Page 11 of Pregnant By the Mafia Boss

To me, it’s an unlikely bunker for a slimy hacker like Kian to conduct his business, but also one which most would not suspect. Rechecking my ammunition, I count the hardware, buteven as I’m checking in with my men, I’m thinking about Fiona. I haven’t called the lady in red, and I want to, but Bratva business comes first. Always.

“The main objective is to snatch the Omerta files from Kian by any means necessary. We kill him afterwards. Then we leave,” I state plainly as my Bratva soldiers nod. My heartrate slows as our driver draws closer to the location and I study the streets. There are people out roaming the streets, but not many. It’s likely they’re returning home from a bar or a club nearby, and they’d do well to get back to their homes. However, I’m not a man to kill civilians if they have nothing to do with Bratva business. It becomes more hassle than its worth, and the repercussions often end up with us having to kill more. Not that I mind so much—but these days, I don’t release my wild aggressions as much. I’m a Bratva Don and need to be much more strategic in my movements. Things are working in reverse for me, and when it comes to killing a man, I’m internally soothed by their deaths. It brings my jet-black heart intense joy.

Tranquility washes through my veins as I draw my gun and the parabellum bullet flies through the air, piercing the flesh of my enemy. It’s even better when I’m able to stick my knife deep between the ribs of a man, watching him bleed out, the same way I witnessed my father—Artem—do it when I was a young pup. He, too, was a Bratva don, and I had a fast trajectory to the top of the Russian food chain because of my unflinching ability to do whatever it took to defend the family. It’s important to learn from the best—and that’s just what I did. It’s not as if I had a choice—I was born into it, yet I wouldn’t have chosen any other path in the first place.

Darkness is an old friend, and I became the best of friends with it long ago, learning to gut a man like a fish, owning the realm of torture. Often, I brought my “special Russian knives”along for the ride, when it’s a special occasion and some old-fashioned Bratva tactics are required to send a clear message.

“Keep your balaclavas on and don’t let him see your face,” Andrei adds in back up.

“Yes—Andrei, you grab the file, and I’ll do the honors of killing Kian.” I grin as I slide my black balaclava down over my cropped beard. “It will be my pleasure to do so.”

“Once we have these files, our network and power will extend to new levels, and we’ll have more leverage for international military gun deals,” Andrei states, the navy-blue van slowing as we approach the street location.

“We already have this, Andrei,” Mark replies, the van rolling to a standstill.

“Yes, but this will allow us to cut these deals without interference, and others will play ball much more easily,” I remind him. The driver stops, and the atmosphere in the van changes instantly. Guns are rounded up as I stare through the glazed tint of the windows to the derelict salmon pink dwelling with long overgrown grass in the peak of the night.

There’s a beat-up maroon Chrysler out front, and I scan the license plate to memory. Another one of my many favorable traits of near photographic memory. Frowning, I falter for a microsecond, my pulse ticking up a notch as Fiona’s glorious mane of brown hair spread around her head like a halo, leaks into my head.

Normally before a job my head is empty, only filled with what I see and need to execute, but not today. There’s jagged pieces of a woman, whose body and face I know, but heart I don’t own. A few days may have passed, but I’ve been too busy to call her, and once I can, I will.

“Ruslan.” Andrei jolts me back into our current reality.

“Ready,” I bark back, directing some of my men as planned to neighborhood watch as lookouts to ensure civilians won’t be nosy enough to lose their lives. We pile out of the vehicle, sliding the van door back quietly, breaking off into our planned formations, our combat boots lightly hitting the asphalt as we slowly surround the seemingly abandoned house at the end of the street.

Behind it are deep fields of grass and not much else. It’s our lucky night because the street itself is dead quiet. I take note of the amber lights filtering out from the surrounding homes, thinking they’ll have no idea of the carnage going on right under their noses. We draw our weapons, stalking up to the front door, my eyes darting around the premises, checking for predators, but strangely there are none. Maybe Andrei was right after all. Our boots creak over the porch, our weapons drawn, but the place is too eerily quiet for my liking. Picking the lock quietly, I nod at Andrei as we bust through the fragile door. It squeaks open, swinging back against the wall.

