4. Anton
ANTON
I step out of the car, eyes narrowed, and cast my gaze around the street upon which my brother’s bar sits.
It’s not like I haven’t been here before. Plenty of times, as a matter of fact. Mostly in my younger days, when life was more focused on drinking, partying, having fun. But there’s something different about it this evening, and I’m determined to figure out just what Artem has planned.
Because I’ve heard plenty of stories in these last few days, plenty of buzz about the events apparently taking place tonight.
All planned by my brother, who definitely didn’t tell me about it.
There’s a small line outside the door, the first sign that something isn’t exactly as it is meant to be. I frown as I shoulder past a few of them, reaching the bouncer, who looks me up and down.
“Name?”
“Anton. Anton Valiski.”
It takes him a second to register the name I give him, the fact that it matches the one held by the owner of this place. As soon as he realizes, though, he jumps back, pulling aside the rope and gesturing for me to go inside.
“Of course, Pakhan,” he blurts out. “Right this way, please...”
I feel him watching me as I make my way inside, probably wondering if he’s pissed me off beyond the point of no return. The last thing anyone here wants is to get on my bad side.
Even Artem, for all his arrogance, knows that I hold the keys to this city, and I will not let anyone take them from me...
I scan the room for my brother, mostly so he can tell me just what he’s planned. I notice the place is heaving with activity, mostly men, to my surprise. Normally, he pays a few girls to wander around and flirt and chat, keeping the clientele entertained as best they can.
But there’s no sign of them this evening.
I head for the bar, where the bartender practically leaps into action to make sure I have everything I need.
“Can I get you anything, Pakhan?” he asks me, reaching beneath the counter to pull out a glass in preparation for my order.
“Vodka. Neat,” I reply.
“Of course.” He pours me my drink and pushes it across the counter, and I pay for it, making sure to leave a generous tip.
“What’s going on here tonight?” I ask, gesturing around.
The bartender pauses, and I can tell that he has been warned not to speak too openly on what is actually going on.
Whatever Artem has planned, he clearly doesn’t want anyone else to know about it.
But there’s enough buzz to tell me that he has spread the word to those who might be interested, and I want to know what, exactly, he is dragging our family name into.
Because I might be the Pakhan, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t still feel like he has a right to do what he wants.
He’s my half-brother, technically, the illegitimate child of my father by another woman—I only learned about him when I was a teenager and his mother insisted that he have a part of my father’s legacy.
My father didn’t give him anything close to what I was owed as his legitimate son, but he made sure he had plenty to keep himself busy with.
Gifted him this bar and told him he could run it however he wanted, which Artem has taken with a great seriousness.
Though, these days, it seems to have taken on a darker edge.
And I need to know what that means.
“I’m not sure,” the bartender replies, but I can tell he’s lying.
I lift my chin, not breaking his gaze for a moment, daring him to lie to me further, and his eyes slide to the right, trying to escape my scrutiny.
“You don’t know,” I repeat, and he shrugs.
“I just tend the bar. I—”
All of a sudden, a door opens behind him, and a man leans through.
“Ilya. When’s that drinks order arriving downstairs?”
He nearly jumps out of his skin, and I cock an eyebrow. His cover is blown. Whatever is happening, it’s going down in the basement. Out of sight, and, as far as Artem is concerned, out of mind, though it’s not going to work that easily.
“I’ll be right there,” he replies, and as the man ducks back inside, he turns back to me, wincing. His cover is blown.
“Downstairs,” I repeat, and he nods.
“I don’t know what Mr. Valiski is planning, exactly,” he confesses, leaning forward and lowering his voice as he looks around. “But... But whatever it is, it’s attracted a few dozen people. They gave us a list at the start of the night, to make sure we took care of the people who’d been invited.”
“Just men?”
He nods. “Looks like they all are. Artem told the female staff members not to come in tonight, I’m not sure why.”
