2. Yana
Fyodor’s Rules #32 - Indulge your vices where you can. You never know when you’ll have to go without.
The transfer from the car to the plane went smoothly. Either Fyodor wasn’t bringing anything with him, or he’d sent his things ahead and they were already packed in the hold. The crew stashed my go bag in a cabinet toward the rear of the plane, no overhead bins to disturb the sleek lines of Fyodor’s private jet. If anyone ever wondered where I got my expensive tastes from, all they had to do was look at Fyodor. His vice was vehicles, be they cars, boats, or planes. My vices were clothing and shoes.
Honestly, there were worse vices to have.
I settled back in my seat, making sure I was comfortable and my seatbelt was fastened before I took my laptop from my purse, placing it on the small table. Fyodor was busy as he talked to the flight crew. He had never been good at sitting still for long, and I thought it might be a werewolf thing. Most of the ones I had met over the years were constantly moving.
I slipped my headphones over my ears, letting the strains of Tchaikovsky wash over me. The pleasant background noise helped to keep me relaxed and focused me on the task I was doing. Next, I opened a blank document and let my fingers settle over the keys. Touch typing was a distinctly undervalued skill. It allowed me to take notes, without having to pull myself out of the memories and disrupt my workflow.
Closing my eyes, I tilted my head back, letting myself draw upon the memories that were not my own, but I didn’t let myself sink into them yet. I would need to once I found what I was looking for, it was too hard to make out the details I needed to know otherwise. For now, I watched the memories like they were a movie, subconsciously taking basic notes, just in case there was something I needed to recall later.
Each time I finished with a memory I extracted, I locked it away in a vault inside my mind. I hadn’t yet removed any of the memories I had taken from other people from my mind. However, rather than let them simply rattle around and mix with my own memories, I locked them all away. These notes would make it easier to pull them out if I ever needed them again.
When I reached the memories of an office with dark wood shelves, a large desk and jewel-toned carpet, I pause. This was the memory I was looking for, or rather, the secret I was seeking, was in this room. I needed to step deeper into the memory now. I took a moment to draw a deep breath and relax my body as best I could. This part was almost as bad as the screaming.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t sitting on the plane; I was now standing in the office, in a body that was not my own. I wasn’t alone, there was the hum of people talking. Discussions of business, moving product between warehouses, and the inner workings of a smuggling operation. The man I was inhabiting wasn’t anyone important within their organization. He wasn’t a lieutenant, wasn’t even an enforcer. He just knew the person they needed to bribe.
On the plane, my body took notes on the conversations I heard, again just as a precaution in case they became relevant later. I wasn’t paying too much attention, letting the words wash over me, leaving my mind as soon as I had recorded them. These words weren’t the reason I was here. Just when I thought about fast forwarding through the memory, the man behind the desk finally stood.
This was what I had been waiting for.
He strolled over to a painting and slid it out of the way.
I never understood why people put their wall safe behind paintings, it was always the first place we checked. My safes were hidden inside cupboards or behind panels. I wasn’t about to make a thief’s job easier.
Watching as he typed the code into the keypad, my fingers recorded the numbers amongst my other notes. The temptation to just bail out of the memory at that point was strong, but I resisted. I wanted to talk to Fyodor, as I wanted more information about what was going on, but I was also thorough. I took pride in my work, and there was no point in doing something if you did not do your best. Especially if one day your life could depend on it.
The rest of the memories I had scooped out of my victim followed on from this one. I knew what his contact looked like now. It was useful information if we needed someone to lean on or bribe so that we could move things in or out of Chicago. I was sure we wouldn’t be at that stage for at least a few months, but you could never tell with Fyodor.
For all I knew, this war would be over within a week. It wasn’t likely, though. Even if we could strike surgically, catching everyone by surprise, and have every strike go perfectly, it was going to be a long, bloody fight to claw back what they had taken from us.
It excited me, thinking about the upcoming fight. I was eager to inflict the same suffering that they had all wreaked on me. And in the end, I would stand over four bloodied corpses with their hearts cut from their chests, and everything would be as it should.
There was only one way to repay betrayal, and that was with death.
I pulled out of the memories and started filing them into my vault with everything else. Tying them to a few keywords from the notes I had taken, along with the date, and the name of the man I took them from before I locked them away. It was a mental exercise that I had down to a fine art now, one that preserved my sanity, so I made sure that I practiced it often.
Opening my eyes, I saw Fyodor now sitting across from me, watching intently with that silver gaze of his. He didn’t speak immediately, although it was clear from his body language that he wanted to talk. We had worked together enough that he knew my process, and knew when he could interrupt, and when he could not.
I quickly skimmed through my notes, making a few changes and expanding a few points while they were fresh in my mind before I saved and filed those away too. I took a notepad and pen from my bag, wrote the code to the safe, and handed it to Fyodor. Closing the laptop, I slid it back away with the notepad and returned my purse to the floor.
Fyodor wasn’t looking at me anymore, his attention now on his phone. Once he had finished typing, he crumpled the piece of paper, dropping it into an empty glass. He held it out, and it was only a few seconds before one of the flight attendants took it away. They were well versed in how to dispose of things so no one could find them.
It was a skill everyone who worked for Fyodor was required to perfect. There were always things that could return to ruin your plans if you didn’t dispose of them properly. No one wanted to be responsible for such a minor mistake being the downfall of everything we had worked toward.
