Chapter 20
20
Anya
“W here are we with that USB drive?” I ask Chance and Booker as soon as they come into the living room one late afternoon.
It’s been a quiet couple of days, and I’ve had some time to do another walk through my fractured memory lane. More pieces are coming back, but I’m starting to think I need to work a little harder—at least until the headaches hit.
“They’re still working on it, but there is hope,” Chance says, leaving his jacket in the foyer.
Booker walks over to the bookcase and opens one of the bottom cabinets, taking out a large photo album with a dark blue hardcover. “Hayes NY” is written in white block letters on the sturdy spine.
“Any word on Leo?” That’s usually my follow-up question when one of the brothers comes back from town.
“No, not even a sighting. Where’s Nico?” Chance asks, looking around the living room.
“Upstairs, getting ready.”
They take turns patrolling the property and the surrounding area, mountain paths included. Every day, like clockwork, there’s a Hayes man riding the ridges and moving like a shadow through the deep woods, a weapon ready to inflict maximum harm to anyone who even thinks about coming near me.
They also have motion sensors and cameras mounted everywhere on an internal surveillance circuit that isn’t dependent on a wireless internet connection. Old-school will save the day in case get hit with another blizzard.
“What’s that?” I ask as Booker turns the album over and places it in my lap.
“You need to remember more, and you mentioned visual aids,” he says. “The more you remember about how you got here in the first place, the easier it’ll be for us to protect you and to take the Sokolovs down, once and for all.”
“Wherever you hid over the past couple of years, you got out of there for a reason. We need to know what that reason was,” Chance replies.
“I thought it was the USB drive,” I mumble, my mind drawing a blank.
At least the morning sickness has subsided, thanks to those supplements Dr. Rollins gave me. In about a week, I’m due for another round of blood tests—I wish I could focus exclusively on this pregnancy, but life obviously has different plans for me. I can’t even enjoy the love I’ve found in the middle of a snowstorm.
“You could’ve just mailed it, or used a courier service without anyone tracking it,” Booker says. “It has something to do with what you saw or heard when you were in hiding. And as much as we were all about letting you remember everything naturally and slowly, Leo being so close sort of ups the stakes.”
I nod slowly. “I get it.”
He flips the photo album open.
“Oh,” I gasp, recognizing myself and my brother in one of the photographs, each image gingerly taped to the thick page with ballpoint pen notes scattered in every white space. “Look at us; we were kids!”
The photograph strikes a chord deep within my soul.
My brother Aleks and I stand at the bottom of the steps outside our apartment building. The brownstone facade creates a beautiful composition in the background, with its tall windows and flowers blooming at every sill. Aleks is about fifteen, maybe. I am still in pigtails and smiling a crooked smile at the camera.
At the top of the stairs, the Hayes brothers guard us with broad grins and a few bruises on their skinny, tanned faces.
“We were in our hoodlum era,” Chance chuckles dryly. “Look at Booker and me…”
“You were so thin,” I laugh.
Nico, on the other hand, was taller and broader even as a teenager.
“He looks so big,” I mumble, the photograph dissolving into a real memory playing before my eyes. “Oh, our mother took this photo…”
She wore a floral dress, and she had shadows under her eyes. She hadn’t slept much that night. Arguing with my father, I think. But the Hayes brothers wanted a photo with us, so my mother obliged.
“‘Stand up straight,’ she’d tell me,” I add, delving deeper into the memory, a mixture of emotions swirling through me. “‘Suck that belly in.’”
“Yeah, she had this fixation about you not being skinny enough,” Chance mutters. “The whole Balkan mom shtick was pretty tiresome.”
“To all of us,” Booker adds. “We kept telling her to cut you some slack, that you were prettier than most girls.”
I give the twins a surprised look. “You did?”
“Every time we were left alone with her,” Booker replies with a nod.
I shift my focus back to the photo because I feel a thread there, just within my reach. I need to pull it.
I keep my eyes on my smiling face, the white and yellow dress with a satin bow tied just above my waist, my blonde curls combed and caught at the back with a banana clip.
I wore the same dress when Leo’s father brought him to visit us one time.
Wait,” I whisper, the images blending before my eyes.
“Deep breath,” Chance says, and I feel his arm snaking gently around my waist. The twins are quiet as they let me process this. I’ve had a few similar episodes so far, and they all lead somewhere.
