6. Elena
6
ELENA
A nna and I were riding high on finding out we would be making a new life for ourselves in New York City, a place we knew only from movies. We spent the summer practicing our English, so we would be prepared. Unfortunately, in the middle of my last summer at home, my sister lost her battle with her drug addiction and was found dead from an overdose. She was older than I was, so we weren’t close, and she battled demons for most of her life. That was the turning point between my mother and me, the moment I told her that I wasn’t giving up my scholarship to Juilliard because of my sister’s untimely death. And it was the moment my mother wanted nothing more to do with me. I was so desperate to get out of my town, and maybe it was selfish of me not to stay and mourn with my mother, but we lost Alexandria a long time ago when she first started using drugs. I had worked so hard to get this opportunity, to escape the bleak future that was waiting for me in Sochi. I was so angry at my sister for being so selfish with her life, only caring about finding her next hit and not her family, and yet my mother wanted me to give up my bright future to sit and mourn my sister’s dark end. I loved my sister, don’t get me wrong, but I couldn’t stay there any longer. My future was in New York, I was destined to be someone more than I could ever be if I stayed at home. I guess karma got me in the end. The bright future I thought I was choosing ended up being so much darker than any I would have had if I had stayed back in Sochi.
Who knew nearly one year to the day later, it would be my turn to die? It was the last time Elena Vasiliev and Anna Sokolov, Juilliard students, were ever seen alive.
“It’s an end-of-summer party in The Hamptons, Maxim. Everyone is going. We will meet lots of celebrities and maybe one of them will put us in their videos,” I explain to my brother, who had called to check in with me and moan about Mom and Dad and their divorce. Not long after I left for New York, the cracks in our parents’ marriage appeared, and six months later they were divorcing. My mother had already moved on to a new man, a widower, who was rich and had an already inbuilt family who needed her compared to her own that didn’t.
“Do you know these people, Elena? You need to be careful,” he asks protectively.
“Maxim. This is America, it’s not like home,” I say, rolling my eyes at my overprotective brother.
“I know. I’ve been there before. Not everyone has your or Anna’s best interests at heart,” he answers sharply.
Maxim is being annoying, but I know he is only like this because he cares. “I promise Anna and I won’t put ourselves in any danger. We know how to look after ourselves. I promise we will stay together. No drinking. No drugs. Nothing, we will stay sober,” I promise him.
“I trust you, Elena. It is the others I don’t,” he grumbles.
“Max, Anna and I have been working every single day since we arrived here. We have spent the entire summer doing classes, this is literally our last weekend of freedom before we do it all again. We need this,” I tell him.
There’s a huff down the line. “You know it’s because I worry and …”
He doesn’t need to say it because he works for some of the biggest criminals in the world. Every day my brother and Sergei, Anna’s father, see the filth of this earth. Of course, he is going to see the world through a more tainted lens than we do.
“I love you, Maxim. I know if I ever needed you, you’d be there in an instant waging war for me. Please, trust me,” I ask him.
“Fine. Have fun. Text me as soon as you get there. Check in every day so I know you are okay. Otherwise, your brother will be crashing your weekend,” he warns.
“I promise,” I tell him, and with that, we end our call.
“It’s time to party, isn’t it?” Anna asks.
I nod and we both squeal with excitement.
Anna and I are at a college friend’s holiday home for the weekend. It’s this huge estate looking over the Atlantic Ocean. Never in my life have we seen anything so opulent. Who knew people grew up like this?
“It’s skinny-dipping time, ladies,” Taylor calls out, wiggling his dark brows at the two of us as a group of them stumble toward the ocean. It’s well past midnight, and we’ve all had too many bottles of beer.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I tell Anna.
“Look at the ocean, it’s calm. It’s a full moon. There’s nothing to worry about,” Anna reassures me.
“Except sharks?” I add with a giggle.
She waves my fear away. “There are no sharks. Please, will you do this? I’ve been trying to work up the courage to kiss Taylor all evening and this is my chance,” Anna pleads with me. She’s been crushing on Taylor Lee all year since he broke up with bitchy Brooke, but she’s too shy to make a move. It’s only fair I should help my girl out and give her this weekend of fun with a hot guy before we are back into grueling hours of training.
“Come on then.” I grin as we run through the sand toward the water’s edge.
“Anna, I bet I can beat you to that orange buoy,” Taylor says, giving my friend a wide grin.
