Page 66 of Corrupted Guilt

Anton met me at the first floor, with Nikita, the man Anton trusted too much. “He’s waiting for you, won’t talk to usdespite … encouragement. Nikita here did all the work, really saved my ass.”

“I trust Anton’s judgement about you,” I tell him, not completely honest, and shake his hand. He says nothing. I like that.

“This way, Yuri,” Anton says, leading me to the kitchen where a man was strapped to a chair and signs of his ‘encouragement’ were all over his face and body.

I knew how to make men talk. All men have weaknesses. Many of these weaknesses are acceptable because other men condone them—they have the same weaknesses after all. But some weaknesses are so shameful they must be hidden from other men, never discussed, hidden from all except a man like me, who can see his secret shame and make him confess it.

My skill at knowing these weaknesses—sniffing them out of those dark places was unparalleled. My talent for finding the jugular of a man’s weakness was so exceptional that sometimes I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.

I wouldn’t need to hate myself this time.

It would be easy on us both.

“Dead man, you have something to say to me?” I ask him.

“Sigereta?” he asks.

I nod to Anton, and he finds one and lights it for the dead man, sticks it between what’s left of his lips.

After a long, deep inhale, the man smiles and looks at me, a slight smile, careful to keep hold of the cigarette, “Mudak! The plan worked. Petya is waiting for you. He has Katya. This was just a feint, and you fell for it. Mudak. Kozyol.”

I took my phone from my pocket and call Maxim. No answer. I call Katya. “Call Maxim until he answers,” I tell Anton. Katya’s phone rings and rings but no one answers.

Panic grabs me by the throat but I need to stay calm. “Get together as many men as possible and come after me to the lake house,” I tell Anton.

“Wait for me, Yuri, don’t go alone.”

“Do as I say,” I tell him, adding: “Surround the house from the road, I’m going in through the lake. We’ll surround it, wait for my signal.”

“What signal?”

“You’ll know it,” I say and walk out to my car.

I drove in a rage, my knuckles white on the steering wheel until I arrived at the lake and calmed myself down.

I looked across the lake and saw 10 houses, all lit up, one of them was mine, but I wouldn’t really know which until I was closer. Damn I wish I had more time. I was parked near an empty house and walked down to the shoreline and untied a small dinghy with two oars and pushed off in it.

The lake was like glass, black and silvery from the moonlight, the only ripples were mine, pulsing from the nose of the boat. I waited until a cloud covered the moon, bathing me in inky black and rowed closer to the opposing shore, narrowing my house—where Katya was— to two or three lights on the opposite shore. I hoped my bedroom lights were on— the sliding glass doors leading to the deck would be the giveaway as I got closer.

A slight headwind knocked me back as I got closer, so I had to bear down on the oars and my arms were screaming at me until I saw the lights on, shining through sliding glass doors peeking through the deck.

Katya was right over there.

Petya too, I recalled, patting my machine gun in my lap.

All the rooms were lit up in the lake house. I preferred that to all dark. Neither of us would have much of a surprise this way.

I tied the dinghy up to the dock, so the wind blew it away from the wood pilings. I didn’t want the aluminum boat clanging against the dock or the shore as I crept up to the house.

Was that something moving on the deck? I crouched and waited for the silhouette to move either against the house light or moonlight. There were movements inside the house, casting shadows outside on the deck, at least two, more bodies moving inside the house, moving from one room to another before settling in the bedroom.

I crept up closer to the house, deciding the bedroom was the place for me to enter and make my stand.

As I approached, the deck lights snapped on and the night erupted with the sounds of a scream—Katya! — then gun fire and crashing glass.

31. Katya

The aura of rape hung in the air. He kept touching me, little taps to my elbow, my knee, my shoulder. Not loving, gentle taps that move to caresses.

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