17. Roman #2
Benny is pouring out a fresh line of coke in front of him and waves one hand in response.
Tackle remains silent, staring out into the distance, and Lucian Farina is the only one who glances up at Yegor.
“Go talk. We’ve got nothing but time,” Lucian says.
The sound of his voice makes my skin crawl, all the way down the back of my spine.
I want to do it right now.
I want to wrap my hands around his pin-straight, skinny little neck, crushing his windpipe before he gets the chance to protest.
I need him gone from the face of the Earth.
This subhuman, this filthy excuse for a human being.
My gaze lingers on Lucian for too long and I feel Maks give me a gentle tap on the arm to bring me back to reality.
I turn, following Yegor out of the thin cloud of smoke, toward the wall of windows leading out to the backyard. He slides open a glass door and we step out into the cool, humid air, and I watch Yegor slide the door shut behind us.
Blood is rushing in my ears and I have tunnel vision on Yegor.
Every fucking move he makes.
Patience.
Patience… until I utterly destroy you.
“Over there,” I say, nodding toward the glittering blue of the pool further to the side of the yard.
There’s a space there behind a column where we won’t be visible to the men inside.
“Talk,” Maks barks at Yegor.
“Okay, boys, what would you like me to talk about?”
“Who are the fucking guys inside, Yegor?” Maks asks him.
I notice that Maks steps to one side of Yegor, while I block the other.
From where Maks is, he has a line of sight at an angle through the tall windows. If any of the men inside move, Maks will see it instantly.
I face directly toward Yegor.
“They are some friends,” Yegor says, looking between the both of us. “New friends.”
Time slows for a moment.
I can see every micro movement of Yegor’s eyes. The way he glances down toward my palm, quickly, to see if I’m reaching for a weapon. The way he looks at Maks, shifting his gaze.
But I’m faster than him.
So much fucking faster.
I always have been.
By the time I’m reaching in my back pocket for my Makarov, Yegor is holding up his hands, backing away.
My gun feels like an extension of my own arms.
It feels scary how natural it is to level it at him, the moment I know he’s untrustworthy.
“Speak or regret it,” I tell him, the heavy weight of the metal unshaking under my palms.
Everything in my body goes calm.
The adrenaline wins out over every thought, and my heart stops racing.
The fear is gone.
The only thing left is to fight.
“Who the fuck are they, Yegor?” Maks says, and Yegor looks over at a second gun pointed at him now, too.
The blue light of the pool ripples behind him, old collected raindrops periodically falling from the trees down into the water.
“You will find out who they are, when you need to find out,” Yegor says.
His eyes are wide as he looks at me.
But he doesn’t look like he’s pleading for mercy.
He looks like he’s trying to make his own fucking rules.
“That is not how this is going to work, Yegor,” I say in a low tone.
I don’t even finish the sentence before I lurch fast, my finger depressing the trigger.
The gunshot pops in the air and Yegor falls to the ground, blood spilling from his knee where I shot him.
“Fuck!” he shouts, clutching at his leg as he collapses.
Blood starts to trickle into the pool, and in this light, it’s like black paint spilling into the water, blooming out into lighter red.
“Are you ready to speak yet?” I ask him, stepping forward fast, this time pointing the gun at his other knee. “Start. Now.”
“Roman, Roman,” he cries, groaning at the pain in his leg. “Fuck, they will have heard that gunshot, you impatient fool. You shouldn’t have done that—”
“I don’t care what they heard. Maks has eyes on them as we speak. Maks, are they moving?”
“They are playing cards and doing coke,” Maks says. “One of them is on his phone, though. Could be bad. I don’t think your friends give a fuck that you were just shot, Yegor.”
“Tell me who they are,” I bark at him.
“You know who they are,” Yegor growls, looking up at me.
“I need to hear you say it. Fucking tell me how you betrayed me. Tell me you’re the next Petrov to turn on us, in a series of betrayals that only gets longer.”
“God damn it,” he says, heaving out the words as he winces at the pain. “I was trying to protect you. I needed one more day. Maybe two. But now you’ve gone and fucked it all up for both of us.”
I frown at him. “Explain. Now.”
“Information is dangerous,” Yegor roars.
“You are the one who taught me that. I didn’t want you to know.
I couldn’t tell you what I was doing. They are paid off by Maletti scum.
Don’t you already know that? I had them in the palm of my hand.
I was going to use the Landrey boy as a trap, and we were going to fucking kill all of them, Roman. Don’t you see?”
I clutch the metal of the gun tighter in my hand. “Bait?” I whisper.
