Authors: Helena Newbury
I
stared
after her for as long as I could, until she descended the stairs. I heard her and Mikhail cross the marble entrance hall and then the scrunch of their feet on the gravel outside. A moment later, a car roared away.
I’d failed.
Rico’s breathing was a wet rasp, his shirt soaked with blood. Now that I didn’t have Mikhail’s gun on me, in theory I could try to get him to hospital. But then I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. One of the guards who’d survived our attack, a big ex-military type. “He said to kill you as soon as he and the Malakov whore were gone,” the guard told me, drawing his gun.
So Mikhail had double-crossed Irina on top of everything else. She’d have to live out her life as the perfect subservient wife to that asshole, thinking she was saving my life, and I’d already be in a shallow grave somewhere.
The guard took his time walking over to us. I wasn’t any sort of threat, lying there. I tried to heave Rico off me, but my cracked rib made the movement agony.
Shit! This is how it ends.
The guard touched his gun to my head. “
Arrivederci
, Mr. Baroni,” he said, as if it was the funniest thing in the world.
And I got mad. It wasn’t just me, or even Rico, or the loss of my entire fucking empire. It was the thought of Irina, living out her life in Moscow with that evil bastard.
She deserves better.
I glared up at the grinning Russian, the rage building and building.
She deserves better!
I let out a yell, grabbed the gun barrel and pushed it away from me. It went off, narrowly missing my ear. The guard panicked and tried to back up, out of range. But it was too late: I’d grabbed two big handfuls of his shirt with my bloody hands and heaved him down toward me.
“Fuck you,” I spat. “I’m not dead yet.” And I headbutted him as hard as I could.
His legs folded and he landed on top of Rico and me. My cracked rib screamed at the added weight and for a second I had to just lie there, panting. Then I rolled the unconscious guard’s body off us, heaved myself out from under Rico and checked his pulse.
His heart was still beating...just.
I bent, got my shoulder under him and heaved him up into a fireman’s carry. I staggered a little getting him downstairs: Rico’s even bigger than I am and my cracked rib turned every step into a jolting, jarring agony. But I wasn’t going to leave him behind.
Outside, Mikhail had driven off in his Mercedes and our Chrysler was a wreck, its radiator caved in from when Rico had rammed through the gates.
Shit!
I found a black SUV in the garage and dumped Rico in the passenger seat, then frantically hunted for the keys, finally finding them in the guards’ quarters. By now, Rico’s face was deathly pale, his breathing a barely-audible hiss.
I grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t you fucking die on me,” I snarled. “Don’t you dare!”
His breathing grew a little deeper. I threw the car into gear and screeched off towards the hospital.
“
C
hampagne
?”
I turned towards the stewardess. “What?”
She smiled at me. “Champagne, madam?” She must have seen something in my expression because she frowned. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes,” said Mikhail, taking the glass for me and another for himself. “She’s a nervous flier.” He gave her a big, wide grin and she set off down the aisle of the first class cabin, unaware that he was twisting in his seat to stare at her ass.
I’d have to get used to that: the Russian norm of watching your husband leer at other women. Even sleep with them.
Married.
I’d be married. New horrors kept leaking into my brain like ice water oozing through a jagged crack. There’d be a ceremony. A dress. Vasiliy would give me away to him.
And I’d have to smile in every photo. The thought of that got to me more than the thought of what would happen that night...and every night.
Mikhail passed me my glass of champagne. “Drink,” he said. He was smiling but there was an edge to his voice.
Remember your promise.
I put the glass to my lips and drank, trying not to gag.
A wedding. A honeymoon.
Children.
I’d promised him children.
We flew on towards Moscow and I tried to hold back my tears.
A
t the hospital
, I sat for four hours in a plastic chair while they operated on Rico. I overheard the staff talking about notifying the cops, since it was a gunshot wound, so I put a pre-emptive call in to one of the guys at the local precinct, to make sure the police report got lost. It gave me something to do aside from curse myself for getting Rico hurt.
I was going to personally gut Mikhail for what he’d done to my friend. For what he planned to do to Irina. For what he might be doing to her
right now—
“Sir?”
I looked up into the face of a nurse. I stood up so fast that she almost got whiplash following my face. “How is he?”
“He should be fine. He was lucky: he must have been standing almost sideways because the bullet went
across
more than in. Tore up a lot of muscle but, um…”—she blushed—”he’s a big guy. It’s going to leave two big scars, though.”
I let out a long sigh of relief. “Yeah, well, the ladies love a scar. Can I see him?”
She showed me through to his room. He was bandaged from his neck down to almost his navel but his color was better. “He’ll sleep for a couple more hours,” said the nurse, and left me to it.
I sank down into the chair that faced his bed. He looked peaceful, for the moment, eyes closed and head thrown back like he didn’t have a care in the world. I envied him. I thought for a long time about all the apologies I wanted to make and how the fuck I was going to explain it.
