pain will end.”

  The man takes quick, labored breaths while I pick at the torn cuticle on my thumb. He’s not talking, that much is certain. I’d wager that this isn’t the first time he’s been beaten on and probably won’t be the last — assuming we let him leave here alive, of course.

  No crime happens in Moscow without the Lutrova family seal of approval. Big, small. Light, dark. So, when two politicians end up with bullets through both of their eyes, it didn’t take long for us to find out about it. He didn’t even make it out of the building before our guys scooped him up and brought him to the warehouse outside of the city. No cops, no saviors. Just snow and wilderness for miles. Even if he does manage to escape, there’s no way he’ll survive the exposure.

  He opens his mouth and slurs his words, dripping even more red droplets down his chin.

  “What’s that, stranger?” Yuri asks, leaning in.

  I step forward, keeping a cautious eye open as my brother eases closer to him. Again, the man’s lips move, but I can barely make out his words.

  Yuri tilts his head and peeks back at me. “He’s hissing.”

  “Hissing?” I stuff the handkerchief back into my pocket as I glide in closer. I hear it louder now. That sharp push of air through bright, red teeth.

  “Yeah…” Yuri straightens up. “Like a snake.”

  The man laughs. His face contorts with pain but it’s almost as if he enjoys it. He looks up at the two of us with amused eyes and spits blood at our feet.

  “You might want to get down,” he says.

  His eyes flick to the wall behind us and my ears perk to the sound.

  Beep beep beep.

  I grab Yuri and shove him aside as the wall explodes.

  Concrete and debris knock us back and I shield my brother from the rapid pop of suppressive gunfire. We dodge the blaze and tumble down to the floor as two other men in black come charging into the warehouse. I pull Yuri with me and toss him behind the crates in the corner.

  Yuri reaches for the gun on his hip, ready to go down in glory, but I grab his wrist to stop him.

  I watch the gunfire strike the crates and wall behind us. At this range, a true marksman wouldn’t miss so much. They don’t intend to kill us.

  At least, not yet.

  I peek out and make eye contact with the gunman as the other man cuts our prisoner free. He lowers his weapon and stares back at me through his black mask, silent and cold.

  I nod with reluctant understanding.

  The three of them run off into the snow, leaving my brother and me alone to breathe the fierce winter blowing in from the large hole.

  “You’re bleeding…” Yuri points to my side.

  I raise my arm and feel the sharp pain fire throughout my back. “It’s just a scratch,” I say, looking at my shirt. “Are you hit?”

  He stares back at me with worry and shakes his head. “No.”

  “Then, I did my job.”

  Yuri breathes a laugh. “Is that all you care about?”

  I pick us both up off the floor without answering and wander over to the blast in the wall. There’s no sign of anyone. Not even tire tracks in the snow to tell us where they came from or where they’ve gone.

  “Markov!” I shout, listening to my voice echo through the darkness. “Markov!”

  His groan travels from around the building.

  “Over here…”

  Yuri follows me outside, and we kneel beside Markov as he sits up in the snow.

  His wrinkled eyes jut back and forth, searching for answers that he won’t find. “What the fuck just happened?”

  “You didn’t see them?” I ask.

  “See who?”

  There’s a note pinned to his jacket. I snatch it off and fold it open.

  Our man’s life for yours. We’re even.

  I hand it to Yuri, and he sighs.

  “You’re one lucky old man, Markov,” he jokes. “A few minutes later and he would have been dead.”

  “You find out who he works for?” he asks. “I would very much like to have a nice chat with him and the bastards who hit me…”

  “Unfortunately, no,” I answer. I hold out my hand and pull Markov to his feet.

  “I should have seen them…” He shakes the white snow out of his gray hair. “They were like ghosts.”

  “We’ll keep looking,” I say. “No one pulls this shit in Moscow and gets away with it.”

  “We should get out of here,” Yuri says. “Send a crew in the morning to clean this place up.”

  Markov nods. “I’ll lead it myself…” He looks at me. “Did he bleed?”

  “He did.”

  “Good.” Markov growls softly. “Blood leaves a trail. We’ll track him down.”

  It’s been ages since I’ve seen Markov so pissed off. He’s usually a rather pleasant guy, but I’d never want to be the man who crosses him.

  When I was a kid, a boy in my class gave me a black eye. Markov asked what happened when he came to pick me up after school and I pointed the boy out.

  This happened on a Friday. On Monday, the boy was gone. His family had left town without a trace. I got up the nerve to ask Markov about it soon after, and he just smiled at me.

  I never brought it up again.

  * * *

  “Bozhe moi!”

  Our mother cries out as we step inside and stands up from her place at the kitchen table.

  “What the hell happened to you?” she asks.

  I glance at my side, following the red splotch of blood creeping down my abdomen. “I’m fine, Ma,” I say. “It’s just a graze.”