Leo Sokolov emerges from the haze. He’s older. A grown man in a dark suit, smiling only with his lips, never with his eyes. Gunshots erupt around us. I’m on the ground. Fear takes over, and Chance can feel me quivering, so he tightens his grip on me.
“Breathe, Anya.”
Breathe. I tell myself the same thing, the weight of my cousin’s body damn near crushing me. I taste blood, but I don’t think it’s mine. POP-POP-POP. It goes on and on. People screaming. Some try to get away. Others are plowed down by bullets. Torn apart. I’m crying, hyperventilating, but I know if I move, I’m dead, too.
Above us, I see the letters printed on a large banner not far from my position.
DALTON FESTIVAL.
“I know where I am,” I mumble, tears streaming down my cheeks as I finally relive the worst day of my life.
Looking around, I see familiar faces. Bodies. The bodies of the people I love strewn across the ground.
Not moving.
Blood s everywhere, crimson red and luscious under the noon sun. I smell it. I can’t get rid of the iron taste in my mouth. The body on top of me is soft. Parts of it squishy as more blood drips over my face.
“Where is she?” Leo snarls.
“I can’t see her anywhere,” Max replies, holding an AR-15.
“Find her and bring her to me!”
I gasp, realizing…
“Oh, God,” I manage, crunching the photograph in my bare hands, while my younger version struggles to get out from under the dead body.
Leo is moving away from me. This is my chance. They’re spreading out, killing everything in sight as they look for me.
“Leo hit the Dalton Festival to take out my family and to retrieve me. He wanted me alive,” I tell the Hayes twins.
“How did you get out of there?” Booker asks.
I keep my eyes closed, my heart breaking all over again as I relive the entire scene, determined to follow this thread all the way through to the end. “I got lucky. Someone fell on top of me.”
Finally, I manage to yank myself out from under the body. But she rolls over, and I see her face. My cousin Ivana. Oh, God, she’s dead. Her eyes wide open, the horror forever imprinted on her pale, round face. I can’t scream. If I scream, they’ll know I’m here.
“I crawled away until I got behind a taco truck, I think. There were crushed taco shells all over the ground.”
I focus on the details. They help me paint the picture, scene by scene, frame by frame.
“The vendor was dead, too.”
“Did you see the shooters?” Chance asks.
“Yes. Leo was there. Max, too.”
“That’s why they’re so desperate to find her,” Booker mutters. “Anya’s an eyewitness. That’s why Max was so determined to kill her, against his brother’s wishes.”
“Leo wanted me alive,” I tell them. “He wanted to teach me a lesson. But I hid under that taco truck for a few more minutes. I found some clothes inside belonging to the vendor, I think.”
Large sweatpants and a black hoodie.
I put them on, moving almost automatically. My instincts took over. I needed to survive, so I did what I had to do.
“They were too busy killing people to come back to where I was,” I say.
Everything is so painfully fresh in my mind.
“I stole money from the cash register behind the truck counter: a handful of fifties. I couldn’t find my phone, but I needed to get away from there.”
“Of course,” Chance tells me. “What happened next?”
I’m running.
Away from the festival. Away from the blaring sirens. Nowhere feels safe. I catch a glimpse of myself in a storefront window. I see the blood on my face, and I wipe most of it off with the back of my sleeve. Everything fades into darkness.
The next thing I remember, I’m in a gas station toilet. Dirty walls. An even dirtier mirror. The smell of chlorine disinfectant hasn’t overpowered the smell of human waste in this place. It makes me want to puke, but I need to wash what’s left of the blood off my face and my hands. I’m shaking like a leaf, constantly looking over my shoulder.
“Where are you now?” Booker asks.
“A gas station somewhere. I don’t know how I got here.”
“Do you see anything?”
I look around. Marty’s is sewn onto several ball caps on display by the shop’s register. “Marty’s,” I mumble. “I think it’s a—”
“Chain of gas stations north of New York,” Chance says.
“I’m headed north.”
I’m in the last seat of a Greyhound. Again, I’m not sure how I got here, but I’m counting what money I have left, and it’s not much. It’ll cover food and a motel for the night. Looking outside the window, I see the woods we drive past. Deep, dark woods.
Ahead, the road snakes through it.
Above, the night sky stretches with billions of twinkling stars, and for a moment, I find peace. We pass a sign.
“Chappaqua.” I remember now. “I took a bus to Chappaqua.”
“What did you do when you got there?” Booker asks.
