Chapter 41
ROMAN
The light blinds me as the bag is yanked off my head.
I frantically look left and right, but the harsh glare in my eyes after the last God knows how many hours spent with a bag over my head has me seeing nothing but white spots against an even whiter background.
I try to stand, but the rough bite of rope against my ankles and thighs, and at my wrists pulled behind my back, stops me.
Gloved fingers pinch the edge of the tape covering my mouth, and I flinch as it’s torn from my lips.
“VAL!”
His name is the first thing that erupts from my throat. I look around blindly again, my pulse roaring as pure adrenaline and fear careen through my body.
“VAL!”
“Roman?!”
“Val!” I scream when I hear him call my name from somewhere to my right. “Where—”
I grunt, fireworks exploding in my head as the back of a hand smashes across my mouth. My head snaps to the side, blood spraying from my split lip as I hiss.
I flinch as the hand grabs my chin, angling my face up. The light blazes into my eyes, and I blink against the blinding glare until slowly, I can make out shapes.
People—men—are standing around me, a spotlight angled into my face. I smell cigarettes and vodka, then damp, stale air and the coppery scent of blood.
“Cut him loose.”
A chill rips down my spine when I hear my father’s voice, calm and icy.
“Mr. Nikitin, I don’t think that’s wise.”
I go still at the sound of the second voice—gruff, with a distinctly South African accent.
“I said cut him loose.”
Hands yank at my wrists. I grunt, blinking again against the harsh light in my eyes as a cold, sharp blade grazes my wrist before it slices through the ropes. My ankles are next, and then the bonds around my thighs.
“Val!” I lurch from my chair and whirl to the right. I'm immediately shoved back down, but I lash out, swinging wildly and jumping up again. This time, I’m rewarded when my fist crashes into soft flesh.
“Fuck!” a voice—also South African—snarls. “Little fucker hit me!”
“I fucking told you,” the first voice hisses. “Don't cut him—oh, fuck this.”
I grunt as a fist slams into my stomach, knocking me over.
A scuffle breaks out, and I hear shouting and raised voices, yelling both in English and Russian. Then one louder voice silences them all.
“ENOUGH!” my father booms.
For a second, I feel something I haven’t really felt since mom died—the sense that there’s a parent here who wants what’s best for me. Who’ll protect me.
“Papa—”
The hand slams across my mouth again, sending blood and spit streaking across the floor. I groan as I'm grabbed at the front of my shirt and slammed backward into the chair.
“Sit. The fuck. Down.”
The light is swung away so that it's not shining right in my eyes, and everything comes into focus.
My father stands in front of me, looking at me with such pure hatred that it freezes me for a second.
Gunner and his two stooges are right behind.
Past them I see Stepan, looking furious.
Two of my father’s men are holding him back, his hair messed up and the side of his mouth swelling, like he just got hit.
Guess that was the scuffle.
He looks right at me and shakes his head, his jaw tight. But I can’t really focus on anything right now except…
I choke as I twist my head to the right.
“VAL!”
I lurch from my chair. Instantly, my father’s fist crashes into my jaw, slamming me back down. I tense when I feel the cold blade against my throat.
“Do not fucking move,” Papa hisses furiously.
But I barely hear him as I whip my head around to stare at Val.
No.
He’s bound to a chair. Blood drips from his nose and his mouth, and his right eye is purpled and swelling shut. I surge against my father’s grip on my shirt, but when I feel the steel of the blade in his fist bite my skin, I go still.
“Do not test me, Roman,” he snarls. “With how I feel about you right now?” He turns and spits onto the ground. “Cutting your throat might be a mercy.”
My pulse jumps as I glare up into his face.
We’re in a dingy, windowless basement, with half-smashed café tables and chairs shoved into one corner and a couple of utterly foul, grimy couches against the wall.
Pinup posters of nude women are tacked up, and a makeshift bar made from plywood is littered with various bottles of alcohol, with a microwave and an electric tea kettle at one end.
I know this place.
It’s the old nightclub.
When my eyes drop to the rusty stain on the cement floor, my blood goes cold. That’s where Gunner and his men…
I swallow as I try to suppress the flashbacks of Papa forcing me to watch after they caught his girlfriend who ran off with that jewelry.
Papa chuckles quietly. “Da, you do remember this place.” He turns to point his knife at the rusty stain. “She was very pretty, eh?” He turns to chuckle—chuckle—at Gunner. “Well, before this one here skinned off her face, eh?” He and the South African both laugh in a way that makes me sick.
I turn to Val, looking my way. His lips part, and he winks with his good eye as he gives me a bloodied smirk.
