Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 57155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
“What did you give me?” she mumbles.
“Truth serum.” I cut her wrists free and rearrange her into a comfortable position on her side. I forgot to turn my heat up, so I pull the covers around her now and then sit beside her, brushing the cornsilk of her hair from her face.
“What is your name?”
“You already know it,” she mutters. “I’m Kira Koslova.”
Who sent you, Kira? The politsiya?”
Her brows knit. “I sent myself,” she mumbles.
“Why?”
She appears to be fighting the drug. She rolls her head to one side and the other.
I stroke her cheek. “Shh. Relax. The truth will set us all free, Kira Koslova. Why are you here?”
“To find my nephew.”
“What were you looking for in the desk?”
“Information.”
“Why not ask?”
“I…don’t…trust bratva.”
As I suspected. “What do you know about the bratva?”
She shakes her head. “Hate…bratva.”
“Because of Anya?”
“Yes. And the brava killed my father.”
I barely keep the groan from my lips. This revelation physically pains me. All these years I’ve been haunted by my actions. That I executed a man without knowing a thing about him. That he had two daughters.
I was thirteen years old, and they told me to shoot. I did as I was told. It’s no excuse. There’s no forgiveness. Ravil has said we wear the tattoos on our skin as reminders of our sin.
That we are not clean. We are marked by the violence, blood, and death that has been wrought in the name of the bratva.
He does not seem to relish the markings on his skin like most bratva leaders. It’s more like a weight he requires himself to carry. I’ve appreciated his take on it because killing never came easily to me.
I don’t sleep at night without being haunted by the faces of the men I’ve ended.
Particularly my first–Grigor Koslov.
Somehow, though, I manage not to show anything to Kira.
“Who killed your father?” I ask. She didn’t accuse me of the execution. But did she come here looking for me?
“I told you: bratva. He owed them money. First, they took my sister. They made her work off his debt and left her pregnant with Mika. Then he angered them again. I don’t know how. All I know is that of our two parents, he was the one who cared, and the bratva took him.”
I manage to keep my breath steady and even, though inside a restless wind has whipped into a frenzy.
I killed this beautiful woman’s father. Left her orphaned. With a sister impregnated by men from my cell.
I don’t remember her sister–it must have been before my initiation.
Of course, her father had offered Anya’s body up as payment. He’d offered Kira’s, too. So, I guess considering that I’m almost glad the bratva didn’t accept his offer. I would hate for Kira to have suffered the same way her sister did. Still, she lost a parent at my hands.
“I’m sorry.”
“My sister never recovered. She became an addict. I helped raise my nephew, but she took him with her when she moved to America with her bratva boyfriend.”
“Who was her boyfriend?”
“Aleksi.”
“There is no Aleksi here. You have the wrong cell–I told you that before. You didn’t believe me?”
“He’s dead. Now, so is Anya.” Kira flops a hand across her eyes and her lips tremble. “It’s my fault. I should have come to find him sooner.”
My chest aches with her pain. I want to take it away. To hunt this boy down for her. Unbreak her heart.
“Kira.” I lift the hand away from her eyes. “He’s not here. I wasn’t lying.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t trust bratva.”
That coil of sickness in my gut winds tighter. She’s right not to trust me. I am the man who murdered her father.
Her blue eyes swim with tears. “I lost him,” she moans.
I brush one of the tears sliding down her temple away. “Maybe we can find him. I will help you, Valkiriya.”
“Why are you so kind to me?”
I ignore her question. “What were you doing breaking into my desk?”
“Looking for information–the list of who lives here. A building diagram.”
“Why?”
Her eyes droop closed, then open. “I came in grief. Directly from the morgue and a visit to the crack house where my sister lived. They told me there was no boy with her and hadn’t been for several years. So, I came in hope and dread that Mika had attached himself to the bratva to survive. The police officer told me you take in Russians.”
Ah. So, this was who she meant when she said she was told we would help.
The story is coming together.
“Who are you working with?”
She shakes her head, pressing her lips closed. A soft moan issues from behind them.
“Who, Kira?”
“The…” she appears to be fighting the drug. “FBI.”
I go still. Fuck.
“What do they want?”
“They wanted me to plant bugs and…” Again, she seems to be trying to stop herself from speaking.