Chapter 16 - Beatrice
“Here, try this.” Anja shoved a container of pad Thai right under my nose. “Arko says it’s too much spice, but I’m telling you, it’s the best Thai food out there.”
Anja, Alena, and I were sprawled across my bed, digging into far too much take-out and just generally catching up. In other words, gossiping. I’d got some pizza, while Alena ordered in sushi, and as for Anja?
She ordered Thai for an army.
I took a bite of the noodles straight out of the container and instantly regretted trusting Anja in the first place. “Oh my god!” I squealed, as tears sprang to my eyes.
“Water.” I waved my hand over my burning face and tongue. “Water!”
Alena laughed, not sounding sympathetic at all, and handed me a glass. “Weakling. You and my brother belong together.”
Well, I didn’t know about that. I was still unsure what this thing with Arko was, especially after the argument we had yesterday. Sometimes, I thought Arko and I would never see eye to eye, and I wondered whether two people could belong together when they were always on opposing ends.
But then again, opposites attract, right? So I downed the water and tried to catch a breath, not bothering to correct Alena.
“Where is he, anyway?” Anja asked, replacing that trauma-inducing pad Thai in my hand with a plate of sushi. “Our dear brother.”
“Out,” I shrugged. “For work.”
“Ooh…mysterious.” Alena wiggled her eyebrows at me.
“I guess he has to keep his secrets, with the kinds of things he does,” I said, with a little more bite in my tone than intended.
Alena and Anja exchanged concerned looks, then Alena looked at me. “Just what kind of things do you think he’s up to, huh?” Her voice was gentle, almost teasing, but I heard the undercurrent of caution, almost like I’d stepped on her toes.
“Oh, I don’t know.” I didn’t really want to talk about Arko. It had been such fun, catching up and bonding with the girls and forgetting about Arko for a while. “All I’m saying is, he’s in the Bratva, right? He probably does unspeakable things on a daily basis that could land him in prison.”
“You know,” Anja said kindly, setting her food aside to sit up straighter. “He’s not all that much of a monster. I mean, I get it. The way he brought you here was wrong. We’ve told him that.”
“You have?” I asked, surprised.
“Of course,” Anja nodded. “We’re his sisters, not his yes-women. But there’s more to him than what you’ve seen.”
“Really?” I asked, skeptically as I put aside my own plate to lean back against the headboard.
“Uh-huh.” Alena twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “Even at work, he keeps everything secret, especially all the good stuff he does. I don’t know what his deal is, but he likes being seen as someone dangerous even though he’s a total softie at heart.”
I grabbed a pillow and held it over my chest, cuddling tight as I furrowed my brows with genuine curiosity. “What good stuff can anyone really do in a mob organization?”
“You’d be surprised,” said Anja softly. “Not all crime families are bad.”
“I know that,” I said, the defensiveness rising in my voice. “I come from one too, remember? But I know none of us are saints.”
“No,” Anja smiled. “None of us is. But Arko is as close to one as he gets. He just never wants anyone to know. Thinks it’ll ruin his big, scary reputation or something,” she sighed wistfully.
“Did you know he paid for his assistant Marta’s son’s entire cancer treatment?
” She crossed her legs and leaned forward, propping her chin up on her elbows.
“Six figures, paid in full, because the kid had no insurance, and he never told anyone. I only found out because I saw the hospital bills in his office.”
“Really?” I felt my eyes widen at this story, the likes of which I hadn’t heard before. At least, not when Arko was involved. “That’s…something.”
“Oh gosh, Alena, and remember that time he found out one of his men was beating his wife?” Anja gushed, turning to her sister with a look of pride on her face.
“He not only fired him, but Arko told him he doesn’t want him near his ex-wife, then bought her a house on the other side of the city and made sure she had security until the restraining order went through. ”
As the girls continued to share these incredibly kind stories of Arko, I found myself leaning in to hang on to every word. His kindness shone through, no doubt. And still, somehow, my heart was conflicted.
If what they said was true, if Arko truly was this spectacularly good man, then why the hell didn’t he let me see that side to him? Why did he fight me every step of the way? Why, for someone with such kindness, was it so incredibly hard to be compassionate toward my brothers?
That seed of doubt gnawed at me, even after Anja and Alena left. That night, I found it impossible to think of anything else but Arko. All evening, I asked the staff repeatedly whether he was back home.
I didn’t know why, but a loose plan had started forming in my head. I needed to see, for myself, just who Arko was when he wasn’t obsessed with revenge. That side of him I heard about today? I wanted to be privy to it.
I knew one thing for certain. If I asked him about this, he’d shut me down. If what Alena and Anja said was true, he’d keep all this goodness in him a secret, to the very end. So, maybe the best thing I could do was to catch him in the act so he couldn’t hide from me.
Later that night, I went to my bedroom. Arko still hadn’t returned, and I’d eaten dinner alone. I was about to turn off the lights and get into bed, already anticipating a sleepless night, when I heard tires over gravel.
I rushed to the window and saw Arko stepping out of a car. The shadows were strong that night, but I knew it was him from the broadness of those shoulders, the clean cuts of that suit. Even in the dark, my eyes were drawn to him.
I watched, surprised to see that he didn’t walk into the house. Instead, he made his way through the garden arbor. It was well past midnight, and a strange hour to take a stroll at this hour.
Without even thinking, curiosity burning deep, I pulled on a robe and some shoes and rushed out the door and down the stairs.
But instead of heading out the main door, where his men on patrol might see me, I went out through the back door in the kitchen, which gave me a vantage point view of the lawns beyond.