“Not exactly how I saw our date going, wreckage,” he groans. “But you, all tied up—”
One of Gunner’s men walks over and punches Val in the face.
“NO!!” I roar, lurching from my chair. My father slams me back down and puts the tip of his blade to my chin.
“Pakhan!”
Stepan wrestles in the grip of the two men holding him, his eyes blazing.
“Pavel,” he hisses. His eyes dart to me, his face hollow and gaunt. “Enough!” He gestures in my direction. “This is your son!”
“Da, my son.” Papa spits venomously, turning to sneer at me in disgust. “My son, the pidoraz.”
Icy coldness slices into me to have my own father look at me with such hatred. He turns and spits on the ground, his face souring.
“I thought Gunner had lost his touch,” he growls. “When he came to me and told me he hadn’t found the girl. But then he said that he had found my son spending all his time with this fucking sissy!”
He turns and jabs the knife at Val, then drags his cold gaze back to me.
“I told Gunner it was impossible,” he snarls. “I told him my son was no queer. My son is a man! My heir! My blood!”
“Papa—!”
I grunt, my head smacking sideways as my father’s hand crashes across my mouth.
“FUCK YOU!!” Val roars, struggling in his binds and causing the chair legs to rattle on the floor. “Fuck you, you fucking—!!”
Gunner walks over and slams a fist into Val’s stomach, doubling him over.
“Someone needs to change this one’s tampon, I think,” he chuckles, kicking Val hard in the shin.
My father turns back to me, lifting my chin with his knife. He looks down his nose at me coldly, slowly shaking his head side to side.
“Generations of real men built the empire you were born to lead,” he snarls in disgust. “And you throw it all away to bend some little fairy over and fuck him up the ass…”
I grunt when he backhands me again. But then I smirk.
“Actually, Papa…” I spit blood on the floor, splattering his shoes. “He’s the one who bends me over—”
My father punches me so hard that I go toppling backward with the chair. Stepan scrambles towards me, but Papa is already kneeling astride my chest, raining punches down.
“I did not—!”
He splits my lip open.
“Raise you—!”
Blood explodes from my nose.
“To be a fucking sissy queer!” he roars, crashing his fist into my mouth once more. Stepan shoves away the men holding him back and rushes over. He yanks my father off me and shoulders between us.
“PAVEL!” he roars. “No matter anything else, he is still your son!”
“Get the fuck out of my way, Stepan.”
Stepan shakes his head. “Pavel, I’m your number two—”
“So act like it!!” Papa roars.
“I swore an oath to the Bratva. I have allegiance to you, of course, but my oath is to the brotherhood. That means my oath is to Roman, too, as its next pakhan.” He glances back at me on the ground, his brow caving before he turns back to my father.
“Pakhan…my oath prevents me from letting you kill him.”
My father glares murderously at Stepan. His gaze shifts past him to me, his lip curling.
“You disgust me,” he hisses.
He turns away, viciously swearing in Russian.
“Get him up,” he growls. When nobody moves, he whirls on his men. “I said get him up!”
The two Nikitin men rush over and lift me off the floor. They start to lower me back into the chair, but Papa shakes his head.
“No,” he grunts. “There.”
He points to a spot on the floor right in front of Val. I stumble slightly as they haul me over. But when I get close to him, it all fades away: the pain, the fury, the urge to roar at the world.
It all disappears as my eyes lock with Val’s.
“How’s my hair,” he grunts, his mouth bloodied.
I smile weakly back.
Papa slowly walks up behind me. “So this is why your fiancée ran off with another man,” he sneers. “Better to whore herself out to one of her guards than marry a fucking pidoraz?!” He spits on the ground. “I don’t blame her.”
He starts to walk around me, his nostrils flaring, his hands behind his back.
“I tried with you, boy.”
“Papa—”
“Be silent!” he snaps. “I tried to raise you to be a man who could lead the Bratva with strength and honor.”
“I will lead—”
He cuts me off with a sharp laugh.
“You think any of these men will follow a little pidoraz?” he blurts, incredulous. “You think they will go to war, taking orders from a little fairy bitch?!”
His men are silent, but Gunner and his goons chuckle amongst themselves.
I drag my eyes away from Val to look my father right in the eye.
“No matter what you think I am,” I growl. “And no matter whom I love—”
“Love!” he barks, tossing his head back with a throaty laugh. “He thinks taking it up the ass from another man is love!”
His laugh dies away when I grab him by the collar and yank him close.
“I. Love. Him,” I snarl coldly. “And there is nothing about that which will make it impossible for me to lead this brotherhood one day.” My eyes narrow. “Nothing.”