When I was a boy, ripped from my homeland by my all-powerful, uncaring father, my mother and I lived in a cabin in the Pennsylvania woods. “Cabin” was a mild word for the huge, wooden mansion he’d stowed us in. But regardless of the number of empty rooms and modern conveniences, my mother, Irina, had recognized it for what it really was. A cage.
It hadn’t dawned on me that we were Viktor Chernov’s prisoners until I came home from playing in the woods one day and found my mother swinging from the shower rail. She had been fond of telling me, “Niko, it’s better to die than do nothing.”
That day, I learned that sometimes, dying is doing something.
Since then, I’d lived in darkness. It was a hard thing to find out as a child that the only person you loved in the world didn’t mind leaving you. It was a hard thing to accept that you weren’t worth holding on to. In the end—or in my case, from the beginning—I learned that everyone was alone. I guessed I was ahead of most other people, learning it as young as I had.
After she’d died, I roamed the woods. I slept under the bare sky, with only the stars as my companions, until Viktor sent for me to join him in New York. The days of innocence and starry, unspoiled skies were over for me by the age of fifteen. I would never, ever get them back.
The smell of the basement was the first thing that hit me as I slowly rose from a dark lake of unconsciousness. Damp stone and festering rot. A place full of earthy, hidden things, and now, it seemed, my new home. My wrists burned where they’d been tied, and the floor was freezing beneath me.
The previous events rushed back to me. Was it a few hours ago or days? I had no idea. Everything was murky.
One memory rushed back faster than others. The sight of Sofia falling over the fire escape and the terror that had burned through me. I’d felt nothing like it since I’d gotten home from the woods and found my mother’s body swinging from the shower rail. The day my childhood had ended.
I jerked against my restraints as a shoe scraped on hard concrete beside me.
I wasn’t alone.
“Bravo. He’s waking up,” a deep voice called to the side of me.
“That’s quick. He has some resistance to the sedative,” another male voice, this one steadier, replied.
I tried to blink my eyes open, and then I felt it. A blindfold was pressed against my eyes, pushing my eyelids shut. A dim light showed around the corners, but it was all I could make out. I was no stranger to being tied up and taken somewhere hellish. I’d made a career out of it.
Clearly, Antonio had learned from his mistake and wasn’t taking any chances with me this time.
There was a shuffling noise before me. The two soon-to-be-dead men discussed what was going to happen to me with amused voices. Right. Now I remembered. These were De Sanctis’ men, and they had me trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I’d no doubt pissed them off with my escape attempt.
A sharp kick connected with my side, and I gritted my teeth.
A chuckle floated to me. “Does that hurt, you bratva swine? Anything you want to ask?”
“Yeah, do either of you guys have a smoke?” My insolent question was met with outraged silence, and then the kicks began again.
When the pair of lackeys tired themselves out, they let out exhilarated laughs, high on the thrill of spilling another man’s blood. A tied-up, defenseless man, at that.
“This is only the beginning. We’ll be back later,” one of them grunted.
I decided to call them Idiot One and Idiot Two.
“When Silvio gets his hands on you, you’ll wish your brother had killed you instead of giving you to us.”
Silvio De Sanctis. The man who’d bet and lost Sofia to me. I’d waited a long time to have an excuse to end the motherfucker. It looked like soon I’d get one.
Idiot One kicked me again, and Idiot Two laughed. I’d skin them alive before I put them out of their misery, I decided, as I fell to the side on the concrete, banging my head sharply. Another kick to the head sent me spinning right back down the rabbit hole into the darkness.
Age 19
Since I’d moved to Brooklyn to learn about the family business and met my half-brother, I’d never been so distracted. Since Irina had died, I hadn’t felt anything other than anger toward another person in my life. From my brother, Kirill, a fellow student in my father’s bloodstained altar of learning in a salty warehouse in Brighton Beach, to the man himself. I learned quickly that being the loose cannon gave me an edge. People inevitably underestimated me, and I liked that advantage. I didn’t want anyone to see beneath the psychotic clown mask I donned to survive bratva business. Well, I hadn’t before. Until her. Sofia De Sanctis.
