25. Sierra
TWENTY-FIVE
Sierra
It’s a tense ride to the slaughterhouse. The building looms up over the horizon like some sort of haunted mansion, and I can see why my father loved it.
“You don’t have to go in,” Yuri says once we’ve parked. “We don’t know what we’ll find.”
Kyran’s car pulls up beside us.
I shake my head. “Are you crazy? I’m not staying in the car like some sitting duck. I’ll be safer with the three of you.”
Assuming they don’t turn on each other the second they’re semi-alone with one another.
I haven’t forgotten that Yuri had tried to kill Kyran.
“Yeah.” Yuri looks like he wants to say something, but Kyran gets out and pounds on the door.
“Come on, Sierra,” Kyran says.
I blow out a breath, then get out of the car. “You could be patient for ten seconds,” I gripe at him.
“I want to get this over with,” Kyran tells me. His gaze flicks past me to Yuri. “I remember you.”
Yuri shrugs, but I notice him tensing. “Yeah. I am memorable.” He grabs my wrist and pulls me toward the entrance. “Let us find this hidden stash.”
The last guy they sent, the large Middle Eastern man named Knives, follows behind us. He’s quiet and alert.
I’m fully aware that if Kyran and Knives wanted to, they could overpower me and Yuri.
The first thing I notice when I step into the slaughterhouse is the stench. It’s musty and old, rust with a hint of something deeply unpleasant.
Yuri’s nose wrinkles. “How many people did you kill here?”
Kyran shrugs. “I didn’t keep count,” he says evasively.
I don’t think I want to ruminate on that. Instead, I shake my head and think back to the blueprints of the large slaughterhouse. “Okay, so the basement is going to be… somewhere to our left,” I say.
I notice Kyran tensing up, but I don’t think I want to know what he’s thinking about.
Probably all of the dead bodies he had to dump after visits here.
Jesus Christ, what was my family doing when I was too young and naive to see it?
We walk past the conveyor belt, and endless rows of rusty hooks. The dirt and grime have seeped into the walls, and I wonder if it was ever clean here.
At some point, cattle were slaughtered here, specifically for human consumption. I hope the conditions were better back then.
I bite back a laugh. Yeah, it was a cleaner environment when used for slaughtering cattle than people.
“I think it was past the courtyard,” I say, leading us across an overgrown outdoor space. They would have herded cattle through here. The dumb beasts wouldn’t know that this was where they’d meet their end.
I feel like one of those dumb beasts now, with Kyran and Knives looming behind us.
We get to a room that once would have been an office. There’s only an old desk and an uncomfortable looking chair in here.
“There’s a hidden hatch,” I say, looking around the room.
Yuri steps inside and looks around. “I don’t see anything.”
“That’s why it’s a hidden hatch,” I snap back, the tension getting to me.
I hate this place.
Yuri, Kyran, and Knives start looking around. I want to help them, but a sudden wave of exhaustion hits me. I reach down to touch my belly, and I realize I’ve been running around most of the day. My feet are sore and I haven’t had a real meal in hours.
“Here,” Yuri suddenly says. His fingers push something at the bottom of the baseboard, and the floorboards lift up. They reveal a metal hatch, one which Yuri lifts with a grunt.
The three men stare down into the dark pit.
“Those stairs look flimsy,” Knives comments.
“I’ll go,” Kyran says. “Sierra, you stay up here.”
I make a disgruntled sound. I pull my phone out and tap the flashlight, shining it around, but I can’t see anything from up here. “I’m the best one to go down if the stairs are flimsy,” I tell them. “The two of you would break them, probably,” I tell Kyran and Knives.
Yuri nods. “She’s got a point. And if something happens, the two of you would have an easier time pulling us out, too.”
I can tell Kyran wants to argue, so I hurry down the narrow, steep stairs. The steps creak ominously, and I have to duck my head until I’m several steps deep.
The air is cold and humid down here, and the ground feels rough under my feet. I move my phone flashlight from side to side, and all I see is rough hewn walls.
Yuri joins me down there and waves his own flashlight around. “Fuck,” he mutters, shining his light at a specific spot.
There are metal rods extending down from the wall to the ceiling. It’s a cell, I realize, and on the other side is a corpse, still chained to the wall.
My phone clatters to the ground.
That explains some of the smell, I think, half-hysterical.
Yuri bends down to pick up my phone and hands it back to me. “The weapons. Come on.”
