8. Chapter Eight
Istared out the window of my office. It faced the front of the house, down the mile long driveway to a distant guard box. Three men were at the gate, and an eight-foot-tall white wall surrounded the property. I had checked, and double checked the pressure plates, and sensors around the grounds, and meticulously ran surveillance at every point of the cameras up and down the walls that faced in and out.
No one was going to be sneaking in. And the guards knew that if they did not follow my strict orders, the pakhan of the New York bratva would be very, very Russian, and eliminate their entire bloodline.
It was an empty threat but it worked within our society. I was putting the fear of God in every man, woman and child across the criminal underground.
I didn’t ask if we could delay our honeymoon. After the human pyre we built on our property and the reception, the hunt took precedence. And I was very happy hunting.
It’s not the most common brother-sister hobby… I’m sure that there was a time in Yuliya’s life she would have preferred that I took her to the mall, instead of taking her into the woods to train. But after decades by my side, my sister was a trained killer, and it was an activity best done in good company.
Yuliya and I had strapped weapons to our side, beneath boxy blazers, as we wore matching utility suits, designed to hide weapons in the lining. Our shoes of patent leather had soles made from soft foam, the kind used at the bottom of running shoes. If we wanted to, we had space in our clothes to wear body armor. We didn’t do that today, since we were going to “friendly” territory.
We were going down the freeway to the Green Estate when she finally started briefing me on the developments of our mission. She was at the wheel, and I was staring out the window at the passing world of mountains and greenery.
“Brock remains missing, but the Irish have completely disavowed him,” Yuliya said, her crimson lips up in a smirk. “He has nowhere to hide among his own people.”
“What is that on your mouth?” I asked, lifting a brow.
Was this new transformation in my sister because of Corbin, or her new friendship with the Murphy Girl? I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t figure out if I liked it or hated it. She was letting others influence her, when she had always been her own pillar of strength.
My sister was always beautiful. Even when she was gangly, with wild brown hair that frizzed, and her face was full of childhood acne. I had always liked how low maintenance she was. Her bare face and practical clothes kept undeserving eyes from being drawn to her true beauty - the one in the heart. It meant that there weren’t ambitious men banging on her door for a chance to elevate themselves and turn her into a more typical woman in the backwards bratva world… she was no typical anything.
Was she conforming to please Corbin? And if so, did he deserve it?
No. He did not.
She brought her fingers to her lips, wiping away the offending lipstick as if it was something shameful, a light blush coming to her cheeks.
“You’re not turning into one of those…” I sneered. “Trollops, are you?”
Okay, it was a sexist comment. But I was trying to get a certain reaction.
“Stop it,” she said, punching me in the stomach, right before she turned into the Green Mansion’s long drive.
The guards took one look at us and waved us through. Obviously, we were expected.
We walked into the mansion, with its creepy old world Tudor-style, placed on top of a bald hill that was surrounded by thorny, sticky trees. The place was fucking weird. Like it was surrounded by enormous, bare thorns.
We were beckoned to the front door by a guard, and we walked through the grand double doors into a large foyer and front room. There was a frightening, blood-red canvas to our right: a self-portrait of Eoghan as the devil, devouring his enemies.
The painting was fucking legendary, and there were a ton of rumors about where the blood for the paint had come from.
“I heard he stuck one of his enemies, and bled them out slowly while he painted.” My sister’s smirk was sadistic and cruel. “He painted it in front of them, and presented a fully finished work of art, before putting the man out of his misery.”
“Is that admiration I hear in your tone?” I asked, tapping my foot impatiently on the hardwood floor. “The man’s melodramatic…” We both stepped towards the painting, inspecting its finer details.
The work was good. I had to admit it. But it was still fucking weird.
“And pretentious,” I said as I lifted my eyes towards the Devil with an Irishman’s face.
“Don’t be jealous because you didn’t think of it,” Yuliya teased.
I rolled my eyes.
“That kind of shit belongs in a B Movie, not real life,” I grumbled.
I didn’t want to admit that it was an interesting way to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies… I didn’t want to give a Green credit for anything.
“The guy’s a creep,” I finally said, as a cough floated down towards us.
Yuliya and I turned to see Eoghan at the top of the stairs, a pocket watch in his hand. His tweedy suit was a deep green. His pale skin and slicked back hair made him look like a vampire, surrounded by his crumbling, old house.
“Welcome to my home,” he said, extending his arms to gesture at our strange, wood and plaster surroundings.
This place looked like one of Henry VIII’s hunting lodges, complete with the occasional full medieval armor tucked near a corner, beside a deep green fern.
