20. Lukas
Fyodor’s Rules #6 - Silence can be a powerful response. So choose your words wisely, if at all.
Our rooftop planning session had lasted for hours. Pasha had all kinds of games he wanted to play, ideas to trick the woman, Yana, into telling us the truth. I had only given half of my attention to him, the other half was watching her through the eyes of Ghost and Demon. She was sound asleep, unmoving, and it seemed more like she was unconscious than sleeping. I was just glad I could hear her heartbeat through the hounds’ sensitive ears, or I would be worried she was dead.
Pasha had done a good job of healing her back and cleaning her up. Once I finally extricated myself from all his scheming, I stopped past my room, grabbing a couple of pairs of shorts and some T-shirts. They were going to be too big for her, most likely, but they would be better than the cut and torn dress she was currently wearing. And the gods knew I didn’t want her walking around naked. I was trying not to think of her as a woman, or even human, until we worked out her true identity.
Trying and failing, but it was the effort that counted, right?
Letting myself into her room, I sat in the armchair in the opposite corner from the bed. I didn’t turn the light on, not needing it to see her with my Scion enhanced vision. Was I being creepy? Sure, but I didn’t care what it looked like to her. In fact, if she was put off balance by me watching her, that was a good thing, it would be easier to get her to talk.
As I sat there, all I could think about was the state she was in when I found her in Alexei’s basement, and those words she had uttered to me. Mired in a miasma of old memories, I almost missed it when she stirred. Luckily, the hounds were on top of things, both sitting at the first signs of her waking. Although I didn’t get up, I leaned forward to watch her. Part of me wanted to believe that I would be able to tell if it was her in these vulnerable, unguarded moments, but the truth was, it was almost impossible. I had thought I had clung to my memories of Yana tightly, but I was realizing just how much of her I didn’t remember, and it felt like a heavy weight in my chest.
The moment she was properly awake was clear as day; her body stiffened, and her hand swept under the pillow. I had kept the earbuds in, as while we weren’t sure how effective they would be when we weren’t listening to her voice digitally, hopefully, just the sight of them would be enough to keep her from trying anything nefarious. I was too emotionally drained to be punching a woman in the throat, especially if she was my teenage love.
It only took seconds for her eyes to snap to mine. If there was anything that had me leaning towards it being Yana, it was her eyes. They were a blue that seemed so deep you could swim in them, but how common were blue eyes, really? Was I just falling victim to wishful thinking? “I brought you some clothes. You need to shower, then we will get you something to eat.”
I wasn’t sure what I expected from her in return. But it sure wasn’t her sitting straight up with a coy smile and letting the sheets and the ruined remnants of her dress fall to her waist. Though honestly, I was surprised it had stayed on her this long.
“Are you going to watch me shower, Luka? It’s been a while since you’ve done that. Hovering between the realms, trying to catch a peek.” Her tone teased, but I didn’t miss the slight shake of nerves that underscored her brash words.
And she should be nervous, teasing me like that. Either she was trying to get a reaction from me, or she was trying to worm her way under my guard using the guise of nostalgia. I needed to be more wary of her. I stood up, leaving her on the bed while I went to get the shower started. Once the water was filling the room with steam, I came back to see her now standing, staring at the hounds.
“Towels are on the rack, and clothes are on the sink. Take as long as you need, but do not run. The windows don’t open this high up, and there is no way out of that room. I have your scent now too, don’t forget.”
The last point must have been a more effective threat than I thought, as I watched the way she swallowed. I still needed to go through the items she’d had on her, to find out if one of them had been the reason behind her hidden scent when we’d met at the Masquerade. Alexei would be better at determining that than I, and maybe he was already taking care of it while I was babysitting her. Just so long as he was doing something useful.
I was in no mood to crowd or intimidate her, and not wanting to give in to her teasing, I returned to my earlier seat, giving her plenty of room to get to the bathroom unmolested. The hounds had settled too, and once again lay on their bellies as she walked about them. She looked around at everything but me as she moved across the room, probably looking for an escape or a weapon, any kind of advantage she could get.
