Page 127 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

I have to see her again.

Once more before I die.

The wind whips my hair and face. Other cars are obstacles. Streetlights are for slowing down, not stopping. Never stopping.

I have to get there fast. I have to get there soon. I have to get there now.

* * *

Even from afar, I know it when I see it.

The structure is a giant rectangle with charred stone. I can see the massive skull sprayed on its outside in red, dripping like blood. I park my bike a bit away, striding towards it.

I’m not sneaking in or scoping this place out. I’m not even trying to think of a way out of this.

I know my brother too well, and more important, he knows me. There will be no leaving this place alive. I am walking to my death.

The building is all but abandoned. The two rusted metal doors creak open as I enter. They reveal Skull Kings, milling about everywhere. Bald and grim, bald and chatty, bald and stoic. Marked up with the tattoos that just hours before were a target for my gun.

At my entry, everything stops. Then, a smile’s passed around.

“If it isn’t Gavril Vaknin himself!” a tall skinny one says. The slack skin on his neck wiggles as he giggles. “Look, guys, he’s come to us!”

Guns come out. Hands grab me.

I stop.

Let them look. Let them see. They don’t matter. Only Joy does.

They roughly pat me down. Rip open my leather coat. They take my gun and my knives. Then they strong-arm me, one at each side, down a dank corridor, throw me into a room and slam the door behind me. Inside, amidst lines of massive columns and ceilings a network of pipes, it looks to be a makeshift bar. Like someone ripped up a glitzy, velvet-topped wooden bar from someplace and hauled it in here. All abandoned.

Excerpt for there at the bar, where my brother sits.

Only it isn’t my brother at all. Not quite. This stranger has my brother’s glossy, shoulder-length dark hair. My brother’s lean build. My brother’s eyes. And yet, his face is all wrong. The nose is off-kilter, the cheekbones sloping differently than I remember. It’s my brother as seen in a nightmare or a horror movie. A monster with my brother’s face.

“What did you …” I ask.

His smirk widens. “Oh, I had to make some changes. Plastic surgery. Otherwise, I’d have been recognized.”

I nod sadly. Smart. But still, looking at him is haunting. It’s my brother, but wrong, twisted, mutated.

He gestures me over. “Come. Have a drink, if you’d like.”

“Don’t pretend I have a choice.”

He just smiles. That has not fully changed. There is still the ghost of the same old cheeky Osip smile in it. I rise stiffly and walk over to him. He’s already got a whiskey glass poured for me.

“It’s good whiskey, my brother. I had them screw up my face, not my taste buds. Now, come, drink. I think we both need it.”

I grip mine, eyeing it. Would it be beneath my brother to poison my drink?

“Oh, come on now.” Another derisive snort. Osip gulps a bunch of his drink, then mine. “If I wanted to kill you this quick, I would’ve shot you while you were walking here and had your body strung up on top of Skull Palace.”

Skull Palace.Of course Osip called this hunk of abandoned stone that—renamed it and made it his kingdom. We were both good at that, back in the day. Remaking this shit city into the empire we dreamed of.

“And yet you didn’t,” I say.

“Considered it, though.” He shrugs. “What can I say? Family can make us idiots sometimes.”

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