“I don’t think the Vasilievs have actually been in here before.” He stepped down the creaky, old stairs that groaned under his weight. “I don’t consider Rose’s invasion and cyber-attack a real visit.”
He was talking about the time my daughter entered this house to demand the return of Ajax LeBlanc, my old colleague, and her MMA coach.
“That whole thing was a misunderstanding,” I said to try and placate the man, though it was anything but a misunderstanding. We had very, very intentionally attacked the mansion.
I had been in a million battlefields where the blood and pain of the departed seeped into the ground, and haunted the living. This house was just like it. It was cold, and vibrated with a sorrow that was in the air around us.
“All’s well that ends well.” Eoghan’s thick Irish accent made me shudder. He looked so much like his insane father that it was hard to remember they weren’t the same person. “Rose and Alastair are happily married, after all. You and Aoibheann too. A match far superior to the one she had with my late father.”
He came to stand before me, his creepy, little beady eyes unblinking as he examined me.
“How is my dear stepmother,” he asked, with a tilt of his head. “I hear the rest of the reception went well.”
“It did,” I said, my fists clenched with the tension that existed in this fucking space. This strange, haunted, dying house. “Your… wedding present… is currently in the basement.”
Eoghan smirked. “Aye, well… that’s good to hear.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“I hope you enjoy every second of their… uses.” Eoghan had a delightful way of tap dancing around an unsavory subject. “It seems they may have thought that I was like my father, and… would have had the same relationship with my own wife.”
I bristled at the mention of the girl, Kira. The one my wife had helped escape. Did he know?
“I’m glad.” Eoghan looked at me with a nod, and his words sounded sincere.
“What did my wife tell you, before you left the hall?”
He balked in surprise. “She didn’t tell you? You didn’t know?”
“What didn’t I know?” I felt the tension in my arms as I wanted to lean into him, to shake the information from his lips.
He let out a small smirk, and looked askance. He wasn’t being smug.
“She’s very good at keeping secrets, that stepmother of mine. A trait she seems to share with my wife.” He brought a hand to his chin, rubbing across day-old stubble. “I have a child.”
Yuliya and I looked at one another, our eyebrows rising with this news.
“Or, at least, she believes that I do. She says Kira was pregnant when she helped her disappear.” Ah, so he did know that my wife was complicit in Kira’s disappearance. But he didn’t seem mad about it.
He looked… tortured.
His jaw clenched, the flex of the muscle pulsing. “I have not confirmed if a child resulted.”
The sheer misery in Eoghan Green’s eyes was enough to shatter a man. I almost felt bad for him. Almost.
“You think she might have gotten rid of it?” Yuliya asked, tilting her head.
“I don’t know. Considering what I know now… what I think she knew when she left…”
Then he coughed, pulling out a gold pocket watch and opening it in his hand to look at the time.
“Anyway, I know you didn’t come for a social visit,” he said, snapping the watch closed and placing it back in his pocket. “What can I help you with? I assume this is about Aoibheann, and the hunt for her antagonizers.”
“Antagonizers is a kind way to say it,” I grit the word between my teeth.
“Subtlety isn’t your strong suit, is it Jericho?” Eoghan almost laughed, but he didn’t.
He looked like a man so defeated that it was difficult to truly understand what was going on in that troubled mind of his. The haunted mind that came up with a painting made of blood, that was tacked on top of his foyer wall.
“Not really,” I responded as my sister stepped forward to take control of the conversation.
“We want to speak to Mary and Malinda Brock,” she said in a clear voice.
I noted, with a hint of pride, that my sister was as tall as Eoghan. She looked him eye-to-eye. No fear. No surrender. That was my sister.
“Mary, Brock’s sister,” Eoghan shook his head. “I don’t know if I can allow that, and she’s been a recluse since she became ill. Dementia, unfortunately. I don’t think she’d be of any help. But Malinda is here.”
Eoghan waved a finger, telling us to follow him deeper into his creepy haunted house.
“I cannae let you torture the girl,” he said, his head shaking. “She’s not likely to know anything about it either. But I’ll let you question her.” He took us down a butler’s pantry into a lavish, white stone kitchen. Then he took us down further, to a staircase that led to a basement to a… second kitchen? What the hell? “You’ll understand, though, being as we come from similar worlds, that the girl is under my protection. I’ll need to be present, to ensure her safety, and dignity.”
I snorted. There was no dignity for a people that believed in something as undignified as what they had done to my Eve.
Eoghan’s beady little black eyes turned to me for a moment, before he looked away, leading us to an office. It was his office, obviously. Leather bound books, a globe, and a fireplace, with a large, ornately carved desk with shamrocks on every crown molding was a testament to the Green branding - Irish to the last. Clovers all over.
