Chapter 4
NIKOLAI
The morning air cut through my lungs like shards of glass as I stepped out of the abandoned subway entrance.
Six AM.
The city was just beginning to stir, delivery trucks rumbling down empty streets while the rest of New York slept off their hangovers.
I pulled out my cigarettes, lighting one with my mother’s silver lighter. The familiar weight of it in my palm had always brought me comfort, but today, not even the heavy dose of nicotine had that calming effect I’d stepped out of the shadows for.
Looking down at my hand, my eyes settled on the engraved butterflies like I’d done so many damn times before. Yet somehow, today, they seemed to look back at me in mockery.
Babochka.
Wrong fucking butterfly.
I took a long drag, letting the smoke fill my lungs before exhaling slowly. I closed my eyes for a minute, taking in the peace of a city that never was. Not even the stillness of the early morning and the dim light of dawn managed to reel in the anger simmering inside my chest.
Twenty-four hours of planning. Weeks of surveillance. Months of waiting for the perfect moment to strike at the heart of the Battaglia empire.
And my men had fucked it all up by grabbing the wrong girl.
Not just the wrong girl. The useless half-sister. The bastard child who’d been living in poverty while the real princess sat on her throne, completely untouchable.
I pulled out my phone, scrolling through the surveillance photos Adrik had shown me.
Alison Battaglia at her engagement party, at her father’s architectural firm events, at a small restaurant, laughing with girl friends.
Always perfectly dressed, always surrounded by bodyguards, always an inch out of reach.
Then I swiped over to the other photos. Adrianne Dornier, working three jobs, barely scraping by, looking like she hadn’t had a decent meal in months. Same face, different life.
But it was her eyes that stopped me cold every time I looked at the images. Brown instead of green, but with the same defiant spark I’d seen when she’d corrected me about her name. When she’d stood up to a man with a gun, despite being covered in terror and the blood of the man I’d just killed.
“My name is Adrianne.”
Stupid little babochka. Didn’t she know better than to defy a killer?
I sucked in another generous dose of nicotine, trying to find a way around this fuck up. My father wasn’t stupid. He’d take one look at her and see she wasn’t who we were supposed to have kidnapped.
Such a fucking waste of resources. Of time that I didn’t have.
For what? To cage a skimpy girl who clearly needed to put some meat on those bones.
There was no way she’d morph into a butterfly, and she knew it just as well. That’s why her tattoo was unfinished. She never had the means necessary to sprout into a Monarch, and now she’d die before even trying.
My phone buzzed. Of course, Otets was calling. Father.
I closed my eyes, counted to three in Russian, banishing those brown eyes from my mind before answering.
“Report.” Vladimir’s voice was cutting and expectant. No bullshit greetings. Neither of us had the craving for connection, so cold bluntness was more than enough.
“It’s done, Posol. We have her,” I replied, calling him ambassador and grating on that nerve of his as I knew it always did.
The lie slipped out so easily it almost surprised me. But I’d been lying to my father for fifteen years. What was one more deception in the service of survival?
“Excellent.” The satisfaction in his voice made my skin crawl. “Alison Battaglia is safe and breathing?”
“Yes.” Another lie, smoother than the first. “She’s... cooperative.”
“That will change soon. Battaglia women have always been stubborn. I’m sure she’s made of the same cloth as her mother. Pain has a special way of teaching obedience and submission.” The way he spoke, as if his words were irrefutable truths, always had bile and fury rising up my throat.
Vladimir Volkov in all his narcissist fucking glory.
The casual cruelty in his voice sent a chill down my spine. This was the man who’d raised me. Who’d shaped me into his perfect weapon through years of cyclic brutality disguised as training. As education.
“This changes everything for us, Nikolai. With their precious princess, we can force the Battaglias to give us what we want. Little Odessa will be ours again.”
Little Odessa. The neighborhood in Brooklyn where my grandparents had built their first legitimate business before the Italians muscled them out. But I knew better than to think my dearest father was doing all of this for sentimental reasons. He could fool everyone else, but not me.
This was about power. About proving that his dick was bigger than the Italians’.
“The Commission will have to recognize our claim,” Vladimir continued, his voice growing more animated.
“Manhattan below 14th Street. The docks. All of it. We’ll be equals, not just suppliers.
This fallout with the Yakuza was the perfect excuse to take back what is ours.
Maybe even end their reign. It’s time someone taught the Battaglias some humility. ”
Equals. As if Vladimir Volkov had ever been anyone’s equal. As if respect was something that could be negotiated rather than earned.
“When do we make contact?” I asked, trying to speed up the conversation before I felt the need to punch someone, since the real desired target was too far out of reach.
“Soon. Let them sweat for a few days. Let them wonder if their little princess is still breathing.” He paused, and I could practically see the smile stretching his lips, “Or if she’s being entertained by my men.”
The image of Dmitri bleeding out in that train car was too satisfying to keep a grin from flashing across my face.
That fucker got what he deserved, but I wouldn’t put it past my father to send someone else once he found out that his disgusting pet was dead.
Otherwise, how could he ever keep tabs on me?
“She’s worth more to us intact,” I said, forcing a placidness onto my voice so that he wouldn’t suspect how much Dmitri’s actions had rattled me.
“Of course. But fear is a powerful motivator. And the Battaglias need to understand that their arrogance has consequences.”
“And after?” I took such a deep drag on the cigarette that I hit the butt and almost burned my fingers.
“After?” Vladimir’s laugh resounded through the phone, “After, we take what’s ours. Finish this, Nikolai, and perhaps it will be time I give you what you’ve been begging for all these years.”