“Are you challenging me, Lee?” Anna bites back as she slowly starts to kick off her shoes, then peels off her sundress and exposes her skimpy underwear. Taylor’s eyes widen to saucers as he takes in Anna’s near-naked body.
“Yeah, I am.” He grins, his eyes never leaving my friend.
“What do I get if I win?” she asks, placing her hands on her hips.
“Meet me at the buoy and you’ll find out.” Taylor smirks as he kicks off his shoes, removes his T-shirt and then board shorts and runs into the water naked.
“Bye.” Anna waves to me as she rushes after him.
“He’s been wanting Anna since the day you two arrived at school,” Niko Matthews states. He is Taylor’s best friend and my current crush.
“He was with Brooke.”
“And now he’s not,” Niko adds.
Oh, maybe my friend is going to get lucky tonight with the man of her dreams after all. “Guess we’ll see who is the first one to the buoy.”
“Pretty sure they are both going to win, Taylor did enter the water naked,” Niko says with a chuckle.
“Hey, my friend isn’t that easy,” I say, turning and pointing my finger at him in warning.
Niko holds up his hands in the air but gives me a lazy smirk. “True, the water is probably cold. Wouldn’t give the best first impression.”
That makes me laugh until yelling pulls my attention from my crush to the water. It’s Taylor screaming. He’s standing on the buoy and he’s alone. My stomach sinks as I desperately look around the ocean for Anna’s blonde head that seconds ago was bobbing along the inky black surface right beside Taylor. I lost her when she went around the right-hand side of the buoy.
“Shit, Anna,” Niko curses as he begins to pull off his clothes.
I do the same. Where the hell are you, Anna? You better not be messing around, now is not the time. I kick off my shoes, peel off my dress, and jump into the dark water. It’s a hell of a lot colder than the summer temperature would have you thinking. My arms push through the current, every part of me aching as panic laces my skin. I continue, seeing myself getting closer and closer to where Taylor and Niko are standing on the buoy and screaming out into the water for Anna.
Next thing I know, something grabs me, and I am pulled beneath the surface before I even have a chance to scream. A breathing apparatus is shoved over my face before something pinches me and everything turns dark.
I don’t know how long it has been when I wake up, but I am in a bright white, fluorescent, sterile booth. I’m in what appears to be a gray jumpsuit stuck in a glass box. What the hell is happening?
“Good to see you are awake, Miss Vasiliev.” A voice comes through in stereo into the room.
“Who are you? Where am I? Where’s Anna?” I scream into the white abyss.
“All questions that will be answered shortly. Please have something to eat and drink and we will take you to Anna,” the voice explains.
Am I high? Or is this heaven? Did I drown? I don’t understand what’s happening.
Moments later, a tray with a bread roll and a bottle of water is pushed through a slot. Am I in jail? My stomach grumbles and it sounds like they want me to eat before bringing me to Anna. I quickly shovel the roll into my mouth and throw back the bottle of water. Once I place the empty bottle back on the tray, a loud buzz fills the room, and the door to my cage swings open. Standing before me is a large man in a suit, looking like he’s stepped off the set of Men in Black, and a young woman who looks equally as blank.
“Thank you for following instructions so perfectly, Miss Vasiliev. You may now follow me,” the man states.
I hesitate for a moment, confused by what is happening, but they said they would take me to Anna, and I’ll do anything they say if it means we are reunited. I follow them both down a long corridor. We take a left and then a right, and we arrive at another glass room. I can see Anna is in the box, she is curled up into a ball, crying. My hand reaches out and touches the glass as tears fall down my cheeks seeing my best friend lying there broken. The door to the room opens, and I don’t wait for the robotic people to tell me to enter, I rush toward my friend.
“Anna, it’s me. I’m here. You’re safe,” I say to her in Russian.
Anna screams when she sees me, then wraps her arms around me tightly. Her entire body is shaking with fear as I try to soothe her.
“I promise, I’ll get you out of here. Wherever we are.”
“That is going to be doubtful, Miss Vasiliev, you are currently in a CIA secure location,” the robot man explains as he and the woman come into the room and take a seat in front of us. They place a manila folder with our names on it on the table.
CIA?
Anna looks up at me, and I can read it on her face, we are so fucked.
That’s the night Anna and I met our handlers, Agent Adam Jankovic, who was assigned to Anna, and Agent Laura Pan, who was now mine. They explained to us who my father, Maxim, and Sergei really were. I knew they ran in the wrong circles, but I didn’t realize to what extent. Seeing photos of Maxim and Sergei killing people and voice recordings of my father ordering hits was a lot to take in. I knew they were mixed up with the Bratva, but never to that level. The agents explained to Anna and me that we either joined them on their new program infiltrating the Bratva or we would stay dead, and this glass box would be our home permanently. Not much of a choice now, is it?