He gestured for me and Yuliya to take a seat on one side of the desk, as he walked around to the large, high-back leather chair, and picked up a phone.
It beeped, then he demanded, “Send up Malinda, please.”
The person on the other end didn’t have a chance to respond before the Irishman hung up, and looked at us from behind his steepled fingers.
“How is my stepmother?” He asked, his blank face giving away nothing.
“My wife is doing fine,” I said, ready to punch him in the face for simply breathing.
“Aye,” Eoghan nodded, not annoyed at my correction. “I’ve apologized to her, and I meant it. I did not know what was happening to her.”
“How could you not?” I wanted to throttle the bastard. I didn’t believe a single word that came out of a Green.
“I don’t owe you an apology, Russian,” he said, his lip curling at the words. “But maybe I owe an explanation.”
What could he possibly say that could explain away the disgrace of the Greens?
“My father was a good man once,” he said, his head nodding. “What you don’t know is that he loved my mother with a true, and honest heart. When Anton Vasiliev, your father, took her and left her to die after days of torture… my father was the one who had to help her pass. To put her out of her pain, and misery. She begged to die.”
I tried not to scowl, to not scream that Anton Vasiliev was as much a father to me as Alastair Green had been a husband to my wife. They did not belong in the category of family.
“He was slowly going mad without her. We all were. We all… are.” He said with a long sigh. “All I knew was that my father was insane. There was a new woman in place of my mother. And I did not care for any of it. I spent more time in the City, eager to cast a blind eye to what happened in this house. Aoibheann suffered. So did my wife. So have I.”
His black eyes lifted from his table, to look me straight in the eye, as he leaned forward in his seat.
“I have pledged myself to Aoibheann, for as long as she might need me to help with her revenge,” he said, his finger tapped on the desk to emphasize his point. “I mean it, Jericho. I do not want my people stuck in the dark ages of the past. I want us to move forward, into the light, out of the shadows. But first, I must put the past to rights.”
The door behind us opened as a woman with fiery red hair, a touch more orange than my wife’s, came in, wearing a black sheath dress with long sleeves and a white apron across her lap.
“Eoghan, you called for me?” She had the lightest Irish accent, as her eyes lit up to see her boss.
“Malinda,” Eoghan didn’t look at her directly. Instead, he stared at something at the corner of the desk, as he waved her in. “This is Jericho and Yuliya Vasiliev. They’ve come to ask you a few questions.”
I turned in my seat to look at the woman, as her eyes darted between me and my sister.
Her lips parted, and she visibly looked to Eoghan as if he was her savior.
“Tell them what they need to know about your uncle, Tanner Brock.”
Her eyes gave her away, as they darted for the door, then the window, then back to Eoghan, wishing for… something… for some kind of salvation that would not come.
“You’ve seen him?” Eoghan’s eyes flicked up and looked at the girl, narrowing just the slightest bit. He hadn’t missed her expressions, and had known they were significant. The boy wasn’t a moron after all.
“No! Of course not!” Her voice was too high, as she wiped her sweaty palms on her apron - another sign of a lie.
“Malinda…” Eoghan tsked, tilting his head and staring down at his finger which was making lazy circles along the desktop. “I’ve spoken to you before about Aoibheann. About how she was the lady of the house and in need of respect.”
Well, that was fucking news to me.
“I know how rumors fly among our people. You know what he did. I’ll be very disappointed if you keep secrets from me.” Then his black eyes darted up, looking right at the girl as if his gaze alone could crack her skull open, and find out the truth. “What do you know?”
Malinda looked fucking terrified. But not of me. Not of the two Russians sitting in the office, staring at her like she was the secret to eternal life, and opening the gates of hell.
She was terrified of Eoghan’s poor opinion.
“My… my uncle came and… and we told him that we couldn’t help him!” She looked at Eoghan, and almost stepped to him, if it wasn’t for his cold gaze, rooting her in place. “I… I told him to leave us alone and that we couldn’t help him.”
“When was this?” Eoghan’s impassive face was downright terrifying.
Malinda started shivering like a leaf, her head shaking. Her copper-colored hair started quivering in the air as she tried to hold back on the words that spilled out.
“When. Was. This?” Eoghan asked again, his eyes going from blank to angry. Downright black and stormy.
“Two days ago.” Her lips pulled back in an anguished cry.
Eoghan’s hand slammed on the table, and I observed this whole thing with a strange amusement.
He was worried about us causing harm to this girl? When he was terrifying her far more than a few pulled fingernails could. Malinda was a woman in love. Unrequited in love. Or, at the very least, infatuation.