I’m starting to get a bad fucking feeling about this. I might deal in a lot of shit, a lot of shit that would mark me as a far worse man than my brother, but there’s something about this that doesn’t sit right with me.
Is he dealing in... in women? Artem has been particularly quiet recently, and that only happens when there’s something he’s dedicated himself to—something that he’s trying to get off the ground, often to prove me wrong in the process.
I look past the bartender, towards the door. “They’re down there?”
He nods again.
I knock back my vodka, dragging my hand over my mouth. “Let me through.”
He freezes. He doesn’t want to deny me anything, he knows who I am, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to get on my brother’s bad side either. It’s not my problem, where he lands in the politics of this place, but I’m damn certain I’m going to shake him loose one way or another.
“Let me through,” I repeat, rising to my feet and stepping around the bar.
He is still just standing there, staring at me, clearly calculating who exactly he is worried about pissing off more.
And he makes the right choice after a few beats.
He pulls open the small door that leads to the bar and I step through, heading directly to the door that I saw that man emerge from. Pushing it open, I head to the other side.
At first, it just looks like a storage area, crates of alcohol stacked up in every corner. But then, I hear movement, and glance around to see the same man who came to ask about the drinks stubbing out a cigarette.
Fuck, I could go for one of those, though I only keep them in my car.
“You got the drinks?” he asks me, not bothering to check who was actually in front of him. But when he looks up, he freezes, his eyes widening.
“Pakhan,” he blurts out. “I-I’m sorry, I had no idea—“
“Where’s my brother?” I cut him off coolly, paying no attention to his sharp tone. He can talk how he wants, all I care about is finding out what’s going on here.
“Right down here,” he replies, gesturing through the door he just came through. “I can take you to him, if you want.”
I nod, and he leads the way, taking me outside and then to a small door that leads down a set of steel stairs. Our footsteps clang with every step, and, as we head down, I can hear noise emerging from the room before us, a growing buzz of what sounds like excitement.
The man pushes open the door for me when we reach the end, and I step through the narrow frame, glancing around the room.
Nobody seems to notice me arriving. They’re all distracted, about thirty or so men sitting around various small tables arranged around what looks to be some kind of stage in the middle.
I scan the faces around me.
No sign of my brother.
He’s clearly still preparing whatever this is, ready to handle anything that comes his way. Something grips at my chest, and I get the feeling that there’s something wrong here, something terribly, terribly wrong that I can’t quite put my finger on.
I slip into a seat at one of the tables, the man opposite me flashing me a broad, conspiratorial grin.
“You made it just in time,” he tells me. “They’re just about to start bringing the girls out...”
“Girls?”
He stares at me for a moment, clearly confused as to why I don’t seem to know what’s going on here. “You don’t know...?”
But before he can finish what he is saying, there’s a flurry of activity over by the stage, and everyone in the room turns to pay attention to what’s happening before us.
My brother steps out from some backstage area just out of sight, raising his hand to calm the mutter of excitement around the room.
“Gentlemen,” he calls out, peering into the crowd before him.
I shift slightly in my seat, making sure my face is not visible from where he’s standing. I don’t want him to know that I’m here. Whatever he is going to do, I need to see it play out in its entirety.
“Thank you for joining me tonight,” he continues. “I have some very fine offerings on sale this evening, as I’m sure you’re all here for. Once again, I’d like to extend my appreciation for your discretion in this matter, given the sensitive nature of the work I do here.”
He grins a little wider, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. The vodka I had back at the bar burns at the back of my throat, and my stomach curdles.
“As ever, payment will be rendered via wire transfer at the end of the bidding,” he continues. “And trust me when I say that I predict a battle over the woman we have with us tonight.”
No doubt about it. He is selling girls. Fucking auctioning them off to this room full of men as though they are nothing more than livestock.
My jaw clenches. There are lines in the sand, lines that can never be crossed when it comes to all of this. And selling people, selling women, knowing what they will be used for? That’s a line I have long-since laid down, one that I imagined even my brother would not be foolish enough to overstep.