My hand tightened around the phone, my voice dropping to the depths of hell. “Perhaps?”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think my father was about to fuck me over after getting what he wanted. Over my fucking dead body.
“Your obsession with the past, your pathetic sentiment for things that are dead and buried, might come to an end. Your matushka deserves a proper Orthodox burial, doesn’t she?
” Mother. “And little Anya…” His voice took on a mocking tone that I despised with every ounce of my being.
“Twenty years in unmarked graves. Like common criminals. Like trash. Unless…”
The words hung in the air like venom.
Unless I delivered Alison Battaglia’s head on a silver platter. Unless I destroyed another family to restore the dignity of my own. Unless I sacrificed the last piece of my soul, if there still was any left.
“Bring her to me. Bring me my pawn to make their empire crumble. Do this, and maybe I’ll consider telling you where I put your ghosts.”
Before I could counter, the line went dead.
I stood there for a long moment, staring at the phone. I wasn’t sure what grew wilder each time I spoke to the man – my hatred for being who I am, for having him as a father and what he made me become, or the need to watch him plead for one last breath.
Twenty years. Twenty years of being his weapon, his perfectly trained attack dog, all for the promise of laying my mother and sister to rest properly.
Dead blood is poison in the veins.
That’s what he said. Time and time again.
I clutched the lighter again, feeling a little piece of whatever humanity was still left inside me slip through my clenched fingers.
Complete the job, and you can bury your ghosts.
But I didn’t have Alison Battaglia. I had her half-sister.
The wrong butterfly.
A butterfly who’d looked me in the eye and corrected me when I’d called her by a mocking pet name instead of her own. Who’d shown more spine and defiance in five minutes than most men showed in a lifetime.
I pulled out another cigarette from the crumpled packet, lighting it as soon as I held it between my lips.
I knew what I had to do. The plan was infallible, until it wasn’t. And now? Now I had to change tactics and sacrifice an innocent life to get what I wanted.
That was always the plan, right?
My phone buzzed with a text from Adrik, pulling my attention away from the new strategy I was trying to draw in my mind as I chain-smoked and strengthened my hatred for my sperm donor.
Her plate is intact. She hasn’t touched it.
Has she slept?
More like passed out. But it was short-lived.
She’s no use to us if she’s sick or dead. Not that she’s of much use right now.
What do you want me to do?
Don’t let anyone near her. Keep her identity between us for now.
And her?
I’ll deal with her.
She’s asking when she’s going home.
I didn’t have to hear him to understand that tone of his. He didn’t like this. He didn’t care for hurting women or making them pay for our sins.
I stared at his message for a long time.
When was she going home?
Never, if Vladimir had his way. The moment my father realized I’d brought him the wrong girl, Adrianne Dornier would become a liability. And Vladimir didn’t allow liabilities to breathe.
Unless...
My phone rang. Adrik was too uneasy to wait for me to reply.
“She’s crying,” he said accusingly. He was seeing Sasha getting hurt all over again, and I could understand his angst more than I could let on. “She’s just sitting there, staring at the wall, sobbing.”
“So?”
“So maybe we should–”
“Maybe we should what? Let her go? Send her back to that motel room from the pictures and hope she doesn’t call the FBI? Or worse, her family?”
Silence fell over the phone call, and I could hear the soft sobs on the other side.
“She’s seen our faces, Adrik. She knows who we are. There’s no going back.”
“Then what’s the plan? Because sitting on the wrong hostage while the real target walks free doesn’t seem like winning to me.”
I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. Adrik was right. But I was drawing a blank and hadn’t found a way out of this mess that didn’t end with her dead and me without what I had started all this crap for.
“We adapt,” I said finally. “She’s still leverage. She’s their sister, nonetheless. That has to be worth something.”
“She’s nobody, Nikolai,” He shouted into the phone, followed by another beat of silence, and this time I couldn’t hear her in the background anymore.
“A poor girl who didn’t even know she had family until recently.
You think they’ll trade anything valuable for her?
Let alone their power. This mission is dead, Nikolai. ”
She’s nobody.
He was changing his narrative because his heart was leading now. He couldn’t see past the image that haunted him since that night he witnessed his own father raping his sister. Could I even blame him?
“I need time to think,” I said.
“Meanwhile, she’ll either catch pneumonia or starve if she keeps this up.”
“She’s been there for a couple of hours. Don’t be dramatic.”
“Fine. Whatever happens is on you. I’m not having her death on my conscience.”
“Because you really think that when we hand her over to my father, he’s going to feed her caviar and shower her with diamonds?
What if we had caught the Battaglia princess?
Would it be any different? You knew what we were doing and what the outcome would be.
Don’t grow a fucking conscience now, blyat.
” fuck. Adrik fell silent one last time, and I could feel his guilt reach me all the way through the tunnel.
“I’ll deal with her. I’ll make sure she eats. ”
I hung up the phone with even more anger soaring through my body.
Twenty years of waiting for permission to bury my dead could murk the already hazy moral lines, if there were any.
But looking at her in that train car, covered in blood and fear but still fighting back, still demanding respect…
For the first time in twenty years, I wondered if there might be another way.
A way that didn’t require me to sacrifice an innocent girl on the altar of my father’s ambitions.
A way that might even let me keep both my promises and my soul.
Babochka.
The word almost tumbled from my lips as I took another drag of my cigarette. What am I going to do with you?
The morning sun climbed higher, casting long shadows across the empty street. And somewhere below ground, in a freezing train car, a girl named Adrianne Dornier was probably wondering if she’d ever see another sunrise.
She might. But it would be the ugliest she’d ever had the pleasure of witnessing.