32. Zasha
32
ZASHA
T he cold from the pool tiles sears into my knees, igniting a throbbing ache within my joints.
So much went down in under two minutes that it’s impossible to process everything. My heart aches, and the urge to follow after Naomi and stop Daniil from making what I’m sure is a terrible mistake rises. I can’t though. My own fate lies in the hands of Vladimir Dunayevsky, who sits before me with narrow eyes and a twisted smirk across his weathered face.
My judge.
“You,” Vladimir spits, “are a problem.”
He’s a legend for all the wrong reasons, and I’m not stupid. The chances of me getting out of this unscathed are extremely low. That doesn’t mean I’ll go down without a fight, though.
“Are you sure? You did not know I existed until ten minutes ago.”
Vladimir snorts, then leans back in his chair. “I don’t know what spell you and that whore wove over my son, but it’s over now, do you understand me? It’s over.”
“Spell?” I scoff. “Fyodor’s kindness is of his own doing and it has nothing to do with us. He knows a real threat when he sees one, and it is not me. Or Naomi.”
“My son is blinded but I am here to open his eyes. You, Zasha, will die here and your name will fade into nothing. I had suspected the rumors of your death were an exaggeration, but now I can make them real. I will consume everything you once had.”
“ I ?” My eyes narrow. “You mean Fyodor, right? This family is not yours, old man. You are nothing but a relic so past your prime that you deserve to be in a museum, not leading the most powerful family in the entire Bratva.”
The guard to my left reacts before I finish speaking and smashes the butt of his rifle into the side of my head with a powerful blow. Sharp pain lances like a blade through my temple, and the word spins for a moment. My chest constricts while nausea churns hot in my gut, but I only allow myself to grunt slightly in pain.
When I lift my head once more, warmth trickles down the side of my face and the corners of my vision fuzz lightly.
“Did I touch a sore spot?”
“You will become nothing,” Vladimir snarls. “Too many families like yours have scraped their way up from nothing, taking what should never have been yours. It’s about time someone cleaned up those that can’t fall into line. So yes, I will be the one to do it, and when I kill every single man involved in the attack on my granddaughter, I will let them know they were correct.”
I narrow my eyes.
“I will tell them that yes, we had you and now you are dead. Then I will send them to join you.”
“You don’t even like Dariya,” I remark coldly, shaking my head slightly as the fuzziness grows. “I know the stories. You hold no love for anyone or anything. You are a statue that only seeks power. There is no familial warmth in you.”
To my surprise, Vladimir laughs. It’s a breathy sound like the drag of air through a tunnel. “True, but it is about principle.”
Of course it is. I won’t live to hear the tale Vladimir will spin about this night.
“Besides, if Fio is to listen to me then I must pretend to care about what he cares about. In truth, I care little about what is really going on here between all of you. I will not let some used whore and her old vengeance unseat my family name from the throne I placed it on. If anything, it shows how weak my son has become.
“Fyodor is the one who placed your family on that throne,” I snap. “Even I can see that. You were nothing but a tyrant, but Fyodor? Fyodor is a leader.”
“And right now he is malleable like beaten metal. I know how to break a man just right to get what I want.”
My brow lifts. What the hell does he mean? How can he speak so callously about his own child?
Behind us, a single gunshot slices through the quiet night air and my heart stops. My blood runs cold, and I can’t breathe. The fuzziness around my vision increases.
That gunshot. Daniil? Naomi?
He wouldn’t. He didn’t.
Did he?
Oh, Naomi .
“You won’t be remembered,” Vladimir says, and the two guards beside me raise their rifles, pulling my attention right back to my own predicament.
Before they can take their shot, Daniil melts out of the darkness on my left side. We make eye contact for a second, then he lifts his pistol and opens fire.
White-hot pain explodes through my shoulder, and the noise of agony tears past my lips. I topple backward into the deathly cold embrace of the pool.
Water closes over me like a frozen blanket and my limbs become a deadweight as I sink down, down, down…
Death takes me, and part of me welcomes it as my word turns empty and dark.
“Come on, breathe !”
Solid pressure impacts my ribs so painfully that it drags me right back to the world of the living. My gut convulsed. Bile floods up my throat. Hands help me roll over, and I’m coughing desperately, choking on the water and bile that exit my throat and lungs.
“Oh thank God,” comes a strained, faraway voice.
I hurt everywhere . Fire ignites in my shoulder and spreads down my upper arm, and a deep ache throbs across my chest, pulsing in time to my sluggish heartbeat. Groaning, I roll off my blazing shoulder and slump back onto the ground.
Above me, Daniil’s face suddenly swims into view. He kneels beside me, wiping his face as water drips steadily from his soaked hair. His clothes are just as drenched as the rest of him, and his face is drawn and pale.
“I thought I was too late.” Daniil’s hand rubs down to his mouth and he massages his jaw, placing one tired hand on my bare chest. “You’re a stubborn fucker.”
“You…shot me,” I croak, bracing on my uninjured arm to pull myself up into a seated position. We’re just behind the pool house, hidden from prying eyes. The longer I’m awake, the more aware I grow of sensations beyond pain. I’m frozen to the bone and my temple still aches from the blow of the rifle. Confusion swirls like a fog in my chest and then my ribs constrict as I look up at Daniil.
“Naomi,” I croak, and anger surges. “You killed her?—”
“I didn’t!” Daniil hisses just as my hand closes around his shoulder. “I didn’t kill her. I shot near her and told her to get the fuck out.”