My stomach sinks at the thought that my family thinks I’m dead. Maxim will be blaming himself because he warned me to be careful about going to The Hamptons, and I brushed off his concern. I’m also worried about my mother. Not long after commemorating the anniversary of one daughter’s death, she is now having to commemorate another. And Sergei, he has no one else left in the world except Anna. How is this fair? It’s cruel.
“No. I won’t do it,” Anna screams at the agents.
“Anna!” I hiss, grabbing her arm as she cries hysterically.
“He has no one, Elena. They can’t do this to him.” Anna cries.
I pull her into my arms and hug her tightly. “They will send him to jail, Anna, for the rest of his life. He will have enemies there, ones that have no problem ending him. They will kill him in there,” I tell my friend in Russian. How does she not understand we have no choice?
“He will die if he thinks I’m dead.” She wails at me.
There is a chance that could happen, that Sergei’s heartache will be so much that he decides to end it all. But I have faith that Maxim will keep his will to live going. That he won’t let him slip into the darkness, that he will save him enough that he will get to see Anna again.
“If we do this. There’s a chance we can go home. This will be a small blip in the grand scheme of things,” I try to persuade her.
“We will never be ballerinas. Our dreams are over,” she tells me.
“You were never going to be ballerinas,” Agent Jankovic states bluntly.
We both still and turn to where he is sitting.
“You are both talented, but we were the ones that got you into Juilliard,” he explains.
Everything stills in me.
The life I had never existed, it was all a game to get us to this point. There’s no escaping.
“You played the long game. We don’t have a choice, do we?” I ask him.
“You do, technically …” he says, shrugging his shoulders.
“What happens if we aren’t cut out for whatever it is you want us to do?” I ask him.
“Guess you’re going to have to give it your best shot and hope it works,” he states seriously.
After that first meeting, Anna and I were allowed to stay with each other as we did weeks and weeks of psychological exams. They tried to break us, and a couple of times they did. That’s when I let the old Elena go and started to embrace whoever the hell they wanted me to be. There was no escaping. They had their hands wrapped around my throat and were slowly squeezing the life out of me.
There was no other choice.
I sacrificed myself for my family and never looked back.
“I’m so sorry, I did this to you,” Maxim says, his voice wavering with emotion as he stands up and walks over to where I’m sitting, pulls me up out of my seat, and hugs me so tightly. “If I hadn’t been me, this would never have happened to you.”
“This isn’t your fault, Max. Please, don’t blame yourself. I didn’t tell you my story to make you feel bad. It’s the agency’s, fault,” I tell him as my eyes narrow over Maxim’s shoulder and glare at Damon.
He nods in understanding.
“There’s been too much guilt over this fucked up world we’ve all been thrust into. Maybe this was always written in the stars for us, Max. Karma for generations of living in the world’s underbelly.”
“I’ll be the first to say, I’m sorry for misjudging you,” Sophie says from where she’s sitting.
“You were the only one judging her,” Mackenzie snips.
Sophie glares at her sister before continuing her words, “They gave you no choice other than to be their killing machine and I honestly don’t know if I could have survived that life.”
Guess that is high praise from her. “You would have coped,” I say.
Sophie shakes her head. “As much as I would like to think I’m that much of a badass, yeah, I don’t think I am.”
“What happened to Anna then?” Sergei asks.
I look over at the old man, and my stomach turns. “One year after our training we were both sent on our first mission. They told us that it would be one day, then we would be back at the agency. Anna and I wished each other luck, we were both so scared. We didn’t know how we were going to be able to seduce our targets, let alone kill them. We’d never killed anyone before. I went and did what I had to do and made it back to the pick-up zone and then headed back to the agency. That night, one by one, the recruits came back, all except Anna.” Sergei’s face drops. “No one would answer my questions. I tried so hard to find her, but the very next day I was sent off to become a jewel. And I never got back to the agency again till I needed extraction in Moscow. I never stopped looking for her, Sergei,” I tell him.
“That’s because your information is hidden at the highest level. Or so my contacts say,” Brooks explains.
“Even I don’t have high enough clearance regarding Anna’s files,” Damon adds.
“Where the hell is she?” Sergei demands.
“Wherever she is, I’m going to find her. I promise you,” I tell him.