29. Roman
CHAPTER 29
Roman
“Zver, you can’t go on like this,” says Kazan. “You are wasting your time.”
I’m loading my weapons, my back turned on him. We’ve pulled up to the latest location I’ve tracked Katerina to. The others have been duds or dead ends.
My team has analyzed every second recorded by the cameras on the factory grounds and have used facial recognition technology to identify the assailant.
His name is JC Howell, Katerina’s partner in the kidnapping scheme. The same asshole whose teeth I knocked out and part of the same crew who left Katerina behind.
Fozzil’s death has angered him. It’s made him bold enough to seek revenge.
He probably figures he has little else to lose since I’ve made it clear his little band of criminals are on my hit list. Why not strike first by taking Katerina?
I get the reasoning. I understand the move he’s made. But he doesn’t realize what he’s done.
His life will be hell. His existence will become agony.
He’ll be torn limb from limb, and I’ll relish the pain and torment he experiences. If he’s harmed my kitty cat in any way, I will do so much worse to him.
“Zver,” Kazan says. “Zver, do you hear me?”
“You seem to think you’re able to negotiate this, Shram. There is no negotiation. If you have no interest in participating, then you can get the fuck out.”
“I’m more concerned with the war you’ve waged on the sovietnik. You are not taking it seriously enough.”
“If the sovietnik has anything to do with Katerina’s disappearance, trust me, Shram. I am taking it more serious than any fucking thing. I will get answers. If you’re not here to assist, then get the fuck out of my way.”
Our bodies collide as I turn and stride forward. My broad shoulder knocks him half a step back, clearing my path ahead.
We’ve turned up outside a strip of worn-down apartment buildings in the Williamsburg area. A poorer side of the city where we’ve tracked down those associated with Katerina.
My men follow me obediently up the flights of metal stairs and down the corridor on the third floor. Coming up on the door, I don’t hesitate exerting my full strength to kick it in. My heel slams into the door’s surface, the kick hard, abrupt, and forceful.
The door gives, flying open and granting us entry.
We rush inside with guns drawn.
There’s two men inside smoking blunts on bean bags, the big screen TV loud as fuck. They have delayed reactions as the living room fills with men carrying weapons.
“Woah… what…” the first one asks, his eyes bleary.
I deck him across the jaw and send the marijuana blunt flying out his mouth. He’s left reeling as his head rolls on his shoulder, practically knocked out from my punch. I grab him by the front of his shirt and half lift him off the bean bag.
“Where’s JC?” I growl.
The other pot smoker has been thrown to the ground, rifles pointed at his head by my men. He’s already pissed himself, weeping into the carpet as he begs for mercy.
“JC…” mumbles the guy I’m gripping. “What… you’ve… you’ve got the wrong place, man.”
I look up in the same second a third man appears in the hallway connecting the living room and kitchen with the bedroom and bathroom.
I recognize him immediately.
Finch Freedman.
Otherwise known as the mastermind in Katerina’s little group. The same man who had orchestrated the kidnapping attempt and then subsequently ditched her at the apartment when I was tied up like the fucking coward he is.
A rage so blinding I black out comes over me.
For the next sixty seconds, I’m a bull charging through the apartment.
Chaos explodes as my men hold the two pot smokers at gunpoint and then a few of them break off to follow me in my pursuit of Finch.
I come to in the bedroom, on top of a gasping Finch. Half his teeth knocked out, blood everywhere, my fist drawn back for yet another savage blow.
“Zver!” Oleg calls out. “Get the information first. You’ll kill him soon.”
He’s right—another few to the skull, and I’ll do permanent if not lethal damage to his brain.
I blink out of my dazed rage, breathing like a ragged beast. “Where is she?” I grunt, then I shake him by the front of his shirt. His head bobs like he’s a bobblehead. “WHERE IS SHE?”
“I don’t… know who…”
He can’t even finish before I give into my fury and punch him yet again. His head snaps back from the blunt force of my giant, clenched fist. His eyes go vacant as if barely hanging onto consciousness.
