24. Luka
24
LUKA
W hen I tug the door to my apartment, the metal slides easily, the lock already disengaged. I don’t have a gun on me, so for the briefest moment, I consider backing away. Going back to my car and just driving off.
But Alekseevs don’t run.
I open the door just enough to slip inside and dart my eyes around. The bathroom sink runs behind the closed door, but I don’t hear any other sound or spot anyone.
My eyes never leaving the bathroom door, I creep to the kitchen drawer where I keep my gun. I’m half surprised when I find it there, still loaded and waiting for me.
I pull it out, cock it, then point it at the door and wait.
My finger curls over the trigger when the sink shuts off and the bathroom door opens. When Arseni walks through, I nearly double over, the gun lowering to point at the floor.
He turns to me and looks me up and down. “I borrowed your toothbrush. You’re probably gonna wanna throw that away.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Instead of answering, he walks past me toward my fridge. As he pulls out a carton of orange juice, my initial shock settles, making way for panic.
“How are you not in Spokane?” I stride toward him, my eyes searching for a bulge in his back pockets where his phone might be.
What if someone else has it?
What if someone else was texting me?
What if?—?
My eyes land on the device resting on my counter. My arms tingle as blood drains from my extremities, but Arseni doesn’t seem to notice my panic. Or care. He chugs juice from the carton.
“Arseni!”
He pulls the carton down, orange liquid dribbling down his chin and turns to give me a look filled with something that isn’t sympathy or care. It looks like contempt, but it’s a little hard to tell with the bruises on his face, one purple eye still swollen. He looks like he got into a bar fight.
“Hi, Arseni ,” he says, his voice dripping with what is now obviously contempt. “How are you, Arseni ? It’s good to see you, Arseni .”
“Why are you not with Lucia?” I ask, my voice firm, though my eyes lower to his torso. He’s bigger built than I am, but my shirt that he’s wearing seems baggy on him now. Did he lose weight?
“Why am I not with Lucia?...” He hums as if he’s pondering that, then takes another drink. He sets the carton down then retrieves a paring knife from my block. “You know,” he says, twirling the knife into the air and catching it as he walks toward me. “I’ve been pretty fucking busy.” His eyes don’t meet me, but they burn with anger. Rage . I can feel their flames as he approaches. I set the gun on the island before this escalates.
His sunken cheeks catch my attention, making him appear sickly.
My stomach drops. “What happened?”
He laughs and twirls the knife again. “What the fuck do you think?”
I don’t want to say it. Already, before the confirmation, a mountain of guilt piles on top of me.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
My eyes close to avoid the anger in his expression.
“They got to you.”
“Yeah, well, the bitch parked my car next to theirs, so it wasn’t exactly hard to pin me to her.”
“How long?” I ask, trying not to calculate the number of pounds he must have lost. His collar bone juts through my shirt.
He tips his head. “Uh, well, about how long it took for them to drive up to Idaho.”
They tracked his phone. My eyes close as I rub my forehead.
“They weren’t nice enough to give me a fucking calendar, but obviously it was plenty long enough for you to stab me in the goddamn back.”
I shake my head. “Arseni, I?—”
“You had her the whole fucking time!” He steps up to me, his eyes wide and crazed as he presses the knife to my throat while pinning me to the island. I grip the edge of the marble and let his anger roll at me in waves. “They tortured me, you son of a bitch!”
“I didn’t know . And fuck, I told you to dump your phone.”
“And then you have the audacity , the fucking audacity to ask me to help her. I should kill you. I want to kill you.”
He pushes the knife against my neck, its serrated edge tearing tiny bits of skin. Not enough to kill me, just enough to tell me he could.
“They did kill Mackenzie,” he goes on. “The bitch told them there were two men, so I had to corroborate that, and there was no way I was going to give you up. I told them a lot of shit just to save you, and for what, Luka? What did you do for me?”