Eoghan wiped his large hand over his face, as he stared at the girl.
“What else do we need to know?” Eoghan’s voice was cruel, laced with acid.
“I… I… I…” Malinda was weeping now, and it was a pathetic sight. Yuliya rolled her eyes.
She looked at me, pursing her lips and I almost laughed. At the age of ten, my sister had her fingernails pulled out. They had grown back, thank God. They had starved and beaten her, covered her in black and blue. She hadn’t peeped a single sound. But this woman? She was falling apart at a question. Pathetic.
“Malinda,” Eoghan’s voice was a low warning. “Jericho, Yuliya, and my stepmother are my family.”
Eoghan, to my surprise, slammed a fist to his own chest, as if to indicate that we were close to his heart… a lie, but I appreciated it all the same.
“They are blood of my blood, for what it is worth. So… are you by my side… or not?”
Those words made Malinda straighten, as she looked at him with adoration. This woman wanted to be by his side in more ways than just one.
“I’m on your side, Eoghan.” It was not lost on me that this girl called him by his first name. In a world where everyone else called him ‘Mr. Green.’ She looked back at me, then my sister, before her eyes turned back to Eoghan. With a deep, steadying breath, she began to speak. “He came to our house, and you know how myMa is. I asked him to just leave, but my mother… she doesn’t know what’s happening. She wouldn’t let him go until she fed him, and I couldn’t stop her. I tried, I swear I did.”
She stepped forward, her hands reaching for Eoghan, as if pleading for him to understand her plight. But Eoghan didn’t move. He just waited there, his hand in a fist.
“He was crazed, you know?” She kept talking, her hands coming down in front of her. “He kept talking about a witch. And he said that the only way to break the curse was if he… he…”
She looked at me, then to Eoghan. I glared at her, daring her to speak.
“Your uncle is a dead man already. He just doesn’t know it,” I said, letting my Russian accent come out thick, and quiet. “The only thing unanswered, is what we choose to do with you.”
Her face contorted, waxing between fear, to defiance, then to malice.
“He’s right, Malinda.” Eoghan’s agreement surprised me. You could have knocked me over with a feather. “You knew he was banned. You knew that you were to report to me.”
“He’s my blood, Eoghan!” She placed a hand over her chest. “You know that we are loyal above all things. That’s what makes us family.”
“You’d rather be loyal to that man, than to me?” Eoghan looked at her, his black eyes almost sparkling. He was charming her. It was subtle. I didn’t know that the erratic Eoghan Green was capable of such a thing.
“No, of course not, Eoghan. I just… I didn’t think.” If she could have fallen to her knees, I think she would have.
“What else did he say?” I asked, calmly. I have no qualms about hitting a woman, if it meant that the women I did care about would be saved. But this Malinda wasn’t like my sister. She wasn’t like my daughter either. She was going to crumble.
“He’s not likely to show up again, but he says that he will stop at nothing to… to… kill her, because he thinks that this is all her fault.”
I looked at Yuliya, and then to Eoghan, wondering what they were hiding behind their masks.
“He’s still in the area, and he’ll make a strike,” I said quietly. “At least we know he didn’t flee.”
“That simplifies the problem,” Yuliya laughed. “Smaller space to hunt.”
“If you see him again, you will tell me.” Eoghan tapped his index finger on his desk. “You may go.”
With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the girl. She turned on her heel and tried to rush out. But right before she could make it past the doors to freedom, Eoghan called after her.
“Malinda!” She halted in her steps and turned at his words. “If you keep a secret like that from me again, I will plant my knife in your throat myself. Do I make myself understood?”
She looked at him with pleading eyes, hoping to make him take his words back, but he didn’t. He just looked at her with those menacing black eyes.
“Yes, sir,” she said, giving the smallest, saddest curtsy before heading out the door.
When she closed the door behind her, a tense silence descended over us for a moment.
“You have my backing. I meant that,” Eoghan said, breaking the tension. “I will deliver him to you, alive or dead, if he comes near Green territory. The bounty I have on his head is high. The punishment for disobedience is equally astronomical.”
“You trust your people to betray him?” Yuliya asked, staring at him with her crystal eyes, reading his face as much as she listened to his words.
“I trust in human greed. And I back it up with my threat of extreme pain.” He stared at my sister like she was his equal. Not like my father, or my wife’s late husband who had more outdated views on women.
That observation made me angry. I did not want to be fond of Eoghan fucking Green.
“I provided a stick and carrot,” Eoghan said, coming to his feet. “And I put myself at your disposal as well, dear uncle and aunt-in-law. Or are you my new stepfather?”