“Without further ado,” he continues. “I’d like to introduce you to our guest for the night, Maya...”
He gestures behind him, and, just like that, a woman stumbles out from the back of the stage. As soon as I lay eyes on her, my stomach drops.
Her blonde hair is messy, untamed around her wide hazel eyes.
She looks around the room with horror on her face, and it’s clear she has no idea what’s going on here.
She wraps her arms around herself, trembling, her entire body tensed as she prepares for whatever might be thrown at her next. And to make it all worse…
I know that girl.
I recognize her at once. How could I not? It might have been months since the night we spent together, but that day has been burned into my brain ever since.
Her body tangled with mine, the way she trembled beneath me in the moments before she came, the sound of her breathing intensifying as she went over the edge.
I had left soon afterwards, sensing she didn’t want to be involved with someone like me, but I have let my mind drift dangerously in her direction a few times more than I would care to admit.
But I guess she’s part of this world, at least, more than I could have imagined.
Because she is standing next to Artem, who has put his arm around her and pushed her towards the front of the stage, where the lights seem to blind her.
“We’ll start the bidding at twenty thousand,” Artem announces, leering at her with a grin on his face. “Though I can attest to the fact that she is worth so, so much more than that.”
Rage courses through me, the way he is talking about her as though she’s nothing more than a piece of meat. That fucking bastard. How long has this been going on?
My own brother, pulling something like this behind my back. If I had known, I would’ve shut this down months ago, making him pay for even letting his mind stray in this direction.
“Twenty-five thousand.”
A man’s voice cuts through the quiet, snapping me back into the moment. I look around, and sure enough, a man at the table next to me has raised his hand. The woman—Maya, if that is her real name—retreats into herself, her eyes becoming vacant.
“Thirty.” Another voice places a bid.
I stare at her, the room narrowing to the sight of her standing right there before me. I need to get her out of this mess, in any fucking way I can.
I could pull my gun, slam it on the table, tell these fuckers that I’m going to make them pay for thinking they could dare get away with this, but I can only imagine there are guards on the door ready to spring into action if anyone tries to play hero.
No, if I’m going to get her out, then I need to play by the rules of this place, no matter how sick and fucking twisted they might be.
I raise my hand. “A million.”
A silence falls across the room as everyone turns to look at me, clearly stunned by the enormous bid.
But I cannot risk letting her fall into any other hands.
As soon as I have her out of here, I can find out what my brother’s been doing, figure out how many other women there are who are going to need my help, but for now, all I care about is getting her out of this place in one piece.
Artem squints in my direction. Does he recognize my voice? If he does, he’s doing a good job of pretending otherwise.
“A million,” he announces, and I withdraw into the shadows once more.
I don’t want anyone to see me here. I can only imagine how my enemies would spin it if they knew, that I was paying money for the ownership of a woman.
there is nothing else I can do, and I’m not willing to walk out of here until I know she is safe.
“Anyone want to top that?” Artem continues, but there’s only silence in the room.
Nobody dares to one-up me. No doubt a few of them have realized who they’re dealing with, and don’t want to stand between me and something I so clearly want.
But that kind of money, it’s clearly bigger in number than almost anything else they have seen here, and my brother, as hungry as he is for cash, will take whatever he can get if it means securing payment.
“Sold,” he announces, and he puts his arm around Maya again. Even from where I’m sitting, I can see her shudder in his grip, her face paling as she tries to come to terms with the fact that someone has just paid money to take ownership of her.
I need to convince her that she can trust me, as hard as that might be for her to believe right now.
Shit, after everything she has been through, it doesn’t surprise me to see the fear in her face. It strikes me, all of a sudden, that the man who went after her before could have been trying to secure her for sale in Artem’s sick little game…
Whatever it takes, I will keep her safe.
And I will make sure that Artem pays for what he has done.