Chapter 16Vasily #2
“Shut up!” I snap at her, slamming my hand down on my armrest because I’ve already destroyed everything else I could have slammed my hand down on.
Benedetti actually hops back and nearly loses her balance, her fancy heels snagging on the carpet. She catches herself, though, and quits talking.
“What part did you play in all this?” I ask.
“I didn’t,” she blurts out immediately. Too quickly, perhaps.
“You know as well as I do. You too,” she says with a nod to Kostya, “that I only called you because Angie was being such an idiot. If you don’t believe me that I’m not particularly loyal to those assholes even though they did everything they could to ruin my life growing up, at least believe that the only involvement I have with them is in the 3D printing, same as you.
And they know I’m here as much as I am there, so they’re not going to tell me that they’re kidnapping Bratva. Or returning Bratva? I don’t get it.”
I drum my fingers on that armrest as Kostya and I exchange a look.
She was already on my hit list before she showed up here, she was just far enough down that list that she wouldn’t have been on my mind until I saw her again.
My thoughts have been so discombobulated since Ana left— I might have eaten a stupid amount of a stupid combination of pills over the course of the last twenty-four hours, but I’m not seeing colors, so I’m reasonably sure I’m still sane— that I haven’t considered Benedetti’s involvement in this.
I might actually be able to use her if she answers my questions properly.
“What do you mean, Bratva?”
She gives me another confused look, but this one is definitely pissy in the same way she was just talking about her family. “What do you mean, what do you mean? Vasily, do you—do you think I don’t know you’re Bratva? What the fuck?” she huffs.
She says it like she has no idea why I just laid waste to my office, like something silly happened and not something that’s going to leave a trail of bodies in its wake. Like my tantrum is over getting tricked by Tony.
Tony’s a jackass. Tony’s perpetually engineering stupid, conniving bullshit. If I got this worked up every time Tony attempted to pull some shit on me, I wouldn’t be the pakhan.
“No, you said my boy is Bratva. Why would you think that?”
Benedetti anchors her fists at her waist, showing off her figure and her power suit, making it clear she’s over shit and ready to take control so she can move on with her day.
Sometimes, I think she does it because she hates men, but then I realize that we do a fair bit of dumb shit and need women to keep us in our place.
Ana was good at that.
As much as what happened to Ana’s memory gave me the in I needed and can hopefully still get the upper hand on, I miss the way she tested the waters in Flagstaff, getting braver every time until she confidently and accurately called me out on my shit.
“Vasily. Love. I don’t know if you think I’m running some dog and pony show and have only survived in the black market as long as I have because of my luck and a great set of tits, but I promise you, I know way more about you and the Bratva and your old brigade and Flagstaff than you apparently think I do. ”
“Oh? What do you know about mine and Tony’s past, then?”
Her eyes widen. Her shoulders sink, almost imperceptibly under the build of her power suit, but I catch the softening. “Why do you think I told you to stay away from Lacey Lombardo?”
I stand up and stalk toward her, padding my time as I contemplate that answer, using that time to study her.
As far as lying goes, Benedetti is good at it, but we all have our tells.
She has a finger that twitches, so she typically puts her thumb over it or crosses her fingers to hide it.
Right now, she has those fists dug into her sides.
But she’s also a jaw clencher, and as I approach her, I see no tension in her jaw. In fact, once I get close enough that she has to tilt her head up, her lips part slightly. “What do you know about me and Analiese Lombardo?”
She shakes her head. She can’t hide the sympathy any more than she can hide her jaw. I wonder if I’m just as obvious as she is.
“I know you used to have seven piercings in your dick, Vasily. And I know you’ve never spit on me, which is weird because that seems like it’s your thing.”
“It was our thing.” No sense in hiding that card now. We’re way past that. “Where is she? Where is Ana right now, Maria?”
She sucks in a breath. She introduced herself to me as Maria Benedetti, of course, but I’ve never called her by her given name. It’s important to me that I don’t forget who she really is.
I see her shiver. There’s actual fear in her answer when she says, “I can’t tell you that.”
It’s not fear of getting caught lying.
It’s fear of what I might do for refusing to answer the question .
It’s fear over what will happen if I force her to answer my question.
I don’t think she knows what’s happened.
But I think she knows a lot.
“Maria, what’s my boy’s name? The one Tony has, that Gino was supposed to sneak back to me?”
Her eyebrows furrow. Her head cocks to the side.
“Oh, umm, it’s Alex, right? Alexander Kuz— ohhh.
” She completely deflates. She actually folds as though to sit, but there’s no chair beneath her.
Kostya, ever the observant one, the one who knows everything, remembers everything, catches everything, manages to slide a coffee table under her in time.
Not exactly a chair, but it gets the job done.
Benedetti curses under her breath, and now her hands are shaking for everyone to see. Her curses are hushed sounds; the shake may as well be a scream.
“What do you know?” Kostya asks roughly, despite that close save he just made.
“Tony has Artom,” she whispers. “This whole time, I— whoa, whoa, whoa!” she yelps, and I’m right there with her because Kostya’s just pulled a gun on her.
“Hey!” I yell at him. “Let her talk!”
“She’s obviously a traitor.”