But all she was going to find was some soap, there wasn’t even a razor left in the bathroom. First, I needed to understand where this hatred for us had originated. Not just to mollify Nikolai, but to satiate my own burning need to know. We had been inseparable, all of us, but her and I most of all. What possibly could have poisoned her so completely against us? I could understand her being mad at us. It had been a decade, and we hadn’t looked for her, but we hadn’t known that we needed to search.
While she was in the shower, I tried to think back on everything that had happened a decade ago. So many things happened so quickly that it was hard to piece together now, especially since I did my best not to think about that traumatic time of our lives.
There were photos of them. Their bodies sprawled on the ground, blood everywhere. I remember seeing Fyodor’s tattoos because I had looked for them, as it would have been the easiest way to spot a fake. There had been so much urgency at the time. Screenshots of wire transfers. A hit list with our names on it. The insistence to run. We had only been sixteen, well, I was. Nikolai was eighteen, and Alexei, seventeen. Pasha had only just turned sixteen. What were we supposed to do when faced with that kind of danger? Fyodor’s sister had taken us in for a few weeks while we tried to get our heads screwed on right and our shit together. All while, we tried to ignore the fact that two of us were missing, and not just any two, but the heart of our little fucked up family and our father.
We didn’t have time to mourn them, and instead we poured everything into a plan. All our anger, all our fear, and every bit of emotion we could spare. We rained one night of pure carnage and violence where we took out every bounty hunter and contract killer who wasn’t a high-ranking member of one of the four families in the city. Anyone who may have been considering coming after those bounties who we could kill without repercussion had been dead by dawn. A decade on, and I still couldn’t believe that we had actually managed to pull my plan off.
Part of me wondered if it had all been for nothing. I knew both Pasha and Nikolai would tell me that calling everything we had built nothing, was stupid and insulting. But Alexei would understand. He had the same instinctual need for family as I did; we were both pack creatures. As much as we wanted to pretend that everything was fine in our family, it wasn’t.
The discussion about getting married had brought the cracks to the surface. It was a ridiculous plan, trying to marry us each off to a different Chicago family. I didn’t know why Nikolai couldn’t see what was so obvious to me. It would not bring us peace, nor would it gain us more power or reputation. It was only going to pull us apart as each of the different factions tried to drag us in closer to them. They would use these marriages to absorb us into the families, to ultimately separate us. And I had no intention of helping them achieve their aim.
Nikolai would say that I was paranoid, but I was just considering this tactically. It was how I kept our family safe, and it frustrated me when he didn’t listen. He thought because it was a social situation that he knew better than me, or maybe he secretly wanted to marry the dull Italian girl. I mean, he could do worse. But the thought of making a commitment to someone so demure, who had been taught to be a dutiful housewife, was my idea of hell.
The shower shut off, but I didn’t bother to get up, I knew how long Pasha took in the bathroom, not including his ridiculously long shower. I was sure she would take advantage of the time by herself, probably to plan her next move. That’s what I would be doing.
It also gave me time to think about what I was going to do with her. She was undoubtedly hungry, and food was a good way to get people to talk. Not that I thought she would open up to me if I made her a grilled cheese, but I could eat as well. With a thought, I dismissed the hounds, letting them get some much needed rest. Now that I had her scent again, if she ran I’d be able to find her, even if she did somehow get off our floor.
She only made me wait another ten minutes before the bathroom door opened enough for her to stick her head out. Whether she was annoyed or disappointed to see me, I couldn’t tell. I was going to have to work on that, at getting better at reading her emotions. Body language I could usually read with no problem, but many people communicated so much unconsciously with their face.
“If you want food, you need to come out of there. We can go to the kitchen, and I’ll make you something.” The way her eyebrow rose told me she wasn’t impressed with what I had to say, or maybe it was just how I said it. Growling in frustration, my hand swiped through my hair. “I’m not withholding food, but you can’t eat your breakfast in the bathroom. You lost a lot of blood yesterday. You need to eat.”