“The Malettis would come here. For Tate. But we would never give him over to them. Luring them here, to us, has been my plan the whole time. We were supposed to kill them together.”
A cresting wave of realization hits me like a tidal wave.
“You were using Tate,” I whisper.
“Yes. But I was never going to hurt any of you. I would never.”
“You were using my Tate as fucking bait for a plan you never told me?”
I had noticed that Yegor didn’t shed a tear when I shot his knee.
But they fall from his face now, in long, slow streaks, as he answers my question.
“We already lost your mother, Roman,” he breathes. “I cannot lose you, too. I would not dream of betraying you. I did all of this for you.”
The ground feels like it’s swaying beneath my feet.
I step back, putting a hand to the column behind me, blinking as I stare at Yegor’s blood on the deck.
“How?” I whisper.
“Those fucking monsters inside my living room,” Yegor explains, “they have close friends in the police force in the city. Well, I have a fucking close friend there, too. The moment the incident with the Landrey boy occurred, I heard about it. My contact there is old friends with his brother, Luke. He’s one of the only clean people still left in that entire goddamn department. ”
“Holy shit,” Maks murmurs.
“So you did manipulate the situation so that Tate would be sent here? To be under my protection? This… request wasn’t at all his brother’s idea?”
Yegor grimaces as he tries to move his leg. “Our mutual friend made Luke Landrey think it was his own idea. But yes. It was our design.”
“You were doing all of this strategizing and plotting without my knowledge. Under my nose. Under my father’s nose,” I say.
“Yes. I fucking was. Because if you knew of it, you would never have agreed to it. We would never have a chance to end the lives of the people who still have a chokehold on your heart, Roman. I want my cousin back. I want you back. My fucking family, Roman—”
“Our family dissolved when she died,” I utter.
He shakes his head. “No. I loved your mother so much, too. But we are still us. The Petrov name…”
“You,” I tell him, my eyes wide, “are beneath the Petrov name.”
Information is dangerous.
It truly is something I’ve told Yegor a thousand times.
I underestimated him.
Entirely.
He has seemed like a baby to me for so long that I hadn’t noticed that he grew up, right there, beneath my nose, and I never stopped for long enough to see it.
“Your strategy is blindly dangerous,” I tell him. “You put all of us in danger. Tate, most of all.”
“All of it was going to work, cousin. All of it. You would trust me, if you let me carry out my plan.”
“I still never will,” I tell him.
I step forward and bend down, sliding my arm around his torso and lifting his crumpled body from the ground.
“Let’s get your leg fixed up now,” I mutter. “Handle the vermin in your living room. And then you will take me to this friend of yours in the police force, and I will handle what happens to you.”
“Hey. We’ve got movement,” Maks says quietly beside me.
“Fuck. Fuck, fuck,” I say under my breath. “Yegor, you will not bleed out from where I shot you. Not tonight, at least. Wrap yourself in a very tight towel. I need to handle this.”
“They’re armed, Roman,” Yegor warns me.
“Of course they are. But we are better.”
I toss Yegor a crisp white pool towel from the stack he keeps on the deck. The wound doesn’t look good, but I know he will be dead either way if I don’t handle the people inside first.
“More movement. They are going for the front door,” Maks says. “We need to go now. Go around the side of the house.”
We loop around the edge and push past the side gate.
When we walk under the cluster of trees along the gravel path, I see a black car coming up Yegor’s driveway.
“Fuck, did he inform others that we were here?” I whisper to Maks. “Could this still be…”
“I don’t think Yegor is setting us up,” Maks tells me. “I think Farina called someone, minutes ago.”
“Look. More headlights. Further down.”
Past the thick forest that blocks Yegor’s house from the main road, there are two other cars, parked further down on the street.
“Blyat. That is too many,” Maks says.
“It is.”
I think of Tate’s eyes.
The way he looks at me, with that hazel green, and he sees someone that no one else sees.
The way he has hope for me when I don’t.
His own hope, beautiful and pure, that couldn’t be touched by my darkness.
The black car pulls up to the front of Yegor’s house and the passenger side door swings open.
“Fuck,” Maks whispers.
I think of how Tate kisses me when he can’t hold himself back any longer.
The way I have to kiss him back.
How badly I need it, too, in a way I only knew how to deny at first.
“There is only one thing we can do,” I say, my voice growing louder. “We have to be better. We have to be better than them, Maks. Are you with me?”
“I am with you. Always.”
“This is for my mother. And for him.”
Someone steps out of the passenger side of the black car, and when I see long, glossy black hair in the low light, my chest turns to steel.
“Romik,” Natalia’s singsong voice carries through the air.
She’s carrying.