23. Tamara
TAMARA
Finn is waiting at the quayside with Leonid and Andrej when we navigate the harbor in the darkness on foot. There are no lights. No people bustling about. The only sound breaking the silence is the water lapping the harbor wall and the sides of the ships currently moored up.
I recognize the Russian ship immediately from the faint silver glow the moon casts over the water. Or perhaps it has a presence buried deep in my consciousness that I’ll never be able to shift, like an unforgettable bad smell or a voice that triggers a traumatic experience.
My eyes are drawn to it, and I can’t look away.
Finn folds me into his arms before I vaguely register his presence.
“I love you, mo féileacán,” he murmurs into my hair.
I listen to his heartbeat, and I wonder when it became as important to me as my sister’s heartbeat. Did it sneak up on me while I was looking the other way and bind us together with invisible ropes? Or did I willingly let it in while promising myself that I would think about it later?
“I…”
“We have to act now.” Leonid breaks the moment before I can even begin to find the words, and I reluctantly extricate myself from Finn’s arms. “They will already know that we are here.”
“What gave it away?” Connor asks. “The dark or our group hug?”
Leonid doesn’t acknowledge the banter. “This one is your call,” he tells me. “We’ll give you five minutes then we come in after you.”
“She isn’t boarding the boat alone.” Finn’s voice is firm. “I’ll have your back, sweetheart, no problem, but if anyone thinks I’m waiting here while you climb that ramp by yourself … they’re living in fucking LaLa Land.”
Dear sweet Finn. I feel as if I’m looking at him for the first time with my eyes wide open. He isn’t trying to undermine me. He’s simply doing what he does best, what he was made to do, be a protector, and when this is over, I will tell him that I get it now.
But first…
Time to finish what I started with Mikhail Petrov.
I stand on tiptoes and kiss him on the lips. “Thank you.”
“You don’t need to—”
“I know,” I interrupt him, mimicking his own words. “But I want to.”
I tear my eyes away from him, and peer around the small group.
“Mikhail Petrov told me that his father threw my sister overboard when she tried to open one of the shipping containers.” My throat constricts, but I force myself to continue.
“I want him to know who I am before I end his life. The rest is down to you.”
Leonid nods.
Aiden Kavanagh stands beside Finn. “I’m coming with my boy here because this is no one-man boat, and these fuckers won’t play fair. You do what you’ve got to do but then you say the word, and we’ll take over.”
I glance at Leonid, expecting him to take control of the situation, but he slides a gun from his pocket and hands it to me.
I recognize the weight of it the instant it hits my palm. It’s my gun.
I slide my free hand into my pocket and pull out the bloody shipping schedule I stole from the aircraft. “This will help find Ivana.”
He glances at it briefly. “Go before I change my mind,” he says.
I blink, and Andrej places both hands on my shoulders, turns me around, and shoves me gently in the direction of the Russian ship.
The ramp is already in place for the shipment to be moved, but after hanging around working docks for the last couple of months, this feels like boarding a ghost ship.
I’m aware of Mikhail Petrov’s blood splatters on my clothes.
I can still smell his cologne, his briefcase, his arrogance before he eventually acknowledged that I might be a real threat, one that he couldn’t evade with smart talk and underhand moves.
I can still hear the glee in his voice when he announced that Ivana was no longer aboard the ship.
I’m surprised he didn’t lick his finger and chalk up his score.
One-nil to him for throwing my sister’s fate into the mix.
The crew is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the Pakhan threw them overboard too.
But that would be too easy.
He’s expecting me.
Where would the slimeball hide from an enforcer if he didn’t want to be seen?
As if reading my mind, Aiden gestures for me to follow him below deck, Finn bringing up the rear behind me. We head towards the front of the ship, passing no one along the way. Perhaps this meeting is mutual: the Pakhan wants me as much as I want him.
But I doubt it. I didn’t toss his son from a moving ship in the middle of the freezing ocean.
We stop outside a closed door, and Aiden gestures with his gun for me to enter.
I turn around and face the claustrophobic hallway behind us. The Bratva have us cornered, so if they’re going to attack, now would be the time to do it.
But still, nothing moves, and Leonid gave me five minutes.
Finn leans down and kisses me on the lips, shamelessly unembarrassed by his boss watching us. “Right here, sweetheart,” he whispers in my ear, his breath tickling my neck.
