51. Milana
MILANA
I stare at Luca. His naked chest is smeared with blood from a cut running down his pec to his ribcage. He’s glistening with sweat, staring down at the horrific burn on his chest. It’s raw and looks more than blistered, the skin seeming to be burnt away.
My courage finally swooped in when Masha called for ‘Lana.’ I was grappling for the gun in the baby bag when the gunshot tore through the room, and then Luca cried out.
I prayed I wasn’t too late. It had been so quiet the whole time, just conversation that I couldn’t really follow through the closed door, but I didn’t expect…
would never have imagined that this was going on.
I drop the gun. I had no idea. Luca looks up at me, chest heaving, but focus returns to his gaze. He surveys the carnage. Deadly calm has descended in the room, a log bursting in the hearth an echo of the mind-numbing violence mere seconds ago.
I’m trembling all over, but he just shrugs it off. The Mafia madman I married. Whom I love. Who endured torture so quietly so as not to alarm me or Annushka. She’s sound asleep in the adjacent room, a little chick in the nest I made for her with my winter coat.
I step up to him, raising a hand, wanting to touch him. Blood drips from everywhere. From his hand. His leg. His wrist. From the long cut on his chest. “Luca!”
He inhales, then breaks out into a chuckle. “Fuck. We need to get the fuck out of here before the backup arrives.”
He raises his hand to touch me, and in horror, I notice his little finger, now missing a whole knuckle.
“You’re hurt! Everywhere!”
“Later,” he says, squeezing my arm. “Zoe’s okay?”
“She sleeping,” I say, grateful my daughter will never witness this brutality.
“Luca is right.”
We both turn to Masha where she’s still strapped in her chair, over the man whose face is crushed beyond recognition.
“You need to leave,” she says. “As soon as possible.”
“Who got shot?” I ask. There’s a lot of damage on Luca’s naked chest, but no bullet wound.
“It’s my shoulder,” Masha says. “Don’t worry. I’ve had worse. And it will be over soon.”
Luca tugs the knife out of the other Russian’s body and limps over to her to cut the zip ties. “Good job. You made all the difference.”
She smiles, and it contorts her burnt face even more, making her look like some hideous Frankenstein’s bride from a B-grade horror movie. Except she is real, and this is what she lives with.
“What happened?” I step up to Masha, wanting to hug her to me. “Where did it go wrong?”
“Chertnikov’s spies. The men in the vans.
I didn’t think they’d dare come back here.
Not after seven years, but he must have instructed them to come sit it out.
Wait and see what happens, if anything. Who knows for how long.
” She waves at the supplies. “They’ve been here only a few days. I didn’t think—”
“It’s okay. Let’s not worry about why or how they came to be here,” Luca says. “These types have the happy knack of multiplying. We need to leave, and the car has two fucked tires.”
“I’m not leaving,” Masha says as she stands, her body stiff, creaking as if she’s eighty years old and not a mere twenty-seven like me.
“Malyshka.” I reach for her hand, squeeze her fingers which are cold despite the heat in the room, only to remember two are missing. I drop her hand with a jolt, her warm sticky blood covering me now. “Oh, God. Did I hurt you?”
“No.” She just shakes her head. “Everything hurts all the time, so much. What’s a finger or two? I just want to die.”
Her words are an Arctic breeze that seems to ribbon through the room. My heart rebels against the thought, but my brain has green-lit this for seven long and devastating years. “What do you mean? What have you planned?”
And what the hell were you thinking? I’m still furious that she led us into this trap, but her plans went wrong. What happened here wasn’t on her agenda.
“We’re getting out of here, Masha.” Luca steps in, a hand on her elbow. “All of us.”
“You don’t get it, Luca.” Her voice is firm, if a bit pleading as she steps away from his hold.
“My hip is fucked from being broken when they kicked me around. My gut got rearranged. My jaw clicks with every bite I eat because they broke it in three places. I’ve lost all sensation where the acid burned my skin too deeply.
