Page 33 of The Crimson Lily
I feel my energy slowly return to me. I can breathe again. I have to cough a few times while I raise myself up. I look ahead of me and see two dead bodies sprawled out on the floor. I might scream. I might puke. But I do none of these things. Maksim has killed these two men. I let him dial a number on his phone and hear a voice on the other end.
“Da…” he responds to that voice. He says a few sentences in Russian. I understandOperabetween words.
Once he’s done, he looks at me with a stern glare. “We need to leave,” he declares again.
I bring a hand to my neck, just to check again that nothing is damaged. I swallow a few times, then rise to my feet. I’m in alight state of shock. I realize now that I almost died today. We need to leave, but I’m petrified. Maksim is just in my reach, and I look at him with begging eyes. I have to be in his arms right now. I need his comfort.
He notices and comes closer to me. He kneels down by the bed and wraps his arms around me. I just hug him, right there, really tightly. My eyes remain wide open. My hands make their way to his back, and I squeeze. I squeeze so hard I could hurt him if he weren’t so big.
“We need to leave,zaya,” he whispers in my ear.
I release him just slightly. “Don’t leave me again,” I plead.
“I won’t.”
He escapes my embrace and makes me stand up. I cast another glance at the two bodies—one with a broken neck, and the other, the gunman, with a hole through his face. It’s not pretty. There’s blood everywhere.
“Someone is coming to take care of that,” Maksim declares, possibly to reassure me.
I figure the Bratva has contacts with a body removal service, which wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. I follow Maksim, who’s packing my suitcase for me in a rush. Once done, he opens the door and lets me through first. We make our way downstairs, into the lobby, where he says words I don’t hear to my two friends, who stare blankly at a fixed point in space. When he returns, I’m too weak to ask him anything about what he told them. We head out of the hotel and into the street. Maksim picks the first long black taxi he finds and almost shoves me into it. He gives an address to the driver through the pane, and we take off in the blink of an eye.
I don’t know where I am when Maksim opens the taxi door for me. I fell asleep and I’m completely woozy—he has to help mewith standing on my feet. I’m not in pain, but my brain acts like everything hurts, dimming my motor functions as a plea for me to sit still. The taxi driver looks at me with intense worry, probably wondering if he should leave me with this man twice my size. He’d better. There’s only one place I want to be right now, and that is close to Maksim.
Maksim carries my arm around his shoulder and drags my suitcase behind him. We get to the entrance of a large white building with decorative ridges that catch my eye. The door is made of dark-coated metal and reminds me of a portcullis. He opens it, lets me in, and closes the door behind him.
I turn around, searching his blue eyes, trying to process what just happened. “What did you do with my friends?” I ask.
“They’re with the Bratva,” he answers.
I gasp, feeling panic rising inside me. “Are they going to kill them?” I am so afraid of his answer, of losing my friends. I feel responsible. I almost have tears in my eyes when he lays his hand on my arm.
“They need to be briefed,” he reassures me. “They won’t be touched unless I say so.”
I exhale in short relief, which is replaced by a blank feeling of helplessness. I have no control here, no say in this; I’m just being led by this Russian criminal. I lower my head and follow.
Maksim walks to the end of the large hallway to the stairs. He carries my suitcase up to the third floor, and I simply follow him. We eventually arrive in front of a door that looks like a massive art piece.
“Where are we?” I ask softly as he fiddles with his keys.
He doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he opens the door and motions for me to get in and see for myself.
The wooden floor creaks beneath my feet. We come into a corridor with tall white walls painted with silver patterns of flowers. Decorative adornments are carved into the walls. I takea few steps to admire the surrounding décor. I pass the white marble stairs to my right and head into the second room to my left. A large living room with windows that look out at?—
I gasp. It’s the Eiffel Tower, and it’s sparkling with a thousand little lights. Should I be searching for stars in the night sky, I’d find them here, right beyond this window, in the heart of Paris. It’s astonishing, like a thousand little diamonds eager to show themselves. This is definitely a place for the wealthy.
I am so captured by the sight of the shimmering tower that I notice only now how all the furniture is covered by big white sheets. Maksim has begun to uncover the sofa, the chairs, and the large coffee table, which all look like they’re pulled from the Renaissance. He walks by the arch that splits the room in two and reveals a large dining table with six more museum-like chairs. This house isn’t a hotel, nor does it look like it belongs to the Bratva or something. It looks like it hasn’t seen any visitor in a long, long time, and judging from Maksim’s attitude, he knows this place.
“Is this your house?” I ask.
He gives me a nod. “More or less.”
I amble to the wooden sideboard that harbors little trinkets and even some framed pictures. I take one in my hands and look at it pensively. It’s a little boy with black hair and blue eyes, one with Maksim’s nose. I check if he minds me snooping, but he simply sits on the sofa and observes me. I take another one of these pictures in my hands. This time, it’s a couple—a beautiful blond woman and a tall man with a beard and a suit. The back of the frame has something written on it:
Minsk, 1993.
“Are you from Belarus?” I wonder, my lips parted in surprise. All this time, I thought he was Russian. I’m also pleased with myself that I remember the capital city of Belarus.
“I was born there,” he answers.