Fyodor’s attention shifted back to me now that I had wrapped up everything from my last job. He looked at me expectantly, like he was waiting for me to ask him one of the many questions that swirled around in my mind. Few things were as frustrating as when someone refused to answer my questions. So, I just stared back, waiting for him to decide what he wanted to tell me. His silver eyes glimmered with mirth as he returned my dark gaze, like he was challenging me to break first. It wasn’t the first time we had played this sort of game, although this time the stakes seemed much higher. I would not cave. It would only be manipulated into an excuse not to tell me, then it would be held over my head and used to extract something from me later. Fyodor did nothing for free.
People who observed the way Fyodor and I interacted always had trouble defining our relationship. Some thought I was his daughter. Some thought I was a brainwashed slave. Others thought we were sleeping together. For the record, we had never slept together, the thought of it made me want to gag. Not that he wasn’t handsome, he was. He was tall and broad, with all the muscles you would expect from a werewolf. Between the tattoos and the salt and pepper hair, he had a bad boy vibe that screamed Daddy. And gods knew the man liked to be in control. No, not just liked, he needed it. And he would fight tooth and claw to keep it. He wouldn’t give an inch that he didn’t need to, not unless someone tore it from him. For someone who had never slept with him, I was doing a pretty good job of describing why someone should, wasn’t I?
It wasn’t like that with us, though. I had known Fyodor since I was three years old, when my parents had traded me to him. What they had received in return, I still don’t know. When I asked him, Fyodor said it wasn’t important. He never lied to any of us about how we came to live with him, but he always told us that the circumstances weren’t important. What mattered most was that we were with him now and that we were a family.
Were—being the important word. My brothers had shattered our family when they betrayed us and chased us out of Chicago.
“You must be excited to be returning home, rybka. I am sorry you have been kept away for so long. But just think, your skills have come even further than I thought possible. You should be returning a queen. I want to see a crown on your head, but we are going to have to take it by force, I am afraid. Are you ready for that? You know they are going to be there.” He had finally chosen to break the silence between us.
I took a second to revel in my minor victory before his words sunk in.
Them. My brothers. The boys.
Although I suppose they would be men by now, all of us approaching thirty. Though they would always be rowdy teenage boys when I thought of them, which was more often than I liked to admit. They were the boys I had grown up with, the boys I thought I knew better than anyone else on this planet.
It had been a hard-learned lesson that you never truly knew anyone. That in the end, even the people you cared about the most could betray you. And it had hurt like a bitch when they did.
“It will be nice not to be on the run anymore. And you know I never needed a crown. I just want to take back what they owe us and pay back their betrayal. If that means taking everything from them, then so be it.”
My words may have rung with confidence, but Fyodor was looking at me as if he knew better. Like he was sorry for what was to come, and for the parts we were both going to play. I didn’t want his pity. Blood and vengeance were what I wanted. I wanted to see their hearts ripped out, literally, if possible. Then they would know what it felt like when, as a teenager, I had run home expecting them to be waiting. To be ready to fight beside me, only to find them gone. All their belongings had vanished too, not that any of us had ever owned much to call our own.
He studied me like he was trying to read my thoughts, and it wasn’t the first time that I was quietly relieved that Fyodor didn’t have access to my abilities. Not that he didn’t have his own way of getting me to talk, but torture wasn’t nearly as effective as mind control, no matter how skilled the torturer.
“I am not sure it will be as easy as you wish, rybka. But you know if it’s in my power, I would give you anything you wanted. If blood is what you are craving, then blood you will have. I know how you like those red bottomed shoes of yours.” He looked down at my shoes with a smirk, as though making his point.
Yes, I had an expensive taste in shoes, but there was something about stepping into a pair of Louboutin stilettos that was like putting on armor. There was power in them. In the way they made me stand taller, and the way they made me feel. Over the years, I had learned that you had to ground your power in something, or it was easily lost or stripped from you. It wasn’t the individual clothes themselves; they were just bits of fabric. It was the ritual of getting dressed, of sliding expensive silk or lace across my skin, stepping into shoes that took practice to walk in effortlessly. It was the ritual that clothed me in power.
“So, where will we be striking first?”
This was what I needed. I needed to focus on the steps of the plan, so I wasn’t focused on the boys that were going to play an important part of it. I would let Fyodor handle the bigger picture while I focused on the details.
“The Masquerade is in one week. You will need to keep a low profile until then. Even at the ball, I only want people to see glimpses of you. No one is to be certain it is you. Everyone thinks you are dead, and that is something that we can use to our advantage. Better to be the knife in the dark, that no one expects to find them, hm?”
So much for not thinking about the boys. They would be at the Masquerade. Everyone who was anyone in the Chicago Underground would be there, and it was an important night to promote continued peace. I wouldn’t say it was the only night there was no violence between the factions, but it was the most important. Business would be done and deals struck. It was the sort of night where you could make your fortune, or where your fate could be sealed.
It was an event I had loved growing up. Fyodor always took us with him. He said it was just as important for us to maneuver calmly in these sorts of society events as it was for us to feel comfortable in a dark and dirty alley, Pasha and I, especially. When I was younger, a lot of my training involved navigating the complex web of social politics between the various factions. It was what made me so skilled at my job now.
Everything else seemed easy when you grew up dancing amongst the different Underground factions of Chicago. All polite smiles and fake pleasantries while they pretended to play nicely with each other. They had never truly accepted us in those days; we had been an oddity, Fyodor’s little band of misfits. The Bratva gave permission for Fyodor to run his experiments, but that didn’t mean they offered us an ounce of acceptance.
I couldn’t think of a more apt homecoming. Chicago would not know what hit them.