3. Nikolai
NIKOLAI
Kira's tantrum had stopped somewhere around midnight, when I lay on the couch to catch a few hours of sleep in the blessed silence.
Now, just after eight a.m. she was back at it, banging on the door and shouting. It was a wonder her throat wasn't so swollen from all that shouting that she'd gone hoarse and lost her voice.
I sank into my chair at my desk with a fresh cup of coffee and tried to block out all the shouting.
It wasn't my goal to make her miserable, though I knew without a doubt when I took her that it would happen.
It was a shame.
She really was an incredible woman, and she made my body feel things I hadn't felt since I was a teenager hyped up on hormones and sex drive.
But war was war, and her father had been the one to start this.
After nearly six months of pushing, he'd gotten his way, weaseling into my territory one block at a time until he'd killed six of my men and taken two of my convenience stores.
Business was down so much in that area, I would lose them and have to shut my doors soon if Markin didn't back off.
It wasn't in my best interests to push back hard.
Doing so meant getting the police involved, which would only draw attention to my less legal activities.
Markin knew that, and he was taking advantage of it, which is what pushed my hand.
Taking Kira was the only way to get his attention without causing more trouble for myself.
"You can't keep me locked up here forever!" I heard bellowing down the stairs from my bedroom where she stood banging on the door, and I looked up to see my office door open and Yakov standing there glowering at me.
"She's still at it?" I asked him, frustrated by how vocal Ms. Markin was being. Such a shame to see her so upset by this. It was nothing but an inconvenience, really.
I had no intention of hurting her—a woman that intoxicating?
She was too pure to consider defiling in such a base way.
And whether I liked it or not, we had a good rapport, good enough that she let me ravish her and begged me for it.
So harming her would only leave a bad taste in my mouth.
"For hours… But that's not why I'm here, sir." Yakov clasped his hands in front of himself, shoulders squared as he raised his jaw. "It's Vlad…"
Annoyance crawled across my forehead in deep crevices as I sat back in my desk chair and picked up my coffee to have a swig.
Now room temperature, it didn't comfort me the way whiskey would've, but being alert was better than being relaxed these days.
"Go on," I grumbled, already bracing myself for whatever bad news was coming my way again.
Yakov rolled his neck and tugged at the collar of his shirt as he said, "The Pick-a-Sack on Twelfth was hit. Vlad called me just now to fill me in. I guess one of our lieutenants was taken out or something… I think we're gonna lose that one too, Boss."
My hand curled into a fist resting on my desk as I finished the tepid coffee and set my mug down.
That was three stores now, and if he was already moving on Twelfth Street, we were in trouble.
He had some balls walking into my neighborhood like this.
"What response have we had so far?" I flexed my fingers and then ran a hand through my hair, trying to stay loose and relaxed, but these days, it seemed no matter what I did, I couldn't. I didn't take kindly to a man encroaching on my turf, and Markin was going to learn what happened to men who crossed me.
"We're scrambling, I guess." I didn’t blame Yakov for sounding uncertain. He was my personal security and liaison to the rest of my men. If messages needed to be delivered, it was him I trusted to do so.
"Get the car," I told him, standing up. There was no way I would let this keep going the way it was. My men were failing me, and if I had to do it all myself, I would.
"Sir, what about the girl?"
"She's locked up on the second story. You think she's gonna jump out a window?" I looked at him like he was stupid and his head dipped as he backed out of my office.
I was about sick of these complications and having to focus on putting out fires instead of running my business the way I knew how.
I grabbed my jacket and followed him out of the house to the car where Tyren was already waiting.
Both of them looked at me like I was mad leaving Kira in the home unguarded, but how much harm could she do?
There was no way out of that room and if she tried to jump, she'd break her leg.
Fifteen minutes later, we parked two blocks from the convenience store where the police had set up a perimeter and officers held back the crowd. Tyren kept the car running while Yakov and I approached on foot, hoping to survey the damage.
From what I could tell, it was mostly a firefight, though the windows of the store had been shot out and would need replacing.
And I saw a body on the sidewalk covered by a white sheet.
This wasn't good.
"What do you think?" Yakov asked me. He stood a few inches taller than me, able to see over every head in the crowd gathered to gawk at the sight.
"I think we need a different way in, or we need to back off before we are connected to this.
" My chest was uneasy being this close to a bunch of cops.
It was no secret that I wasn't a straight shooter and they'd been trying to pin me down for years.
"Let's circle around back," I told him, nodding toward the alley.
Yakov led the way through the crowd and up the alley.
