2. Luka
2
LUKA
W hy the fuck did I let him drive my car?
Making our way to the lake, Arseni veers slightly in the other lane as if he’s drunk instead of simply an idiot. He speeds up, my car’s engine roaring, only to slam on the brake right in front of me.
I grind my teeth as my grip on the wheel tightens, my body lurching as I shove my foot on the whore’s brake.
Brake lights flash several times like Arseni wants the car to laugh along with him, and although I’m annoyed, I find my grip loosening when he waves his middle finger out the window at me. I chuckle, my head shaking as I shift in the seat and slap the sun visor up.
“All right, fucker, let’s play.”
I jerk the wheel as my foot presses the accelerator to the floor, the car’s engine growling like a cub who hasn’t quite found its roar. We’re on a two-lane road, headed to the lake, in the middle of summer, so speeding in the passing lane with a dead body in the trunk of this piece of shit is needless to say, reckless. But as soon as I see Arseni’s shit-eating grin, his hand draped lazily over my wheel, it feels like I have something to prove.
I stab the button to roll down the passenger window.
“Think you could beat me in that?” he yells in Russian, nodding to the silver Chevy Sonic.
He’s in a 370z. There isn’t a chance in hell that I’m going to beat him. He knows it. I know it. But it won’t stop us from having some fun.
“You couldn’t beat me if I walked,” I yell back.
He shows me his teeth before rolling up his window. I leave mine down, not wasting any time before I gun it to get around him. He could easily stop me, but to make things interesting, he lets me take the lead. We both ease off the gas when a minivan passes, but as soon as we skid onto the more secluded road, my foot doesn’t let up off the accelerator.
Arseni—like an asshole—toys with me, pulling just ahead before easing off again and again. I look over to see him pretending to be asleep at the wheel before belting out a laugh. This car really is pathetic.
It whines as we pull up the hill to the cliff, Arseni pulling ahead of me to take the narrow trail. The car bounces over rocks, and when the first glimpse of water finally breaks past the hill, Arseni gives one last shove on the gas before drifting the car around to stop just before the cliff, sending dust flying.
Fucking show-off.
I slow the car to a stop and put it in park, shaking my head at my best friend as he steps out of the car and takes a bow. After turning off the car and popping the trunk, I throw open the door and climb out to meet him.
“What are you gonna do when you drive right off the cliff one of these days?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “Die, I suppose.”
“Do it in your own car.”
“Mmm, but yours is much more stylish ,” he says as he struts to the trunk dramatically. I follow.
Arseni frowns, his head tilted as he studies the whore. “Her arm looks funny.” Stepping next to him, I peer in to see what he’s talking about. The rough car ride has her hair a mess and her body folded in half, her arm twisted awkwardly behind her.
I take it and straighten it out, lying her body down flat in the process so her dead eyes can look at us. She always wore these bright green contacts that looked striking but unnatural, and now one is missing, so one of her eyes is green while the other is a bland brown. Died hair, fake tits, fake eye-color. The illusions never stopped with this one.
“All better,” I say.
Arseni purses his lips and gives a single nod of approval before taking her legs while I take her arms. Together, we hoist her out of the car and carry her to the cliff, dropping her on the hard ground. The taste of dirt collects on my tongue as her body kicks up dust, and I wipe my mouth on my shoulder.
“I’ll get started on her,” I say, gesturing to the body. “You do the car.”
“Yup.”
Arseni grabs the crowbar from my trunk while I lug the black bag of tools to the corpse. I hear the dinging sound from the key being in the Sonic’s ignition when he opens the door to start going through her glovebox, getting rid of any identification she may have first. Her registration, her license, her purse, etc.
I start rifling through the bag, but when the dinging doesn’t stop, I look up to tell him to take the keys out of the ignition but lose my words when I see his face.
He’s staring at me with his wide eyes, a giddy smile on his face as he stands by the car’s rear window. He crooks his finger at me to beckon me that way.
My eyes narrowing, I abandon my tools and walk to the car. He presses a finger to his lips when I reach him then points inside the back seat.
“We don’t want to scare it,” he whispers like he’s talking about the rare squirrel who’s allowed us to get close.
I peek inside, at first not seeing anything, but as I get closer to the window, yellow dotted white catches my attention. Then black hair fanned over the shoulders of a girl curled into a ball on the floorboard. It takes only a moment to notice her shaking.