  She scans Yuri for similar wounds, but he has none. I did my job, after all. “Sit down and take off your shirt, Luka.”

  “Ma, it’s fine—”

  “Sit down.”

  I surrender and take a seat at the table across from my father. He stares up at us with expectant eyes, no doubt just as eager as she is to hear what happened.

  “Who sent them?” he asks me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  Yuri falls into the chair beside me. “He wasn’t telling,” he says.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Gone,” I answer, unbuttoning my shirt. “Taken back by his men.”

  My father blinks. “You let him go?”

  “Niko—” Our mother returns with two items in hand: a first aid box and her sewing kit. It’s the second one that makes me cringe. My mother is adept at many things but her needlework leaves much to be desired. I don’t want her messing up my tattoos. “He’s wounded. Obviously, they put up a fight.” She slaps Yuri on the shoulder, forcing him to move down a chair, and she slides into the one beside me.

  I toss the bloody shirt to the floor. “It won’t need stitches, Ma.”

  “You let me be the judge
of that,” she replies. “Raise your arm.”

  I sigh and do as she says, ignoring the pain firing through my side. “He was calm the whole time,” I say. “He bled well, knowing that his team would come for him.”

  Yuri nods. “They were organized. Like soldiers.”

  Father sits back and crosses his arms, drawing his bottom lip between his teeth.

  I hiss as my mother’s claws scratch along my wound. “Careful, Ma—”

  “Pipe down, boy.”

  She grabs a bottle of alcohol from the first aid box. I turn away from her again to avoid watching.

  “These men… did they have tattoos?” my father asks, chewing on his mouth.

  “They wore black,” Yuri answers, shaking his head. “Head to toe.”

  I note my father’s worrisome expression. “You know something, Pops?”

  He’s silent again for several moments before he tilts his head. “There was a time in Moscow… long before you boys were born,” he begins, “when your grandfather met a similar encounter.”

  I furrow my brow, torn between paying attention to his story and cringing at the alcohol spread across my open flesh.

  “A man came to the city, dressed in black. He killed a woman. Young, beautiful, but full of secrets. I remember hearing my father speak of it. The man shot her through both eyes, just like the politicians tonight.”

  My mother flinches, but she keeps her head down, focusing on me. It’s very unlike Nina Lutrova to be squeamish, so I study the look on her face and the expression in my father’s eyes as he regards her for a pause.

  “Who was she?” Yuri asks, unable to read a room like I can.

  “It’s not important,” my father says with a wave of his hand.

  “Katerina Starkova.”

  The three of us react to her voice, and the familiar name crawls down my spine.

  My father inhales sharply. “Nina…” It’s not a word of warning but one full of love and sympathy.

  “It’s all right, Niko.” She grabs a cleaner cloth. “It’s time they knew.”

  “Starkova?” Yuri leans forward in his chair. “That’s…”

  She nods. “My mother.”

  Yuri looks at me as if to silently ask if I knew. I shake my head once. Our mother was orphaned as a small child, that much we knew. The circumstances surrounding that have been, as previously mentioned, not important. Until now, I suppose.

  My father clears his throat. “They caught the man before he could leave Moscow, but several of our men died in the process. The man was too well-trained. He tried to swallow cyanide, but they stopped him and brought him back alive to be questioned.”

  My mother reaches for her sewing kit. I quickly slide it away. “No, Ma.”

  “Luka…”

  “I don’t need stitches.”

  She throws up her hands. “Fine. I hope you bleed to death.” She stands up and plants a kiss on my cheek before she walks away to throw out the bloody cloths.

  I snatch a bandage from the kit, along with some tape to attach it. “What did they get out of him?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I was only a young boy when they brought him in. It was the middle of the night, but I heard them dragging him downstairs. I followed the sounds of him screaming to the cellar and when I looked inside… that’s when I saw the kobra.”

  I glance at Yuri. He seems just as lost as I am. “The kobra?”

  “A tattoo,” our father says. “From here to there.” He lays his hand on his chest and slides down to his navel. “I ran back to my room and never told anybody what I saw, but the next morning my father pulled me aside and he said to me… ‘Nikolai, never let a snake loose in Moscow.’”

  I press the bandage in place to make it stick. “We couldn’t see a tattoo,” I say. “But he did hiss.”

  “Hiss?”

  Yuri parts his lips and lets out the sharp sound. “Right before his men showed up,” he says.

  Our father nods, once again losing himself in memory. “My father spent years trying to figure out what the kobra was and what it meant. Finally, it caught up to him, and my mother found him in a pool of blood with two bullets through his eyes. Just like Katerina.”

  I look up into my mother’s silent face. Unfortunately, these stories are not uncommon for families in our line of work, but to hear the specifics now after what happened tonight is more than a little chilling. The same demons that haunted my family a generation ago are still alive and well… in my fucking city.

  Our father looks between me and Yuri as he taps a hard finger against the table to make sure we’re listening. “You two…” he says, “let this go.”

