Page 38 of The Bratva Contract
The dagger of betrayal doesn’t twist when I read his name. All I feel is relief that she found a way to guide me to her. The car races through streets, slices down alleys, and skims across a parking lot wasting no time. The men I sent to his apartment came up empty-handed, so this must be the place.
I shake my head, half-amused, giving myself a brief moment to remember the hundreds of times I’ve walked into this hotel: the flashy black-and-gold entry, the slightly shabby carpet. The key card in my wallet still grants access to the elevator that goes straight to the top-floor suite he keeps.
This place is a crook’s idea of high-class. No concierge, no fresh flowers, none of the hallmarks of excellence I installed at my Montenegro resort. It only pretends to be exclusive. The black marble veined with gold is outdated and chipped at the corners, scuffed everywhere. Brass fixtures haven’t been polished in years and an ashtray is overflowing. The so-called artwork looks ripped from a thirty-year-old hunting-dog catalog. The veneer of refinement is paper-thin, almost transparent. Yet he loves it, thinks it makes him a big man. I used to tease him, calling him a high roller from back in the day, the kind of dive our fathers favored when they wanted to impress an out-of-town mark before my old man hit the big time.
A place to pretend that you’re something you’re not, a façade. For a second, I wonder what came out of Karina’s mouth when she saw this place. If I’m lucky she just called it a dumpster fire or a shithole. She’d be right either way. She’s not afraid to call something what it is, my wife. I ride up in the elevator and find myself gritting my teeth, willing it to go faster. Only two of my protection officers flank me. I have the rest surrounding the perimeter of the hotel and ready to gun down anyone who attempts to flee the premises. Not that he’ll get that far.
I step off the elevator, almost surprised by the tinny lounge music piped into the corridor. Two men guard the suite door. I smirk. They’re on my payroll, but not for much longer.
“I’m here to see Piotr. He’s borrowed something of mine and I want it back,” I say smoothly, as if I’m asking them to let me in the room. They exchange a look. Before either of them can speak, I reach in my pocket, take out my sidearm with the silencer I attached in the car on the way here. In five seconds, I’ve shot both men in the chest. They both drop to the shabby rug with a heavy thud. I nod to one of my guards who kicks the door in. So much for knocking.
CHAPTER 24
KARINA
This asshole ought to thank my morning sickness. If I weren’t clamping my lips together to keep the vomit down, I’d be tearing him apart. The room reeks. Its dark-green carpet and sticky black leather couch look like leftovers from a brothel’s yard sale. Gilded cherubs prance around the ceiling molding, but the air is thick with stale smoke and sweat. Pregnant or not, I’d be gagging.
When Dima’s top brigadier shook me awake from my nap, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I hadn’t expected him in my bedroom, especially now that I know he’s the traitor in the bratva. It took every ounce of control not to spit in his face and call him the worthless garbage he is. Clearly my attempt to play dumb failed; he kidnapped me anyway.
Within minutes he spun a tale: Dima needed me at a safe house, we were in danger, and only his most trusted friend could deliver his wife. He actually looked proud of the lie, chest puffed like a child showing off. When I questioned a single detail, he shoved a gun in my face with the eager posture of a man hunting for an excuse to pull the trigger.
His cologne is a sleazy cocktail, pine-scented floor cleaner drowned in some oily musk that must have been wrung from a weasel’s glands. The torment of staying silent nearly splits my tongue. But my father taught me one lesson well. Keep quiet when an armed man is angry. Piotr thinks he’s smarter than he is, and I have to hide how badly I want to prove him wrong.
It doesn’t help that I’m scared. The bastard made me write a stupid letter to Dima about how I was leaving him and suggesting that my husband is old and terrible in bed. I laughed at that and got backhanded across the face for it. When I shut my mouth I tasted blood on my lip, and I promised myself that he’d pay for that.
After he finally approved the letter, which he made me rewrite the damn thing three times, claiming I was “too wordy” and probably hiding a code, I could only glare at him. Of course I was trying to slip in a message about being kidnapped by this useless motherfucker; I just didn’t want him to catch it. He’s not clever, but he is naturally suspicious, maybe because he doesn’t have a loyal bone in his soon-to-be-dead body. He assumes everyone’s crooked, everyone’s out for themselves. I still can’t figure out his end game. Does he want Dima to chase me so they can have a showdown? If so, the letter was a pointless red herring. And if he truly wants to convince Dima I ran off with him, an idea that makes my nausea worse, broadcasting it in a letter is downright stupid. He’s not trying to flee the country, and so far he hasn’t caused me serious harm. Unless the chloroform hurt my baby. If it did, I’ll show him pain he’s never imagined.
The whole charade feels like bad community theater. Piotr is playing the overlooked second-in-command who thinks he deserves the bratva throne. Never mind that he isn’t a tenth the man my husband is. My headache is probably from thechloroform, but it might also be the effort of not rolling my eyes at every line he delivers.
