28. Nikolai
TWENTY-EIGHT
Nikolai
We split our groups up into several teams. Victor Corvi’s men are led by a pretty blond man named Celio Palazzo, who is infuriatingly laid back about the whole thing. Pavone eventually gave us a few guys he assured us would work with Celio, and if they didn’t, he promised to feed them to his snakes. Cresci’s men are more eager, with Maddox Gray standing in as team lead.
Yuri, Konstantin, and I had called in the remaining Russians we knew we could trust, the ones who hadn’t been in the mansion that day. Stepan helped work out who was least likely to report back to Igor Voronkov.
Between the weapons, all the tech, the men, and Sierra monitoring the cameras, it’s as prepared as we can possibly get.
“They’ve got the entire compound crawling with people,” Sierra says. Her “battle station” is a van we’ve retrofitted with all the technology she needs. It’s set up several blocks away from the mansion.
Cresci and Celio are on other blocks, ready for their part in the infiltration.
“You got everything?” Sierra asks, glancing at us.
“Yeah,” Yuri answers. He checks his Glock again, like it’s any different now than it was five minutes ago. He’s decked out with a helmet and padded armor, too, although no amount of protection will stop an assault rifle’s bullets from penetrating his flesh.
“I should go in too,” Konstantin says darkly. “I need to.”
“You need to be here,” Sierra says, shaking her head. “I know you want to go in, but I need you on hand. Besides, what if one of the men gets out and finds me here?”
It’s a cheap trick, but it’s one I suspect will work. He values her safety more than his own—and more than his need for revenge, I think.
I’m sort of proud of how far Sierra has come, from my terrified zaya to a confident woman who knows how to get what she needs.
“It’ll be fine,” I tell Konstantin, adjusting my own helmet. “We’ll make sure it hurts.” I clap Stepan on the shoulder. “Keep the boss safe, all right?”
Stepan nods furiously. “On my life.”
Hopefully it won’t get to that.
Yuri and I, along with six other men, somberly make our way to the edge of the compound. The men inside have made good use of the strong lights we set up two years ago, illuminating even the darkest edges of the property. That’s all right.
After a few seconds, the lights on this side flicker and go out.
It’s already dark, and the sky is covered with clouds; it looks like it’s going to start raining at any moment, and I have to hope it’ll hold out at least until we get inside.
“You’ve got about five minutes,” Sierra’s voice whispers into my ear, thanks to the earpiece.
We approach the heavy metal bars of the fence. Two of the guys bring out the metal saw and get to work cutting a hole for us to get through. It’s louder than I’d like, and several sparks fly in the darkness.
As soon as we’ve got two of the bars cut, we rush through. We’re barely inside the garden when the lights go back on, with us hiding behind one of the rows of bushes.
Fuck, that was close.
After we retake this place, Konstantin will need to install better security, with even fewer blind spots, but I am grateful for the lapses now.
We sneak closer to the house, sticking to the dark areas.
“There’s a guard coming your way,” Sierra warns. “On your left.”
We all freeze. The guard on patrol walks past us, oblivious at first. He simply wasn’t expecting to see us. But he realizes something is off.
His mouth opens—and Yuri slashes his throat.
Blood gushes out and splashes all over Yuri’s helmet and chest.
The guard makes a few gurgling sounds before collapsing to the ground.
“Fuck. Quick, hide that body. Yura, you and I will keep going,” I order. One of the guys with us nods and grabs the body to drag it away. Thankfully the bloodstains won’t be so noticeable on the lawn.
We end up having to take out three more guys before we get to the guest room window we’d identified as the best entry point.
Yuri and I wait outside the window.
“Where the fuck are they?” Yuri mutters under his breath.
This plan hinges on the other teams doing their part. We’ve been lucky so far, but somebody is going to notice the missing guys very soon, and there are a good thirty to forty men crawling around the compound.
“They’re in position,” Sierra says over the earpiece. “One, two, and?—”
Gunshots ring out across the dead night right as droplets of rain start to fall all around us.
Shouts follow, audible even from this back corner of the mansion.