She was different. She was a distraction. I should forget her.
Instead, I watched her.
I found myself outside her school again, watching her walking down the stairs in her little schoolgirl uniform, her black hair blowing around her shoulders. Her bodyguard lurched after her. He was lucky he hadn’t so much as glanced at her ass as she leaned her petite body into a bulletproof SUV and placed her heavy bookbag into it. If he’d had, he’d have lost his eyes.
Sofia De Sanctis was mine.
It had been two weeks since I’d cornered her in the gym. That had been risky. We could have easily been found there, and Viktor wouldn’t take kindly to the Italian mob in New York declaring war on the bratva. Still, I hadn’t been able to stop myself. The lure of her was like a fucking siren call. It had only gotten worse now that I’d tasted her. I could still remember the feeling of her skin against mine, her teeth on my lip, her shaking, trembling token resistance.
I was a man possessed, fated to follow her, watching from a distance until I could work out how I was going to take her and how I would keep her.
I tailed them downtown to an expensive shopping area. Sofia and her friend went into a designer store while her useless bodyguard stayed outside the door. I was about to make my move, heading toward the back entrance, when another car arrived. Silvio got out and straightened his suit over his rotund stomach before heading into the store. He left his bodyguards outside as well.
Dark anticipation rolled over me. I’d been waiting to teach that fucker a lesson, and now, my time had come.
I looped around the building, climbing up a service entry and hopping onto the back fire exit of the adjacent building to clear the wall around the back of the store. The fire exit was propped open with a chair. People were fools about security. That much was a universal truth. Like cancer, people thought that random acts of violence were things that only happened to other people, those poor unfortunate people on the news, but never to them. Everyone thought they were invincible until they met someone who taught them otherwise. I’d been a prolific teacher in my short time on earth.
Slipping in the door, I moved down the stark white hall, a specter in black with murder on his mind.
One of the changing rooms was occupied. As I peered around the corner of the hall, Silvio approached it.
He rapped loudly with his knuckles, like whoever was inside might be hard of hearing. Either that, or he was just that obnoxious.
“Sofia, let me in. We have to talk,” he said in a tone that he must have felt was full of authority.
He puffed up his chest, trying to look important. Fucking loser.
“I’m just changing,” Sofia’s voice floated out of the room.
“It’s fine, just let me in,” Silvio blustered.
Anger flourished in my veins at his words. The motherfucker.
I could feel her hesitation, but then the door opened. Of course it did. Sofia De Sanctis was a good little girl, except for me, it seemed. Good. I liked that. Thrashing in my arms, she’d shown her real self for a moment, and there wasn’t anything obliging or well-behaved about her. I wasn’t interested in her act. I wanted the real her, the one she hid away to survive her patriarchal family.
Silvio barged inside and closed the door behind him.
“Have you heard anything from Nikolai Chernov?” Silvio asked his cousin. Their voices were easy to make out.
I waited for her response, mildly curious if she would rat me out for our brief encounter in the gym.
“No, nothing. Why?” she asked after a moment.
I wondered if Silvio could tell that she was lying.
“Good. I didn’t know if he’d give up that easily, that’s all. He’s a psychopath. You need to tell me if you see him around. We can’t talk about it at Casa Nera in case someone hears. No one can know we went out that night and met him,” Silvio said, sounding relieved.
“Okay, I get it,” Sofia said quietly.
Silence fell between them, and I burned with curiosity. What were they doing now?
A bang suddenly sounded in the room, as if something heavy had fallen, and then the sound of a ringing slap.
“Don’t! Silvio, what are you doing?” Sofia cried.
I had to stop myself from pushing in there and cutting his throat right then.
He laughed, a cruel, arrogant sound. “Relax, Sofia. You’re the one standing there wearing next to nothing. You’re asking for a feel.”
“No, I’m not, and I don’t want to be touched by you,” Sofia said.
“Whatever. You hardly have a figure to tempt me. Try putting on a few pounds if you want to attract a real man,” Silvio said and barged from the changing room.
