Chapter 22 Viktor
VIKTOR
We walk through the doors and are immediately hit with the smell of cigarettes and stale beer.
Tati, who had been quiet for most of the trip, is standing stiffly at my side, still clutching her brother’s journal in her hands.
The dress she’d been wearing all night hangs off her body loosely under the jacket I’ve thrown over her shoulders, hiding the large rip from where she was grabbed on the side.
I’ve been trying not to look too hard at her, not to think about the fact that Yanov put his hands on her. I’m trying to stay focused on keeping us alive for tonight.
The bar isn’t as busy as I’m accustomed to at this time of night. There are only a few club members around. Two of them are playing pool near the back and one of them is sitting at the bar talking to Sandy, the bartender. He looks at me as we walk in and his eyes dart to Tati.
“Hey, Vik,” he says with a little frown of concern. “What’s up?”
“Teddy come through here?”
“He’s in back.” He looks at Tati again, then back to me. “Can I get you guys anything? Some coffee, maybe?”
I glance over at Tati and I want to pull her close. She looks shaken and terrified, and I wish like hell I could take that from her. “Just get Teddy out here, pronto.”
The bartender leaves and I turn to Tati. “We’ll be safe here,” I tell her. “Everybody is well armed and this building is fortified to the teeth. Anybody comes looking for us, they’ll regret it.”
She bites her lip and turns her eyes to me. “Can… can we really trust them? I mean…”
“We can,” I say softly. “And if we can’t, you still have nothing to worry about. I’ve got you.”
The ice and fear in her face melt a little when I say that and her shoulders relax.
“Vik,” Teddy says as he walks into the room, Sandy right behind him. He gives me and Tati the same look of silent concern that Sandy just did. “Looks like things have escalated.”
“They have. We need a place to crash… and some help, if you’re willing.”
“You never have to ask, Brother,” he says with a slight smile. He looks over at Tati, then turns to the bartender. “Sandy, take her to one of the back rooms to get cleaned up. And call Luanne. Tell her to come through with some clothes she can change into. Something decent, please.”
“You got it.” He steps forward and offers a hand to Tati. She looks over at me, and I nod, giving her assurance. She takes his hand, and they disappear to the back rooms.
“She looks like hell, Brother,” he says once she’s out of earshot. “You don’t look so hot yourself.”
He points to my neck. I touch it and feel the burn and sting of a wound. Dammit. Yanov always was a good shot.
“Yeah, it’s been a night. We can debrief over beers. I could use one after everything that’s happened.”
He nods and walks around the bar and grabs a couple of bottles, then jerks his head to one of the tables. I follow him, and the moment the cold beer touches my lips, I feel like I can think again.
This mess is a big one, but every mess has a solution and I’m going to find one.
But first, he needs to know the severity of the situation.
I’ve been Bratva for my entire adult life.
I’ve committed myself to this way of life without question, and nobody knows that better than Teddy.
And on the drive over here, I’ve had a real hard look at where I am in this.
This life is one that I’ve cherished and built my entire identity around.
But all good things, they say…
“I’m breaking away from the brotherhood, Teddy,” I tell him, “and I’m going to need your help.”
“Damn,” Teddy says once I’m done telling him everything. He’s been sitting silently, listening to me as I run it all back. Nicki’s journal and Tati’s stealing of it, the gunfight in my apartment building… All of it. And when I’m done, he adds a shake of his head as he leans back in his chair.
“You’re in some deep shit, my friend,” he says finally. “In all the time I’ve been in this game, I ain’t never heard of a retired Bratva.”
“That’s because there aren’t any,” I say. “Once you’re in, you’re in for life. Breaking away from them is going to be next to impossible. It’ll mean Tati and I will need to hide underground.”
He frowns and his bald head tints slightly red. “If that’s how it is, King Nick’s never going to stop looking for you,” he says. “You two will be running for the rest of your lives.”
“I know.” My beer sits on the table between my hands. I turn it slowly around between them as I think. “I was the guy who used to hunt down the ones who tried to opt out of this life. Both me and Nicki. It’s in the job description.”