I stood at the doorway, watching as he walked fast. Really fast, his strides long and urgent, like he had somewhere urgent to be. Without thinking, I followed to gain ground, and then he started heading downhill toward the bottom of the big yard, where only the pool house was.
I felt my blood turn cold.
The pool house was a small stone building set away from the main house, surrounded by overgrown rose bushes. I’d never been inside because Arko had told me it needed renovation and wasn’t safe.
So what the hell was he going there for?
I crept closer and kept low. Dread turned my heart to race, for I felt in my bones that there was a secret kept hidden in that pool house.
Or someone.
The night air skimmed against my skin, making me shiver.
I started into a slow jog, quick enough to catch up, but not enough to get caught.
I watched Arko stop outside the pool house, looking left and right like he didn’t want to be caught, before he went inside and closed the door firmly behind him.
Whatever he was hiding in there, he didn’t want it discovered. I knew getting caught tonight was a bad fucking idea, and I couldn’t exactly just storm in there and demand answers, so I crept closer until I reached the old garden shed, right next to the pool house.
From there, if I managed to get to a certain height, I knew I would have had a clear view through the grimy window on the right side of the pool house. I climbed onto a discarded, forgotten crate and looked inside.
That’s when dread and any sense of wrongness turned to pure panic. I wish I’d never come, for what I saw had bile rising in my throat.
Arko stood there, with his back to the window, flanked by two men on either side. Before them, on his knees, was a man bound and gagged, staring up at Arko with fear-filled eyes.
I watched breathlessly as Arko pulled a gun and raised it to the man’s head. I could feel the man’s terror, see it play out in the desperate way he tried to free himself, begging for mercy by falling further to the floor. Then, on Arko’s nod, one of the men removed the gag.
I couldn’t hear from where I stood, but I watched as Arko and the man spoke. Whatever Arko wanted to know, I guessed the man told him.
That’s when I felt relief. If Arko got what he wanted, that man could walk out. The gun was only there to scare him.
How wrong I was.
For the very next second, I saw the man hit the floor, blood pooling around him. It happened so fast, the kill, that I had to slam my hands over my mouth to keep from screaming. My entire body trembled, my knees bucking below me on the crate in panic.
I staggered down from my perch and away from the window, my stomach lurching.
I’d grown up in a crime family. I knew what my brothers did.
But seeing Arko kill like this in cold blood made me feel sick to my stomach.
My brothers never killed without motive, and Arko had none, from what I saw.
He killed that man after getting the answers he wanted, and nothing in my head justified such an act.
I pressed myself against the shed wall, breathing slowly through my mouth in long bursts so I didn’t hurt. I needed to get away, but my legs felt numb.
Before I could convince my body to move, to run back to safety, I heard the pool house door open and footsteps setting out.
I pressed myself further into the shadows, crouching to my haunches and folding into myself in an attempt to make myself as small as possible.
“Get rid of the body,” Arko ordered. “We need to make sure it’s never found and tied back to us.”
A lump formed in my throat, the shock and terror now giving way to disappointment. After what Anya and Anja said about his supposed kindness, what I saw tonight made no sense at all.
Maybe they didn’t know Arko at all. The tears were threatening to fall down my face, and I was about to drift away, into my own head, until they passed, when another man approached.
“Did he say anything about the girls, boss?” he asked, his voice etched with concern. “We haven’t been able to find where they’re being kept?”
Immediately, my ears perked up. Girls? What girls?
“Oh, we got it out of the bastard before I killed him,” Arko said, and I could hear the vengeance in his voice. “Yuri here has the location. Make sure you don’t frighten them during the rescue.”
“Of course, boss.” The new member of their party said. “Still can’t believe it. I heard some of those girls are barely into adulthood.”
“How many are there?” Arko asked, his voice tinged with such clear pain that I felt my heart shatter.
“At least three dozen. He was transporting the younger ones for the Korzyński outfit tonight.”
I clenched my fists tight, my nails digging into my skin to remain quiet through the disgust. They were talking about human trafficking, I noted with a shudder and put two and two together. And whoever that man was, he was someone behind the ring.
“I want those girls found and safe by midnight,” Arko ordered. “And I want the rest of that operation burned to the ground. Make it look like a rival gang hit. I don’t want our name anywhere near this.”
“And the girls?”
“Make sure they get medical attention, and for God’s sake, find out if they have families to go back to. But if it’s not safe for them to go back where they came from, then get them new papers and identities,” Arko sighed. “Set them up somewhere far from here.”
The men soon began discussing the rescue mission. I realized I had to get out of here before Arko saw me and back into the house before he noticed I wasn’t there. This was my chance, while they were distracted.
I crawled around to the opposite edge of the shed, away from outside the pool house where they stood and talked, and then jumped to my feet to rush to the house before they moved.
I took the longer way back, my mind reeling the whole time, knowing the trees would provide cover if any of their eyes wandered. This whole time, I thought Arko only cared about looking out for himself and his family.
My heart plummeted at knowing how wrong I’d been. He wasn’t perfect. He was still a murderer in every right, but I’d caught him killing a monster. The tears fell down my cheeks as I ran, thinking about all the horrible judgments I’d passed.
Anja and Alena hadn’t been wrong in what they said. Tonight, right in front of my eyes, Arko killed to save three dozen innocent women. Victims of human trafficking. He was arranging medical care and safe passage home for them, and even new lives if they needed them.
By the time I got inside the house, I wasn’t foolish enough to believe Arko was an angel.
But I knew, without a doubt, that he wasn’t the selfish man I’d made him out to be, either.
In some weird, strange way, I felt proud of him that night.
And that made things between us feel even more complicated.