15. Tamara
TAMARA
“I’m relieving you of your duties for the foreseeable future.”
Leonid eyes me coolly from behind the wide mahogany desk in his study, his expression neutral. Yet, he makes me feel like I’m a naughty child who has pushed my luck too far and deserves to lose my favorite toy as punishment until I learn who has the final word.
“Because I shot the Irish enforcer?” I’m still standing, feet planted squarely apart, arms folded across my chest.
His eyes don’t register any reaction. “Because you disobeyed orders and crossed a line, Tamara.”
Okay, shit, so yeah, I shot a few Russians at the dock before I went to Finn’s apartment last night, but they fucking deserved it too. “Tell me that Andrej wouldn’t have done the same.”
“This has nothing to do with Andrej.”
“Tell me!” I snap. His calm voice rattles me today in a way that it never has before.
I’ve seen him show emotion. He and Gianna’s relationship was complicated to begin with.
Leonid abducted her during a flight from Montenegro to Chicago to use her as leverage against her family, a Sicilian mob that was trying to take down the Ivanov organization at the time, and they fell in love while she was being held captive.
But the Sicilians invaded his mansion and stole Gianna back again, tipping Leonid over the edge of a precipice that resulted in him taking on the entire Sicilian mob single-handed.
Angry Leonid I can handle. Angry Leonid I can respect. He will rage and curse and threaten to kill everyone who crosses his path, until it is out of his system and he can deal with the situation logically.
But this calm is unsettling because I don’t know what’s going on inside his head.
“What would Andrej have done?” I demand.
Until his younger brother met Cartier, he had a reputation for being the sadistic member of the Ivanov family. I was here one time when he packaged up the severed hand of an enemy to deliver to the man’s organization as a warning. I know what he can do.
“He would not have shot the Russians in plain sight on a working dock and then escaped on the back of a motorcycle belonging to a member of the Irish clan.”
“He’d have let them get away with trafficking women and children into the city.” My chest is heaving with the effort of controlling my temper. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry if that’s what you truly believe of us, Tamara.” Leonid sits back in his seat. “I thought you knew us better than that.”
“What have you done to find Ivana?”
“I said I would look for her, and I’ve kept my word. I will let you know when I have information regarding her whereabouts.”
Why does it feel like he isn’t doing enough? I know I could do more, but my hands are tied by my role as Leonid’s enforcer, whereas he has resources in every corner of the city, twenty-four-seven, and Victoria who could find a grass snake in a pit filled with vipers.
“What about the Irish mob?” I ask.
“I’ll handle them.”
“How? Are they the reason why you don’t want me to work for you?”
“No, Tamara. You’re relieved of your duties and your weapons until we find Ivana because you are a fucking liability.”
Something breaks open inside me, and I don’t bother trying to repair it.
“If I’m a liability, it’s because you turned me and my sister into weapons.
You taught us how to fight. You taught us how to hit a moving target and never miss.
You turned us into enforcers without ever asking if that was what we wanted. ”
I’ve never spoken these words out loud before.
I’ve never raised my voice to Leonid or Andrej, or refused to follow an order, and I feel cut adrift in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight.
Leonid offered us a lifeline. Screw that!
He offered us a life, and a home, and skills that we would never have acquired otherwise, but with Ivana missing, and no work for me to carry out, I understand that there is nothing else left for me.
“And you betrayed me to the Irish.” His words land like heavy rocks in the middle of the room.
It feels like a metal band is crushing my chest, constricting my airways and applying too much pressure to my heart to think straight. I don’t understand the accusation. Where did this even come from?
“I didn’t. I would never betray you to anyone…”
“Where were you last night, Tamara?”
“I…” I think about Finn barricading his bedroom door with a chair to make me feel safe, and tears sting my eyes.
I haven’t cried since my mom died, and I refuse to cry now, especially in front of Leonid.
“I was with Finn. The Irish enforcer, but it isn’t what you think.
I’ve never told him anything about you.”
It’s a lie though. I told Finn about the Petrovs shortly before I made a hole in his brother’s hand. I also told him about the private discussion between the Ivanov siblings that took place after the Irish left the meeting.
Leonid sits forward again, and now there’s no mistaking the disappointment in his eyes. “As I thought, Tamara.”