Yuliya covered her mouth to hide her smile as I seethed in my seat. I was related to him several times over, and I did not like it.
“We Russians and Irish must stop intermarrying,” Yuliya giggled. She fucking giggled. “Or our family tree will turn into a wreath.”
“Not funny,” I grumbled, as I came to my feet.
Yuliya and Eoghan shared a conspiratorial look, as they were smiling at my expense.
Eoghan led us down the hall and to the grand double doors to the wrap-around porch.
“I’m not fully selfless in my alliance with you,” Eoghan said, as we stepped out into the fresh air. “There’s a war with the Italians brewing.” His voice noticeably darkened with his assertion. “They’re searching for my wife.”
I, more than anyone, knew what a threat against one’s wife meant. I knew the unimaginable torture that Eoghan’s mother had gone through. Her death was so gruesome, her autopsy was a fucking novel. The missing Kira Green would suffer that, and worse, if the Italians found her.
“I will find her,” Eoghan said, his voice full of conviction, that I knew he had no faith in it. “But a war with Eugenio Durante is inevitable. And I will ask you to be by my side.”
I loathed the idea of fighting with Eoghan Green. Though he had been there when I fought my brother to become Pakhan. He had backed us up in that war to keep my daughter safe, but the idea of standing by his side still made me want to rage and be Brutus.
I didn’t answer. We showed ourselves out, with Eoghan following behind, his shoulders slumped.
As we stepped outside, I still hadn’t answered Eoghan’s unasked question. But Yuliya, the traitor, turned as soon as she was in the sliver of sunlight outside, giving Eoghan a slight wink.
“We will answer the call,” Yuliya answered for me, before I could snarl about something I’d regret. “At least… I will be there, depending on if this one becomes a grandpa or not.”
Eoghan smirked, looking sideways at me, before smiling at my sister. They were teasing me without words. A rapport I resented.
“I’d be honored,” Eoghan said, “Whether or not my new step-father-in-law, and also uncle-in-law is there.”
Yuliya laughed, clapping her hands, as my hands fisted in anger.
She grabbed me by the shoulder and pushed me down the front steps towards our waiting car. She opened a door and shoved me in, before she walked around and got into the driver’s seat.
“I hope you’re not getting distracted,” I said, steepling my fingers in front of me.
“Distracted?” She lifted that brow of hers, looking at me as if I had lost my mind.
Her brow was plucked, her lips were colored. Her clothes had also changed in almost unnoticeable ways. But I had noticed, because I wasn’t a fucking idiot.
“Is this what you do for an asshole like Corbin McClellan?” I made a circle with my finger to indicate her face. “Make sure you don’t spend too much time on your hair and makeup. You need to remember what’s important.”
She glowered at me.
“The governor,” she said his title as if it was a curse, “is your best friend. Remember? You told me to rely on him if something happened to you.”
“Nothing has happened to me.” I leaned back in my seat, glowering back at her. “You don’t need to turn to him.”
What the fuck was I doing? I wasn’t sure. Under different circumstances, I would welcome this change in my sister. Finally, she could find someone. And Corbin was a good man. An agent, like me. He had dedicated his life to ending international, and national crimes that couldn’t be persecuted outside of the shadow world.
But he was less of a man, if he couldn’t see my sister for who she was. If he didn’t pursue her without the fucking lotions, perfumes and powder.
Considering his recent engagement to the Murphy girl from Boston, I wasn’t convinced that he was the right man for my little sister.
“I’m not the woman who needs you to tell her where to stab a man,” Yuliya said. Her frown would have withered a lesser man. But not me. Not when I had braided her hair, taught her to shoot a gun, and cut her down from the wires they had crucified her with, when the Irish took her as retribution for my father’s sins. “Look at your own house, before you remind me of what is important.”
If Corbin expected a domestic little thing, then he wouldn’t find it in Yuliya. Our father’s blood assured us of that.
A name flashed on the center console, Yuliya’s phone having automatically hooked into the bluetooth. The name proudly proclaimed, “Nephew-in-Law” was calling. I groaned in irritation. What did that human hernia want now?
She clicked the green answer button on the dashboard, and smiled. “Yes, nephew?”
“Where’s Jericho?” Alastair’s British voice was breathless, like he’d just run a fucking mile before calling. “I called him, and he’s not answering. I need him here… Now!”
“Drama king,” I grumbled, with an eye roll.
“What’s happening?” Yuliya said, her hands on the steering wheel tightening.
“It’s Rose.” The sheer terror in his voice reached through the phone, and clamped its dark fingers around my throat. “She fainted.”