Chapter 5 Noah
Noah
My shoes crunch over the fine gravel behind Colossus.
The loading dock is so quiet that every step I take, I feel like someone is listening.
I’ve felt like that all week, actually.
Like there was a pair of eyes on me.
Paranoia because I think Torin’s watching me, or because of what I’m about to do for Roman? No goddamn clue.
The crickets and the low buzz of the street lamp are the only sounds in the air.
I sure as fuck haven’t been behind Colossus dining hall very much during my time on the Crimson campus.
Back here, there are two big, white semi trucks that are empty, parked beneath the tall lamp post, but there’s not much else in sight.
Tall, green trees line the far edge of the small parking lot, and I’m leaning against the trunk of one of them now, staying in the dark.
I scan around for a security camera. I see only one, but it’s pointing toward the white trucks, in the opposite direction of where I’m standing.
It’s strange seeing the campus like this. At this time of night during the regular school year, there would usually be the occasional student walking back to their dorm, but in summer, everything is emptier by now.
As I walked past the stone buildings on the way here, I almost felt like Crimson College was a ghost town, lit only by the occasional glow of the outdoor lanterns and posts.
I keep my head on a swivel.
Where the fuck is Roman’s cousin?
Roman told me very little about the guy.
His name is Maks Petrov, apparently.
And he works with Roman’s mafia side of the family in… some capacity.
That’s all I know.
My phone says it’s four minutes past when he was supposed to show up, and whatever trade I’m making tonight is supposed to happen in another minute.
“Any fucking second now,” I whisper under my breath, clenching my fist and then letting it go.
I see a figure coming toward me from the dark end of the parking lot and I straighten my spine.
Finally.
The guy who shows up actually does look a lot like Roman. He’s not nearly as tall or as thickly muscled, and he has about half of the amount of tattoos that Roman does, but his hair is dark, too, and cut short on the sides and longer on the top.
He’s wearing a similar jacket to the one Roman wears a lot in the winter, with denim on the outside and some sort of fuzzy fleece on the inside of its popped collar. It isn’t exactly cold out, but the jacket is stylish, and that’s probably the point.
There are two other men behind him.
Roman didn’t mention that any other men would be here. But I suppose it makes sense that mafia types never like to move alone.
“Taking this for?” he asks me.
“Roman Petrov,” I tell him.
His cousin doesn’t respond for a moment, looking down at a box that one of the other guys is holding.
“Good, good,” he finally says.
A man of few words like Roman, too.
The other guy hands him the box and he brings out a knife to cut open the tape at the top of it. He rips the cardboard open, looking inside, then nodding. Something about the way they’re doing it makes my hair stand on end.
It’s like what I’ve seen in the movies.
For some reason, I thought that people with mob ties wouldn’t be like this. So blatantly doing illegal shit, right in the middle of campus. I’m waiting for him to bring out a finger covered in white powder and test it on his gums, but I’m not even certain it’s drugs in the box to begin with.
Maks Petrov seems satisfied with whatever he’s looking at.
He reaches the box over to me and I’m already saying ten little silent prayers that this is going to be over with soon.
The low rumble of an engine suddenly cuts through the air. I glance up and a black SUV is pulling up fast on the road down below us, down the hill from the loading dock.
Maks yanks back the box right before I can grab it, then nods toward the SUV.
“Who did you bring?”
I blink at him.
“Bring?”
“This SUV is some friend of yours, correct?”
“What? No. I don’t know anyone with an SUV. I just came alone—”
“Fuck,” he mutters, shoving the box back into his associate’s hand. I see him reaching in his pocket and when he pulls out a small gun, my heart plummets in my chest.
“Wait. What’s going on?” I ask.
“Quiet. Stay right fucking here, behind us,” he tells me.
Another figure is coming at us now, through the thicket of trees between the road and where we’re standing.
A tight knot twists in my chest, and the fact that this guy told me to stay put somehow makes it worse.
The other guy coming toward us is tall.
And he looks nothing at all like Roman’s family.
His hair is lighter and it’s buzzed very short.
And as he approaches, he keeps his hands in his front hoodie pockets, but the most intimidating thing about the stranger is that he’s looking past the Petrov guys.
He’s looking directly at me.
He approaches Roman’s cousin and I try to shrink behind the men in front of me, already toying with the idea of making a break for it. I lean back against a tree trunk again, trying to seem calm even though I’m starting to freak the fuck out.
