35. Nico
35
NICO
SOUL RIPPER
I s this what some people call marital bliss?
I spend my days between helping my brother run his Empire, tracking Misha Petrov and his goons down, and my nights between the thighs of the woman I love. In between are breaks with the cutest child I’ve ever seen. Granted, I have never seen any but she’s the cutest one for sure. Every day, Ember and Marie make me feel more like the man I knew I could be. I’m not good by any means of the word, but I’m theirs. I’m still tainted by my past but I’ve turned my need to atone into something good, helping Marie get better and raising my little girl to be the most fierce person I will ever know.
When my phone rings and the number shows Aleksei Dobrev, my hackles rise. I pick up and don’t greet him. He can tell me right away what’s wrong, I don’t have time for pleasantries like my brother.
“Nico, can you hear me?” he asks.
“Yes, Dobrev, loud and clear. What do you want?”
He tsks but continues. “I called Andrea but he’s not answering. I left him a message. I know where Barychev is.”
Barychev is Misha’s second in command, second best to the kingpin himself. He was the one who abducted Alana Moretti last year and orchestrated the exchange between her and her bodyguard, Igor, who happened to be Misha’s brother. I know Lana and Julian will want to make him pay for stealing someone they love from them, but the bastard is as elusive as Misha himself so we need to act fast.
“Send me the location.”
“Nico, he’s meeting with the Amsterdam Bratva in a secluded location in the Cotswolds. You’ll need reinforcement. I’m coming with you. We don’t have time to wait for Andrea to wake his ass up or stop fucking his wife.”
“Watch your fucking mouth.” My voice is a promise of pain but Aleksei is unfazed and hangs up. A chime rings, and the location loads onto my car’s dashboard. I veer and change routes. I’m just an hour away.
Barychev could have met the European Bratva leaders anywhere but he chose to do it on our territory, nagging us, taunting us with his presence. Red is all that fills my vision as vivid images of what I’ll do to him enter my brain and refuse to leave. The all too familiar blood lust and promise of violence boils inside me. I crack my neck to the right then left and take calming breaths through my nose. When I check my speed barometer, I’m way over the limit and take my foot off the gas. No way I’m getting pulled over when hunting has just begun.
I have no idea how many people I’m about to face but I trust Dobrev to do that work for me. I’m usually the one you call to exact justice, not the strategist. There’s nothing that irritates me more than waiting and planning. I snort to myself as it reminds me how good I am at following orders, in and out of the bedroom. I never made the connection until then.
Picking up my phone, I dial Marie’s number but before the call can connect, the screen turns black. I’m frozen in place, dread a living breathing creature inside my chest demanding attention. A honk blares next to me and I bring both hands back to the steering wheel and my eyes on the road, veering before I collide with the car next to me.
Fuck.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I yell into the cab of my car, punctuating each expletive with a punch to the wheel. Not that it fucking helps.
I dart towards the glove compartment but it’s empty. She took my charger when I dropped her off a few days ago. I have no way of contacting her. I have no way to tell her I’ll be there soon.
Not caring about anything but dealing with this bullshit anymore, I speed off towards my target in silence. The air is charged with my darkening thoughts and I suffocate under the weight of my own recklessness. That’s how my father got killed.
This is history repeating itself. If Marie hurts herself because she couldn’t reach me when she needed… I try and fail not to think about that. About how similar the ending could be. About how I’m the one who opened the door of our home ten years ago to let in a man I thought was my father’s second in command, his most trusted ally. My parents were not home, but I knew the man. He knew me. The vivid memory of his sly smile as he entered, clasped my shoulder and moved towards my father’s office sends a chill down my spine. I’m driving but I’m sent back then. He was in there less than five minutes before I pushed the ajar door fully open and asked him to leave since my father wouldn’t be back for another few hours.
“You’re right, kid. No need for me to wait here while your parents come home. I’ll see them tomorrow for dinner, eh?” He had said. It was not a question despite the intonation of his voice. I guided him through the house. As a goodbye, he patronisingly slapped my cheek. Three times. “Sleep tight.” I should have known something was wrong by the giddy way he had said that. But I hadn’t been as observant of other’s behaviours back then. I was still grappling with what was ‘normal’ or suspicious, what was left unsaid when someone spoke and why did people never said what they really meant with their words, but betrayed themselves with their bodies.
That night, as we all slept soundly, a fire started in my father’s office. The house was consumed quickly, a beam breaking over my mother’s body, snapping her spine and leaving her without the use of her legs. My father and I carried her out but he inhaled too much smoke and died at the hospital. He wasn’t even injured. He died and I lived though we were both in and out of the house at the same time. Andrea met us at the hospital. Too late.