“I’m sorry,” I said at last. “I was an asshole.”
I had no idea what I was going to do. Irina was by now in a strange country where I had no contacts and no power, a place where I didn’t even speak the fucking language. I wouldn’t even be able to find out where Mikhail’s Russian home was.
My head felt like it was going to explode: hate for Mikhail, hate for Vasiliy for trying to take my territory and starting all this, hate at myself for being weak and falling for a woman. I stood up and strode over to the window, pulling back the drapes. The sun was going down, the last rays lighting up fresh snow as it blew against the glass. By now, Irina and Mikhail would be in the air, on their way to Moscow.
Fuck!
I couldn’t fix this with violence or intimidation or the vicious hatred The Saints had had me believing. Maybe I needed to think more like the Russians. More like Irina. Cool and calm and logical. I shut my eyes and tried to imagine her next to me, silken strands of hair blowing against my neck in the wind. Her presence calming me, guiding me….
I opened my eyes. There was only one move I could make, only one person I could go to for help. And it would mean going against everything I’d ever known.
Abandoning the SUV at the hospital, I got a cab to Vasiliy’s townhouse. He was still on lockdown, so there were guards at every window. They came alert as the cab pulled up, then did a double take as I stepped out. Several of them drew their guns.
Moving slower than I’ve ever moved in my life, I took the edge of my suit jacket between thumb and forefinger and drew it open, showing my gun. Then I lifted it from its holster with two fingers and tossed it away. I laced my fingers on top of my head and sank to my knees in the snow. I took a deep breath and yelled as hard as I could.
“Tell Vasiliy I surrender.”
T
hey searched me thoroughly
. First, in a yard at the back of the house, with a gun barrel against my forehead, in case I’d strapped a bomb to my body in an assassination attempt. Then they pulled me inside and patted me down for guns. Finally, they had me strip off and went through my clothes looking for knives or bugs.
At last I was shown in Vasiliy’s study and pushed into a chair. The guards looked at Vasiliy, wondering if they should stay, but he waved them away. When the door closed, he took a big, mean-looking handgun from his desk drawer and set it on the desk, right next to a chessboard. He nodded at the board. “Do you play?”
I shook my head. “I have no fucking idea how to play chess. It’s a Russian thing.”
He blinked once and then smiled. “Perhaps it is. A pity. So, tell me, Mr. Baroni...why have you given yourself up to me? Were you hoping for mercy?” He leaned forward. “I fear you will be disappointed. I couldn’t kill you when you were head of your organization but from what I hear, that’s no longer the case.”
“I came because I need your help.”
He was too surprised to even laugh, at first. There was a second of stunned silence where my words just hung in the air. Only then did he throw himself back in his chair and roar with laughter.
I took a deep breath. “Irina is in danger.”
He tilted his head to one side. “Really, Mr. Baroni—you can do better than that. As I’m sure you know, Irina is where no one can hurt her, including you.”
Now
I
leaned forward. “She’s in danger because you sent her off with a perverted, violent son of a bitch.” I pulled out my phone and showed him the photos of Kirsty. “This is what he did to one of my escorts. Look at her.
Look!
See the mark from his ring?”
I could see it break across his face in slow motion. Every cell in his body was telling him it couldn’t be true. If we’d been talking about any other woman, he would have just denied it. But this was Irina...and whatever differences I’d thrown up between them, he had a father’s need to make sure she was okay. And the more he looked, the more he thought about it, the more everything he thought he knew was thrown into doubt.
“Impossible,” he said at last. “Irina went with him willingly.”
“He’s blackmailing her.”
Vasiliy frowned, then let out a sigh of exasperation. “What could he possibly have to blackmail her with? I already know about...
you.”
He made me sound like a filthy drug habit.
And here it was. The moment where I sealed my own fate. I had to tell him: it was the only way I could convince him. “She had to go with Mikhail,” I said, “or he was going to tell you that it was me who stabbed Yuri.”
There was a half-second of stunned silence. Then the gun was in his hands and pointed right at my forehead, his hand trembling in his rage.
I talked fast. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t kill me,” I told him. “It was an accident. We were fighting, we fell together...but that doesn’t matter. I get that.”
“You sliced right into his heart, you
svoloch!
” Vasiliy panted. His face had turned scarlet.
“You can kill me,” I said. “But
think.
Think what this means. I’m telling the truth about Mikhail. He blackmailed her. He lied to you. He took her from right under your nose. He’s going to make her life a living hell and
she’s with him right now.
I can’t get her back. But you can.”
Vasiliy’s hand flexed on the gun as he adjusted his grip. I thought about closing my eyes but I’ve always thought that’s the coward’s option. If I was going to die, I was going to look him right in the eye while he pulled the trigger. I watched his finger tighten, tighten, the chromed trigger easing back and back—
“Have you any idea what she means to me?” Vasiliy whispered.