“Talk,” Maks says before the guy’s even stopped walking.
The stranger ignores Maks.
“Move,” the guy says as an ice-cold ripple shoots down my spine.
In a flash, the stranger lunges behind Petrov.
He grabs me, pushing me off of the tree trunk, and I almost stumble and fall to the ground.
“I’m only here to make a trade,” I say in a shaky voice, and Roman’s cousin shouts over the top of me at the same time.
“Get your hands off of him.”
Suddenly Maks is pointing his gun at the stranger, and my adrenaline surges to a new height.
The other man leans close to my ear.
He reeks of cigarette smoke. Vodka. Faint, sharp cologne.
“Shut your fucking mouth and move with me,” he says in a stern voice.
I see the gleam of metal coming out of the stranger’s pocket and I hope to God I’m wrong about what it is.
But I’m not.
“Let him the fuck go,” Roman’s cousin says. “I will shoot you.”
The stranger grips my arm hard and drags me a little further along underneath the tree tops, taking us onto the dark, grassy pathway.
Then I feel a cold, hard metal hit the side of my ribcage.
He has a gun on me.
The barrel is pressed up to the edge of my torso as the man immobilizes my arm, moving us along the edge of the path.
I can see now that there are at least three other men with him, too.
He brought friends, just like Maks did.
Holy shit.
He whips around to face Maks again and yanks my arm at the same time, pulling it so hard I’m afraid it might rip from its socket.
I turn my head backward, looking for any sign of other people nearby. Campus security, or fuck, even a random group of students.
But there’s nobody behind me.
Fuck.
Fucking fuck.
Don’t panic.
My heart rate is racing. I can feel each beat like a drum as the stranger pulls me harder again.
He yells at Maks.
“You are giving me that box, or I shoot this worthless fuck in his head.”
Maks gives him a steady gaze. “You aren’t doing that. And you have no right to this package.”
The stranger pushes me again and shoves the metal deeper against my ribs. As I stumble, I trip over a knotted tree trunk on the ground and fall against his black jacket, my face buried in the stench of him.
“Move,” he tells me under his breath, and then he’s pulling me forward.
We’re walking down the pathway and for a few beats, Maks doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t even seem like he’s chasing after us.
I try to look back at him, and I can see him and his two friends all have their guns drawn, now, but they’re staying silent.
“What the fuck is going on?” I demand, shouting loudly.
“Don’t talk,” the stranger roars at me.
The summer ghost-town feeling is ten times worse now. I look all around for a sign of anyone at all, but it feels like this is the emptiest Crimson has ever been. I can’t see past the trees on one side, and on the other, I see the black SUV that we’re heading towards.
Is Maks really just going to let this happen?
He’s going to let me be fucking kidnapped because he’d rather protect whatever the fuck is in that box?
I’m more certain than ever I’m going to die tonight. Or worse, tortured and held as prisoner in some mafia war, and who the fuck knows what these freaks will do to me in the interim.
The switchblade.
Where did I put the goddamn switchblade?
I’d felt silly earlier bringing the knife at all, and I even considered leaving it behind because I thought I’d never need to use it. One of my hands is still free, and I awkwardly try to move without this guy realizing it as he pulls me down the hill.
I reach slowly with my free hand down toward my front pocket, but I don’t feel the blade there.
It’s in the pocket that’s on the same side I currently have a goddamn gun pointed at me.
Think, Vancliff.
Fucking think.
“Shit. I—I think I left my bag back at the parking lot. I have a lot of cash in there. I have so much money I could pay you with, actually, so could we just go back?”
I sound pathetic even to myself. I can hear the falseness and desperation in my own voice.
I really would give him money, fuck, I would shower him with cash if he let me go alive. But why should he believe that?
He shoves the gun harder against my ribs and I groan in pain.
“Shut up,” he barks at me.
We’re getting closer to the SUV now and something about it seems particularly bad, very, very bad, like if I get inside that vehicle something truly terrible is going to happen to me.
His associates all have guns drawn, too, just like Maks’ did, and I realize that I’m literally at the center of what could erupt into a mafia gun fight.
I use my peripheral vision to glance at the side of the guy.
If he didn’t have goddamn steel pressed up against me I would think I could take him with no issue, but…
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
We’re near the car now.
I can see that the driver’s seat is empty, but there is another man in the passenger seat, looking out at us in the dim glow of the street lamp on the sidewalk.