Chapter 41 #2
The room goes quiet. Oddly, my father doesn’t shove me away, or even try to remove my hands from his shirt.
Stepan moves toward us. “Pakhan—”
“Be silent.”
Papa’s still looking right at me as he holds up a finger to silence his number two. He stares at me a long moment.
“Well, well,” he finally hisses. “There’s still fight in you. Maybe you haven’t lost all your manhood, boy.”
He turns to level a vicious look at Val. Slowly, a dark smile creeps over my father’s face.
“You want to lead this brotherhood, Roman?” he murmurs. His eyes drag back to mine. “Prove it.” He slaps me hard in the chest. “Prove to me you’re still a man. Prove to me that you haven’t grown a fucking pussy between your legs, that you still have a cock and balls.”
“Oh, trust me,” Val snickers. “He’s got plenty of cock and—”
I snarl when Papa backhands Val across the mouth. My father turns back to me, his dark, lined face full of malice and hatred.
“Let me give you a lesson in what it means to be pakhan, boy,” he snarls.
He pulls a gun from his jacket, his eyes locked with mine.
“It means one's duty is to lead the brotherhood. That comes before anything else.” His eyes narrow. “For me, that includes you.”
It’s nothing I didn’t already know, but it still cuts like a blade to hear it.
“I’m going to make this easy.” He cocks the gun, chambering a round. “You might be my blood, Roman, but right now?” He shakes his head. “Right now, you are no son of mine. Which means…”
“NO!” Val roars, slamming against his binds as my father places the gun to my forehead.
“PAVEL!” Stepan bellows, trying to rush my father. But Gunner shoves him back, leveling his pistol at my father’s number two.
My pulse jackhammers and my throat works as I meet my father’s gaze down the barrel of a gun.
“Two things can happen right now, boy,” Papa growls.
“I can shoot you in the head and spray your brains all over your little boyfriend’s face.
Or?” He smiles cruelly. “You can prove to me that you still have it in you to be pakhan. To be a fucking man!” He pulls the gun away from my forehead and aims it at Val.
“Prove it to me, Roman,” he snarls. “Kill this fucking cockroach.”
He looks back at me.
“With your fists.”
My blood turns to cement and my heart stops as my eyes lock with Val’s.
I don’t see anything but a person who loves me.
A person that I love with all my heart.
A man who sees me for who I am, and makes me want to be who I am.
A man I’d give my last fucking breath for.
“No.”
The word falls rasping from my lips as I lock eyes with Val.
“I won't—”
“Roman!”
Val chokes out my name, and I freeze when I feel my father’s gun pressed to the back of my head.
“Hit him,” he says quietly. “Right now, or I swear to you, boy, I will splatter your blood all over his face, and I will not mourn you after I do.”
“Pavel, please,” Stepan hisses. “What the fuck is this!?”
“A course correction,” Papa growls. “Before he and his perversions destroy an empire. Now…”
The gun presses tight against my skull.
“Hit. Him.”
My eyes lock with Val’s. He smiles wryly, arching a bloodied brow.
“I mean, you can’t say you’ve never wanted to, right?”
I slowly shake my head. “I—”
“Hit me,” Val hisses, his good eye holding mine. “Just shut up and hit me.”
My head shakes again, my jaw tensing. “No—”
“Hit me, you little bitch!!” Val roars.
“Stop it,” I hiss.
“HIT ME, PUSSY!” he roars again before he spits a wad of blood at my feet. “Such a whiny, pathetic pussy!” he snarls. “So fucking weak!”
I’m shaking as my eyes blaze into his.
“Goddammit,” I choke. “Shut the fuck—”
“You never meant shit to me,” Val spits, laughing coldly. “Just another straight boy to fuck with. That’s my thing: finding confused, needy fuckers like you and turning them out.” He sneers at me as my eyes widen. “I don’t love you. I could never love such a fucking pathetic little bitch.”
I snap, my heart wrenching as I wind up and slam my fist into his jaw. My father and some of the others roar with laughter as I grab the back of Val’s head. I lean in, my vision blurring and my teeth bared as I press my forehead to his.
“I fucking love you,” I choke, shaking.
“I know, baby,” Val croaks, blood dripping from his mouth as his gaze holds mine. “Which is why I need you to fucking hit me. I can’t watch them kill you.”
“I fucking can’t—”
“Just do it!” he screams, his face contorting as his one good eye blazes icy blue into me. “Please don’t make me watch you die, wreckage.”
There are tears in my eyes as I stand, wind back, and punch him again.
Then again.
I manage a third blow before I realize there’s no fucking way I’ll ever hit this man again, and I will die before that changes.