With his skills for cybersecurity and my need for revenge, it wasn’t hard to track the man who did it. The way I made him bleed and hurt for five days straight, cutting each piece of his body carefully so he would stay alive, drugging him with stimulants so he couldn’t pass out or rest, sleeping myself only one hour at a time because I was so consumed with rage, is one of my fondest memories. He was my first painting.
I reminisce and oscillate between blinding white hot rage and calculated cold all the way until I reach what looks like an abandoned farmhouse. After parking two miles away, far enough to not drive any attention and hidden from the main road, I change into the black clothing I always keep in my trunk and take the pre-prepared backpack from there. It contains a few of my favourite tools and a painter’s suit, my soft cashmere balaclava–the only one on the market that doesn’t irritate my skin and makes me want to claw it raw–and my trusted gun and its silencer.
I have no way of knowing where Dobrev and his teams are. I can’t wait to deal with the vermin who think they can keep me away from my girls but I can’t get in there without any reconnaissance. I walk the perimeter of the farmhouse on silent feet. It takes me barely twenty minutes to find Dobrev, his new ally Dante Ventura and—unsurprisingly since she follows her brother everywhere—Irina, hidden in the bushes with three of their men.
“If it were anyone else but me, you’d be fucking dead,” I say and they all whirlwind, guns pointed at my chest. I roll my eyes. “Fucking amateurs.”
“You called the Capaldi dog?” Irina squeaks but I ignore her. She doesn’t matter to me, and insults have always glided on my skin like wind. The only opinions that matter to me are from the people I love.
“Be nice,” Ventura tells Irina and she glares at him, which makes him grin like a lunatic. I’m not about to burden myself with understanding their interaction.
“I need your phone,” I tell Aleksei and hold my hand expectantly.
“We left all devices but this in the cars.”
He holds out an earpiece to me and I put it on, clicking my tongue. We need to get going with this operation because every minute I’m away from Marie without her knowing why I’m not answering my damn phone is a minute that could bring her closer to the edge. My recklessness could cost me yet another person I love and I refuse to let that happen. I won’t survive it.
“What’s the status?” I ask. It sounds like a bark even to my ears but I don’t have time to give a shit or be polite.
“Barychev and four of his best men. Amsterdam’s pakhan, his second in command and two of their soldiers.”
“Seven to their eight, I’d say it’s reckoning day,” Dante jokes and Irina hisses at him.
The next half hour is a blur, the element of surprise a considerable advantage.
We storm the farmhouse, two of our enemies immediately down from our bullets. Irina takes down two more men, one with a bullet straight to the head and the Amsterdam packman with a knife directly jerked into his eye. It’s savage and blood sprays on her alabaster face.
“Fuck, she’s hot,” Dante says loud enough for everyone to hear and I grimace. I don’t need to know his lustful thoughts. But even I can admire Irina’s skills. Not that much of an air-head after all. Giulia and her might have more in common than my sister-in-law thinks, but I won’t tell her that. I value my tongue too much.
Bullets wheeze around us and force us to take cover, but Aleksei’s sniper skills are not match for Barychev’s last two standing men. I advance on him where he crouches behind a makeshift barricade. Before I can get to him, the bastard stands and shoots directly at me. My body bows back with the force of the impact, my right shoulder immediately on fire. Something sticky and warm flows on my front and when I look down, I see that it’s my own blood.
Fuelled by rage so hot it burns through the pain, I stand and press my hand from my valid arm on top of where the bullet grazed the side of my shoulder. I ignore the wetness of the wound and take the knife from its holster at my thigh. Determined steps get me in front of a crouched Barychev, who uselessly presses the trigger, his gun empty and his eyes flaming with fear. I slash the knife across his face and he yelps in pain.
“Tie him up,” I order no one specifically, and one of Dobrev’s men execute my command in seconds. I’m barely aware of the dead bodies around us, blood pouring on the floor like the perfect ink for my next canvas.
“Sit down,” Irina barks but I don’t even look at her, keeping my gaze fixed on my prey. With a heavy press on my shoulders, I’m seated and alcohol is poured on my shoulder, bringing my attention to Aleksei and Irina, working in tandem around me.
“Don’t touch me,” I bark and Dobrev removes his hand immediately, holding them up in surrender.
“Well, I’ll need to touch you to stitch you up, you moron,” Irina says as hands me a piece of wood and pours alcohol on her hands. “Bite this.”
“I’m not putting this in my mouth,” I tell her.
