Chapter 26
VIKTOR
Isee one of the employees unlock the door as I park my car.
For the entire drive, I kept thinking about Tati and how she looked at me with those eyes—round and dark with fear and worry.
I couldn’t tell her that I feel exactly the same.
I don’t like the idea of leaving her right now, even knowing that Teddy will be there to protect her.
He could be God Himself and I would still want to be the one by her side.
It’s got to be done this way, though. If I’m wrong and someone is looking out for me here, the smart thing for them to do is to attack her first. She’s a walking Achilles’ Heel. I don’t know what I would do if someone hurt her in front of me.
This task is more about preparation than anything else. After I take Nikolai off the chess board and the smoke’s cleared, his loyalists will want answers. And if I can’t provide, I’ll have to deal with them, and then whether I survive or not, all of this will be for nothing.
I’m not planning to be here long. Just in and out. Simple. It started raining as soon as I got here. Large raindrops splattered my windshield as I turned the car off. Of course, the weather would start to turn now, of all days.
As soon as I step out onto the sidewalk, the memory of Marla’s last moments comes back to me.
It was warm just like it is now with the smell of coffee from the shop down the street mixed in with the asphalt in the air.
I pass by the place where she died, the sound of hard soles walking over the very last place she would ever see the sun.
The concrete has clearly been cleaned of her blood prior to the rush of rain falling now, but I know the spot.
I’ll always know it. It’s like there’s a vibration pulling at me.
She died for this. I can’t let her sacrifice be in vain.
I get inside the bank and the air conditioning blasts me, cutting through my damp clothes and chilling my bones as I walk across shiny linoleum that’s been freshly waxed and past an overfed security guard standing at the door.
There’s no other customers around. A relief, really, just in case I was wrong about being followed here.
There’s a single teller sitting behind a counter. She’s a young woman with dark hair and cat’s eye glasses, looking down at a computer just out of my line of sight. She’s typing quickly and the moment I step up, she stops, turns, and smiles at me.
“Welcome to First Community Bank,” she says. “How can I help you?”
“I need to get into a safety deposit box.”
“Okay,” she says, turning to her computer. “Name, please?”
Shit. This might be an issue. In all the madness, I didn’t realize that I might have to identify myself. “It’s for Marla Chekov,” I tell her. I’m ready if I need to force the issue. I hope I don’t, though. Holding up a bank isn’t exactly in my repertoire.
She nods and continues to type. After a few seconds, she turns to me, her eyes still on the screen. “ID, Please?”
I hesitate for half a second, then I hand over my driver’s license. She takes it, then walks it back to the printer behind her and makes a copy.
“Thank you, Mr. Morozov,” she says with a smile. A wash of relief comes over me. Thank you, Marla.
She takes out a paper on a clipboard and places my ID on top before sliding it to me. “If you could fill this out, please? She started the paperwork to add you, but since you were out of town at the time, we just had to leave a note in the system that you’d be stopping by.”
Well. I guess she thought of everything.
It’s less than thirty seconds later and I’m being escorted to another room. The teller tries to make small talk with me and I respond politely, but my focus is sharpened. I need to get done with this and get back Tati quickly.
Down a short hallway to a locked door that she uses a ring of keys to unlock.
The room we enter is covered in three walls of drawers from floor to ceiling and a counter in the center with two stools on either side of it.
She leads me around the wall of drawers, silently looking up and down each row before stopping in front of one.
“Four-two-three-nine.” She says it softly and nods to the drawer marked with the numbers.
It has two keyholes. I pull out my key and she pulls out hers, and we unlock it at the same time.
She then pulls the drawer out, a long metal box with a hinged lid keeping it shut, and sets it down on the counter.
“Take all the time you need,” she says and leaves me in the room by myself. I open the lid and pull out all the folded papers and envelopes. As I do, a small note falls out and onto the counter. I set everything down and open the note. It reads,
Viktor,
If you’re reading this, then I’ve failed and now you’re the only one left who can get justice for Nicki.