The scoff she gave me was well deserved, but that didn’t mean I was happy about her attitude. If getting on my good side was her plan, she was failing miserably. With a huff, I threw my hands up in surrender and got out of my chair, leaving the room with the unspoken invitation to follow me. If she wanted to eat, she would come out of the bathroom. If she ran, I would chase her down.
What happened next was entirely up to her.
One of the others must have started the coffee machine, thank the gods. I knew Pasha had gone to bed after our planning session, but Nikolai and Alexei would be lurking around here somewhere. Hopefully, they kept themselves scarce so I could work on getting information out of our guest. I poured two mugs, adding milk and sugar to hers and a dash of cinnamon and some cream to mine. By the time I was finished, I looked up to find that she was standing at the entrance to the kitchen, looking tiny in my too-large clothes. Pushing her mug toward her, I made sure not to crowd her and let her come to me. I opened the fridge and looked over my shoulder.
“Omelets, okay?” Her small nod was enough to have me pulling the ingredients out. I knew the basics of cooking, but the kitchen was Pasha’s or Alexei’s domain. Still, omelets were within my skill set. It wasn’t hard to break an egg, then you just had to add stuff.
She kept the kitchen island between us; I wasn’t sure why. If she really was Yana and she knew me, then she must have known it wouldn’t be enough to keep her safe. Although a lot could be said about the illusion of safety. I wasn’t trying to scare her right now. It was the reason I had sent the hounds away, and why I was glad my brothers were remaining scarce.
I prepared the vegetables quickly, not thinking too much as I used the knife. I wasn’t even looking at what I was doing, watching her instead as she sipped her coffee. There was a tension in the set of her shoulders, and her eyes did not settle anywhere for too long, almost like she was scared.
“You can talk, you know. Ask me things.” I hoped that if I gave her the space to do things in her own time, it may have encouraged her to speak. But it didn’t stop her first question from catching me by surprise.
“Is this going to be my last meal, then? Because if it is, I have some requests.” The knife paused on the cutting board, I didn’t want to lose a finger in my distraction. My confused eyes met her gaze, but her expression was goading, like she was challenging me.
“We will ‘not kill you yet. We believe you, Yana, but there is still a lot to talk about. So, unless you want to tell me where you’ve been for the last ten years, and why you haven’t reached out to us, breakfast is where we’ are starting.”
Her eyes narrowed in suspicion over the rim of her mug, her silence doing the talking for her.
“We have a lot of questions, as I’m sure you can imagine. We thought you were dead.”
I didn’t miss the glare she gave me at that statement. So I filed it away, as the start of the information I needed to get from her. She had to have known that we thought she was dead, but still chosen not to tell us she was alive. Suspicion flared in me briefly. It was a check in the column that her mind had been controlled by someone and she was now back here as part of the recent attacks.
Not wanting to push her too far, I cracked the eggs into a bowl and turned away from her to cook. I had just poured the eggs into the pan when I felt the press of the knife I had left on the bench in my throat. It had taken her longer than I had thought, maybe she had been worried it was a trap.
“Kill me, and you won’t make it to the door, then you’ll be straight back in Alexei’s basement. You’re the first one to make it out of there, but I don’t think you’ll manage it a second time.” I kept my voice even, not moving anything except my eyes, which looked sideways at her.
I could see the doubt, her confidence wavering, and saw the second she decided to lower the knife. My hand came up gently to take it from her, just setting it down beside the stove, then continued with my task. Picking up the veggies, I sprinkled them into the omelet; I didn’t look at her and instead focused on the cooking.
“This all would go easier if you talk to us, Yana. You should know that.” I carefully folded in the edges of the eggs, flipping the omelet before I looked over at her, but by then she was back by the counter, mug of coffee in hand.
“There’s nothing to talk about. You should all just go back to thinking I’m dead. I don’t want to talk, the time for talking was over so long ago, it’s not even a memory.” She sounded sad—the kind that was bone deep—and my heart ached for her.
I plated up the food and set it in front of her. “Eat. Everything is better when you have a little food in you.”
This was going to be harder than I thought.