He was flushed, his piggy face excited, and I’d bet he had a pathetic little stump of a chub in his ill-fitting slacks.
He strode out of the store, smoothing his greasy hair back, and Sofia turned the lock of the door.
I withdrew, silent as a shadow. Silvio already had a debt to me, considering how he had dragged Sofia away when I’d won her, but now, he’d just added to his tally.
It was time to collect.
Men like Silvio were easy because they were lazy and lived their lives by predictable routines. On a Tuesdays, he went to a whorehouse over on Mulberry Street, just like clockwork. He only took a couple of bodyguards with him.
The bodyguards were easily incapacitated. They were as lazy as their boss. I gave Silvio a good twenty minutes to get into it with his chosen company that night before barging into the room.
Silvio was lying on the bed, the twisted sheets pooling around his flabby middle. The shower was running in the bathroom, and Silvio was smoking what seemed like a postcoital cigarette.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Don’t tell me you’re done already? I thought I’d be interrupting something, but I guess I gave you too much credit. I suppose under five minutes was a safer bet.” I stepped into the room and locked the door behind me.
Silvio’s eyes widened, and he scrambled out of bed. “What are you doing here? My men are outside,” he babbled.
I nodded, giving him a grin that sent him pale. “Yes, they were,” I said conversationally, strolling toward the bathroom. “They aren’t now.”
I knocked gently on the bathroom door.
The shower shut off.
Clearing my throat, I spoke to the woman through the door. “Sweetheart, Silvio needs to have a grown-up talk out here, and I don’t want to be interrupted. I also can’t have you seeing my face, so I’d prefer if you’d stay in there, lock the door, and don’t move until everything is quiet and done out here, okay?”
Silence met my words.
“Don’t be a hero and try to call someone. Believe me, Silvio isn’t worth it. If you understand me, get back in the shower and have a good scrub.”
After a moment, the shower switched back on.
Silvio stared between me and the door and then at his clothes lying behind me on the chair.
I reached for the pile. “Let me guess. Your gun is in here? Not very prepared, are you, Silvio?”
“What do you want, Chernov?”
“I want what I’m owed. Sofia. You bet her. I won her.”
He laughed. “You really think Antonio De Sanctis is going to give his little princess to a thug like you? Forget it.”
“That’s not my problem. I didn’t bet her. You did. Work it out.”
“It’s impossible.”
I blew out a breath and shrugged off my leather jacket. “I thought you might say that, so I planned ahead,” I said, giving him another grin.
He watched me warily. “What are you doing?”
“Taking this off, I don’t like to get it dirty. It’s a bitch to clean.”
I reached into the pocket for something I’d picked up earlier. It had been expensive, not that I’d paid for it.
As my hand was emerged from my pocket, Silvio went bone white.
The meat cleaver shone dully under the ceiling spotlights.
“What the fuck is that for?”
“Well, since I expected you to let me down, I had to decide how to punish you for wasting my time. And I know you tried to touch what is mine, so I figured I could kill two birds with one stone.”
“You’re crazy,” Silvio sputtered, and made a pointless break for the door.
I caught him in an explosive burst of power and slammed him hard into the wall. He groaned and slumped to the floor.
“Now, Silvio, don’t be a child and try to escape your punishment. Be a man. You are, of course, free to explain to Antonio why this has happened to you. But you’ll have to tell him about sneaking his seventeen-year-old daughter out of the house, betting her in a poker game, and letting her catch the eye of a thug like me,” I said, slapping his belly. The obscene sound echoed around the room.
“Now, tell me which hand you touched Sofia with, and be quick about it,” I said as I leaned in to trail the cleaver down his cheek.
He stared at me, terrified and devoid of fight. Fuck, I’d known he was a coward, but this was even worse than I’d imagined.
He was quiet, shaking his head slightly.
“Tell me now.”
His eyes widened with terror. “Or?”
I was impressed he could form coherent thoughts with how afraid he was.
I grinned down at him, enjoying the taste of his terror. “Or I’ll take them both.”