“Okay. That wing is clear. Go!” Sierra says.
One of our men uses a heavy pick to smash the window. The alarm that should have gone off stays silent, and I’m grateful that Sierra was being a snoop and got all of this shit set up.
I wonder how she would’ve used this against us if we hadn’t come together as we had.
Yuri and I climb through the window, the other men behind us.
We cautiously make our way through the corridors. All lit, unfortunately, but there isn’t much Sierra can do about that since the indoor lights are still manually activated.
“Start sweeping the rooms,” I tell the men. “If they don’t surrender immediately, kill them. If they make any suspicious moves, kill them. If they breathe wrong?—”
“Kill them,” one of them finishes. “Got it.”
It’s going to hurt, seeing so many men I’d worked with die at our hands, but that’s what they get for betraying Kotya. No mercy for traitors.
Yuri and I move on while the men start opening all the doors. We hear gunshots and garbled shouts, but we can’t waste time checking in on them. We have to trust that they know how to do their jobs, and that Sierra would warn us if there are any immediate problems for us.
We turn the corridor, and I slow down when I realize we’re at my photo studio. I open the door, then let out a sharp hiss when I see all of my equipment destroyed. Even my toys have been ripped down and may not ever be the same again.
Yuri stops when he realizes I’m lagging behind. He peers past me. “We’ll replace it all,” he says.
I know that on a rational level, it’s only stuff . But at the same time, I’ve been collecting these things for years. My photography equipment will be easier to replace, if expensive, but the ridiculous monsterfucking dildos I’d collected over the years had come from indie creators who may never make the same things again.
I do have to wonder what the fuck these people were thinking when they’d destroyed those, though.
It’s almost funny.
Almost.
“Yeah,” I say gruffly.
Assuming we survive this to be able to replace everything, but I don’t say that part aloud.
Movement in the corner of the room startles me. Somebody starts clapping.
My father steps out from the shadows. “I knew you’d show up here,” he says in Russian.
Yuri raises his arm and aims his gun at my father, and before I realize what I’m doing, I grab his wrist and force it down. “No!”
Yuri growls impatiently. “What? Kill him and be done with it.”
My father bursts out laughing. “Roman Igorevich always accuses you of being Konstantin’s lapdog, but apparently you have more balls than my son does.”
My cheeks flush beneath the helmet. “I thought…” I falter. This isn’t the moment to have a heart-to-heart with my father, but I know I can’t let him die without resolving some trauma.
Or at least trying to.
“You go ahead,” I tell Yuri. “I’ve got this handled.”
Yuri hesitates, but he nods. “Okay. Let Sierra know if you need backup. And the other men are still out there.”
He waits for me to let go of him, then jogs out of the room.
“Are you crazy?” Sierra hisses in my ear, but I ignore her as I focus on my father.
I lift my own hand, for all that it feels impossibly heavy, and aim the gun at him.
Somehow, my hand isn’t shaking.
“You can still come out of this alive,” I tell my father, defaulting to Russian—partially because I want to appeal to him, and partially because some shameful part of me doesn’t want Sierra to understand what’s being said when my father inevitably gets vicious. “You can help us.”
My father spits onto the floor. “My American son, who ignores my advice and thinks he knows better than me. If you wanted to survive, you should have left when I told you to.”
“I’m still going to survive,” I tell him. “You’re not. Don’t you understand you’re outnumbered? Come on .” I can’t help but plead with him, even though I know he’s not going to listen to a damn word I say. “I didn’t leave because I know Konstantin is going to come out on top. If you’d been paying attention as much as you think you were, you’d know that. But you’re too busy licking Papa Voronkov’s ass to see that things have changed.”
“Changed?” My father sneers at me. “There is only one rule in this business. The strong lead the weak. And you are soft. You think I didn’t notice how you doted on that woman? How jealous you were that she flirted with me?”
My jaw clenches. “I am not soft,” I snarl at him. “Just because I know how to follow someone worthy doesn’t mean I can’t lead my own men.” I try not to react to his accusations about how I’d reacted with “that woman,” but it’s so hard to keep my mouth closed.