He puts his arm around my shoulders and leads me deeper into the cellar. I make sure to keep my eyes straight ahead.
The only blessing is that it isn’t a large space. Two cells later, we find several large crates lined up against the wall. Yuri goes to one and opens the lid.
“There’s our weapons,” Yuri says. “Semi-automatic rifles, American made. I can think of a few people back home who would want these.” He shakes his head ruefully. “We will make use of them soon.”
I nod, my eyes flicking back in the direction of the corpse before I stare back down at the weapons. “Let’s see if we can get one of these back to the stairs. They can’t be that rickety if they got these down here.”
Yuri grabs the handle on one side, and I take it on the other. It’s heavy, but we can do it, and the crates are narrow enough to fit up the stairs. Kyran and Knives help lift them out.
“How many crates are there?” Kyran asks.
“In total? Probably around fifteen. They won’t all fit in our cars.” Yuri grimaces. “Let’s grab what we can and come back for the rest later.”
Knives and Kyran go down to grab more crates. When we’ve got three crates—and somehow each of them is carrying a whole crate on their own—we start heading back to the cars. I want to say that I’ll help with the heavy lifting, but I don’t want to go back down there.
“Do you know who the person was?” Yuri asks Kyran. “The one chained to the wall.”
Kyran shakes his head. “No clue. I didn’t know that room was there. The body looked at least five years old.”
I eye him, but I don’t want to ask him how he knows. “Great,” I mutter. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Things to do, people to see.”
People to shoot, too.
I hope the person down there was shot, and not left to starve to death. I want to believe my father wouldn’t be that cruel.
We take a faster route out. Halfway to the cars, I realize Kyran has stopped walking. He’s in front of an open door, staring inside, the crate of weapons at his feet.
Curiosity gets the better of me, and I go to his side. I look inside, and I hiss in a breath at the sight of chains and equipment that was never used for anything ethical or humane.
Blood has stained the ground, most notably in two places, and I wonder if bodies bled out here.
I touch Kyran’s arm, and he jumps, looking at me with a face as pale as if he’d seen a ghost.
“This is where it happened,” I say, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “Isn’t it?”
Yuri and Knives have gone on ahead, and I’m grateful for that much. They don’t need to hear this conversation between me and Kyran.
Kyran doesn’t look at me, but he nods. “He was going to kill me, Sierra,” he says, his gravelly voice low. “Both of us.”
I close my eyes, not wanting to see the room, but it’s been burned into my vision. I can’t stop seeing it, and now I can’t stop thinking about what it might’ve looked like then.
“Tell me,” I say. “I’m listening.”
“They were torturing Silvano,” Kyran says tonelessly. “Right there.” He’s probably pointing, but I don’t open my eyes to look. “Beating the shit out of him. Cut his shoulder open, too.”
I shudder, hugging my arms against my belly.
“And I was there. I helped them, Sierra, because I thought it was the only thing I could do. Then Lom—” He catches himself. “It got bad. I saved Silvano, and… and Pa came in.”
Kyran goes silent.
I find myself looking up at him, trying to get a read on him, trying to imagine the whole situation and how it had to have felt. But one thing nags at me. Silvano’s shoulder had been cut open. Silvano had shot Pa. But that doesn’t make sense, does it?
“So Silvano was strung up,” I say, my eyes going to the chains dangling from the ceiling. “And being tortured.”
“Yeah,” Kyran agrees.
“And then after Pa arrived, he wrestled with Pa and shot him.” I watch Kyran’s reaction.
He waits too long to say, “Yeah.”
I bite my lip. “Did you try to stop him? Did you try to save Pa? Or were you already Silvano’s bitch then?”
Kyran lets out a low growl. “I am not his bitch , Sierra. Unless you’re Konstantin’s bitch?” he retorts. “You look at him like you’re a lapdog. Did you know that? The way you look at all fucking three of them ?”
My heart seizes in my chest.
“I’m not stupid, Sierra,” he says. “I’m not some dumb dog, not any more than you are. But if it came down to it, if it was between Pa and them, what would you have done?”
What would you have done?
That horrible dread keeps building and building. I don’t think he realizes what he’s admitting to, but I know. I know all too well. I can imagine what happened, now, as clearly as if I’d been there myself.
“None of them killed our brother,” I say bitterly. “None of them ordered a little girl murdered. If Kotya or Yura or Nikolai ever did that, I’d be done with them.”
“Silvano didn’t give that order,” Kyran says, his voice starting to rise in volume.
