Page 2 of The Bratva’s Monster

I move without thinking, rushing into the shadows toward the door behind my brother. I see him a half-second before he pulls the trigger. I grab his arms, pulling the gun up as it goes off, shooting a bullet into the ceiling.

He struggles against me, trying to push his arms back down so that he’s aiming for Alex. I turn into him and bring his arms down on my knee, and the gun drops, clattering across the floor. Then I bring my elbow back, hitting him square in the nose.

He falls back and stumbles as blood sprays from his face. He doesn’t get a chance to hit the ground before I’m on him, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him into the light.

He’s young. Long, greasy brown hair, too much cologne… and both arms covered in Irkutsk ink.

“Son of a bitch,” I hear someone say. “How did he get in?”

“I’ve got a better question,” I growl. “How did he know where to find us?”

He stares up at me, eyes big with fear. If this isn’t the best indication that there’s a rat among us, I don’t know what is.

I’m still holding his collar with both hands, my knuckles pressing against his throat. It’s only by the grace of Alex’s word that I haven’t killed him yet. Without breaking my glare into this piece of shit’s eyes, I say, “What does the new Pakhan want to happen to this would-be assassin?”

Alex doesn’t hesitate. He says, “Show him why we call you the family monster.”

It’s all I need. I lift him up, and with one move, I swing him around and toss him into the nearest wall. He slams into it, his head banging so hard into the concrete that it cracks. As he slides down the wall, I stalk over and kick him in his nuts, his stomach, his chest until he’s lying on the floor crying out for help in Russian. Then I’m stomping his head into the dirt. I keep stomping until his screams start to gurgle and the feeling of his skull cracking registers under my shoe.

And I don’t stop. I keep going until he’s twitching, until most of what I’m stomping starts to soften, until there is nothing recognizable under my shoe.

“That’s enough,” I hear Alex say. And like a switch has been thrown, the rage inside me settles and I back away from the mess I just left.

“My first… Well, I suppose my second order as Pakhan,” he says. “Call Marius. Tell him to get his guys to clean this shit up.”

“On it,” says Kostya.

I’m still staring at the body attached to the mess of blood and bone that used to be a head.

He knew where we were. He knew because there is a rat among us. That fucking rat killed my best friend and my father and he almost just killed my brother.

I will find him, and when I do, he’ll wish for as merciful a death as this assassin just received.

2

LIZ

The last time I saw Rikki might have been the night when he brought Gedeon home drunk. It was right before his brother’s wedding, I think. He’d left that night, promising that he would be home at a reasonable time. Ten or maybe eleven, at the latest. He wasn’t. That night, Rikki dragged him into the house in the wee hours of the morning. I was so pissed at him, I didn’t speak until after the wedding itself.

That was my first thought when Rikki showed up at my door again a couple of weeks later. That night, my husband was draped over one of his massive shoulders in a fireman’s carry, passed out, wasted. His best friend is the size of a house, this massive wall of muscle with long, auburn hair that he usually keeps tied back. He’d said in a low voice that sounded more like a lion’s growl than human words, “Sorry. He had a little too much tonight.”

If I had been the type of wife who kept track, I’d probably have a filled notebook of times that Gedeon had to be dragged home by one of his friends. He always did things in excess, always came home smelling like beer and cologne.

I’m thinking about that now as I look over Gedeon’s office. There is so much that needs to be packed away… and this fucking room still smells like him. More than our bedroom. More than any other room in the house. Probably because this was where he spent most of his time when he was home.

I think that’s what brought about the memory of him coming home wasted. His smell. Gedeon had a sweet scent to him, almost like flowers growing in damp wood. I never realized how much the scent still clings to every damn thing. I could always smell it under the booze. I could even smell it on him after a shower. I’m pretty sure it was soaked into his skin.

And the very last time I smelled it so strongly like this, my face was nuzzled into his neck as we were having make-up sex right before he went out that last night. And I was so mad at myself after. Before the wedding. Before his drunken nights out. Before it all, I told him I wanted a divorce. In the moment, though, caught up in his arms after denying him for so long, I broke.

At the time, I didn’t understand why. I had been done with the marriage and with him for a while. We’d started that night talking, with him trying to apologize just as he’d done a million times before. He apologized in the way that most people put on their socks or underwear. I swear he did it so much that he had certain words and phrases rehearsed. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean… I didn’t realize… You mean everything to me.

I think I was tired of feeling numb after everything fell apart between us and I just wanted to feel… something. Anything.

Kind of like right now. He’s dead now, and I’m left with all his things in this room that smells like him. I want to cry, but I’m tired of crying. I want to scream, but I don’t have the will. I just want to feel something other than this. Too bad there’s no one here to help me fuck or maybe even drink the pain away.

I walk over to his desk in the corner of the room, past the filing cabinets and random papers strewn on the floor. This room is a fucking disaster. It’ll take me forever to go through everything.

Bastard. Of course, he would leave me with this mess. It’s the one thing in this relationship that he was great at. Leaving me to pick up the pieces.