Because he’s not really wrong.
My father shifts his stance, and I spot the gun he’s holding. I tighten my grip on my own weapon.
“Do you know why your mother left?” my father suddenly asks.
The abrupt shift in topics has me fumbling with my grasp on the gun—the shift, and the topic itself, because this isn’t something we talk about.
Ever.
“No. Because you’ve never told me,” I spit at him. “Beyond it being my fucking fault.”
But I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s because of him . I wouldn’t have wanted to stick around with him, either, though the reason she left me, too? That’s less clear.
“But by all means, enlighten me,” I tell him.
“She left because she couldn’t stand the sight of you,” my father says, taking a step forward. “She couldn’t handle that her boy was so terrible at everything. Later, you tried to join the Voronkovs, and what did that get you? You were nothing but an errand boy.”
I force myself to remember he’s trying to get under my skin. “Stop moving,” I order, making sure to keep my gun aimed directly at his chest. I want to tell him to stop talking, too, but there’s a fucked-up part of me that wants to hear this from his point of view.
That fucked-up part of me that wonders, too, if he’s being honest.
“And that’s bullshit,” I add quickly. “That’s all bullshit. I’m not an errand boy.” Maybe I’d started out that way, but I’ve moved up to being Konstantin’s right-hand man.
“Nikolai?” Sierra asks in my ear right as thunder echoes in the distance and a bolt of lightning illuminates the grounds beyond the window of my studio. “You need to get out of there.”
I ignore her, my attention still focused on my father.
“You still do nothing but lick Konstantin’s balls,” my father says. “Does he let you oversee anything? Does he let you handle any part of the business on your own?”
Fury rages through me, and I’m not sure if it’s because he’s saying it or because he’s right. I don’t know what to say that won’t be an admission of guilt, either, so I simply stare at him until the silence gets uncomfortable. “You need to make your choice,” I rasp. “Get down on the floor and surrender, or I will kill you.”
“You will not kill me,” my father says, laughing. “You had years to do it. But you are like all the Americans. Too kind, too trusting. Naive. You think the world will simply give you things if you ask nicely.”
“Shut up!” I shout in English. “Give up, old man!”
“Nikolai, calm down,” Sierra says. “He’s just?—”
Konstantin’s voice interrupts her. “He is a decrepit old man clinging to the glory days. I do not know your mother, Nikolai, but would you stay with this sad sack?”
I can’t catch my breath no matter how hard I try. I want to focus on what Konstantin is saying, but my father’s ugly words are still resonating in my ears. I don’t want to listen to him, to believe him, and there’s only one way to prove him wrong.
I don’t want to shoot him, though.
I don’t want to kill him.
I am every bit as weak as Vasily claims I am, but I need to change that. He isn’t going to surrender. He isn’t going to help us. His idea of helping me had been to tell me to get the fuck out.
But I can’t help but wonder why he hasn’t tried to shoot me yet. It gives me a pathetic sort of hope, but it’s not something I can afford to have. Not right now.
I steady my aim. “Did you ever care for me?”
Something in my father’s expression changes. “You weren’t terrible when you were still a small brat. Before your mother left. But she must have noticed the same thing I did?—”
I shoot him.
I’m not sure who’s more surprised, me or him, but blood sprays out from the wound in his chest. I want to close my eyes, to avoid seeing the destruction I’m causing, but I force myself to stare him in the eyes as he starts to crumple. I shoot him again, because there’s no salvaging this. Even if I wanted to keep him alive—and fuck, I do , despite everything—I can’t. We don’t have time to deal with my daddy issues right now, and he’s not going to do anything but hinder us.
“Nikolai?” Sierra asks, sounding alarmed.
“It’s done,” I croak out.
“Okay. You need to get to Yuri,” Sierra says. “He removed his earpiece for some reason.”
Fuck. I lower the gun, my arm reverberating from the aftershocks.
Once I feel steady, I head out the studio’s door and shut it behind me.
I’ll figure out how to mourn later.