  I blink. “But, Pops—”

  “No buts.” He points at me. “They come and they go. That’s the way it is.”

  “This is our city,” I argue. “It’s like Grandfather said. We can’t just let them run loose.”

  “I have before, and I will now. Doing so has allowed me to live long enough to watch my children grow up, unlike my father and your mother’s mother. Do not get involved, Luka.”

  “Markov won’t be happy about that.”

  He sits back. “You let me deal with Markov.”

  I slink in my chair and look at Yuri to back me up, but he stays silent. He never dares to disagree with our father. He sure as hell isn’t going to start right now.

  My mother lays a soft hand on my shoulder. “Luka, you should get some rest,” she says, her tone soothing and calm. “Both of you. It’s late and we have a flight to catch in the morning.”

  I’d almost forgotten about the Zappia wedding. Judging by the looks on my brother and father’s faces, they did, too.

  She flicks a finger against my father’s shoulder. “None of that, now…” she warns us all. “This will be a nice, quiet weekend, even if I have to murder each and every one of you myself.”

  My father nods. “She’s right. It’s only a few days, and the Zappias will return the favor if either of you gets married. It’s part of the truce.”

  “When either of you gets married,” my mother corrects him, flashing stern eyes at my brother and me. “This family might be a business, but unless the name continues—”

  “Yes, yes, Nina…” My father waves a hand at her, gently smiling to placate her. “I think they realize how it works.”

  “And who knows?” She grins at the two of us. “Maybe you’ll meet a nice girl at the wedding. Hm?”

  Yuri scoffs. “Meet a nice girl in Italy? I’m more likely to piss a rainbow.”

  I chuckle. “Or shit bricks of gold.”

  Mother narrows her eyes at us. We stop laughing.

  “Get the jokes out of your systems now,” she says. “I doubt the Zappia boys will find them very funny.”

  My brother sneers. “The Zappia boys wouldn’t know a good joke if it bit them on their tiny—”

  “Yuri.”

  He clears his throat. “Okay, Ma.”

  “You will be pleasant. You will be kind and respectful,” she says. “The Zappia way may be a bit…”

  “Medieval,” I suggest.

  “Psychotic,” Yuri adds.

  “Outdated,” she says, “but that is their way. Even I feel for the poor girl, but it’s not our place to try and change them.”

  My father shrugs. “Zappia girls have been the same for generations. I’m sure Sofia is no different.”

  Sofia.

  The girl in the garden shed with adventure in her eyes. She enters my dreams now and then, racing through the trees in the corners of my vision. I look and she’s gone, but I often wake and wonder if her family’s way has changed her in the decade since I last saw her.

  It doesn’t matter in the end. Changed or not, she’s getting married this weekend. Yuri and I are Giovani’s reluctant groomsmen.

  I stand up, pushing through the dull pain in my side. “Goodnight, Ma,” I say.

  She pops up onto her toes, stretching as far as she can, so I lean over to help her land the kiss
on my cheek. “Spokoynoy nochi, Luka.”

  Moonlight lights my path down the hall, shining through the tall, stained-glass windows. Falling snow leaves shadows on the walls as I pass them by, creating movement all around me, and I once again see that little girl rushing down the corridor out of the corner of my eye.

  I don’t bother looking. I know she’s not really there. She probably doesn’t exist at all anymore.

  I close the door to my room behind me and walk over to the fireplace to toss a fresh log on top. The wood sparks, and the fire hisses with fresh life.

  Never let a snake loose in Moscow.

  The Lutrova name isn’t as powerful as it used to be. My grandfather, Viktor, ran this business with an iron fist. He never cowered away from anything or anyone. Nikolai Lutrova should be the same way. He should be just as eager as I am to find out who the men in black were, but he yields to them instead — just as he yields to the Zappias and their ways.

  Blood leaves a trail.

  If there’s anything to be found out there, Markov will find it. He’ll surely destroy it, however, the second my father orders him to. There’s no one more loyal to my father than Markov. They grew up together, went to war together.

  I’d have a better chance at meeting a nice girl in Italy than I would be of convincing Markov to help me hunt down the kobra.

  Chapter 3

  Sofia

  Ever since I was a child, I pictured what my wedding would be like.

  I suppose every little girl does. The bouquet of pink roses. The white dress. The black veil you have to wear that covers every inch of your skin for two weeks before the wedding, so you look like a goddamn porcelain doll on your wedding day.

  Oh, wait. That’s just the Zappia way.

  A Zappia woman is brave, never tortured or fearful.

  A Zappia woman is focused, never careless or rash.

  A Zappia woman is wise, never arrogant or cold.

  A Zappia woman is a slave.

  I added the last one myself.

  “Sofia?”

  I turn around to see Rosalie peeking her head into my room. Her expression changes from one of pleasant interest to quick judgment as soon as she sees me on the balcony.