Inside this box is everything I’ve found about his death so far.
I’m not going to tell you what everything is because you need to learn what I did for yourself.
I’m hoping you’ll see evidence of what I’ve suspected all along.
The truth of things is that Nikolai somehow found out that Nicki was planning on leaving the Bratva and had him killed.
You should also know that the night of the accident, we came to you for help. He had been struggling after the job you’d done involving Sturov.
The name strikes like a bell in my mind.
Jacob Sturov was a part of the brotherhood before he stole a brick of drugs from Nikolai during a deal.
Nicki and I were to find and end him, which was done within a week of his trying to run and hide.
We ended up finding him in the basement of a business of one of our supposed allies.
And now that I think of it, it was also around the time that Nicki started having hypotheticals with me about what life outside the Bratva would look like. I read on.
What you probably don’t remember is what Nicki found out about Sturov after the fact.
You see, Sturov was looking to help his wife, who was dying of cancer.
Nikolai had stopped paying him as punishment for insulting him at one of the dinners he liked to have.
Nicki never found out how he’d insulted him, but I guess that doesn’t really matter now, does it?
The bottom line is that Sturov messed up and Nikolai was punishing him for it.
At the time that he stole the brick of drugs from Nikolai, it had been three months since he’d been paid a dime.
As I understand it, he’d gone to Nikolai several times over that time period and every time, Nikolai would tell him that he would get his money, but it just never happened.
Sturov apparently had money set aside in his savings, but it was running out and his wife needed her treatment. He was desperate.
His killing never set right with Nicki after he found out about all that.
And roughly a few weeks after Sturov’s death, he discovered that his wife had passed away.
If I had to choose a moment that changed him, I’d have to say it was that.
The night he found out, he shut me out for almost a day before finally coming to me and telling me everything.
I guess I should have known where it was going because Nicki just stopped finding any joy in the job.
A few weeks before the accident, even you had noticed the change in him.
You came and asked me about how he was doing.
What you didn’t know by then and what I didn’t tell you is that Nicki decided he needed to find a way out.
My stomach turns over, and I have to stop reading for a moment. I reach for the nearest stool to me and sit down. I was just asking myself what I might’ve done if I had known for sure… Now I’m about to find out. I take a breath and read on.
So, we decided together that the only person we could trust to help us was you.
And the night of the accident, the three of us met for dinner at your apartment.
Nicki told you everything that he was feeling, including how he wanted to marry me but didn’t feel like he could as long as he was an enforcer.
By that point, he was thinking in terms of the future and what it would look like if we ever had kids.
What would they think of a father who would kill a man for protecting his wife the only way he knew how?
If you’re wondering if you stood by your friend, I can say that you did in the only way you could. You told him to tell no one else from that point on. You also told him that you would help him, though you needed some time to think about what that would look like.
I relax a little in my seat. I guess the person I was in the past lives up to my expectations, after all.
You took him home that night. Nicki was paranoid about being watched, so he had me call a car service and said he would meet me back at home. What you talked about after I left, I’m sorry. I don’t know. What we both know now is that he never came home that night.
That’s why I’m putting your name on this account with mine.
Even knowing you might not remember everything.
The only person I’ve told about my plans has been Tati, and soon, I plan on going to a lawyer to find out what my options are.
I hope to do this soon as I don’t trust that Nikolai’s spies aren’t watching me.
I believe that even though Nicki only told me and you about his wanting to leave the Bratva, somehow, Nikolai found out.
And that’s why he’s dead and why you can’t remember what happened.
If you’ve gotten this far and you’re reading this, you must also realize that Nikolai clearly doesn’t care about your welfare either. It’s my greatest hope that you’ve been led here looking for answers. I pray these documents help you find them.
Shit. She risked everything for this. More than ever, I wish I had acted sooner to protect her.
As I stated, in this box is everything that I’ve found so far.
I know it’s forbidden to talk to the Feds, but ever since I learned that part of your memory was gone, I couldn’t risk telling you outright.
At least not until I had enough to back it all up.