I knock on a door, constantly looking around. Worried someone will see me. I don’t see the big guy in a leather jacket until it’s too late. He comes in from the side, a gun pointed at my head. I damn near soil myself. I almost scream, until the door opens.
“Oh, my God, he’s going to kill me!” I cry out, and Chance holds me close.
But an old woman comes out. “Stop, Ivan. Don’t!”
“Grandma!”
“Anya?”
She’s shocked to see me. Her eyes are tired and puffy. She’s been crying. News of what happened must’ve reached her. Ivan puts his gun down and motions for me to go inside. Zoya takes me in. She holds me for what feels like forever, and for the first time, I’m able to simply collapse.
“I went to my grandmother’s house,” I tell the Hayes brothers as my eyes peel open. I’m back at the lodge where I’m safe, sound, and almost happy. “I knew where she lived. But I made sure I wasn’t followed. I switched buses, trains. I zigzagged across the whole of upstate New York before I got to Chappaqua. I ran out of money by the time I got to her.”
* * *
The more I look at these photos, the more memories come back.
One by one, they return, albeit with missing pieces here and there. But Chance and Booker stay close, patiently helping me through the process, while Nico is outside patrolling the perimeter. The safer I feel, the easier it is for me to do this.
“How about this?” Booker asks, showing me a photo from when I was almost eighteen.
“Oh, yes, I remember it. You were on leave.”
“Every leave we had, we spent with you and Aleks,” Chance says. “And our family. But we made a point of coming to see you as often as we could.”
“To scare off my prom dates,” I giggle.
“To make sure you were okay,” he replies. “I think we worried a lot. There was something going on, something neither you nor Aleks wanted to talk about. It makes a lot more sense now that we know about the engagement.”
I can hear them arguing. My father and Aleks. So many times I came downstairs and heard them yelling in our father’s study.
“‘You can’t go through with this,’ Aleks would tell Dad. ‘He’s going to hurt her. I’ve seen what he’s capable of,’” I recall Aleks saying once. “‘I know she won’t be safe with him. Leo is a monster.’”
“But your father made a promise,” Booker replies.
“And my father’s word was his bond. I know it almost killed him to break it,” I say. “Leo lied all the time, though. He’d say one thing and then do the complete opposite. He did give Papa some fuel to justify breaking off the engagement. And thirty percent of the Asimov businesses was more than fair compensation. But Leo thrives on control, on always getting what he wants. Oh…” I pause, distinctly remembering something else.
“What is it?” Chance asks, worriedly looking at me.
“Zoya came by once. It was all very hush-hush, done in the middle of the night,” I say, closing my eyes for this vivid recollection. “I can almost see her walking through the front door. Ivan is with her. And three other men, just as big and as deadly. I hadn’t seen her in awhile. But for Zoya to come to my parents’ house, it had to be important.”
I hear my father and his mother squaring off in the foyer. I’m listening quietly at the top of the stairs. Zoya’s men stand guard, while my father’s men patrol outside. She looks regal from up here. She’s wearing a dark grey dress and a black tunic top and her silver hair is combed into an elegant bun. The pearl necklace around her slim neck shimmers softly.
“You’re a fool, Paul,” Zoya tells my father. “You never should’ve agreed to this engagement in the first place. You should’ve told the Sokolovs no from the get-go.”
“Leo was still young. I had no idea he’d turn out to be such a psychopath,” my father says, trying to defend his decision.
But Zoya won’t let him off the hook that easy. “Maximilian was already notorious for killing all the family pets. What made you think the elder son was any better?”
“What can I do now?” My father sounds defeated. “No matter the path I take, someone still gets hurt. At least, if I give him part of our territory, he’ll leave Anya alone.”
“Paul, your father sacrificed so much for every piece of those territories. Every inch you give to the Sokolovs will cause us to lose our standing within the family. Breaking your promise will cause the others to lose confidence in us. There’s only so much our old blood can protect us from, in this day and age.”
“Should I just go ahead with the wedding then?” Dad scoffs.
I exhale sharply, praying that never happens.
“What do you see?” Chance asks me.
“They’re talking. Zoya and my dad. Arguing. There was a lot of arguing in the days leading up to the end of the engagement,” I tell him. “Zoya didn’t want me marrying Leo. She told Dad I could just leave Leo standing at the altar. Dad would pretend he had no idea what happened, and then he and Leo would both be equally angry and embarrassed. She offered to take me away, to hide me, and then help me start over away from New York.”