We were halfway to the back of the shop when Vlad stomped around the corner and nearly ran into us.
His head jerked up and he looked startled.
"Boss, fuck… I swear we never saw them coming." I could see the shame in his eyes and knew how angry he was over this mess.
"Yeah, well, we all have to be on our toes more…
Tell me what happened." My fingers itched to find the man responsible for this particular hit and put a bullet in his skull.
The only way to stop these bastards from continuing to come after me was to stop them dead in their tracks and make a lesson of them.
"Okay, so we were just a block away when we heard a commotion and by the time we got here, it had escalated to shooting.
There were three of them, but Gregg took one of them out.
He's hit." Vlad glanced over his shoulder.
"Not bad, but I have to get to him before the cops haul him off.
He has that domestic, you know… And he's in the back of the bus over there.
" He nodded down the alley where we'd just come from and I recalled seeing the ambulance parked there with the back doors open.
"Get to him," I grumbled. "Did you see where they went? Which way?"
Yakov stepped out of Vlad's way as he continued on his path toward the front of the store and the ambulance to get Gregg out of there before police came to question him.
When he twisted, his jacket shifted, revealing the Makarov shoved in his waistband.
"That way," Vlad said, turning to walk backward. He pointed in the general direction we were headed and said, "But one of them is dead. I think they said something about a coffee shop, but there was so much shooting."
With blood in the water, there was no time to lose. We lost one of ours and another was injured, and they were limping away. "Come on, Yakov. We don’t have any time to lose. They could be anywhere by now."
We stormed up the alley checking around every corner, and about a block away, we started to see blood.
First it was just a few drops here and there, but it got worse, like whoever was bleeding had slowed down, giving more time for their wound to leave traces of them.
The bloody handprint on the back door of a shop made me pause and gesture at Yakov.
I brought my finger to my lips to hush him and nodded at the handprint.
He scowled and understood what I meant, pulling his weapon.
If those men were here, we would root them out and send them back to Markin with a message that would ruin his day.
"Go around front… If I chase them out, shoot 'em." I crept toward the building as Yakov jogged along the side of the building toward the front entrance and as he disappeared from sight, I pulled the back door open.
Both of the men were there just inside the entrance as I walked in, and they both looked up at me.
One of them was slumped against the counter with his hand clamped over his side, blood soaking through his shirt and dripping onto the floor.
The other turned at the sound of the door and brought his weapon up, but he hesitated for half a second when he saw me, and that was all it took.
I fired and hit him in the chest, dropping him where he stood. He stumbled back into the counter and collapsed, dropping his gun. It spun away from both of them, under a low table where it came to rest before he slid down the counter and smeared blood everywhere.
Shouting erupted in the front of the coffee shop and I heard chaos unleash, but I didn’t slow my march to the injured man, who tried to aim at me, but his arm shook too badly to hold steady.
I could see he was already losing strength.
I closed the distance and knocked the weapon from his hand, sending it clattering across the floor before grabbing him by the front of his shirt and forcing him upward and into the wall.
A grunt escaped him as I slammed him hard, and his knees buckled, but I kept him upright.
Yakov rounded the corner with his gun up but he missed all the fun.
“You work for Markin?” I snarled, and Yakov glanced at the front of the store. He looked nervous, and I didn't blame him. With cops a few blocks away, we had seconds, not minutes.
He hesitated, his breathing uneven as he tried to hold himself together. I tightened my grip and drove him back into the wall again, harder this time, and the fight went out of him.
“Yes,” he rasped, and blood dribbled from his lip.
He was bleeding into his lungs, which meant he might die before he even got back to Markin. But I had to send this message anyway.
“You’re going to carry a message back to him,” I told him, holding him there so he couldn’t look away. “You tell him I have his daughter, and if he doesn’t back off my territory, I will kill her.”
His eyes widened and he shook his head, narrowing his eyes. “You’re lying,” he choked out. "She's—"
I pressed the barrel of my gun against his head and held it there. “Does this feel like a lie to you?” I asked.
He swallowed and didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
So I shoved him. hard again before I let him go.
I heard the sirens and knew we had to get out of there.
When my eyes met Yakov's he said, "Boss, we gotta go.
" He was already moving, pushing past the bleeding man toward the back door.
He gave me a shove, and I knew he was only trying to protect me, but my job here was done.
Markin would get that message about his daughter and hopefully, he'd start to back off.
If not, he would reach out to me and demand I return her and we'd get to the bottom of this shit once and for all.
Either way, my plan was now in motion.
I just had to avoid the cops long enough to keep it on the right track.