We’re in a miserable hotel room decorated with fake hunting-lodge paintings in gaudy gold frames that match the cherubs. Even the lamp is a gilded baby angel. My wrists are zip-tied to a metal chair, and the seat is killing my back. I need to pee so badly. Part of me wants to let go just to give Piotr one more crime to answer for. The other part, the prideful part, refuses to endure the humiliation of wetting my pants.
The moment the sedative wore off, Piotr began pacing in front of me, waving his gun for punctuation while he lectured. He claimed he was the brains of the operation, the reason the bratva had survived this long. He’s sick of Dima getting all the credit just because of the Petrov name, he said; the men are loyal to him, to the brotherhood, not to some figurehead with the right last name. He harps on that name so much I start to wonder if he’s one of Dima’s father’s illegitimate sons, since several already work for the organization.
“I was doing fine with my side hustle until you came along and tried to ruin it. You think you’re so smart, using some computer to sniff out the embezzling.”
Piotr and three of his goons, more traitors from the bratva, men whose lifespans now number in hours at most, are watching a horse race that’s live streaming. They’ve placed bets on one of the horses and I secretly hope the horse loses by an embarrassing distance.
They trash-talk the other horses, shouting and shaking their fists at the TV. The room vibrates with noise and the funk of cheap beer, the yeasty hop smell hanging damp in the air. Piotr tears open a bag of fish-flavored chips and waves it under my nose,taunting. I don’t manage to hold my breath in time. Retching overtakes me, and I twist just enough to vomit on the floor beside the chair instead of in my lap. When the gagging stops, I’m dizzy, my head throbbing. Part of me wishes I’d splattered Piotr’s shoes, but instinct for self-preservation kept me from it. He laughs anyway. I’m parched, my bladder aches, but I know he won’t untie me or offer water. The chips were just another cruelty. I force myself to breathe and count, anything to avoid panicking, but each inhale drags the stench deeper. I focus on taking the smallest breaths possible. My preferred coping strategy would be to open fire on every man in this room, but a shoot-out isn’t good for the baby, even if we’re not in the crosshairs.
“Vlad, clean that up. It stinks in here,” Piotr orders.
I want to tell him my puke smells better than his nasty cologne. Instead I bite my tongue while he turns away and crunches the chips. The greasy fish stink coats the room. I try counting backward, anything to calm myself, but tears spring up, equal parts rage and fear. I blink them away. They don’t get to win. So I vomited. At least I’m not the idiot smearing it around with a dingy hotel towel. Shouts erupt when their horse loses, curses flying about all the money they’ve blown on a “sure thing.” I just sit here with no choice. My shoulders burn from being bound so long. I woke up this way after a thug pressed a cloth over my face until I inhaled the sweet, sick chemical they’d soaked it in.
I woke up with my head spinning and my stomach roiling, installed in the hard metal chair in the middle of the hotel room. Someone must have had to carry me in the building and paraded my unconscious body in front of whoever was in the lobby. I’m guessing it’s the kind of place where no one ever sees anything.Certainly no one had the decency to try to help me or call the authorities since I was clearly a crime victim.
My mind keeps drifting. I try to catalog everything I know about my situation and the men guarding me, but it isn’t much. Even if I somehow pieced together their master plan, it wouldn’t help; they took my phone, and I’m in no shape for a daring escape. I’m still groggy from the drugs and terrified about what the chloroform might have done to my baby. If pregnant women can’t smoke or drink, inhaling a powerful sedative can’t be good. I fight the spiral of panic. I stay perfectly still despite the ache in my back. I don’t ask for water or a bathroom as I’m trying not to draw attention. Maybe they’ll get so absorbed in their betting that they’ll forget I’m here, I think with pathetic hope. All I really want is for Dima to kick down the door, guns blazing, and pull me out. In superhero movies the girlfriend never pukes or has to fight tears. Even fictional heroines seem tougher than me, I think, swallowing another surge of self-pity.
I hear the ding of the elevator. My first thought isn’t rescue. It’s a fervent prayer that they haven’t ordered room service. Whatever they order will be the smelliest worst thing imaginable. I can’t be in this humid, nasty room with a cart full of greasy food that my captors want to eat in front of me.
“We’ve got company,” Piotr says with grim satisfaction. He sends a goon to the door just as someone kicks it in. My husband and two guards enter, stepping over the splintered wood they left behind.
Piotr jams the barrel of his gun against the base of my skull. “Drop your guns,” he orders through gritted teeth.
Dima sets his on the floor and so do his guards. He spreads his hands while they pat him down. Coming up clean, he steps intothe room, hands in his pockets, the picture of ease. He sits on the black leather couch and turns to Piotr. He hasn’t even looked at me. I listen, rapt, to learn what game he’s playing. Because like any predator, my husband will toy with his prey before destroying it.
CHAPTER 25
DIMA