My brows raise as I turn to Arseni, matching his grin. “I didn’t think the whore had friends,” I whisper, although it’s only a tease. We both know she can hear us.
I switch to English so the girl can understand. “Do you think it’s alive?”
Arseni shrugs with his palms lifted before he points to the door handle. “Shall we check?”
I slowly, carefully , open the door, like I truly don’t want to scare the girl. When Arseni snickers behind me, I look pointedly at him but can’t fight my smile. I turn back to the girl, still curled into a catatonic little ball, sans her shaking.
She makes no sound, and I want so badly to know what she’s thinking. Does she think we’ll just drive away as long as she doesn’t acknowledge us?
“Little girl,” I whisper, creeping into the car with my knee on the seat. I only mean to be condescending, but for all I know she could be young enough to be a girl. “We can see you.”
“I haven’t seen your faces,” she squeaks, her voice slightly muffled by her arms that she’s hiding in. “I don’t know anything about you. I’m not even from this country. I—I’m here illegally. I won’t tell.”
Arseni nearly giggles behind me while my smile widens. “If you haven’t seen my face, how do you know what I’ve done?”
“I saw your back,” she’s quick to say. “That’s all. And I wasn’t even looking at you. I didn’t see you, I swear.”
“What in the world are you doing in the back of that whore’s car?” I ask with a chuckle.
The girl’s body visibly stiffens. Her breathing becomes audible. Loud and hurried until a little whimper escapes. This is the point where she realizes I’m not worried that she’s seen me, and I’m also not going to let her go.
“Are you not going to answer?” I ask. I count to three before grabbing a fistful of hair and ripping her out of the car, her roly-poly form springing open to reveal arms and legs.
“No, por favor ,” she pleads while I drag her to the cliff. “ Please . Please no.”
“Actually, we know what por favor means,” Arseni tells her. “You can speak Spanish if you’d like, senorita . It’s kinda sexy. Don’t you think, Luka?”
When I near the edge, I throw the girl down where she lands on her back with her head hanging fifty feet above rocky water. She screeches and tries to scoot away from the edge, but I step on her ankle to stop her. She yelps and writhes beneath me.
I turn to Arseni. “Not really.”
When words fly past her lips, I look back at her, but she’s imploring Arseni, Spanish he can’t understand running over her lips so fast she has to suck in large gusts of air between rambles. Arseni nods, his brows creased like he’s trying to be considerate, but I don’t see how she misses the sparkle in his eyes. He thinks this is hilarious.
We wait until she’s finished, which must take a solid couple of minutes while she recites her autobiography. She pants beneath me, never meeting my eyes, her head rolled purposefully away from me.
Arseni waits another few moments in case she starts up again before he clears his throat, looks at me, and says, “Now you’re telling me that didn’t get you hard?”
The girl sobs while I laugh, easing my foot off her ankle. As I step back, she hurries to sit up, wrapping her arms around her knees, her eyes darting between us.
“Why were you with the whore?” I try again, hardening my expression.
She shudders as her gaze fixes on me. When she starts speaking Spanish, I hold up my hand.
“ English .”
Her shoulders hunch. “My truck broke down. She was helping me get supplies.”
I rear back and study the girl’s face through squinted eyes. Piper was doing a good deed? Is she serious?
I’d laugh if I wasn’t so annoyed.
“How much was she making you pay her?” I ask.
The girl’s eyes flick to Piper’s corpse, and she cringes, her eyes slamming shut. “Nothing.”
“Nothing? She was helping you out of the kindness of her black heart?”
“She was nice,” the girl sobs, then covers her mouth.
No, she wasn’t.
“Are you really an illegal immigrant?” Arseni asks her.
Keeping her eyes clenched shut, the girl nods.
“You live in Vegas? Been in the US a while?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
“Which question are you answering?”
“I don’t live in Las Vegas, and I only crossed the border yesterday,” she cries.
Arseni looks at me, his eyes lighting up.
What? I mouth.
“I smell an opportunity,” he says, nodding at the girl as he rubs his hands together.
I look back at her with my head tilted.
Young girl. No family or friends to turn to. Little to no trust in law enforcement.
She’d make a great prostitute.
Or would she?
