Chapter 24 - Janella
The world comes back to me in watery fragments.
My mouth is sour. An acrid chemical taste coats my tongue. Someone must be trying to pound nails into my skull. The ache is sharp. My guts are in knots.
It’s too late by the time I register their voices. Deep, male voices—four of them, I think—talking about “the package”.
It’s even later by the time I realize they’re talking about me.
When I squirm, a rough fabric scrapes against my cheeks. That explains the darkness. I’m not just blind. There’s something over my head.
Each passing second makes it more and more clear that this is not one of my night terrors. No, this is real.
So is the panic that claws its way up my insides. I have to swallow it down. I have to. Think, I plead with my fuzzy brain.
If you’re ever taken, Iosif had once told me during one of the training sessions I’d talked him into giving me, the first few minutes are crucial. When they’re moving, you're your best shot. They have the least control. Get the fuck out of the vehicle.
My whole body jostles when the vehicle rocks over a speed bump. Zip-ties bite into my wrists and ankles. Testing them, I yank against the restraints. They aren’t the tightest. I guess they wouldn’t make extra sure of them being. I don’t look like much, do I? Easy to underestimate.
“The fact that people assume you’re weak is probably your biggest asset,” Leonid had said to me weeks ago.
Envisioning my body frozen, I keep as still as possible. Beneath my weight, I begin to work my wrists back and forth. It stings, scraping my skin. You can do this, I tell myself.
The universe rebels. The van hits a pothole, flinging me against some sort of wall.
One of the men curses.
“Watch the fucking road,” another man snarls.
I pat around behind myself, straining to find my bearings. My chest is so tight, panic is shrinking my lungs. I don’t need to look at a watch to know my time is running out.
The van swerves again.
It takes everything in me to withhold a cry when I slam into a bolt. It strikes me in the hip. Adrenaline alone dulls the pain enough to work my bound wrists over it. If it was sharp enough to cut through my jeans, it should be sharp enough to—
I pull, hard as I can, refusing to cry out when plastic tears at my skin.
The zip-ties don’t snap, but they loosen enough.
“Ten minutes,” someone announces.
That’s all the time you’ve got. Hurry the fuck up.
It all boils down to a single point in time. I’ve found that most important moments in life tend to.
The van slows down only seconds later. It can’t be the second location yet. Which means I’ve got to hedge my bets on traffic or some merciful red light.
This is it.
I summon every bit of power within me and wrench my wrists apart. I give it everything I have. My wrists are free.
There’s no time to pause. I yank the hood off my head and kick out, ready for an assailant. My ankles are still bound, but I land a kick at the door, hunching into a ball to protect my head, before I roll out of the van.
Asphalt rubs my arm raw as I scramble to my feet. There are cars everywhere. No one helps. I don’t look around to see why. I force myself to my feet and start running, hopping toward the nearest storefront I can. Someone screams. I can’t afford to look up.
Past the blood buzzing beneath my skin, I shove my bloody hand down my pants and pull out the knife strapped to my thigh.
The plastic doesn’t stand a chance against the blade.
I break into a run once more.
My bare feet pound down the pavement of the shopping district, weaving my way through the labyrinth of pedestrians and storefronts.
Not too far behind me, the harsh roars in Russian are unmistakably clear to me. It sounds nothing like it does coming from Yuri’s mouth. Every syllable sounds inelegant and coarse.
It’s what it sounds like, coming from people ready to cleave me to pieces.
I run toward Newbury Street. That’s where Iosif’s coming. He said he was coming for me, didn’t he? I just have to get to him.
His face is the only one in my mind. The goalpost I run toward, no matter how my legs burn, and my lungs scream.
When I collide with another body, the smell is so familiar.
It takes me a second to realize it isn’t because it’s my husband.
It’s my dad. I can’t begin to process the relief that barrages me.
All else in the rearview, I clutch at his elbows for dear life.
“Dad,” I sob, my face buried in his chest like I’m still his little girl.
“Daddy, please, you have to help me. There were these men—they took me, Dad, they’re after me—”
His hands grip me back. They dig, his blunt nails biting through my blouse. It hurts.
“I know,” he breathes against my hot, wet cheek.
The words don’t make sense to me. I can’t… I don’t understand. His grip fights me when I try to rear my head back. Only then do I see it. In the dark suffocation against him, I see perfectly.
He knows.
There is no measure for the dam of grief that bursts in my chest. It drowns me from within. I’m drowning.
“I’ll give you anything,” I gasp, fighting for air that won’t come. “Just help me.”
“The way Viktor Zakharov can help me?” I feel my father shaking his head, his hand stroking my hair. “I don’t know if you can, honey. He’s a very generous man.”
My blood has been replaced with quicksilver. My limbs weigh down, heavy with distress.
“You’re working for him? All along?”
“I told you,” he says into my ear. His grip tightens when I try to pull away.
“I told you I’m not scared of your husband, and you wouldn’t listen.
He’s an arrogant man. All the Yuris are.
Thinking they’re the smartest in any room.
Like they’re fucking untouchable. And then I gave that reckless fool something to lose. ”
“No,” I cry out, a death knell that echoes down the street. “How can you do this to me? I’m—I’m your daughter.”
He pulls back from me now, holding me at arm’s length. “No,” he says sadly. “You’re a Yuri. Remember?”
My heartbeat slows, lulled by the cold snarling through my system. A frigid, unforgiving frost that coats everything in sight. That turns into icicles that protrude, waiting for any collision to become a fatal demise.
