Chapter Five
Alina’s POV
The tears didn’t stop even after he left the room, his silence a sharp contrast to my angry yelling. I couldn’t stop myself from delving into the newly-opened Siroc chapter—not that it had ever been closed for very long at any time.
Taking controlled breaths to calm myself, I folded my hands as my mind drifted.
“Siroc, stop. Come on, that’s not fair!” I called out to him as I ran to catch up with him.
It was afternoon and the cool spring air was making running a hassle, especially when my dress impeded movement. He had suddenly declared a race to the back of the old church right in the middle of a conversation.
It wasn’t the first time he pulled such a stunt; one would think he lived on competition.
“What’s not fair? We started at the same time, baby!” he called back, his voice coming out in huffs.
I kept running, knowing fully well that I couldn’t get to our destination before him.
“You already had the intent; I was caught unaware,” I argued, still panting, when I eventually joined him on the wide clearing behind the brick building. “Cheat.”
“Alright, alright,” he conceded, taking my hand, leading us closer to the building itself. “I just wanted to bring you here. How else would—”
“Who put this here? See,” I interrupted, my voice low with suspicion as I pointed at a tray of neatly arranged drinks and several snacks covered with a transparent yellow cloth.
“You had to jump the gun,” he answered, sighing dramatically, leading me closer to the tray that was nearly touching the wall of the building.
“It was you?!” I asked, running ahead of him in excitement and surprise.
“So, I know it’s not the biggest thing for this special day, but,” he started, but stopped himself as if something suddenly occurred to him.
“Alina,” he called, making me look up from where I squatted by the tray.
“Hmm?”
“What day is today?”
“What day? It’s Thursday. Didn’t we pass by students coming back from school just now?”
“It’s the 28th,” he remarked, his pointed gaze on me.
“So?”
“We’re in May,” he went on. “28th of May.”
My eyes dilated as I understood what exactly he was talking about. The special day he was referring to. The reason he did the snack tray thing and brought us here.
My birthday.
“It’s my birthday,” I uttered, rising to my feet. My voice was barely louder than a whisper when I added, “I forgot.”
“I thought you intentionally didn’t mention it because you were being your usual selfless self and you didn’t want to pressure me. It didn’t cross my mind until now that you might actually not remember,” he explained, taking both of my hands in his.
“I forgot. You remembered,” I pointed out, gazing up at him with teary eyes.
“Seeing you cry makes me sad, you know that. Don’t cry,” he implored, and I blinked, nodding. A trail of tears escaped my left eye, and he wiped them off with his thumb. “And why would I ever forget your birthday? You’re my best girl. In the whole world.”
“We might not have the best life now,” he said, his voice calm before he shook his head.
I giggled, and a slow smile crossed his face.
“But I wanted you to have a…bit of a different day. My plan was a real picnic with a blanket and all the food in a basket, but B.B’s mum suddenly drove out with their blanket, so I couldn’t borrow it. And, I had no idea baskets were so expensive!”
“I love this. Just like this. I don’t need blankets or baskets.”
“I’m glad.”
“Thank you, Siroc. Really. This means a lot to me. I don’t have the words, but you already made my day. You’re a gem, and I really hope you see that.”
“When you say things like that, Alina, it makes me want to kiss those pretty lips,” he said, his voice low.
“Then, do it.”
He threw his head back for a second before saying, “Nah, that’ll be wrong. You’re still a kid.”
I had expected him to say that.
“I’m 18 today,” I told him, pursing my lips in anticipation.
“I know. But that just happened today,” he remarked, chuckling. “There’s no rush, baby.”
I collided against his body, and his hands came around me.
“I love you, baby. Just know that.”
In that moment, I pictured us, many years later, dancing to a birthday song on the rooftop garden of our big mansion somewhere in the elite area of town.
And I was content.
I wiped the tears, which had almost dried up on my face, with the back of my hand as the click of the door brought me back into reality.