“Your loss,” she says and it’s the only warning I get before a needle pierces my skin and Irina ties a couple of stitches around the wound, sealing it shut.
Fire holds me captive, radiating from my shoulder, where I can feel Irina’s touch, all the way to my chest and legs. I hate it but direct it to Barychev as a reminder of why I’m here. I refuse to pass out even as white edges my vision and stars dance around me. I’ve known pain before. This is just a short halt until I can get back to my girls. I keep my gaze trained on my enemy. He’s the reason I’m here. He’s the reason I’m away from Marie and Ember. He’s the reason I’m in pain. And he’ll pay for it ten fold.
Irina steps back a few moments later. The breath I take tastes cold and fills me with renewed energy. Painkillers are shoved down my throat, followed by a burning clear liquid that I cough half out. “No alcohol,” I sputter and spit. The makeshift bandage on my shoulder feels wrong, scratching the unblemished skin around the wound.
“You’re still bleeding, take a break, amicio ,” Dante says but I ignore him.
Standing, adrenaline making me feel invincible, I walk to Barychev, tied and gagged on a chair in the middle of the room we’re all in, his allies dead at our feet.
“You know what I should be doing right now?” I ask him. It’s rhetorical but he shakes his head nonetheless, a mix of fear and arrogance flickering in his beady eyes. It hasn’t registered that he will die in pain yet. That’s what always happens and I usually don’t delay the inevitable but now, I feel unhinged, unleashed, untethered. “Fucking a baby into my woman until everyone knows she’s mine and I’m hers. But instead, I’m stuck here with you.”
An unhinged laughter escapes my throat and my victim shudders, closing their eyes as if I’m an illusion, a nightmare that won’t be there when he opens them up again. Too bad I am very real and ready to exact my revenge. “You’re keeping me away so, you , my friend, are going to suffer. Now, tell me where Misha Petrov hides and I’ll consider making it shorter.”
I take hold of his jaw and carve a hole in both cheeks, sticking the useless pieces of his skin into his throat. Eventually, he swallows then throws up all over himself. I jump back just in time and put on the painter's suit in a frenzy. My movements are jerky and uncoordinated but I don’t care. I also don’t care that I have an audience. I stuck the piece of wood Irina wanted me to bite into right through the two holes of Barychev’s cheeks. It opens his mouth just enough for me to grab hold of his tongue with pliers I had in my backpack.
“We need Petrov’s location, idiot,” I hear Irina yell in the background.
Hot rage pours through my body feeling my need for vengeance and pain. I’m breathing hard but removes the pliers from Barychev’ mouth, focusing once more on my goal.
With the only two knives I had in my backpack, I carve and slice and dissect, pausing enough to repeat my questions. I don’t have any of the stimulants I’d need for Barychev to stay awake and present long enough so I use all the intimidating techniques in my arsenal to make him cave. And I don’t have to force the terrifying way I must look, crazed and dressed for slaughter. I flay half the skin of his face before threatening to go to a place no man want to be threatened with. Barychev’s eyes roll into their sockets.
“ Amicio , slow down. He’s gonna fucking croak before we get what we need.” Dante’s approaching in my periphery and I turn round, bloody knives in hand, tapping the butt of the handles against my legs frenetically. One, two, three. One, two, three.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
Marie needs me. I need to make that man pay for keeping me away from her. My breaths come out laboured, sweat dripping down my back inside the plastic of the suit, and I know it’s blood I feel lazily dripping down my forearm almost to my wrist. I shake my head and close my eyes but I don’t see a way out. I turn back to Barychev.
What he sees in me has him white as a sheet. He caves and whispers a coordinate. As well as a prayer for death. Though I’m not ready to give it.
“ Fratello .” My brother’s voice filters through my haze and I turn. Impeccably dressed in a burgundy suit, his hair in a bun, he looks so out of place but he doesn’t care walking through all the blood splattered around me. I’m about to turn back to my victim when he lands a hand on my shoulder and I hiss in pain.
“What happened to you?” he asks, lifting his hand up again, concern filtering through his words.
“Bullet wound. Irina stitched me up,” I answer and Andrea glances at her with a deep frown before refocusing on me again. I’m heaving, ready to end Barychev with a slow, painful death, succumbing to my meltdown, but my brother’s words stop me.
“Marie’s not good, fratellino . You need to get your shit together and come back to West Hill. Now.”
Like a magic word, I snap out of whatever trance I was in. Barychev’s imploring eyes connect with mine. He mouths “please” and I nod, walking away. My brother’s gun echoes around us but I’m halfway out of there, pawing at the plastic suit desperately. I drive back to my home, my brother hot on my heels. I hope I’m on time.