“There's my boy!” Papa bellows, clapping me hard on the chest. “My blood!!” There’s a manic light in his eyes as he grabs my hand, shoves his gun into it and then jerks my arm out, so that the barrel is pointing at Val’s face.
“For the sake of your family,” he snarls. “For the sake of your fucking bloodline, and this empire.” He slaps my face and then gets right in it, his eyes blazing. “Shoot him, Roman. Cut this fucking cancer from your body. Show me that you are still a fucking man, and shoot—”
“No.”
Despite all the chaos, adrenaline and pain searing through my veins, I know with every fiber of my being that this will not happen.
I turn to my father.
“I’m not going to shoot him.”
“Roman,” he snarls. “So help me fucking God, I will—”
I raise the gun in my hand and point it right at my father's face.
“Or you’ll what, Papa,” I hiss. “I’m not shooting him, or hitting him, or hurting him in any way.
I love him,” I snarl. “What you’re asking me to do is to cut out my own heart, and I can’t and won’t do that.
So…” I feel power roar through me as my muscle clench.
“This is done. All of it. I’m walking out of here with him, and you and I will never speak again. ”
He smirks. “Ahh, such a big man now, eh? Calling the shots?” He leers at me. “You think this is the first time I’ve had a gun pointed at me? You think—”
“No, I don’t.”
My father’s eyes bulge as I pull the gun away from his head…
…and point it at my own.
“Roman!” Stepan hisses. “What the fuck are you—”
“I’m his only son,” I say, my teeth clenched.
“Without me, he has no future empire,” I snarl at my father.
“I'm the last of your bloodline, Papa. This is me holding hostage your only chance of seeing our forefathers' legacy continue. And now he and I,” I say, jabbing a finger in Val's direction as I level a cold glare at my father, “are going to walk the fuck out of—”
Pain explodes through my head, my vision shattering into fireworks as I go crashing sideways. The gun is wrenched from my hand as I stumble to one knee. When I look up, I see Gunner standing over me, holding my weapon and the one he just used to pistol-whip me.
The room goes silent, the full weight of what I just did hitting me.
“Pavel…” Stepan says calmly. “This has gone far enough. Let’s—”
“My only chance at a legacy?” Pavel grunts, laughing bitterly. “I have news for you, boy. I am still virile. I’ll make another fucking heir, with a whore if need be.”
My heart drops.
“Tie him to the chair.” My father’s voice is devoid of emotion as he turns to nod at two of Gunner’s men. “Do it. Now.”
“Pavel!” Stepan shouts, shooting looks at the two other Nikitin men, who look equally uncomfortable.
I grit my teeth as Gunner’s goons shove me back into the wooden chair. Val is yelling at them to go fuck themselves as my arms are yanked behind me and bound at the wrists.
“Wire it up, Gunner,” my father says tightly.
I frown, not understanding. Then one of the mercenaries unzips a duffle bag and pulls out a brick of plastic explosive with a control switch attached to it.
“What the fuck is this?!” Stepan yells. “Pavel!!”
“This, Stepan,” my father says quietly, “is what happens when my fucking blood decides to point a gun at me.” When he turns to look at me, I don’t see any shred of a father, or love of any kind.
Just dead, black emptiness, tinged with hate and disgust.
“It’s no secret that I use the club upstairs for meetings from time to time, is it, Stepan.
” He smiles icily, not waiting for an answer.
“We’ll say that this one”…he points at Val…
“came here tonight to try and sabotage this place by setting another Obsidian Syndicate bomb, as directed by his brother.”
The color drains from my face.
“And that my brave son, Roman, tried to stop this little maggot from trying to kill me. Alas…” His smile turns cold and vicious, his eyes blackening as they stab into me, without a single speck of love.
“Alas, in their fight, the bomb went off.”
The full weight of what he’s saying slam into me. I knew my father was cold and calculating, but I suppose the fact that I have humanity in me stopped me from ever seeing him go this far..
I’m going to die here tonight, along with Val.
My father will get sympathy from allies and neutral parties alike at the tragic loss of his son and heir. He’ll also hit Vaughn hard, by taking his only family.
It’s…brilliant, in a way.
And monstrous.
I stare at him, and even though part of me wants to scream at him that whatever he feels about who and what I am, I am still his child—I don’t.
I don’t bother.
Because it’s hearing his intensions spoken out loud that make one thing crystal clear to me: I don’t have a father anymore, and Pavel Nikitin no longer has a son.
“Pavel, this is madness!!” Stepan roars. His eyes dart to me, filled with terror.