“I didn’t actually know that!” she cries out. “I mean, I’m just now realizing that’s what happened! Everyone kept saying Vasily’s boy, and I knew that Alex was in your brigade and recently went missing, so it made sense.” She drops her arm just enough to point at me. “You thought that too!”
“Because he didn’t know he had a son,” Kostya seethes, as angry as I’ve ever seen him. A good man. Honestly, even if he’s going harder than he needs to, I’m glad it’s giving me a chance to sit back, catch my breath, and let someone else handle my rage for a second.
Because I’m still pissed. At everyone. Including Benedetti. But I gotta make sure Kostya doesn’t kill her because I really am going to need her for whatever happens next.
“You did know, didn’t you?” I ask her.
“I did,” she says frankly. She settles her hands back in her lap and stares me down, making it obvious her words are for me.
“I told you already, Analiese Lombardo is a good girl, and she deserves to be left alone. By all accounts, she’s a great mom, and she’s got a happy life, really rocking the single mom thing, thriving where she is.
So I don’t know how Tony ended up with Artom, but—”
“She was kidnapped.”
“Oh, shit.” Her shock is palpable. Made even more obvious when she reaches into her pocket despite a gun being on her.
A gun that doesn’t even need to be cocked. I don’t like how that model doesn’t have a safety, but Kostya does. He hasn’t shot himself in the foot yet, so I guess it’s fine.
“Hey!” Kostya barks, his only warning.
Benedetti rolls her eyes. If the situation wasn’t so tense, I’d laugh at it. “I’m grabbing my phone. I need to make some calls, make sure there’s a good team investigating her disappearance.”
“Oh, she’s been found already,” I tell her. “She was returned. To me.”
“Why you?”
“Because she has my insignia tattooed on her.” I hold up my ring, my family crest, the one Ana has tattooed on her mound, the ink still as bright as it was six years ago, albeit fuzzier at the edges. “It’s none of your business who rescued her, but they recognized the insignia and contacted me. ”
“Why didn’t they just ask her? Oh god, is she okay? She’s not in a coma, is she?”
“She has amnesia. She didn’t remember who she was, and I told them she’s my wife.
” I don’t bother to play like I’m ashamed about the lie I concocted.
I’m not. I never was, and now that I know she’s had my son— with a second hopefully on the way— she is my wife.
No piece of paper or lack thereof changes that.
“And Artom went to Tony thanks to a babysitter who had his contact info. So when I took Ana up to the roof with me with the intention of welcoming Alex back and giving Ana time to meet her old friend, Tony showed up. With Artom.”
Benedetti’s eyes bug out. “And you let him take them?” she screeches.
Okay, damn, I guess she is on my side. “I didn’t let shit happen!
” I yell back though. If she’s on my side, she needs to stay in her place on my side.
“Her brother and her son showed up, and her son agreed with her brother that I’m not her husband and her name isn’t Ana Baranov, it’s actually Lacey Lombardo.
It was a pretty fucking convincing argument that I’m the bad guy! ”
“You’re not the bad guy.”
“Thank you!” I yell, then hold my hand up, take a breath, and repeat myself in a normal voice. “Thank you. Sorry. I didn’t mean to get that worked up, but—”
“But you just found out that you have a son, and you’re the last to know. Shit. She’s at Tony’s now?”
I shrug. I hope so? I think? I don’t know.
“I’m gonna head back to Phoenix. Check in on them. Keep an eye out.”
“Why would you help me? ”
Benedetti gives me a lopsided grin, which has me realizing that for all the hats that she wears, from 3D printer provider and servicer to fuck buddy to Mafia connection to ATF playtoy, she’s never been a friend before.
But she says, “Because now that you know you have a son, it’s time to be a father.
And a husband to Ana. It sounds like she needs that more than anything. ”
Kostya, who’s always been a friend although our relationship is more professional, and I appreciate that even if Dima’s always hated him— now I know why, I guess— says, “And while you deal with that, we’re going to be in Flagstaff. You don’t have a choice this time, Vasily.”
I will fight this until I die because Flagstaff is death.
I’m not the muscle anymore. I’m the ruler.
I’m the decision maker. I’m the negotiator.
These can all be done from anywhere in the world, even right here in Los Angeles.
And the people who care about my presence understand that Kostya is as good as I am. “You will do,” I tell him.
That’s enough. It has to be.
Because what will happen if Ana does realize it’s me she needs to be with? What if she and Artom sneak out in the middle of the night and board a bus to LA to return to me? What if she finds this building and makes it all the way here, but I’m not here to open the elevator for them?
Kostya’s anger and frustration is palpable. We’re going to stalemate yet again on this. Except there’s never really a stalemate. He’s my most trusted adviser, but he’s an adviser.
He opens his mouth, closes it when my phone starts to vibrate. He retrieves it and tosses it back in time for me to answer it.
No time for greeting, just Janson’s voice, loud enough for us all to hear in the silent room .
“There’s been another attack. The shop here. Two guards were executed, the shop completely ransacked. And the cops have already gotten there. They’ve taken the bodies.”
Fucking dammit.
“It’s the IRA. And Vasily? We haven’t... fuck, we haven’t been able to contact your sister.”