Pain breaks past his anger, the hurt clear in his voice, and he pushes harder on my throat as he leans in with his teeth bared. “I was terrified of you calling me or texting me and incriminating yourself, and you just … didn’t. You sent me away just so you could have that whore to yourself. Do you know how selfish you are? Can you even comprehend what a horrible friend that makes you? I used to think it was just your siblings you didn’t care about, but fuck!” When he presses the knife in even deeper, I think he really might kill me. And I might deserve it.
But he’s right. I’m selfish.
I shove him off with two hands to his chest, and he easily flies backward in his weakened state, still gripping the knife. He raises it up like he’s going to come at me, but I pick up my gun and point it at his torso. When I see the pain cross his expression, I almost lower it. I almost drop to my knees, beg his forgiveness, and wish it was me that they’d taken.
But there’s one very, very large problem I can’t ignore. If Arseni is here now, with his phone, and he was the one texting me… Then they must have let him go. Which means he must’ve given them a reason to.
“Did you tell them where Lucia was?” I ask, already knowing the answer. Already trying to calculate how fast I could get to Spokane and knowing how useless that would be.
He asked for the room number. They were already there.
“What the fuck do you think?”
“Arseni, please .” I lower the gun, holding it at my side while I feel my face contort with more pain than he shows. “She is the only woman I’ve ever loved. I am sorry I hurt you. I want to make it right… But right now, I need to know… Do they have her?”
“The only woman you’ve ever loved…” He looks off, his jaw clenched. “Tell me something first, Luka. If I had told you that your love’s people had me. That they’d starved me, beaten me, tortured me for days, and the only way they’d let me go is if you traded her for me… Would you have done it?”
He turns back to me with his face hard as stone, like he already knows the answer. Or like there isn’t one I could give that would ever be good enough. My mouth opens, but no words come out when I don’t know what to say.
Weeks ago, I swore I would slit Arseni’s throat if it came down to him and me. I was ashamed of it then, but I don’t feel that way anymore. I don’t even think I felt it then, only that I convinced myself I was capable of such selfishness. But I’m learning that my heart is gray. Not black. I wish, with everything, that I could’ve taken his place. I wish it would’ve been me they punished.
I would take a bullet for him. I know that now.
But I wouldn’t throw Lucia in front of it.
“That’s what I thought,” he says with a curt nod. I open my mouth to explain, and when he lunges for me, he catches me completely off guard. Arseni is weakened, but he knows how to fight. His elbow jabs my nose before he hurls me to the floor, the gun clattering from my hand. I go to shove him off when he climbs on top of me, but the knife presses to my throat in an instant. My eyes close as my carotid throbs against the blade. Any jerk of Arseni’s hand will be it for me.
“Do you know why they let me go?” he asks, his voice level.
The knife is so firmly against my artery that I’d rather not speak, not move a muscle. But he wants this. He needs this.
“Because you gave her to them.”
“No, Luka,” he says, his voice a whisper now. “Because I promised them I would kill you . And you are the Pakhan’s brother-in-law. You , they think they shouldn’t touch… I should’ve told them how much you don’t matter. How you’re just a guard. How nobody, not even your own family, would give a fuck if you were dead. You don’t want to know what they did to Mackenzie.”
He gets close to my ear. Any moment, I think his hand will move, and I can’t help but see the irony of this. I’ve felt so much confliction over turning Arseni into a killer. Perhaps this is poetic justice.
“ But ,” he says, emotion flooding the one word. “I can’t .”
He pulls the knife from my throat and stands abruptly, his sickly form standing over me. Through the swelling, I spot tears in his eyes for the second time since knowing him.
“I fucking hate you.”
He shakes his head at me, lets the knife fall from his grasp, and turns to walk toward my door. He stops with his hand on the handle, his back facing me.
“They’re taking her to Chicago… Good luck fighting the cartel, asshole.”
I sit up as he leaves, my heart racing faster than ever.
Chicago. That’s over a day’s drive away from Spokane. A hell of a lot less if they fly, but…
I still have time.