16. Mikhail
Mikhail
My fingers press into my temple while I force myself to look at the event plans covering my desk.
This is the biggest laundering operation we’ve ever run through Ozero, months of careful planning all riding on one night, and I can’t focus on any of it.
Every time I look at the numbers, they blur together.
The schedules make zero sense no matter how many times I read them.
It doesn’t have to mean anything. Those words won’t stop echoing in my head, and fuck, it hurts. It meant everything to me.
I wanted to go home and work through it with him, figure out what happens next, but he pulled away like he always does.
I’m done chasing after him when he won’t chase me back.
I’m mad and hurt, and I wanted him to choose me for once, but he didn’t.
So I didn’t go home with him yesterday after the shooting because I couldn’t handle being near him.
We got confirmation it was Nozares’s men who tried to shoot me. Fucking cowards.
Sighing, I grab a pen off the desk and hurl it across the room.
It nails Alexei directly in the head and clatters to the floor.
He shoots to his feet immediately, snatches the pen up, and whips it back at my head with enough force to crack my skull open.
I duck just in time, and it bounces off the wall behind me with a sharp crack.
“What is your fucking problem, suka?” he snaps.
“Relax. I wasn’t trying to hit you. Your giant head just got in the way.”
“You are the most annoying person on earth,” he says flatly. Then storms out and slams the door so hard that a picture falls off the wall and crashes to the floor.
Dramatic much?
Standing up, I walk to the window and stare down at Manhattan glowing below me. I press my face against the glass and close my eyes. The cold feels good, grounding me when everything else is spinning out of control.
I’m not gay. And yeah, I know that sounds like denial, classic textbook denial, but I’m really not. I’m just not into men. Except him. Which doesn’t make sense, but here we are, and I’ve stopped trying to logic my way out of it because it’s not getting me anywhere.
The door opens and yanks me out of my thoughts.
Someone gets kicked inside first and lands on the floor with a thump, then Alexei walks in with Calder trailing behind him.
Tank’s tucked under Calder’s arm, and I make sure to keep my distance from that four-toothed nightmare because he bites purely for his own amusement.
I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. I love Calder though.
Yulian told me his story once. When Calder was eight years old, his dad was a big gambler who owed the wrong people a lot of money.
One night they broke into his childhood home, tied him and his parents to chairs, and beat his mom and dad to death in front of him.
They left him there alone, covered in their blood.
It took three days until someone found him still tied up.
That kind of thing messes you up permanently.
He joined the Navy the second he turned eighteen, became a SEAL, saw heavy combat. Then an explosion during one of his deployments gave him a traumatic brain injury and severe PTSD that never went away.
He got medically retired and ended up on the streets, a total mess, until Yulian found him and decided he could be useful.
Now he’s thirty-two, covered in tattoos from his shaved head down to his feet, and works for our family, mostly with Alexei handling interrogations and torture, whatever needs doing to keep people quiet or make problems disappear permanently.
He’s been obsessed with my mother for as long as I can remember. Does everything she tells him to and then goes above and beyond, just waiting for her to notice. Any attention she gives him, and he’s like a starving man getting fed.
Calder makes everyone uncomfortable, but I don’t care. He’s creative when he works, I’ll give him that much.
I’ll never understand Yulian’s ability to collect damaged people like they’re stray cats. People like him for some reason. Don’t ask me why, but they do.
“Really? We’re doing this in the office?” I gesture around the space. Third floor above Ozero with windows to the side, a desk, two chairs, and some cabinets. Nice enough, but not somewhere I want blood splatter.
The guy groans and tries to stand. Alexei walks over, stomps him back down with his boot, and holds him there, then gestures toward Calder. “We brought you a present.”
“What?”
“The Nozares rat that shot at you,” Alexei says.
“You did? Best fucking gift ever,” I say and grin.
Calder puts Tank down, then grabs the guy by the hair and drags him toward one of the chairs.
He and Alexei force him into it and strap him down with zip ties, pulling them tight enough that the plastic digs into his wrists.
I walk around the desk and hop up to sit on it in front of the guy, letting my legs swing while I look him over.
Alexei shakes out his fists. “Talk or I let this freak skin you alive.” He gestures to Calder who lights up with a manic smile, walks around the guy, and crouches to look up at him, then over at me.
