1. Tamara
TAMARA
PRESENT DAY
“Let’s go.” I slide my weapons into place: pistols in the holster around my waist, blades in the inside pockets of my leather jacket, smaller blades inside my Doc Martens.
Leonid has asked us to scope out the warehouses around the Iroquois Landing at the Illinois International Port District.
A rival Bratva family, the Petrovs, is forgetting its place and trying to encroach on our district, the area controlled by Leonid Ivanov.
Our Pakhan. The man who saved our lives when he found my sister and me in a shipping container seventeen years ago.
The man who took two eight-year-old girls home, cleaned them up, gave them a soft bed to sleep in, and treated them like his sisters.
Leonid understood the terror we’d experienced crossing the ocean and chose to make our lives better.
“I’m not going with you.” Ivana doesn’t move from her position, her shoulders leaning back against the wall of my room, arms folded across her chest.
I stop packing and look at her. Really look at her.
She’s wearing her customary beaten-up black Doc Martens, black jeans and a black sweater.
The uniform that she adopted years ago when we were both being trained as enforcers for the Ivanov family.
Only now, I can see her collarbones protruding through the neckline of the sweater, and although her chin is still tilted towards the ceiling, it’s almost an effort to hold it there, as though the stance belongs to someone else, someone she has no right to steal it from.
Four months ago, my sister was guarding Andrej Ivanov, Leonid’s younger brother, and his wife Cartier in the family mansion in Russia, when she was shot by Cartier’s uncle who was working for another Russian Bratva family. Ivana’s injuries could’ve been fatal.
They would’ve been fatal had she been anyone else but my sister.
We’ve never spoken about what the doctors told us when she was in the hospital, that she would never make a full recovery, and it was highly unlikely that she would ever resume her role as enforcer.
Saying the words out loud would mean acknowledging them, giving them legs to run with until they become reality. Letting them win.
And being an enforcer is all we know.
Ivana’s face is pale. Her thick black hair has lost its luster as if all the goodness was sucked out of it when she got shot, and her body is still figuring out how to put it back.
The dark bruises underneath her eyes have never faded even though she was sleeping eighteen hours a day when she discharged herself from the hospital.
“Why not?” I ask her now, even though I know the answer.
“Leonid doesn’t want me there.”
Every part of my skin bristles like I just scrubbed it raw with a wire brush.
Leonid has been our big brother since we were eight years old, and I would give my own life to protect him, but he doesn’t know my sister the way I do.
He doesn’t see her slowly dying inside her broken body, desiccating on the inside because this right here, this way of life, jobs like these, are what keep her alive.
“I’ll speak to him.” I’m already moving towards the doorway.
He only wants us to observe. That’s the message he conveyed via Ivana the enforcer who he then denied the opportunity to do her job.
Observe and report back. My sister could lead this mission blindfolded and with her wrists tied behind her back, and she would still return with the information Leonid wanted.
“No, Tamara.” Ivana touches my arm, and I realize with a jolt of nausea that even her touch belongs to someone else. “I don’t want you to speak to him. He’s the Pakhan. We don’t question him, and besides, Gianna has asked for my help in the women’s refuge.”
I know what Leonid’s wife Gianna is doing: she’s trying to make Ivana feel useful.
But just because we’ve never questioned the Pakhan before, doesn’t mean we can’t start now.
“Alright.” I tilt my mouth into a smile I don’t feel inside. “I won’t speak to him.”
Not right now, anyway. But if Ivana thinks that I’m letting this go, she’s mistaken.
I broke my promise to never let anyone hurt her when I didn’t go to Russia with her.
I should’ve insisted. I should’ve threatened to leave the Ivanovs, or bought my own plane ticket to Moscow, or convinced Andrej to let me go with her.
I won’t let it happen again.
I arrive at the Port with a small team of four men, and we spread out to cover as much of the terminus as we can without getting noticed by the Petrovs.
From my raised vantage point, crouched on a small grassy bank behind a line of empty shipping containers, I have an unobstructed view of the ships currently moored up at the Iroquois Landing.