“She … she’s alive?”
“For now.” He nods and water cascades from his hair like the shaking of a dog. “But we’ve got more important things to worry about right now.”
I’d disagree but I’m still confused as to how I’m alive. Glancing at my shoulder reveals a heavily bleeding bullet wound.
“You shoot me, then you save me?”
“I need you alive. Only way to do that was to shoot you myself and even then, I didn’t think I’d get back to the pool in time to drag you out,” Daniil explains. He flops back onto his backside, panting. “I’ve been punching your chest for ten minutes trying to drag you back.”
“Explains why I feel like I have been hit by another car.”
“I realized something when I was walking up to you and Vladimir,” Daniil explains. “It clicked when I heard Vladimir call Fyodor, Fio. He says it all the time, but it didn’t snap in my mind until that moment.”
“So?”
“ So ,” Daniil continues croakily. “Only two people in the world call him Fio. Vladimir and Dariya, both because they can’t say Fyodor. And then you turn up here with Fio on your lips which means you heard it somewhere, from one of those two people and I can guarantee that it wasn’t from Dariya.”
Daniil looks me straight in the eye.
“You heard Fio when you were in captivity, didn’t you?”
Daniil’s words are a sharp trigger. Suddenly, the throb in my temple becomes a sharp burst of light, and I remember.
I remember everything.
Death lingers around me like a whisper, caressing my broken bones and shattered soul. I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here, but it’s longer than anyone should be kept alive. Gone is the determination to remain silent. These men aren’t torturing me for information. It’s a game to them. They want to send a message and they’re enjoying writing the letter.
Water drips constantly down my back from the cracked pipe above me. My shoulders burn from having to hold my weight up half an inch from the ground while I dangle from my wrists. One arm is broken, but the pain has become a friend in this dark place. I’m going to die here. And no one will know.
Beyond the metal door of my cell, a single sliver of light makes it through the gap at the hinge. The beam flickers every so often as someone paces back and forth and the conversation comes to me in drivels. Someone is talking about Fyodor Dunayevsky. I know him. We’ve fought over territory a few times, but he always returns my men to me alive. It’s strange, given the Dunayevsky reputation.
“He has gotten away with too much,” comes another voice, along with a squeaking that rakes through me. “He needs to learn that love does not bring loyalty. Fear and blood do. Fio will learn this before the end.”
“Fio!” The last of my memories, clouded with pain, explode through my mind like a firework and I clutch at Daniil. “I remember!”
“Tell me,” Daniil demands.
“I saw him. Vladimir. I saw him and he was with—he was with Ivan!”
“What?!”
“I saw them together. It was just voices at first because I was so fucking out of it, but they were talking about killing Fyodor. Ivan was furious because he had a deal with Vladimir that fell through when Fyodor took control of the family, and then Fyodor’s attempts to change things were gaining too much traction. They wanted to kill him and place Vladimir back in charge long enough for Ivan to absorb the Dunayevskys without argument from anyone else.”
“Ivan, with the power of the Dunayevskys under his hand, would be unstoppable,” Daniil mutters, his gaze low and brow furrowed.
“I think I was certain I was going to die. I knew my family was crumbling, and if they succeeded, then all the men I cared about would die. I remember…thinking about how even when I went head-to-head with Fyodor, any men he captured were returned to me alive. It became my goal. To escape and warn Fyodor. He’s the only one that can stop the Bratva from entering a second bloody age where death becomes the only currency.”
Daniil stands and water drips from him like he’s his own little rain cloud.
“I’m fucking glad I didn’t kill you,” Daniil groans. “Fucking hell.”
“Yeah, I appreciate that,” I snort dryly. “Gotta thank the guard for striking me so hard on the head, fucking asshole.”
“It makes sense now; when Vladimir tried to kill me and Naomi at the bar. I thought he was just insane but I…I used to work for Ivan. He knows what I’m capable of.”
“So he wanted you out of the way?” I climb to my feet slowly. “Because you’re the one protecting Fyodor.”
“Maybe. Only, Fyodor saved my life and ruined that plan, so…so what? They found out you were here? They found out about Naomi?” Daniil drags a hand through his sopping wet hair and paces.
Then, I spot the intense scarring Daniil has around one of his eyes. I’ve never seen him without his glasses before; somehow, it makes him look more human. I don’t need to know his history to know Ivan’s probably responsible for that.
“I don’t have the answers to that piece of the puzzle,” I murmur, “but there has to be more to it. I know my men, and they wouldn’t do what they did unless they thought I was in terrible danger.”
“There’s something we’re still not seeing,” Daniil mutters, and then his eyes snap to mine. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Not right now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Fyodor is in there with Vladimir and he’s not thinking straight because of Dariya. We have to get to him. We have to save him before Vladimir can make good on his threats. Like fuck am I letting him destroy this family for a second longer.
“What about Naomi?” I ask, still trying to work out how she fits into all of this. What little I heard of her past makes her a target of Vladimir’s for sure, but was she really a threat?
Or is it just another way to hurt Fyodor?
If he cares about her half as much as I do, maybe that’s the answer. The fastest way to take down a Pakhan is to rip out his heart.
“Later,” Daniil says, sliding an arm around my waist to support me as my steps become unsteady. The pain in his voice is unmistakable and I feel it too, in my own heart. “Naomi is a painful truth for later. First, we’ve got to get you fixed up. Then we save my brother.”