“Does it matter?” I retort. “He knew about it. He could’ve stopped?—”
“Do you really think I could’ve stopped Pa from killing someone?” Kyran demands, turning to face me. Before I can respond, he barrels on, “Because I couldn’t have. He never would’ve listened. Ever. You know that.”
“So what?” I snap back. “It doesn’t excuse what Silvano Cresci has done! He watched while Neil and Diana and Mona were murdered! He stole everything from us!”
“He didn’t watch!” Kyran argues back. He reaches for me, but I take a few steps away, into the dank cell of a room. “He stopped me from being there!” Kyran lets out a small sob. “He made sure I wasn’t killed too.”
I clench my fists, suddenly even angrier. “That doesn’t excuse it! He—He murdered our father, Kyran, and you’re still there, licking his fucking boots?—”
Kyran’s face is an ugly shade of red as he shouts, “It wasn’t him! All right, Sierra? You can hate him all you want, but it wasn’t his fault.” Another sob wracks his body, but I’m too dazed by the admission to care.
I’d wanted to be wrong.
So badly, I’d wanted to be wrong.
Tears sting the corners of my eyes, but even as I try to blink them away, they start to fall anyway. “You stayed with him, you killed for him, you go to him again and again and I don’t—” I clench my hands into fists. “If you hadn’t been with him, if you’d been with us, they never would’ve taken me! You don’t— You don’t understand what it was like!”
All of the pain and rage I’ve been holding in for all of these months boils over, and I stagger.
He’s there to catch me, and even as I beat my fists uselessly against his chest, he holds me against him.
“I’m sorry,” he says raggedly. “I’m so sorry, Sierra. I’m sorry we didn’t rescue you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you. I’m sorry I failed you.”
I can’t stop crying, can’t stop trying to hit him—a pummeling he doesn’t even try to stop.
“I hate you so much,” I rasp.
That gets the reaction hitting his chest hadn’t. He rocks back like I really had landed a blow, but he squeezes me close to him. “I deserve that.”
“You really do,” I whisper. “You should’ve been there.”
“I know,” he whispers back. He kisses the top of my head, all bulk and muscle as he keeps me close.
There’s so much I could say. I could tell him about the rapes, about the branding, about the way they’d treated me—but then, he already knows about all of it. He’d put those pieces together on his own the night he’d seen me at the masquerade.
“I would take you away from all of this in a heartbeat,” he says hoarsely. “If you’d let me. But you… You had to go and fall for them , didn’t you? God, you’re as much of a fucking idiot as I am.”
“Not possible,” I sniffle. “You’re the stupid one here.”
He snorts. “Okay,” he agrees, then he says more quietly, “You really are the smart one here. I just wish you would choose a different life than this.”
I shake my head. “It’s too late for that,” I tell him.
Kyran inhales slowly. “Yeah. I was kind of afraid of that.” He strokes my back, and I finally rest my head against his broad chest. “Promise me one thing, okay?”
“What?” I ask warily, my voice muffled.
“Stay with us when they go in. Not forever. I know you know how to use a gun, but you have yourself and the… the baby to worry about,” he says, stumbling over the words.
I stare at him. “That… is cheating,” I tell him, hardly able to believe my brother manipulated me like that.
He shrugs. “Is it cheating if it’s the truth?” He finally releases me. “Stay safe until the fighting is over. Okay?”
I sigh, but I have a feeling that Konstantin, Yuri, and Nikolai are going to agree with him.
He’s right. I know how to use a gun, but I’m no expert.
And I have to worry about the baby now, too.
“All right,” I tell him. “Fine. You win.”
My exhaustion is damn near crippling, and he steadies me when I wobble.
“Let’s get you out of here,” he says.
Nodding, I let him lead me back to Yuri, who wraps his arm around me and pulls me close. “You okay?” he asks, his voice low.
“You could’ve interrupted that at any time, you know,” I tell him, unable to keep a little bit of accusation out of my voice.
“It sounded like you had things under control,” Yuri answers. “Although I did not see that coming. That he was the one to…” He trails off.
“I should have,” I say quietly. “I should’ve known Cresci would never get his hands dirty like that.” I shake my head. “I… I need more time to think about this.”
Yuri nods and hugs me tighter. “Yeah. Well, Kotya is about to commit patricide too.”
I grimace. “Yeah. That’s different, though.”
But I think about the body in the basement, and I wonder if it’s really that much different at all.