“I remember.” He shrugs and takes a swig from his bottle, finishing it. He then turns and gestures to Sandy for another. “Never ended well for the ones you caught.”
I shake my head. “Nope. And I’ve never lost a single one.” I have to pause. I don’t know how many of my former brothers I’ve killed for trying to run. I’ve been doing this job for so long that they all kind of blur together. I can’t stop thinking about them, though… or Nicki.
I can’t shake the feeling that if he had come to me, I wouldn’t have honored his wishes. It makes me sick to think about it. He was my brother and it would have torn me up to know that he didn’t want to be by my side anymore.
But… he was my brother. Was I so deeply corrupt that I wouldn’t have hesitated? Before falling for Tati, before everything in my worldview changed, would I have gone to Nikolai? And when Nikolai inevitably brought down the order, would I have followed it?
One of the girls milling around the clubhouse appears at Teddy’s shoulder with a fresh beer.
She looks like a carbon copy of all the women who hang around them, young and thin with tight jeans and T-shirts with the Red Devil logo on it.
She brushes her long, ratted hair over one shoulder and asks me, “You want another one, honey?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Thank you.”
She nods and walks away. Once she’s sitting at the bar next to one of the other guys, Teddy says, his voice a little lower, “You still don’t remember anything from back then, do you?”
“No,” I say. “I wish to God that I did. Especially if what that journal said was true.”
“What if it is? What do you think you would have done if he told you that he was thinking of skipping out?”
I shrug. “I’ve been thinking about that. You gotta understand something, Teddy. I’ve been loyal to the brotherhood since I was eleven years old. Nikolai raised me. If Nicki had come to me talking about leaving…”
I take a breath, trying to be honest with myself and at the same time trying to see myself the way I was before all this happened.
“I don’t think I would have believed him.
At least, not at first. Nicki was good at the job.
Almost as good as me. And just like me, he grew up in it.
There was nobody in the Bratva who knew the consequences better than we did.
He knew damned well if he told me he wanted out, it would put me in a position where I might have to enforce company policy. ”
“Yeah, well… maybe he thought that being the Pakhan’s son would grant him a pass.”
“Clearly, he thought wrong,” I say with a hard sigh. “Nikolai made sure of that. I’m certain of it now. There’s no way he’d sanction Yanov trying to kill me over that journal otherwise.”
“Well, friend,” he says, “I gotta say, this is quite a situation you’ve got here…
but if you want to run, I’ll do whatever I can to get you and Tati out of town.
We got friends in the south, a few in the west. We can make you disappear, I think.
And really, if there’s anybody who could stay gone and stay off the Brava radar, I believe you could do it. ”
I shrug. “Yeah,” I say, “but for how long? I think I could pull it off if we keep moving. Maybe for a few years until we can settle somewhere remote for a time. But then after that…” I sigh and shake my head.
“I’m forty now, Teddy. Let’s say I manage to hold them off for ten or twenty years.
What happens after that? I don’t want to be in my seventies and eighties watching out for them from my hospital bed. ”
We drink our beers in silence for a few moments until I finally say, “My choices are a little limited. Run or stay here and die.” He doesn’t answer, and I’m not expecting him to.
He’s right. Tati and I will never really be able to settle.
Never be able to stop running. The arm of the Bratva is long. Long enough to find us wherever we go.
And Teddy’s not wrong. Being that I’ve been on the other side of this, I’ve always known what to look for and how to run if I’ve ever needed to.
But that doesn’t negate the fact that I will always be running.
If it were just me, that’d be one thing, but what about Tati?
What kind of life would that be for her?
“Your choices might be limited, but not erased,” Teddy says. “You got more options than you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way I see, friend, running or dying ain’t your only choices.
” He puts up a finger. “You can run. Sure, it means you’ll be doing it forever, but at least you and Tati will be in charge of your own destiny.
Least ‘til they find you.” He puts up another finger.