“Hi,” the guy who entered the room greeted, approaching the chair I occupied.
What does one say when a gangster comes to you with a ‘hi’?
“Alina, right?” he inquired, leaning against the dark, empty shelf that spanned the majority of the left wall. “I’m Ruslan. Everyone calls me Russie.”
“So, I came to check if you needed anything. Food, water, anything,” he divulged. “And, no, we have no plans of poisoning you or anything.”
“Coming from the people who literally kidnapped me from my workplace just a few hours ago,” I said, a wry chuckle leaving my lips.
“Okay, that’s fair,” he yielded. “But, look at it this way, we have no need for your dead body; we only need you alive.” Then he shook his head as he said, “I just scared you even more, didn’t I?”
“I’m not scared. I see dead bodies every day,” I answered, shrugging.
He bent his head slightly as if to comprehend what he just heard.
“I’m a nurse. At a clinic.”
“Ohh,” he remarked, sighing with a smile. “I didn’t go with the extraction team, so I missed that detail.”
“Right.”
“So, do you need anything? It’s midnight, but considering the long drive here, you might be hungry.”
“How far are we from the city?”
“That information isn’t mine to share,” he uttered, scrunching up his face in a silent, playful grimace.
“Of course.”
“We’re around Moscow. That’s all I can tell you,” he revealed.
“I figured.”
He nodded.
“I don’t want anything. To eat, I mean. I just want water.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding as he moved away from the heavy furniture.
“How would you have gotten food, anyway? We’re outside the city.”
“Oh, I’m the cook around here. A good one at that, if I say so myself. Even the boss has no complaints about most of my meals.”
“Your boss? Konstantin?”
“Technically, he’s my boss’s boss. But yes, and that’s high praise because he’s such a picky eater.”
The image of the stony Konstantin I knew as a man who ate intentionally instead of wolfing down anything he saw didn’t correspond in my head. So I just decided to forget about it.
“But, since it’s late and the house hasn’t been in use for a while, ordering is the way to go until morning. Then I can make proper food tomorrow.”
“So what? You cook with your right hand and gun people down with the left?”
“Not exactly,” he answered, chuckling in amusement. “Both hands can do both.”
I laughed at the way his expression became serious, like he was letting me in on a state secret.
“I see.”
“We’ll be friends, I see it already,” he told me, smiling.
“That’ll be assuming I survive this.”
“You will. If not, you’d be dead by now, trust me,” he disclosed. “Just water?”
“Yes. Oh, and I don’t know, I’ll need a change of clothes and stuff for tomorrow. There’s too much nervous sweat on these. Is that a possible request?”
“Sure. It’s a safehouse. I’m sure I can get some tees, blouses, and even dresses in your size. I’ll just dry clean them.”
“Wow, dry clean? Thanks.”
“It’s the least we can do. I’ll be back with your water.”
I nodded, and he left the room.
I wondered how someone warm and normal like him could be a member of the Bratva, and under Konstantin, for that matter. He talked about being under Konstantin like it was something cool.
Not that it’s any of my business.
It was nice to talk to someone who wasn’t exactly my captor, anyway.
**********
When Konstantin walked into the room wearing his stony expression, I hadn’t expected anything good.
I had braced myself for a more violent interrogation.
Torture, maybe. I had expected one of his men to drag a chair into the room after him to sit on while they dragged me to his front, and he hit me until I was bloody.
I had expected him to come with bigger threats, things that made death sound good.
But I never imagined a scenario where Konstantin would come in to tell me that marrying him was the only way I would come out of the situation alive.
And that was exactly what he did hours after he left the room, after I told him about Siroc.
So I looked up at him, stunned like a deer caught in headlights.
“Did you just say marry?” I queried.
Of course, he’s mocking me.
It was just an expensive joke to rile me up. Maybe a tactic to make me lose my footing and spill whatever he thought I was still keeping from them.
But his face remained unreadable as he stood by the foot of the bed.