I hold my gun steady, open the door, and step inside.
This must be the bridge, the room from where the ship is controlled.
A man is sitting on a seat facing me, an expanse of dials and digital screens behind him, his feet up on a chest, crossed at the ankles.
One arm is loose by his side, in his other hand is a revolver pointing straight at me.
Apart from the thick silver hair, he is an older version of his son, Mikhail.
But it is the scar on his face that has sucked the air from my lungs and is squeezing my chest like a metal vise. The jagged mauve scar from underneath his left eye to the corner of his mouth. The scar caused by the knife my sister stole from the orphanage kitchen.
I would recognize those cold dark fisheyes anywhere. I’ve been seeing them in my nightmares for seventeen years, and every time they appear, I stare straight back at them and tell the asshole, “This is for my sister.”
“I’ve been waiting for you.” His voice isn’t what I imagined. It’s deeper than in my dreams, gravelly, like pebbles dragged along a riverbed in a storm. “Think you can take on the Bratva? Well, go right ahead. I haven’t had a belly laugh in a while.”
Same arrogance.
Same vacant eyes like the man is already dead inside.
But something is missing.
He doesn’t recognize me. He bought two little girls from a Russian orphanage all those years ago, shipped them across the ocean and had them stolen right out from under his nose, and he doesn’t even remember me.
It hits me like a sledgehammer. The nightmares have all been mine. He altered the destiny of two eight-year-old girls, and we haven’t even remained as a fragment of a memory in his consciousness. We were nothing to him. And we are still nothing to him now.
“You don’t remember, do you?” I step closer.
His eyes narrow, roaming my body from head to toe, missing nothing.
“Did we fuck sometime? What happened? Did you think that it meant something to me, that I’d come back for you one day and drag you out of the gutter?
” His top lip curls just like his son’s did, his scar turning a livid shade of purple.
“I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you’re just like every other fuck I ever had. Forgotten.”
It isn’t his blatant misogyny that turns my stomach; it’s his use of the word ‘sweetheart’. That’s Finn’s word. I could cut out his tongue for daring to use it.
“I’m not your fucking sweetheart.”
He smirks at me now. “That’s better. I like my women with a bit of fire.”
I hold his gaze. “I thought you liked them young and vulnerable.”
His face visibly darkens, and he sits forward in his seat, his knuckles turning white around the revolver. “Careful. You slander people like that, and they might take offence.”
“It isn’t slander though, is it?” I’m vaguely aware of my heightened pulse ticking away the five minutes that Leonid gave me to avenge my sister. “Tell me, do you still buy little girls from orphanages?”
His left eye twitches. I’m getting to him.
“Or is that scar a reminder that two little girls almost beat you once?”
His eyes scan my face, recognition finally setting in, and his smile widens. “Was that you?” He blinks me into focus, matching the woman standing in front of him to eight-year-old me. “How did you…”
I can almost hear the coins dropping inside him, clink, clink, clink.
“Oh, this is too fucking brilliant. That was your sister?”
“Ivana. She has a name, asshole. You couldn’t take that away from her, and guess what, because of you, we’ve had a better life than we would ever have had if you hadn’t bought us from the orphanage.”
“Is that right?” He rises slowly, straightening himself to his full height which, although intimidating, is nowhere near as tall as Finn.
“Had a better life. Past tense. Your sister is probably turning blue in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean right about now. What’s left of her, that is.
I hear the fish are particularly carnivorous this time of year. ”
My hand trembles. I can’t let him win. I’m doing this for Ivana, and for my unborn child, I remind myself. If I let him live, there will always be other children for him to traffic, other vulnerable young women who find themselves trapped through no fault of their own.
I smile. “Were you always a coward who picked on people weaker than you, or is it something you learned from your father?”
The smile fades. “Your words can’t hurt me.
I should’ve killed you both when I had the chance, but the money was a great incentive to keep you alive.
That, and the thought of you both being broken in like horses.
Come to think of it, I’ve never tried twins.
Maybe I should’ve kept her alive. I’d have taken great pleasure from—”
A gunshot rings out from the other side of the door, and I see the flicker of acknowledgement in his eyes. This is it. This is the moment that he and his men have been waiting for, the reason for all the ghostly theatrics: they were waiting for us.