I just hope that you’re not too deep in that you can’t see what kind of monster Nikolai is.
Should you also decide to leave the Bratva, I wish you all the luck in the world, and I wish you so much more if you’ve decided to be the one to avenge my dearest Nikita. Either way, please stay safe and stay alive at all costs.
—Marla
And that’s all that she wrote. I set the note aside and start looking through what’s here.
The police and autopsy reports, just like Tati said.
And a flash drive with the word “Crime Photos” written on it.
I don’t relish the idea of looking through crime scene photos of the accident that killed my best friend and nearly killed me, but I’ll have to look at it. I’ll have to see it with my own eyes.
I start reading through the report, scanning down to the description of the accident. Sure enough, it’s described as drunk driving. According to Tati, the autopsy says that there was no alcohol in Nicki’s system. As I thumb through the pages, a printout of a photograph stops me.
It shows the road leading to a broken barricade. I turn the page to find another printout, this one showing the ravine just behind the broken barricade. The back end of a car is visible among a grove of twisted bark and pine needles from the trees down below.
“Shit… Shit… Vik…”
The voice in my head is Nicki’s, cursing as he realizes the brakes are out. The road ahead of us is blowing by fast…
All at once, the memory of the moments before comes rushing back. Nick looking down at the dashboard frantically, his hands gripping the steering wheel.
“I can’t stop! Fuck! I can’t fucking stop!”
His foot is slamming the floor. I reach over and grab the emergency brake and yank it up, and the car still sails without so much as a stutter. We’re about to hit a curve in the road.
“Hold on!” he shouts.
I close my eyes as the sound of the crash echoes through my brain. The crunch of the metal, the smashing of glass… Nicki’s screams…
“Shit,” I say, getting up from the counter. My hands are shaking as I go to wipe the sweat from my brow, and my heart is pounding hard…
I take a big breath, breathing in slowly through my nose and out of my mouth. I have to do this a few times before my hands stop shaking and my mind starts to clear.
The brakes went out. Even the emergency brake. That wasn’t an accident. I thought that in the moment. I knew it then.
I turn back to the print of the road. The metal barricade is twisted outward and part of the cement has been broken up from the impact of the car. It’s a grisly opener to every other photo that comes after.
And there are no tire marks. None. The car sailed off the road and into the ravine with the only resistance being the barricade.
If it needed to be done and I were the one to do it, to make it look like an accident, I’d cut the brake lines.
Son of a fucking bitch. He put a hit on his own son. Any doubt that I had before this moment is gone. Nikolai truly is a monster.
More importantly, he’s no longer worthy of his title. Just my being in the car is enough to justify what I have to do, but the added part of purposely endangering his own son…
I gather everything together in one pile, finding a folded manila envelope in with everything else. I unfold the envelope and stuff everything inside.
When I see Nikolai next, it’ll be to put a bullet between his eyes.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s Teddy. “Hey, I’m on my way back,” I tell him when I pick up.
“They hit us, Brother,” he says. He sounds winded, like he just sprinted from one end of the room to the other. “We managed to push them back, but they got her. They took Tati.”
A flood of cold comes over me. No…
“They pulled an okie-doke on us,” he continues. “They hit us from the front and while we were fighting them off, your boy Yanov busted in through the back and grabbed Tati. I tried to go after him, but the sonsabitches swarmed us.”
I’m clenching my jaw, but my mind is already turning. Yanov. I guess Nikolai’s decided that he’s his new main enforcer now. First things first. “Casualties?”
“We’re still whole. Got some injuries that we’re tending to, but we’ll be ready when you want to come down hard on this motherfucker. Nobody busts in on the Red Devils without paying for it.”
“Good,” I tell him. “I’m on my way to Nikolai’s now. Tend to your wounded, then get your people and head over there.”
“You want us to meet up outside the gates?”
“No. I’m going to need you there to keep the dogs at the door while I slit his fucking throat.”
“That’s the what fuck I’m talking about. See you there, Vik.”
I hang up the phone and leave the bank.