An overwhelming rancid stench wafts from the ramshackle house as I point my gun in several different directions, ready to aim and fire, but find there’s no need. Nobody’s in the house and it’s sparsely decorated. All that exists is a couch, and a large screen TV, but the rest of the house is bare. The only way you can identify Kian as a hacker is by all the computer equipment and cords set up all around the house.

“See anything?” I whisper to Andrei, and the other two men with me at the front.

“No.What thefuckis that smell?” Andrei questions, scrunching up his nose as we keep walking through the house, kicking back doors and searching. We snatch open kitchendrawers, looking for the files high and low, coming up short. Papers fly out all over the place, but none of them pertain to the Omerta files we want. My men check in the bathroom underneath the sink cabinets fishing around for whatever information we can find. It’s unknown what the files might appear to look like, but nothing we see even resembles a file.

Next, we reach the closest bedroom that has a large king-size bed in the middle of it, and an office desk on the side of it. Three of my Bratva men search diligently, crouching down and looking underneath the bed, yanking out an empty cardboard box. Inside the box unfortunately is a whole lot of big fat nothing. Holding the box up, I valiantly pitch it across the room.

The stench is becoming unbearable to deal with, and my nose hairs are damn near close to frying, but we still haven’t worked out exactly where it’s coming from. It’s not why we’ve come, and realistically we don’t have much time before we’ll need to head out.

Where the fuck are the Omerta files? Who has them?My eyes dart back and forth while I use the barrel of my gun to lift up the distasteful living room carpet, but all I find is a pile of dust and insects. Eventually my men and I locate where the bad smell is originating from as we head into the second room.

Here we find the corpse of Kian slumped in the corner, blood swiped behind his head on the dingy white wall, and one accurate kill shot to the head. It looks like Kian has been dead for some time, and parts of his body have turned the color of gangrene. The insects are crawling over his body, right along with his lips turning blue. I hesitate in picking apart his pockets, wondering if the file itself is on Kian’s body. His beady eyes are bugged open wide, and as one of my men pokes him with a rifle, it’s clear that he’s dead. Chuckling, I hitch my top up overmy nose, covering it on top of the balaclava to better prevent the stench from seeping in. Andrei and I move out of the room, heading for the exit.

“Is it the Italians?” Mark questions as we make it out, unsuccessful in our attempt to locate the Omerta files. Andrei takes off his black leather gloves, shaking his head, attempting to reason. “Luca Marino is hospitalized, but he’s as good as dead. It can’t be him. And it can’t be Roberto either, because his brother’s in prison.” Lifting my balaclava, I watch as some of my men slowly return from lookout, stepping back inside the black van as Andrei, Mark, and I wrack our brains to figure out who it might be.

“It could be someone from the Irish or American mob, couldn’t it?” Mark poses, adding in his two cents worth as the lights of other houses shut down. I pat myself down, finding my cigars, shielding my hands around its end, and lighting it up, the plume of dirty, dark smoke filling the pitch-black sky. In my eyeline, I take note of the CCTV at the end of the street.

“Andrei, I think we have a very clear way of finding out who one-upped us for the Omerta files.” I point up directly to what looks to be a street pole, but at the top of it is a camera. He looks up in the same direction my hand’s pointed, nodding his head. “I’ll get the footage and find out who’s behind it.”

Piling back in the van, we head back to my house, but I’m too restless to stay inside. Instead, I take a ride out for a while thinking about the Omerta files, and about Fiona who comes right back to the front of my mind.

Call the lady in red. I’m curious about her, and even more curious about why she didn’t realize how dangerous I was. Looking at my phone, I scroll down to “Red October” and call her number, as promised, on my Bluetooth.

As the call rings through, I almost hang up until a masculine voice answers. “Hello, Tim Merchant here. Whose calling?”

Chuckling, I ride through the night, hanging up the call. She gave me the wrong number.Unbelievable.

Just when I think I’ve had enough of mysteries for the night, now I’ve got a new one to solve.

Oh, girl in the red dress, don’t you know what Ruslan wants, Ruslan gets?

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