Wait, he’s serious?
How the hell would that be an option to even consider?
A marriage proposal wasn’t the last thing on the list of what I’d expected; it wasn’t on the list at all.
First, I went from being a nurse at the clinic, living a simple, private life, to becoming an abductee and a public suspect. And now, a wife? To Konstantin Lobanov, a man who was nothing short of a Bratva prince?
Marriage wasn’t something I had in my plans—not even in the next few years. In fact, I’d be lying if I said I had envisioned my future self being married. My last relationship had burned me badly enough to cure me of romantic thoughts for a long while.
And the man I couldn’t stand being in the same room with was proposing marriage to me.
“As my wife, you’ll be off-limits to other factions. You’ll be under Bratva protection in Manhattan, so none of them will be able to get to you. More importantly, I’ll have full control over your movements.”
“Why would any other faction want to come for me?”
His sigh wasn’t subtle enough for me to miss it. He looked the way those older, not-so-friendly nurses looked when they had to re-explain a dosage or something else to an anxious patient.
“Vitya’s betrayal was under wraps, but he blew his cover himself, and now that he’s been arrested, a few factions know that the intel he stole and was about to sell was Bratva intel.
So, the government made it easier for these factions by making the list of his frequent contacts public.
It won’t take long before they put two and two together.
Marriage is a containment strategy, the only one. ”
“Better put, it’s a cage,” I uttered, a sardonic laugh emanating from my lips. “You must be insane to think I’ll marry you.”
“As I said, it’s the only strategy,” he answered, walking towards me, his figure dominating and absolute, yet not threatening. “The Pakhan’s alternative is a bullet.”
Isn’t this worse than death?
The look on his face as he looked down at me was serious. His usual stony expression didn’t convey this to be a necessary inconvenience.
I hated to admit it, but he was right.
Just a few hours into Vitya’s arrest, and my colleagues were already giving me scornful glances, sure I was really an accomplice without thinking to know my side of the story.
I wouldn’t expect them to be anything but cooperative and even eager to give up information about me if anyone set out to hunt and harm me.
I’ll be scapegoated, anyway.
If the Bratva didn’t do it, the Russian authorities would. The bastard put me in this position with his obsessive ways and his inability to understand the word no.
It was probably better to stick with the devil I knew. At least, I knew Liza, and her name meant something in the Bratva world.
I have no way out of this situation, do I?
The damn marriage might be the only way I survive long enough to clear my name.
I sighed, my eyes on the stretch of bed in front of me, before speaking. “If I’m going to be doing this, I have two conditions.”
“Let’s hear it,” he said, not missing a beat.
“I want my belongings from my apartment. And then, I need my phone to contact my only friend in New York, Liza.”
He nodded. “I’ll arrange for your belongings. But the phone condition,” he shook his head from side to side. “No can do. Liza will be told once we’re in New York, and she’ll visit whenever she wants to.”
I nodded, and he gave me a look of surprise.
“This is nothing but a bargain for me. Marriage or not, you’ll always be the man who killed someone I loved in my presence and ruined my innocence. I’ll always hate you for subjecting me to that image when I was just nineteen,” I warned, looking up at him with the anger I felt.
He took more steps closer until he was right beside me.
“Your innocence was ruined the very day you decided to date someone affiliated with the Bratva. You know that better than anyone else,” he shot back, his voice level.
I had no response, no comeback to throw his way as he turned around.
Just as he got close to the door, he turned partially towards the bed as he warned, “I see your facade of cooperation, but you should know this: if you’re hiding anything about your lover’s network or any important intel, I’ll drag it out of you. Piece. By. Piece.”
“Do your worst,” I answered, rolling my eyes. As I dragged my body to lie down on the bed, I added, “And he’s not my lover!”
My pulse hammered against my skin as he left the room, and my eyes remained on the door.
Is it just my mind playing tricks, or is that the shadow of his feet I see from the small space beneath the door?