“You can rat. Get all of Marla’s evidence, find a lawyer, and trust that they’ll be able to hide you in the Witness Protection program. ”
I scoff. “Yeah, those are just the same choices with extra steps. Plus, we’d have to testify against him. If I don’t know anything about running, I know the first rule is never let them know where you are. I wouldn’t be the first Bratva to be gunned down in front of a courthouse.”
“Okay,” Teddy says. “So, that just leaves you with a third option.” He holds up three fingers as if putting on display. “Face the sonofabitch and put him down yourself.”
I look up from my beer at him. “Kill Nikolai? Seriously. That’s what you’re suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting you excel in the one thing you Bratva enforcers know how to do better than anyone I know,” he says.
“Vengeance. Only this time, you do it for yourself. If Nicki was killed, Vik, and his father is the guy responsible, you can’t let that shit lie.
Especially if the bastard’s got you and his other kid in his sights next.
You want to be with her and live a life outside of having to spend it looking over your shoulder?
Then you already know that he’s gotta go.
” He taps the table for emphasis as he adds, “Claim the life you want with Tati and avenge your brother’s death. ”
It’s an insane idea. Nikolai could wipe me out with just a word. Standing against him sounds like a death sentence.
And yet, it might be the only real option available to me. It’s at least the only one that leaves me and Tati to move freely again.
“The rest of the brotherhood won’t follow me blindly,” I say.
“Maybe not. But they might think twice about defying you if they know your predecessor put his own children on the chopping block.”
He has a point… and I’ve got to be real with myself. I don’t like the idea of spending my life running. “All right,” I say. “But if I’m going after Nikolai, I’m going to need an army. Can I count on you?”
“Always.”
“Good.” I take a swig of my beer. “First thing, I need to go to the bank when it opens. Get into that safety deposit box. Whatever Marla’s gathered, I’m gonna need it after I take him down.”
“Right on. You want me with you when you go?”
“Let me sleep on that. There’s a lot I need to consider before I start moving.”
I finish my beer and my thoughts turn to Tati. I need to set things straight with her. If any of this is going to work, she’s gotta be on the same page as me. “I’m gonna turn in,” I tell Teddy. “Meet you back here tomorrow morning.”
“Bright and early.”
I leave the table and make my way to the back of the clubhouse. There are at least five rooms back this way that they use for various reasons, sex being one of them, of course. But most of the time, Nicki and I always found it to be a safe haven if we just didn’t want to go home…
Well, if Nicki didn’t want to go home.
I stop in the middle of the hallway as a flash of a memory comes back to me. Him sitting on the bed of one of the rooms one morning when Nikolai called me to go find him. His curly brown hair was mussed and he was shirtless and wearing nothing but his boxers.
When I first walked into that room, a girl was in his bed, topless except for her panties. The moment she saw me, she grabbed her clothes and skirted out of there like her ass was on fire.
Nicki rubbed bloodshot eyes as he looked up at me. I’d just asked him if he spent the whole night there.
“Yeah,” he’d said. “Guess I needed a little time away from home.”
I thought then that the statement was confusing, but I didn’t question him about it. I just told him to get his shit and that it was time to leave.
I should have questioned him. Should have gotten him to spill his guts right then and there. He would have told me. I know he would have.
Of the rooms in this hallway, the only one with a closed door is the one on the far right. That must be where Tati is.
She didn’t believe me in the apartment, and I guess I can’t blame her. On its face, it’s a tough pill to swallow. How does the Dark Cloud not follow through with a job?
It’s pretty clear to me now that Nikolai set me up. He must have known then that Tati and I were together and one way or another, the problem of Marla was going to drive a wedge between us.
And that’s on me to fix. I walk up to the door and turn the knob. It’s open. That’s a good sign, at least.
I walk in and find her sitting on the bed. She’s wearing an oversized T-shirt and panties, her face clean of makeup and her pink curls hanging damp in the moonlight coming in from the high windows of the room. She’s holding the journal. It’s open and sitting on her lap.
She glances up at me and closes the book. “So, what’s next?”