I stared right back at him. “As much as she means to me.”
He held my gaze for another few seconds...then the gun hit the desk, the heavy thump almost drowned out by a tirade of Russian curses. “Killing you would break her heart,” he snapped. “Get out. Don’t ever let me see you again. I will go to Russia and get Irina.”
I frowned. “Now that you know...can’t you just call him and tell him it’s over?”
He shook his head. “Perhaps that would work with men
you
know, Mr. Baroni. But Mikhail is one of us. You don’t know how we operate. By doing this, Mikhail has made himself an enemy of the Malakovs. His life is over. If he finds out we know, he will run and take Irina with him as a hostage. We may never find them again.”
I leaned across the desk. “Then I want to come with you.”
He stared at me, aghast. “You think I’d let you fight alongside me and my men? You think I’d let you near her again?”
“Mikhail had at least ten men just at his place in New York. How many does he have at his place in Russia? Twenty? Thirty? You need all the help you can get!”
We glared at each other, neither willing to give ground. “We have to move,” I pressed. “They’re hours ahead of us!”
Vasiliy rose to his feet and straightened his tie. “We will catch them up,” he said. “We have jet.”
Less than an hour later, we were aboard the Malakov private jet, throttling back for take-off. Luka—Vasiliy’s son and Irina’s cousin—was gathering a force of men in Moscow and would meet us there. We could then refuel and quickly set off again for a small airstrip close to Mikhail’s mansion, way out in the sticks. Irina and Mikhail would have had to travel from Moscow airport by road, so we’d arrive not far behind them.
I just hoped we were in time.
I
t took
hours to drive from the airport to Mikhail’s mansion, most of it on winding roads through thick forest. It had been an overnight flight and I hadn’t managed to sleep on the plane, so I was exhausted. But I couldn’t sleep while I felt Mikhail’s eyes on me in the darkness.
Thankfully, Mikhail eventually dozed off himself, lulled by the gentle roll and bounce of the SUV’s suspension. With my head cushioned on a sweater against the window, I let myself drift off into a fitful sleep, haunted by nightmares where Angelo was hunted down and shot because I was weak, or where I tried to protect my children from a drunken, violent Mikhail.
I jerked awake when the car bumped over a tree branch...and when I opened my eyes, dawn was breaking and I was looking out over paradise. We’d been climbing up into the mountains for hours and the twisting road we were following clung to the side of one of the peaks, letting us look down across its steep slopes to a verdant valley below. The sunrise was turning the early-morning mist pink as it crept between the snow-covered firs, with dazzling beams of golden sunlight punching through the gaps between the clouds.
I felt a deep, unexpected swell in my heart. I’d forgotten how beautiful Russia could be. I’d deliberately put it out of my mind when I’d torn myself away from my family. Now I was back...but in a way I’d never wanted.
It didn’t seem right that Mikhail should live somewhere so beautiful. He should live in some dark, concrete fortress in a world lit by lava and fire. But his mansion was a huge, stone-walled house atop a rocky peak. At least from the exterior, it looked as if it hadn’t changed in centuries: it was the sort of place a Tsar might have had as a summer retreat.
Inside, the place was a mixture of the very old and the ultra-modern. Thick oak beams, wood paneling and slabs of exposed stone gave the hallways a medieval feel, with wood fires burning in many of the fireplaces. But the rooms themselves had been lavishly appointed with big screen TVs and leather couches. A staff of cooks and maids greeted us, together with an army of guards. Mikhail spent almost an hour giving me the full tour, preening at my compliments and grabbing my ass. I spun it out as long as I could: anything to prolong the inevitable. But all too soon, he said it was time to go upstairs.
Mikhail showed me to the master bedroom. The bed was an emperor-sized monstrosity, too big for even the huge room, and two walls were covered by mirror-fronted closets. I knew immediately that he hadn’t intended this room for sleeping, or cuddling, or spending time together. The entire room was focused on the bed.
I ran my hand down one of the metal bed posts. There were scratches in the black paint: circular ones that ran right around the post and cut deep enough to reveal the metal beneath. Scratches from handcuffs, made as some woman had desperately thrashed and pulled against them. I wondered if the room was soundproof or if he just paid his staff enough to ignore the screams.
Mikhail came up behind me, pushed my hair aside and laid a kiss on the back of my neck. “Undress, Irina” he said quietly.
If I didn’t do it, he’d tear the clothes off me. And if I resisted, Angelo was dead.
When I stood in just my underwear, he drew one wrist back towards him. I felt the kiss of cold metal and then the cruel rasp of the handcuff’s ratchet as it locked tight.
Be cold. Be numb. You can get through this, Irina.
He pushed me towards the bed, still clutching the free end of the handcuffs. My eyes were locked on the scratched bedpost as it came closer and closer. How many more scratches would I carve in it, over the next few decades?
I closed my eyes just as an explosion rocked the house.