Taisiya
My blood turns to ice.
The words hang in the air between us, and I can’t make my mouth work fast enough to lie convincingly. That’s the problem with me. I’ve never been able to lie without my whole face betraying me first.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, which is possibly the worst lie I’ve ever told in my entire life, and I’ve told some real stinkers.
His eyes don’t move off mine. Blue, cold, and entirely too perceptive. “You do.”
“I need to go.” I stand up properly this time, clutching the ruined copy of Anna Karenina against my chest like it might stop a bullet. “Give me my money back, and I’ll leave.”
“That money’s already been through the machine. It’s mine now.” He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. The way he says it, flat and certain, makes something in me curl up and die a little.
“Fine. Keep it. I’ll find someone else.”
“With Anton Melnikov currently downstairs?” He tips his head towards the door like he can see straight through it. “You’ll walk out of here and right into him. Is that the plan? Bold. Stupid, but bold.”
My legs don’t want to hold me up. I sit back down, not because he told me to, but because standing suddenly feels like a luxury I can’t afford. The book digs into my ribs where I’m gripping it too hard.
“You don’t know it was me.”
“I know enough.” He rounds the desk again, slower this time, and leans against the front edge of it, arms loose at his sides.
Not touching me. Just close enough that I have to tilt my head to keep looking at him.
“Bruises don’t lie, little bunny. Neither does the way you jumped when you heard his name. ”
“Stop calling me that.”
“What should I call you then? Anna Morozova?” His mouth curves, not quite a smile, more like he’s enjoying himself at my expense. “Or do you want to try the truth this time?”
I don’t answer. My heart is going so hard I can feel it in my throat, in my wrists, in the stupid bruise Gregor left there. The book creaks under my grip.
“Gregor Melnikov,” he says, his gaze boring into mine, “made a habit of collecting debts with more than money. That’s the word on the street, anyway. Men like that don’t earn quiet deaths in dark alleys for no reason.”
“I don’t know what you’re implying.”
“I’m implying nothing. I’m stating.” He tilts his head, studying me the way I imagine a cat studies something small and cornered.
“Anton’s downstairs right now, telling my man how he wants blood for his brother.
He thinks I did it. He formally complained to my pakhan, who also happens to be my uncle.
That’s the only reason you’re still breathing. ”
“Thanks for the reminder,” I snap, and the sarcasm comes out before I can stop it, sharp and stupid, exactly the kind of thing that gets people killed. “Really comforting.”
“It should be. It means you have time. Not much, but some.”
“Time for what?”
“To decide whether you tell me the truth, or I hand you to Bogdan and let him escort you downstairs to say hello to Anton personally.”
My stomach drops through the floor. I don’t think he means it. I can’t be sure he doesn’t. “You wouldn’t,” I say, and it comes out steadier than I feel, which is something. A small, useless victory in a day full of losses.
“Try me.”
I search his face for a bluff and find nothing.
That’s the worst part. Not the tattoos creeping down his neck or crawling over his hands, not the way Bogdan fills a doorway like furniture nobody asked for, not even the knowledge that Anton Melnikov is downstairs deciding who to blame for his brother’s death.
It’s the stillness in this man’s eyes, like he’s already decided what happens to me and is only waiting to see if I’ll make it interesting.
“He grabbed me.” The words come out before I decide to say them, tumbling over each other in their hurry to get free.
“Gregor. He grabbed my wrist and told me nobody would care if I screamed, and I had a knife because he’d been harassing me for weeks.
I borrowed money. He kept adding interest even after I’d paid.
He said he’d take it out with… other methods.
He assaulted me. I reacted. I didn’t mean to… ”
“Yes, you did, and that’s okay.”
“What?” I stammer, frowning.
“You meant to kill him, and that’s okay.”
I blink, stunned into silence for a moment before my thoughts come rushing back. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t find it comforting that a Bratva man tells me killing is okay.”
“Take it or leave it, because I’m all you’ve got right now,” he says.
Shouting outside makes my blood cool. Shit. Then I hear a gunshot, and I freeze.
“Move,” Voronov says, lunging for me and gripping my upper arm.
I don’t. I can’t. What is happening?
His fingers dig into my arm hard enough that I yelp. The sound gets swallowed by another round of shouting downstairs, muffled through floor and door but unmistakable. Male voices, angry, one of them rising above the rest in Russian.
“I said move.” He hauls me towards the door, and the book slips from my grip, hitting the carpet with a soft thud that feels obscenely loud against the chaos below us.
“What’s happening?” My voice comes out thin. Useless.
“Anton doesn’t like waiting for answers he thinks I’m hiding.” He yanks the door open.
“We’re going out that way?” I croak.
“You’d rather go out the window?”
“Uhm…” I consider the drop, but apparently take too long because Voronov growls and hauls me along the hallway to a door marked Private. “Wait! My book!”
“I’ll get you a new one,” he says, and reaches to his back to pull a gun out from underneath his jacket.
My legs finally decide to cooperate, though I’m not sure if it’s survival instinct or just the fact that a man with a gun is dragging me along a corridor and my body has apparently decided arguing is pointless.
“Where does this go?” I hiss.
“Out.”
He shoves the door open with his shoulder, keeping himself between me and whatever’s happening downstairs.
I catch a glimpse of a narrow stairwell, unlit.
He pulls me through and lets the door swing shut behind us, muffling the shouting to something distant and unreal, like a television left on in another room.
“Down,” he says, and starts moving before I can ask anything else.
I follow because the alternative is standing in a dark stairwell. The door at the top bursts open and Voronov spins, aiming his gun. He swears and lowers it, pushing me forward. “Go.”
“Go where?”
“With Bogdan,” he replies as the giant lumbers down the stairs towards us.
“No, I don’t want to.”
He ignores me. “Take her to the Bentley. I’ll be there in five minutes. If I’m not, take her someplace safe.”
Bogdan grunts a response and takes over the hauling of my person around.
I struggle, but he drags me the rest of the way down the stairwell like I weigh nothing.
Voronov is already gone, back through the door, into whatever’s happening on the other side. I hear several shots, and my stomach lurches with every step down.
We hit a door at the bottom, and he shoulders it open onto a back alley. Rain slicks the cobbles under my useless boots. I slip, but Bogdan is there to haul me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“Hey!” I growl.
His shoulder digs into my stomach, and every bounced step knocks the air out of me in short, undignified grunts.
Rain hits the back of my legs where the coat has ridden up. “Put me down, you absolute unit of a man! I can walk.”
He doesn’t answer.
He carries me across the alley like I’m cargo, and I bounce against his shoulder with every stride, my ribs protesting, my hair coming loose from its pins and hanging in wet strings across my face.
The rain has picked up, hammering against the cobbles, running in dark rivulets toward a drain choked with cigarette butts.
“This is kidnapping!”
“Would you rather I hand you to Melnikov?”
I’m more stunned by his full sentence than the contents of it. “No,” I start, and he grunts loud enough to shut me up.
He sets me down beside the passenger door of a black car, and my knees nearly buckle when my boots hit the wet ground.
He catches my elbow, steadies me for exactly as long as it takes for me to find my balance, then lets go, reaching around me to open the door.
He shoves me inside and slams the door closed, standing at the side of it like a guard.
I blink and try to process what has happened to me in the last few minutes.
I fail.
The fact that I’m sitting in a fancy car owned by a Bratva man who is currently getting shot at by the man whose brother I killed is kind of taking up all the space in my head. And then reality hits me.
He didn’t give me up.
He knew, and he protected me.
Why?