I survey her closer, with different eyes, to take in her slender legs, her long, wavy black hair, a little wild with frizz at the moment but beautifully fistable none-the-less. Her dress covers her tits well, but I can tell they’re at least a B cup. Possibly C.
Her face… She has thin eyebrows but full lips, a pointed nose, all framed on an oval structure. Her caramel skin looks blemish free and lickable.
Yes, she’d make a great whore. A nice edition for the Bratva.
But the Bratva can kiss my ass.
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s too risky to hand her over. No one can know what went down today.”
The girl’s eyes shoot open. She shifts onto her knees, her dress blanketing the dirt as she implores Arseni yet again.
Stupid girl.
“Please,” she says to him. “ Por favor . I’ll do anything. Please don’t kill me. Por favor .”
Arseni snorts, but it isn’t directed at her, it’s directed at me. He seems to be ignoring her. “I’m not talking about handing her over. I’m talking about having some fun .”
My brows arch as I turn back to the girl.
Oh . Now that’s an idea.
“No one will be looking for her,” Arseni goes on.
The girl’s eyes widen, her mouth falling open in horror. “Th-that’s not true,” she says. “My boyfriend will be looking for me. And—And—And he’s dangerous. He’ll hurt you when he finds you.”
“Oh.” Arseni nods as if he’s pondering that. “I guess we’d better kill him before he finds out you’re missing then.”
“No!” she screams, reaching out like Arseni has a gun to the guy right this minute. Pulling her hand back and holding it to her chest, she shakes her head while her eyes well with new tears. “Please no.”
“Is he dangerous or not?” Arseni asks, his tone teasing.
“He isn’t.” She shakes her head. “He isn’t even real. I made that up. I just…” Her lip trembles before her head lowers. Her lie about her boyfriend being made up is so obvious neither Arseni nor I mention it. “I’ll do what you want.”
I watch as she lowers her head so much that I only see a fraction of her pretty face. And she is pretty. The longer I stare, the longer I consider the opportunity of having her, the more I realize it. And the more my cock stirs.
There are consequences for taking a captive outside of the Bratva’s orders, but lately, I couldn’t tell you what they are. Leadership has changed hands— not for the better—and I haven’t particularly cared lately about following orders from a leader as insufferable as Vitaly Petrov. Defying the Bratva for the sake of it has its appeal.
“Well?” Arseni prods me.
“Where would we keep her?”
Arseni’s excitement becomes electric, sparking the air. “Both our places. We’ll take turns.”
“Joint custody,” I quip.
“I get Christmas, you get Easter.”
“Bullshit you’re getting Christmas.” I mock glare.
“All right, fine.” He lifts his hands in surrender. “We’ll split her down the middle. You get the tits and mouth, I get the cunt and ass. We’ve already got the saw in the bag.”
“ No . You’ve got to cut vertically, right down the middle.” I make a chopping motion. “Everyone wants the cunt. We’ll half everything equally.”
“No one wants half a cunt.”
The girl’s movement draws both our eyes. We watch as she sprints around us, wailing as her sandals slap earth.
I look at Arseni and raise a brow. “You’re a parent for all of a minute, and already, your child is a runaway.”
He cackles and cups his hands over his mouth to yell at the girl. “You get back here right now, little lady! I’m warning you!”
Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t slow. She disappears into the heavy shrubbery, making things slightly more interesting.
I glance at Piper’s body. There’s too much to do to be dicking around.
“How about this,” I say, giving his chest a light slap with the back of my hand. “We let her choose who gets her first. Then we switch off at the end of every shift at the mansion. Deal?”
His lips purse as he considers it, then he nods.
“When one of us gets bored, the other can have her. When both of us get bored, we get rid of her together.”
“Agreed,” Arseni says before stepping toward the trees. He spins and backpedals so he can wag his brows at me. “Daddy’s got a spanking to give.”
I laugh and rub the back of my neck, tempted to go with him, but goddamn Piper won’t leave my periphery. Even in death, she ruins things for me.
I go to her body and begin the work of disposal, starting with the issue of her identification. Girls who don’t have fingers don’t have fingerprints. And those girls are much harder to identify.
It’s only a minute before I hear the girl’s scream. She has no idea what a predator Arseni is, how useless it is to run.
Jealousy flares as I clip off another of the whore’s fingers with sheers, but I tell myself to be patient.
I’ll get my turn soon enough.