“Where is Katerina?” I spit. “Your partner JC took her, ublyudok? * ! Say it now or I’m ripping your fucking head off!”
“Do what you want! You already killed my brother. You think I give a fuc?—”
I unsheathe my hunting knife and ram it into his face before the last syllable. The fucker wasn’t about to give any info. The fucker, like JC, was getting revenge for Fozzil’s death. They’re defiant even now.
They’ve done something with Katerina and every second she’s out of my sight is another second closer to a grim ending.
The intense rage I’m feeling masks the other deeper emotion buried inside me—the slow-growing panic that I might not find her. That if I finally do locate her whereabouts, it’ll be too late.
We make our next stop on the map of locations she could be.
Her friend Rosita looks on the verge of passing out when we show up on her doorstep. She’s a curvy woman with long, curly hair and light brown skin whose complexion loses some of its color the second she sees us.
“P-please… I’m not sure where she is,” she stammers out. “I’m… I’m just a hairstylist and a single mom. I don’t want any trouble.”
Her fear is genuine. I can smell it on her as she quakes and barely meets my eyes.
This is the woman Katerina insisted she be able to call. This is the one friend she claimed to have.
My intention showing up is unlike the other locations we’ve visited. Rosita won’t be hurt so long as she’s not involved in what’s going on.
Typically, I prefer not to hurt women if it can be avoided. In my world, they’re often used as pawns by the men who are really in charge.
“I have questions for you,” I say, walking her back. My men follow inside her apartment, shutting the door and obediently standing guard. “You answer the questions, no harm will come your way.”
“S-she’s been calling me… from an unknown number. That’s all I know. I promise! Please,” she sobs, covering her face.
I grab her wrists and pry her hands away. “Do you know a man named JC Howell?”
Sniffling, she nods. “Sort of. Kat worked with him on… stuff.”
“I know they were in a criminal gang together. What can you tell me about him?”
“N-not much. He came around looking for her a few days ago. He was upset about Fozzil’s passing.”
“What was he wearing? Where did he go?”
“A hoodie and some ripped jeans. I didn’t see where he went. I’m sorry, I was just trying to get inside my apartment as quick as I could. I told Kat about it. The last time we talked…”
“You did?” My eyes narrow.
“Yesterday,” she says, tears leaking down her cheeks. “I told her about that and the Russian men who’ve come by. Not you. Others. They’ve been looking for her.”
I loom closer to the frightened woman, processing every new piece of info she’s providing. Even if she doesn’t grasp how helpful it is, what she’s said are things I didn’t know.
“What kind of Russian men? Describe them.”
Ten minutes later, we leave Rosita Garcia’s apartment with more information than when we arrived. The men she’s described sound unfamiliar. They’re not men from Uncle Leonid’s crew or my father’s main crew of men. Did my father use others knowing I would suspect his most prominent soldiers?
“Keep an eye on her apartment. Make sure no one else stops by to harm her.”
I think of Katerina as I give the command to my crew.
It’s what she would want—her best friend protected against whomever is trying to fuck with us.
Now, if only I could do the same for Katerina. If I could figure out where the hell she’s been taken.
“Hold on,” I whisper, returning to the group of Hummers we’ve brought. “Hold on, kitty cat. I’m coming.”
“Zver, you have a visitor,” my soldier Dmitri announces.
We’ve arrived at the factory that’s my central operations. All seventy-five inches of him stands stoic and resolute, waiting for me as I hop out of the Hummer and start for the factory doors. He falls into step with me to inform me of this visitor.
“She said she might have some information that’s of interest,” he says. “I was going to turn her away, but she insisted.”
“I have no fucking time to waste. It better be important.”
Ivanka arches a brow when I stride into the room that I’ve been using for war planning. She’s as petulant and irritating as ever, arms folded over her chest and legs crossed as if she’s dissatisfied already.
The bitch better have something of use or I just might break my rule about harming women.
“What the fuck do you want?” I snarl. “If this is you showing up to sell me more of your girls?—”
“Where have you been, Zver?” she interrupts.
“Out.”
“You seem upset. Is everything alright?”