In a way, half of me is dead already. And as he said, who wants to fuck this face? ”
“Masha—”
She raises her hands, her remaining fingers awkward.
“No. Don’t you dare stop me now. I should have died seven years ago, but Chertnikov kept me alive, a living warning.
I spent the last seven years wanting to die, but there was never enough reason.
Maybe I was a coward. Maybe something in me knew to wait.
That the right place and the right time would come.
My life might have been wasted, but my death won’t be. ”
She reaches for me, for my trembling hand, and clutches it with her good hand.
“I never knew it would be you, my lovely, sweet Milana, who would hold my hand like this, help me see it through. Annushka was a gift to me, allowing me to experience the joy and love I never expected to experience in my life. Maybe if I knew having a baby was like this, I wouldn’t have aborted my own, but that was vengeance of a different kind.
It was what I had to do. It felt right at the time. ”
“Masha, please.” I’m begging now too. “There’s hope.”
“Yes, there is. With my death, I’ll give Annushka life outside of this hideous hold Chertnikov has on me. On us. My death won’t be in vain. By dying this way, I get to fuck Chertnikov over and get vengeance in a way that will haunt him for life.”
What does she even mean? Dying? No. She’s been my anchor, my one true friend over decades of being in the Bratva. The one woman who really understood. And fucking Chertnikov over? By dying? How even?
“We can’t let you do this, Masha, whatever it is you’ve planned.” Luca’s steps sound on the wooden floor as he goes to the backpacks and plucks a dirty T-shirt from them. He pulls it on.
“Your wounds!” I say, helplessly, too many things to focus on. “We need to clean them.”
“Later,” he says. “We need to go. Get Zoe. They must have a car. We need to find the keys.”
“No!” Masha says, her voice harsh. “Listen to me. They were dropped off here. You can’t park a car anywhere here except in front of the cabin, so we would have noticed it and backed off.
Someone will come for them, if nothing happens in a week’s time.
New guys will come and be on rotation, until something does happen.
” She stands taller, with the authority of someone whose mind is made up.
“Don’t fuck anymore with my plans. Just listen. ”
It’s been fucked already. Doesn’t she see this? Luca’s been tortured. She’s been shot—
Luca squeezes my wrist. I slip my hand into his, relief in feeling it’s still mostly intact.
“Okay,” I say, and he nods too.
“I’m only going to say this once,” Masha says.
“This is what’s going to happen. Luca must go outside and bring in the cooler box in the trunk.
There are about fifty liters of fuel in containers stacked in the old shed.
Bring that in too. Here, we leave everything just as it is.
These bodies can stay just as they are.”
Luca tries to stall her again, but she puts her hand up, shaking her head.
“And then?” he asks, his voice thin.
“I would have done it myself.” She shakes her head and holds up her hand. The hand she held the gun with. “Now that I’m finally ready, I can’t do it myself. You’re going to have to deliver the coup de grace.”
“No!” I beg.
“Yes. And then, you’ll set the stage one final time with the prop in the trunk, and you will pour the fuel all over this place and light a match. The wood is so dry, the whole place is basically kindling. They will find nothing but charred corpses.”
Heaven help us. This is what she planned. For weeks. Months. Maybe even before I left for America.
This was her plan all along…
“Masha—”
“No, Milana. Let Luca take Annushka, tie her to his chest in the baby carrier, use one of the camo jackets to secure her—they’re big enough—and leave on the bike that’s hidden under an old tarpaulin in the far back corner of the shed. I doubt these fuckers would have found it.”
“An old bike? In this snow?” Luca says. “With a baby?”
“Yes, exactly. Nobody is going to think you have a baby underneath your coat. And the bike is brand new, but I covered it in dust to make it look like it’s been there for ages.
Something tells me you won’t have a problem going off road.
And once that little girl is strapped to you…
” She trails off. “You’ll see.” She blinks, quiet tears seeping from her one good eye.
“Go through the forest. There are many deer paths through the thicket, shortcuts to a main road. Go east until you find a place for the night. There are small towns dotted along the road. And whatever you do, don’t look back. ”