Page 2 of Poisoned Vows

I get up, open the window, and lean out. Our apartment is high up, on the twelfth floor, and there have been many nights where I leaned out just like this and imagined what might happen if I simply…tumbled out. I ran the calculations, trying to determine if there was a chance of survival. I was fairly sure that there wouldn’t be.

Isolation and loneliness will do that to a girl. Growing up with a father obsessed with pushing his daughter into the bed of the most advantageous man will do that.EverythingI’ve endured has pushed me to the very brink.

But now, if I can hold on just a little longer, my freedom might be very close. And with it, what will I do?

I’ll get the fuck out of Chicago, that’s what. I’ll go as far away as I can—Florida, California, fucking Alaska, for all I care. I don’t give a shitwhereI end up, as long as it’s not this room, this apartment, thisfuckingcity. As long as I never have to hear the wordspakhanorBratvaagain. As long as I get to choose who I fuck and when.

All I have to do is give up this one last thing. Endure for just a little longer. And then my value to my father—to all of these men—will be gone. I won’t be a virgin any longer, and none of them will give a shit about me.

I’ve spent the better part of my life being tutored in anything that my father thought might give me an advantage over these men. It’s been impressed upon me over and over how worldly they are, how cultured, how my intelligence could matter, if the pakhan decides he wants me for more than just a single night. If he wants me on his arm as a mistress for any length of time. Literature, world history, geography—I’ve had all that drilled into me, too, along with the placement of spoons and forks.

The result of that wasn’t entirely what my father hoped for, though. I have some of those maps still squirreled away, some of those books with places highlighted, outlining a future in which I can travel to those places on my own, without anyone else to hold me back. Destinations I want to visit, a world I want to see with the freedom I’ve earned, and no one will tell me no.

Those plans are all ephemeral still, and I haven’t decided where I’ll go first. But that doesn’t really matter.

Anything is better than this.

All that will matter is that I’ll get tochoosewhat I do next.

If I can survive.

Nikolai

The man’s screams and pleas are meant to move me. I know, objectively, that they are. But I feel nothing as I stand there, hands bloodied, setting the pair of pliers I’m holding aside as I stare at the man trussed up in front of me.

He’s missing most of his teeth at this point and several nails, both on his hands and his feet. His answers, the ones I’ve managed to coax out of him, are spoken through blood and spittle, sobbing gummily as he cries between words.

The man is utterly pathetic, and I’m ready for this to be over.

“Tell me again,” I say patiently, reaching for a filleting knife. “And perhaps I’ll believe you this time. How many men did you say that we have watching tomorrow night’s shipment? And what time did you tell them that it will be landing? And to whom?”

It’s too many questions for a man in this much pain to remember, so I repeat them again, in between shaving off thin strips of skin. I know he’s lying, and at this point, I’m not sure what it will take to get him to tell the truth. But lies are useful, too. If he’s enduring this much, it means his treachery goes deeper than we knew. It means he’s afraid of something more than my father and I—which could be very few men in this city.

I am brutal, but my father is terrifying. Merciless, even to those he loves. This, to me, is a job. A rote duty that I’m expected to carry out. My father has often told me that he leaves interrogations to me because while we’re both equally skilled, my father enjoys it far too much.

That, and he’s getting older. His hands are no longer as steady as they once were. But he would never admit that, and to suggest it would mean ending up where this poor bastard is, trussed up above plastic sheeting and being killed an inch at a time.

His end is quick, at least. When I’m sure there’s nothing more to gain from him, I slit his throat. A gunshot would be quicker still, but I left my weapon on the other side of the room, and he only told me lies. He didn’t earn the effort it would have taken for me to get it.

As I’m washing my hands afterward in a side room, rinsing the blood from around my nails while I listen to the steady thump of my father’s lackeys removing the body and cleaning the room, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I dry off my hands and see a message from my father.

Meet me in my office as soon as you’re finished.

Brief, and to the point. I chuckle to myself, because my father is nothing if not consistent. He could want to speak to me about anything, and the message would be the same, no matter his mood. He could be pleased or furious, hopeful or despondent, have good news for me or bad, and I would receive the same text.

Emotion, in his eyes, is something for a man to quell. To kill, lest it get him killed. And I have learned, over the years, to keep whatever emotion I feel buried to a fault.

Fortunately, it hasn’t seemed to matter much. My life is a pleasant one. I have whatever I desire. I live in a Chicago penthouse, I want for nothing, I drink and eat what I wish and fuck who I please, and go where I want. One day, my father’s empire will be mine. And all I have to do in return is follow his commands and, sometimes, spill a little blood.

A small price to pay for the life I lead.

My father, Egor Vasilev, is in his office as promised. He’s leaning back in his broad leather chair, flicking through papers with a cigar burning in an ashtray next to him and a glass of vodka at his right hand. My father is a man who rarely stops working, and so he enjoys his pleasures when he wishes to take them, rather than saving them for the end of the day. If it had been anyone other than one of his children coming to meet him, he likely would have had a woman under the desk. I’m almost surprised that he doesn’t, anyway. It’s only my sister Marika’s sensibilities that he concerns himself with, mostly.

“Nikolai.” He doesn’t glance up, waving at a chair with one hand as he reaches for his vodka with the other. “We’ve had an offer.”

His expression doesn’t change, but there’s a hint of amusement in his voice. He sets the papers down, taking a long sip of his drink, and then looks up at me, at my blood-spattered shirt and trousers. “No time to change?”

“You asked me to meet you as soon as possible,” I say calmly. There was a choice to be made between receiving that text and coming to meet my father in his office. I could change my clothes, and come to him fresh and appropriately dressed—or I could follow the letter of his instructions, and come as soon as I was finished. Knowing my father, I chose the latter.

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