Gunner just chuckles, shaking his head as he crosses the room. “Making a cup of tea,” he grunts over his shoulder. “Any of you?”
“Ja, boss. I’ll take one,” the guy setting up the bomb mutters.
“Hey—wreckage.”
I twist my head, my pulse thudding in my ears as I stare into Val’s eyes.
“Sorry about the shitty date,” he smiles sadly. “I swear, I had better plans for the end of it.”
“Val—”
“Don’t,” he says. “Just know that I’ve never loved anyone like I love—”
An anguished sound rips from my throat as one of Gunner’s men slaps a strip of duct tape over Val’s mouth.
My heart races as my eyes sweep the room. When my gaze lands on the man setting up the bomb on the café table across the room, I go still.
My eyes zero in on the box with the digital display that he pulls out of the duffel bag and starts wiring into the control board of the bomb.
A little rubber neon orange box, with Chinese lettering on the side of it.
Exactly like the one Vaughn showed me from the safe house bombing.
Suddenly, the pieces fall horribly into place.
“It was you,” I growl, staring at the man. He lifts his gaze from what he’s doing, frowning at me.
“The fuck did you say?”
“It was you,” I snarl, nodding at the timer in his hand that is identical to the one Vaughn said is incredibly rare to see used outside of the Chinese military.
The man’s eyes narrow.
“What are the odds,” I mutter, “that military tech that’s barely ever seen outside China gets used twice in the span of weeks, in the same American city.”
Stepan's jaw tightens before he walks over to me. “What are you saying.”
“That timer,” I growl, dipping my chin at the orange device. “It’s the same type used at the safe house.”
He scowls. “You have proof—”
“Yes,” I hiss. “It's sitting on my desk at home.”
Fire ignites in Stepan’s eyes. His back to Gunner's goons, he slides his hand into his jacket pocket and starts to pull out his gun.
“My okruzheny vragami i predatelyami!” he barks, looking at the Nikitin men.
We are surrounded by enemies and traitors.
It all happens in the blink of an eye.
Stepan and the two Russians whirl on Gunner’s men, who drop what they’re doing, lurch to their feet and yank out guns. Gunner himself whirls from where he’s been waiting for the electric kettle to boil, a pistol gleaming in his hand.
“Stepan!!” my father roars.
Stepan’s jaw stays tight as he points his gun at one of the mercs.
“Pavel,” he mutters, glaring at Gunner. “These men are traitors.”
“Lower your weapon, Stepan,” my father growls.
“I don’t think you heard me,” my father's number two says. “These men—”
“I heard you fine,” Pavel replies. “Lower your weapon. That’s a fucking order.”
“Pavel—”
“They are not traitors, Stepan!”
It hits me at the exact same moment that it does Stepan. I watch my own emotions bloom across his face—shock, refusal to believe the obvious.
Betrayal.
Because if Pavel isn’t surprised to hear that Gunner’s men set up the bomb at the safe house…
Stepan’s face goes haggard as he stares at my father.
“Pakhan, Nikolai Antonov is a powerful ally. A friend!”
My father says nothing.
“You didn’t—”
“And if I did?!” Pavel snarls. “That is my decision to make! I am in charge, Stepan! “So lower your fucking—”
He shuts up when Stepan’s gun swivel from Gunner to him.
“A war with the Antonov family would destroy us, Pavel,” Stepan growls. “It would level this empire.”
“Stepan, I’m not going to tell you again—”
“My oath is to this brotherhood, pakhan. That comes before anything else.”
He glances at me, his face tight. Then he turns to the two Nikitin men.
“Untie Roman.”
One of them takes a step toward me. But the instant he lowers his gun, Gunner suddenly yanks a second pistol out of the holster at his hip, and the whole room goes from zero to two hundred miles an hour in milliseconds.
The air is filled with the sound of cocking guns. Stepan is aiming at Gunner. Gunner is aiming at Stepan and one of my father’s men. The Nikitin guards and Gunner’s mercs are aiming at each other.
For a moment, the whole scene seems utterly frozen, like a still-life painting, or something caught on a Polaroid. The air itself seems to stop moving. Not one single person moves, breathes, or makes a fucking sound as the tension wraps and slithers around everyone’s throats like a noose.
My pulse ticks. I slowly drag my eyes to the side, meeting Val’s. He swallows, staring right back at me, and even though I can’t hear him, and can’t read his lips, I know what he’s saying when his jaw works behind the duct tape.
I love you.
I love you too, I mouth silently back.
The tension keeps pressing down with unbearable pressure.
The air crackles.
Muscles twitch.
Then suddenly, the electric kettle dings loudly…
…And all hell breaks loose, in a hail of violence and gunfire.