“Let’s feed him his own eyeballs.” He rubs his thumb over his lips. “Fuck, I’m getting hard thinking about it.”
Alexei grins and looks my way. “On bol’noy na golovu.” He’s sick in the head.
I stare at Calder for a beat. “Dude, if that’s what gets you hard, you might need to see a shrink.”
Calder rolls his eyes. “Been told that before.”
The guy’s sobbing turns to screaming. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Please stop, you’re all crazy.”
“Why am I crazy?” I interrupt, raising my brows. “I didn’t say I was getting hard from feeding you your own eyeballs.” I glance down at Calder and gesture with my chin. “That’s all him.”
Calder stands up and wipes his tattooed hands over his jaw. “It’s not about the gore. It’s about the act of it. Watching an art piece unfold in front of you. Human reaction in real time. Honest and ugly. You can’t fake that.”
I blink at him. “Did you accidentally take LSD again?”
He stares at me, expressionless. “There’s no accident. I just take it pure.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I start laughing.
The guy’s screaming again, trying to get someone to save him like anyone’s coming.
Hopping off the table, I crack my neck side to side and shake out my hands to loosen them up. “Alright, why not. Let’s fuck him up and get all the information we need. Show me how you do the eye removal without killing him. We should drag it out, and then I want to be the one who ends it.”
Calder shrugs. “Want to come with me to the party afterward?”
What party? I mean no. But going home is worse.
“Sure, whose party?”
“It’s Lev’s thirty-third birthday. Did you forget about your own brother?”
The guy starts screaming and thrashing against the restraints. I lean down and punch him in the face, hard enough to snap his head back and shut him up.
“Let’s just get this over with. Then take me to that party. Gives me an excuse to take a break from the club bullshit.”
Calder grins wide. “Perfect. This’ll be fun.”
Hopping back up onto the desk, I take my grinder and start prepping a joint.
Calder and Alexei grab the guy and tilt the chair backward until it hits the floor with a thud.
He wiggles and kicks, trying to break free, but they’ve got him pinned down tight.
I finish rolling, seal it with my tongue, and light up.
The smoke fills my lungs, and I exhale slowly, watching him struggle.
Alexei pauses, looking down at the guy. “So how do we get his eyeballs out without killing him?”
Calder tilts his head, considering. “Melon baller. Scoop behind the eye, twist, pop it out. Keep the optic nerve intact as long as possible so he feels it longer.”
Alexei’s quiet for a second, then mutters, “You’re a genius.”
They start, and the screaming starts immediately, high-pitched and desperate. I watch Calder pull out his tools, Alexei holding the guy down with his boot pressed into his chest.
My head tips back as the cocaine drips down the back of my throat, bitter and chemical, then I rub the leftovers into my gums with my fingers until they go numb.
“Don’t Let Me Go” by Lane 8 and Arctic Lake blasts through the door, bass thumping hard enough to rattle the walls and vibrate through the floor. I’m hiding in the bathroom like a fucking coward, trying to escape from everyone.
Shaking my head, I grip the black marble bathroom counter to steady myself, my reflection staring back at me. The lack of color in here makes me think of Daniil. He loves colors, always gravitates toward the brightest things in any room.
Shut up, brain. I need to stop thinking about him. For real this time.
I’ve been here for thirty minutes, and I already want to leave, crawl back home, and lock myself in my room.
Pushing off the counter, I slap myself twice, hard enough that my cheek burns and heat blooms under my skin. Get your shit together. Just survive this party.
The door swings open, and I nearly walk straight into some girl. She stumbles, and I catch her arm to keep her upright. She grins up at me.
“Sorry,” I say, already letting go and moving around her, but she catches my arm and bites her lip.
“You’re Mikhail, right?”
“Da.” I wrench my arm away and keep moving. She’s calling after me, but I ignore her and head straight into Lev’s living room.
He doesn’t really live here, just crashes here when there’s too much work at the docks to bother going home. Everything’s black, walls and floors, soulless just like our family.
Lights shine down from above on everyone dancing, drinking, laughing without a care in the world.
There are so many people crammed in here, I’m surprised the floor hasn’t given out yet.
Alexei and Kelly stand in the back. Alexei drapes his arms over him and pulls him close, whispering something in his ear.