Ignoring the names painted onto the sides of the vessels, I focus instead on the crew. Whatever they’re transporting in and out of Chicago, it’s illegal, and they will wear it on their faces like an invisible mask.
Floodlights bathe the terminus in a stark white glow.
I track the men in hardhats to begin with, my gaze following them from ship to storage point outside a warehouse, where cranes are waiting to stack them inside for onward transport.
They move with the efficient confidence of men who can get the job done as quickly as possible and with the minimum amount of effort and resources.
Nothing they are moving is illegal.
Compartmentalizing them into people I don’t need to expend any further energy on, my eyes land on a man wearing a black suit.
Immediately, my hackles are up, and my body is poised to attack. My hands instinctively reach for my guns as I hear a click from somewhere behind me.
“Don’t move.”
I freeze. In the dark, there’s no shadow to plot the man’s position, but he was close enough for me to hear the click, and I can smell his cologne or aftershave, fresh, clean, with a hint of citrus.
If he was going to shoot me in the back, he’d have done it already, which means that he’ll either order me to stand up, turn around, and face him, or he’ll force me to walk down to the busy landing area with his gun pressed between my shoulder blades.
In the fraction of a second that it takes me to shift my attention from the predator wearing black down on the landing, to the predator behind me, I’ve formulated a plan.
I roll sideways, sliding both guns from my holster at the same time, and spring onto my feet to face the man pointing his own weapon directly at me.
He isn’t what I expected, probably because my thoughts were skewed by the man in black, and I instinctively projected his appearance onto the man who snuck up behind me.
This guy is tall. I mean, he’s a fucking giant who could balance me and my sister, one on each extended arm, without straining a muscle.
His thick black hair curls around his ears, and I can’t even look at the wide shoulders.
He must have to walk sideways into a room.
A couple of beats pass before I realize that his lips have curled into a small smile, and fuck me, the guy has dimples.
“Who do you work for?” I demand, ignoring the Flamenco dancing taking place inside my rib cage. He might be a giant, but I’m the one holding two guns.
The smile tilts up in one corner, and my eyes follow it, while the dancing inside my chest pauses momentarily, and then resumes with more verve than should be possible.
“That’s it? That’s what you’re leading with?” His accent rolls off his tongue like cream, and I find myself mesmerized by his mouth and the sneak peek of straight white teeth. “Are you not going to ask me who I am?”
“You’re Irish.” I had this strange, preconceived notion that Irish men have red hair and pale skin. I guess I was wrong.
“You’re… Russian.” His smile slides into a full-on grin now, and I bristle, despite the blood pumping around my veins.
“What did you expect?” I narrow my eyes. Neither of us has lowered our weapons, and I would rather die than be the first.
Frown lines appear between his brows, and even in the dark, I swear I already know that his eyes are green. “Would you believe me if I said that I expected to find a black-haired Russian with a gun in each hand and carrying enough blades to take down a small army?”
The way my heart is hammering, I’d believe anything he told me, but then I remember who I am, and the reason why I’m here.
“But I didn’t expect to find you,” he says.
The honesty in his voice cracks something open inside me, and I remind myself that he’s trying to distract me. And it’s fucking working.
I’m not here to observe an Irish giant, even if he is potentially the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. And I certainly can’t go back to Leonid and tell him that I failed a simple task because I couldn’t take my eyes off this man’s dimples.
“So, now what?” I demand. “Are you going to tell me who you work for, or do I have to shoot you first?”
He chuckles. He fucking chuckles, and for the first time in my career with the Bratva, I don’t know how to react.
“Depends,” he says, “on if you’re shooting to kill, or shooting to cause me pain. Not too much pain, mind. Too much and you risk me shutting down, or worse, dying a slow and excruciating death without giving you the information you want. Too little and—”
I release a bullet towards his left foot, and he dodges it like he was the one who pulled the trigger, dropping into a forward roll and taking me out with his legs as he unfurls.
My chest hits the ground, the air leaving my lungs with a steady whoosh. But I don’t waste a beat. I roll onto my back and fire again, this time missing his right ear by a whisker as he lunges sideways and retaliates with a bullet that ricochets off the ground beside my shoulder.