The day my father died, I learned two new things.
First, my half-brother, and rival for the title of pakhan in the bratva I’d dedicated my life to, knew me better than I’d thought.
Second, getting out of the trunk of a car with your hands tied is a bitch, but it’s not impossible.
My entire life, I’d been competing with my older brother for survival in the brutal world I’d been born into. A chess game a decade in the making, each moving our pieces across the board, trying to stay alive. Kill or be killed was the only certainty in my life for a long time, and that didn’t make for happy families.
The plan that had finally ended my father was too clever and unexpected for him to anticipate. For the first time in my life, my brother had moved a chess piece in a direction I’d never seen coming.
I’d been taken by the De Sanctis family, or rather, handed over. Fucked over, you mean. I wriggled my hand, testing the bonds, and chuckled. It was fucking funny. I had to give it to Kirill, he’d blindsided me at the end. Cornered me into a perfect check, but the game wasn’t over yet, and I was born to play it. Few people impressed me, and after years, my brother had topped the list. I’d buy him a drink before I killed him.
But this wasn’t the time for revenge fantasies. It was the time to figure out how the fuck to escape before Antonio De Sanctis, the don of the outfit, got me locked up and sitting pretty at his compound or a warehouse somewhere. Being a prisoner to show the might and power of a fading, irrelevant man wasn’t how I’d planned to celebrate my father’s death.
They’d secured my wrists with zip ties. Maybe Antonio wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Zip ties were hard to cut through and not easily picked like metal cuffs. The De Sanctis fuckers had also tied them incredibly tight. Luckily for me, they didn’t know my little trick.
They also hadn’t checked me carefully for weapons, and it would prove fatal to whoever had the bad luck of opening the trunk.
Breathing steadily, I focused on my body, positioning myself as well as possible, given the limited space. The ache in my right shoulder was a constant companion and a side effect of my trick. I leaned into the pain now, pushing my shoulder away from me and twisting. The agony increased, then a faint pop echoed through my head.
Pain beat at me as I carefully maneuvered my arms under myself inch by agonizing inch until my hands were in front of me. My dislocated shoulder howled at me. I stuffed the pain inside the locked box where I put all the other horrors of my life. Joint laxity wasn’t an unusual condition. However, the ability to embrace the pain of a full shoulder dislocation was rare. The problem wasn’t the loose joints, it was my fucked-up brain.
I’d learned young that I could do anything to survive.
Next, I reached for my steel-capped and lethal boots. The idiots hadn’t even taken them. I’d stomped brains out with these very boots. And that wasn’t their only benefit. Press the inner arch just right, and a blade shoots out of the toe.
Cutting the zip tie wasn’t pretty, but it was done by the time the car stopped.
I suspected I’d been brought to New Jersey, the De Sanctis seat of power. When taken by a rival family, they liked to get you secluded and into an easily defended place as quickly as possible. To use a truly American phrase, this wasn’t my first rodeo. However, it was the first time my brother had willingly handed me over.
As my hands came free, wrists stinging from multiple slices of the careless knife, my mind lingered over the sight of my father dying.
My mother had been fond of old Russian superstitions. After we were ripped from Moscow by my father and badly transplanted into America, it was all she’d had to hold on to of her homeland. That, and me. Not much. Not enough to stop her from hanging herself from the shower rail in the bathroom of our secluded house on my fifteenth birthday.
One of her favorite phrases proved itself correct last night. “Don’t dig a hole for someone else. You might fall in yourself.” How right Irina had been. As I’d held her lifeless body that day, the last day of my childhood, I’d planned how and when to dig a hole for my father. Last night, when he’d fallen, I’d fallen right in after him. On the surface, I’d dedicated my entire violent existence to being the heir of the Chernov bratva, a brotherhood of thieves and murderers who conducted their bloody business in New York. Being pakhan should have been my life’s ambition, my greatest goal. It wasn’t. A fact that not a single soul knew. My goal had always been to end Viktor, my mother’s killer. Look at me, Mother, smashing our goal by the ripe old age of twenty-four. I’d always been an overachiever.
When the car stayed still for more than a minute, I knew it was time. We’d arrived at our destination. I waited for the trunk to open.
Once it did, I was ready. I kicked forward before the guy opening it could see inside properly. The knife in my boot sank into his neck. He froze, staring at me. His look of shock was the last thing he managed, choking on his own blood. If I’d ever had any luck in my life, it had been the devilish kind. Today, it was working its magic again.
I kicked him off and lunged out of the trunk as the second stooge rounded the car. This time, the knife in my boot connected between his legs. As he pitched forward, grabbing at his bleeding balls, I kicked his head with the steel-capped toe of my other boot. The crack of his neck breaking was a comforting sound. Two down, two to go.
By now, the driver must have had an idea that something was happening. Luckily for me, De Sanctis men seemed slow on the uptake.
I crouched between the two dead men and rifled through their clothes, glancing around. We were in a dimly lit garage. Pocketing a wickedly sharp knife and two guns, I approached the front of the vehicle. The driver was talking to the passenger. It was almost too easy. The problem was that blowing his brains out through the window would be loud, and the building where we were currently fighting to the death housed a lot more De Sanctis men than these four. I had to get out of here quietly, or not at all.
I crept back into the shadows at the back of the car and sacrificed one of the guns. Making sure the safety was on, I tossed it into the far corner of the darkened garage, where it banged off a storage bin.
The two remaining men left the car, pulling their guns, clearly believing I was making for the door. They approached the place the sound had come from, and I moved after them. A bloodthirsty shadow they didn’t catch, looming behind them. I took the first from behind by the throat, holding the knife there. His friend whirled at the sound of his grunt and leveled his gun, with a silencer, at both of us. He shot wildly, scared out of his mind. The suppressed shots zipped into his friend, ending him. I clasped him against me as my shield and threw the long knife. It embedded in the shooter’s gun shoulder, and he dropped the weapon, crying out like a little lost goat.
I was on him before he realized I’d crossed the distance.
I wrestled him to the ground, and he grunted in pain as I yanked the knife from his shoulder and put it to his neck.
“Where are we?”
“Fuck you,” he ground out.
“Tell me, and I’ll take mercy on you.”
He blinked at me, his furious eyes burning into mine. Pain was something many people could endure, but hope? It was deadly.
“New Jersey, Casa Nera, the De Sanctis compound.”
“And how does one get out of here without attracting attention?”
He wetted his thick lips. “There are woods at the back. They go nearly the entire way to Trenton. You can climb the wall.”
He had barely finished speaking when his eyes bulged, and red frothed from between his lips. He mouthed a word as the slit in his throat sprayed his lifeblood against my neck.
“This is my mercy,” I told him, getting up. It was the only type I knew.
I stood in the sudden stillness of the dark garage, death hanging in the air. I waited to see if the struggle had alerted someone, but no one came.
I could get out of here. I was well on my way, but I didn’t know who was outside or what the layout of the compound was.
I needed someone for insurance.
Someone important.
I knew just the one.