“Let me guess. Your father didn’t agree,” Booker scoffs.
“A man of honor,” I say and sigh deeply.
And it cost him his life. My grandmother walked out with a stern warning for our family. She told my father to be careful. Leo Sokolov does not take kindly to broken promises. He proved it at the Dalton Festival.
But now, I’m back in Zoya’s mansion.
We’re hiding in her bedroom.
“Keep your head down and stay away from the windows,” she hisses as she rushes over to the dresser and takes a go bag out from the bottom cabinet. “Take this. You’ve got money in there, IDs, and some clothes.”
“What is this?” I ask, suddenly even more terrified.
Zoya kneels before me, though I know it’s hard for her to sit like that at her age. “Anya, you need to listen to me very carefully. In the side pocket of the bag—”
“Grandma, what is going on?”
“What’s going on is that Leo’s wolves are circling,” she snaps. “Now shut up and listen to me, if you want to survive. You’ve made it this far, but you need to do something far more extreme. It’s been two years since… since Leo did what he did. It’s time for you to fight back.”
“I can’t fight him!”
“Yes, you can. Because you have proof and your own testimony”
I’m confused. “What proof?”
“Aleks gave me a USB drive before he died. He had someone inside Sokolov’s inner circle. But he couldn’t take the drive to the police or the Feds because there was talk about Leo paying off the authorities to keep his name out of Dalton. But they’re getting close to this address now…”
“They found us?”
“Not yet, but they’re in the neighborhood. Ivan has spotted a few of Leo’s people in town. It’s only a matter of time.”
I shudder in Chance’s embrace. “They were close to discovering us,” I say. “For two years, I stayed with Zoya in Chappaqua. It was decent and quiet, for the most part. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t get a job. I spent most of my time indoors. The anxiety was through the roof. It got so bad that I couldn’t even sit down to paint anymore.”
“Leo’s men came after you,” Booker concludes.
“They were spotted in town. That same night, Zoya gave me the USB drive and the go bag you found in my car and sent me on my way. She had Ivan leave a car for me just outside of town. All the precautions were taken to get me out of there without picking up a tail. I guess somewhere along the way, I failed, because Max Sokolov caught up with me.”
“Do you remember how you got here?” Chance replies.
I shake my head slowly. “No, but I must’ve driven a long way. The car you found me in is the car Zoya gave me. I was terrified to be out in the open like that, but I needed wheels for this trip. I couldn’t risk airports or bus stations. I don’t even know what happened to Zoya or if she’s still alive. She said she was going to leave in the morning, too, though I have no idea where she was headed.
“But I know she insisted I come here. I’d be safe here, she said. With what was on the USB drive and my testimony, the three of you could reach out to people you trusted in law enforcement, all of your military buddies and whatnot… she said you three had the spine needed to see this through, to take the Sokolovs down for good and to save me.”
It’s amazing how close I got to making it. My eyes fill with tears as I look up at Chance, then at Booker. “I was driving up here because I knew you were the only ones who could keep me safe, who could save me.”
“Then you need to trust we will do precisely that, Anya,” Booker says, gently caressing my face. He pulls me into a soft kiss, and I feel his emotions pouring into me.
His strength and his devotion surge through me like fiery sunlight, filling me to the brim and making my heart beat a thousand times faster. I hold on to him for dear life, crying my heart out while kissing him at the same time.
Before long, the three of us are making sweet love on the furry rug in front of the fireplace, the photo album forgotten on the coffee table as our bodies intertwine, building a future as far away from our past as possible.
“There’s no other way around it, is there?” I ask, resting my head on Chance’s broad, muscular chest, while Booker trails delicate kisses down my spine. “Except facing Leo head-on.”
“It might come to that, yes,” Chance says and sighs deeply, “unless we manage to retrieve that USB drive information before Leo makes his move.”
Booker grunts as he sits up, running a hand through his messy hair. I love the disheveled look about him. The afterglow of our lovemaking always hits different with him. “Either way, Leo isn’t getting anywhere near you. He knows we’re not to be played with. Otherwise, he would’ve already made his move.”
“Fair enough,” I whisper.
I want to believe him. But something tells me Leo is an absolute sadist who loves to play with his food. Perhaps he wishes to torment me with all the uncertainty mustered by this current limbo situation before he swoops in and dashes any hope of salvation I might have left.
That being said, Zoya sent me up here for a reason.
And I feel safe in their arms.
It’s got to count for something.