“Are you…” I suck my top lip and blink furiously to hold back the tears. Finn is making me soft, and I’m not sure how to be this person without ripping my seams apart and baring my insides for all to see. “You’re not… You’re not going to make me leave, are you?”
His eyes flinch with the first sign of emotion he has shown since I entered the room.
“This is your home. You and Ivana have been with me since you were eight years old, and I’m not about to turn you out onto the streets now. So, no, I’m not going to make you leave. On the contrary. I want you to stay here until you’ve earned my trust again.”
“You’re going to keep me prisoner?” My thoughts are racing.
I shouldn’t have come back this morning. I should’ve stayed with Finn, the man who promised to never stop me from flying away.
“No. You’re going to follow orders and stay in the house until I’m ready to believe you.”
“You can’t do this! You can’t tell me when I can and cannot leave the house. I’m not a child. I can come and go as I please and I don’t need your fucking permission to look for my sister.”
“You’re right, Tamara.” He spreads his hands wide as if in defeat. “You are free to go, but if you leave, you don’t take any weapons with you.”
“Fine.” I huff like a child, achieving the opposite effect to the one I wanted.
“You will also not be allowed back into my home.”
There it is. The sting in the scorpion’s tail. The deadly blow delivered without a hint of emotion.
“You just said—”
“I said I wouldn’t ask you to leave. But if you choose to walk away from me, then you should understand the implications of your actions.”
“But… I have nowhere else to go.”
“Then stay. I’m disappointed that you would throw your life away when it is because of you that the Irish mob are involved in the war between us and the Petrovs.”
I take a moment to process the accusation. “They believed that you were responsible for the trafficking operation.”
I wish I could swallow the words before they’ve even melted into the ether. But it’s too late. Leonid knows that this information didn’t come from him, same as he knows that there is only one other source I could’ve heard this from.
“I don’t understand how you think that this is my fault,” I conclude.
“You disobeyed my orders to attend the Calumet Harbor and report back to me in Ivana’s place.”
“I followed your orders!”
My voice is shrill with impatience and frustration at Leonid’s calm manipulation of the conversation. Sure, I’ve seen him weave circles around business associates and rivals, but he’s never used this tactic on me before, and I feel like the mouse that walked straight into the trap.
“Wait. What?” One important detail is seeping through my increasing resentment and waving a banner at me to pay attention. “Calumet Harbor?”
Leonid narrows his eyes at me, waiting for my next outburst.
“You sent me to the Iroquois Landing.”
We lock eyes, each following our own thought process and reaching the same conclusion at the same time.
“Is that what Ivana told you?” he asks, and the cold metal running through his tone has softened just a little.
I nod. Ivana sent me to the wrong dock. Not because she wanted to get me into trouble, but because she wanted to take on the Petrovs alone and prove to Leonid that she was still the enforcer he’d trained her to be.
I turn around, open the door, and walk out of the study.
“Tamara,” Leonid’s voice follows me. “I’ll find her, I prom—”
I close the door behind me.
In the privacy of my room, I lock the door, lie down on my bed, and stare at the ceiling.
Ivana is still in Chicago. I’ve no idea where she is staying—our contacts are Leonid’s contacts, and our movements will always get back to him one way or another—or how she is managing to fly under the radar and track the Petrovs, but now I’m certain of her intentions.
She is an enforcer. Like me, she doesn’t know who else to be, and she is determined to prove to Leonid that he still needs her, although taking on an entire organization without any backup from the Bratva is death-wish crazy even by Ivana’s standards.
It’s testimony to how badly her injuries have affected her mental health, and my anger towards Leonid and Andrej multiplies like demon baby spiders hatching from a nest the size of a mountain.
My skin is crawling with the overwhelming need to get out of here and go blow up a few child traffickers, do the world a massive fucking favor.
Then something I thought of when I came back to my room pops into my head with the small sound of someone bursting a bubble made of chewing gum.
Ivana has been flying under the radar of Leonid and Andrej, if in fact, they’ve been true to their word and trying to track her down.
But she isn’t the only person flying under the radar. I’ve used the expression myself in recent conversation, only I can’t remember in what context.
I squeeze my eyes shut, breathe deeply in through my nose and out through my mouth, and wait for it to come to me.