“Let me go,” I say softly.
He makes a pitying sound in the back of his throat. “Viktor’s waiting, honey. He’s got plans for you.”
I don’t let him get any further.
My knife is in my hand before I know it. I don’t remember pulling it back out. I don’t think as I slash at him, anywhere I can, until his hands aren’t on me anymore. Until I make him let me go.
I’m running again.
Iosif, I think. Iosif, Iosif. Please.
I’ve never heard my father move so fast. His hand fists in the hair he’d stroked so gently moments ago. He wrenches me backward, the force knocking me to my knees, and dragging me back up the street.
My knife hits the pavement with a clang drowned by my scream.
“You fucking slut,” he shouts in my face, blood dripping down from his face onto mine. “You owe me fucking everything!”
He raises his fist. My eyes squeeze shut, just in time.
But his blow never lands.
I look up, and he isn’t there anymore. He is ripped away from me with an intensity so ferocious, I hear his shoulder pop out of its socket. His howl is syncopated by the sickening crash of his body falling through the window of a bakery-to-be, almost done being renovated.
Iosif’s stature blocks the scene when he steps in after him.
My Iosif, with his hands finding Cillian Driscoll’s throat. Whose hands tighten, relentless, no matter how much his hands are clawed at. “You don’t deserve to walk the same earth as her,” Iosif condemns, my angel of vengeance. “I should have ended you the night you sold her.”
He lifts Cillian Driscoll with a single-handed grip and throws him up against a counter.
This man isn’t my father. Was he ever? Would a father do this to their child? Would a father sell you? Not once, but twice. Would a father use you as currency for his next hit?
How many times had I begged him to be my dad?
It’s him who begs now.
Iosif pays those cries no heed. “You’re going to wish you had,” he vows.
His knife glints beneath the sun, a brilliant silver. He soaks it in red.
Iosif could just subdue him. He can just knock him out and leave him here for the police.
But he won’t.
I know he won’t.
“I—I’m sorry,” Cillian Driscoll whines, clutching at Iosif’s wrist.
Calmly, Iosif shakes his head. “No. But you will be.”
I don’t remember getting to my feet. I don’t remember walking up to them, entering through the broken window. I only hear the glass crunching beneath my feet, cutting them up.
I only see Cillian Driscoll’s desperate pants turning wet, gurgling, until blood is pouring out of his mouth one hacked cough at a time. I see his body drop to the ground with a thud. His eyes go glassy until they stare off into nothing at all.
And then there is Iosif, his blood-streaked palms cupping my face. I am lost to the storm swirling in his eyes. My feet find steady ground when I feel his forehead press flush to mine, and his kisses against my lips, salty with tears that could be his or mine.
“He will never hurt you again,” Iosif swears against my lips, over and over.
The buzzing beneath my skin finally stops.
Confronted by atrocity, by the blood on my husband’s hands, I wait for the horror to flood me. I’d done so much to keep him from this, and then I’d just watched him do it. I’d watched him kill my father.
I wait for the guilt to submerge me for it.
But it never comes.
“Thank you,” I gasp against Iosif. I press my face into his chest, breathing in the smell of cedar and gunpowder. His arms ensnare me, pulling me in tighter, like he wants to absorb me into his skin. Please, I think. “I love you,” I say.
“I love you,” Iosif rasps into my hair, kissing any part of me he can reach. “I love you so fucking much, doll. When they took you, I—I thought I’d lost you. I can’t fucking lose you, Janella. You are my heart.”
I pull back despite my own heart’s protests.
I do it just to cup his face and lower his head to mine. I kiss his lips, letting his thumbs swipe the tears from my cheeks.
“Take me home, baby,” I plead with him. “Can we just go home, please?”
His gaze is fierce. “Yeah. And then we’re going to start over again. I’m going to marry you again, Janella Yuri. And I’m going to do it right this time.”
“I—”
A throat clears behind us, turning my body to stone.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Leonid drawls, and every muscle in my body unwinds.
All four brothers stand behind us: Trifon, Valentin, Leonid, and Miron. How had I not noticed them? I notice them now.
“How about we get out of here and get that head lac looked at?” Trifon suggests, pointing at my head.
“I’ll get all this—” Valentin gestures vaguely at the shattered glass and body on the ground. “—cleaned up.”
“You mean you’re going to make me clean it up,” Miron mutters, elbowing him in the side.
Leonid grins and throws an arm around Miron’s neck. “That’s what baby brothers are for.”
“The police?” Iosif interjects.
“Ten minutes out,” Trifon says grimly, checking his watch. “Self-defense appeal. Traffic cams caught him assaulting her, dragging his daughter into an alleyway. I’ll have Dmitri splice the rest together for a more cohesive picture.”
My head reels.
It’s Valentin who steps forward, planting a steadying hand on my shoulder. The gesture threatens to make my knees buckle. “Iosif told us what you did for us. We take care of our own, sestrenka.”
Iosif’s lips find my ear to translate, “Little sister.”
Tears fill my eyes all over again, a watery smile forcing its way to the surface. “Thank you.”
I can’t help but look back one last time, where the body of the man who was once my father lies, in a spreading pool of his blood.
“Come on, kukolka,” Iosif exhales beside me, steering me toward the line of waiting SUVs. I let him guide me, trusting his hands to lead me.
They are the hands of a killer; this is the truth. And they are the hands of the man who pulls me into his lap in the backseat, and lets me unravel like a child, loving me always.
He had been right all along. The world isn’t black and white.
Sometimes, two things can be true at once.