“Get the fuck out if you’ve got nothing important!” I thrust a finger at the door, the veins in my neck throbbing. “You never should’ve been allowed in here in the first fucking place!”
“Are you sure about that? I think you might want to know what I have to say.”
“What?” I spit. “Tell me now!”
She smirks. “This info feels so valuable. Maybe I deserve something in exchange.”
Of fucking course.
Of course a woman like her would bargain even words. The only existence she’s ever known has been the life of a prostitute and then madam. She does nothing for free.
“Tell me the info first,” I grit out. “Then I will compensate.”
She shakes her head to the side. “Not good enough. How do I know you won’t cheat me? Your cheap uncle loves to. He fucks my girls and then refuses to pay.”
My temper snaps like it had earlier with Finch.
In less than a second, I’ve rushed toward her, clenching my hand around her throat. I’ve lifted her out of the chair, glaring darkly into her pale face.
“You have five seconds before I snap your neck.”
But Ivanka’s not like Katerina or Rosita.
Women who aren’t used to being roughed up. A woman like Ivanka has experienced the worst from men in the bratva.
There’s little I could do to truly shake her. The simple threat of violence doesn’t work.
“The girl you were with,” she says in her thick accent. “The one with the purple hair. What happened to her?”
“You know where she is? Tell me now!”
“I didn’t believe it at first. Leonid insisted she was not a real pet. He told me you had pretended. You hadn’t really bought her. But then I saw her. She is a real whore.”
An urgency so intense the room begins to spin takes over me. I rattle her hard and snarl some more in her face. “Tell me where she fucking is!”
“In Easton,” she says, smirking despite my rough treatment. “At the market. She’s up for sale, Zver. Will you buy her back?”
Ivanka’s thrown to the floor as I rush for the door.
There’s no time to waste. If what she’s said is true, I have to make it before she’s sold. Before she disappears into obscurity forever.
We make it to Easton in record time. My men flank me as I stride toward the entrance to the Midnight Society’s marketplace, where humans are sold for the right price. The guards at the door attempt to turn me away without realizing who the fuck I am.
Pure rage clenches onto my face as I prepare to crack skulls to get inside.
“Zver!” calls a familiar voice first.
I turn at the sound of the pakhan. He’s arrived with no shortage of soldiers himself, dressed to the nines in a perfectly tailored suit. He wouldn’t be the only one—most of the guests attending the society’s marketplace do so in fancy suits and dresses.
I’m the outlier in a crewneck, cargo pants, and combat boots.
“Pakhan,” I say. “I didn’t realize you were here. You visit the marketplace?”
“Occasionally,” he says, smirking. “Some of the shows are very good. You can join my table.”
Together with his crew of men and mine, we bypass the guards at the entrance. I’m much more preoccupied with locating Katerina as the pakhan prattles on about the state of our organization.
If I have to disobey his wishes and go off to the private rooms just to find Katerina, I will. If I have to tear every door in this place down to find her, I will. It could cost me my position within the bratva, but considering the circumstance, I’ve stopped giving a fuck.
I’ll do anything to find her.
We’re led into what’s a theater with dozens of tables and a large stage at the front. Giant bird cages hover midair, where I’m assuming the people being sold are made to stay until they’re purchased.
“Drink, Zver?” the pakhan asks.
A bottle of some of the most expensive vodka available has been delivered to our table.
I absentmindedly nod my head, more concerned with scanning the theater. Several women in scantily clad outfits have strut out to work the crowd and even help serving drinks. Each woman I study, searching for the one face I’m desperate to see.
Katerina.
The desperation inside me mounts. My pulse thumps faster, echoing in my ears.
I’m obsessed, no longer blinking as I scour the large room for her.
And then I see her.
Or a woman who looks like her identical twin—except she has dark hair. She’s up toward the front of the theater in the same sparkly bra and g-string as the other women.
I half rise out of my chair, staring hard at the woman to make sure.
She looks up as if sensing my presence, her expression so lifeless it’s deeply troubling. Our gazes connect and it’s in that second I’m launching forward.
It’s her.
My kitty cat.
* ? ublyudok - bastard