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“Blyat!” Vadim says as he peels his body off the wall and marches out of the office. He comes back inside with a furious expression on his face. “Those workers only take orders from the men in this house,” he says while eyeing me.
I think of what Tatyana told me she overheard in the cells. She’s right. Someone on the inside is betraying the Bratva.
“Find out what the fuck happened,” Vadim says through clenched teeth. “I want the man responsible brought to me.” He marches out and punches his fist through the office on the other side, sending shards of floor-to-ceiling glass raining down.
I leave, heading in the opposite direction to the elevators. Tatyana’s still keeping something from me. I know it. She tells me stories and stops short. I figure it’s something personal about herself, but maybe she’s holding out on me. I press the floor button on the elevator panel as the doors close. Tatyana will tell me everything she knows.
No more secrets.
Chapter18
TATYANA
My fingers graze a row of book spines in a section of a neglected library a few floors below Viktor’s apartment. The stack of shelves appears to be dedicated to Alexander Pushkin’s work. My fingertips leave behind a pair of trails on the dusty leather covers. Many of the novels and plays I can recite from memory are sitting on shelves alongside books on literary criticism of Pushkin’s work. I slide out a copy ofQueen of Spades, a story I discussed in a Comparative Literature course I took when I was a student in Chicago. A laugh escapes me when I consider the irony; a tale of the fall from power due to relentless greed being housed in library of a mafia headquarters.
I toss the book onto a desk behind me and reach my hand further into the bookshelf, feeling up and down the length of the back wall for a lock or a lever of some kind, any sign of a false wall or escape passage. It’s desperate, I know this, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that men like Viktor never give up on what they want. They never stop trying to climb to the highest rung of power they can.
And they never forgive a betrayal.
It doesn’t matter what Viktor told me this morning. His feelings will change if he finds out I’ve crossed him.
The sleeve of my shirt catches the corner of a book, pulling it off the shelf and sending it fluttering to the ground like a bird with broken wings. I sigh in defeat and lean over to pick it up. When I rise back up in front of a window, my eyes catch the bright glow of something outside. The windowsill has a thick hardwood ledge that I lean myself on to investigate. Sunlight beats off the lime green roof of a sports car as it slides into a parking space outside the compound. The driver door swings open and I grimace when I see the soldier with the tattooed scalp appear from the car, remembering his threat to expose me to Viktor.
It’s silly for me to keep trying to find an escape route, but I continue on a new shelf on the other side of the window, sliding my hands behind another row of books. Dust from the book covers floats upwards into my nostrils, making my eyes water when I hold back a sneeze.
I give up on the bookshelves and walk to a desk at the far end of the library, wrapping my fingers around a thin metal handle of the top drawer, not surprised when I discover it’s locked. When I shake the handle around, the entire drawer rattles. This lock isn’t that strong. I lift my leg and brace it against the edge of the desk, just to the side of the drawer, and yank on the handle. Wood around the lock splinters and I pull harder when I feel it giving way. A sharp snap of metal comes from inside the desk and a chunk of wood flies off before the drawer shoots open. I fall backwards with the drawer in my lap and find a gun inside. I hold it in my hands, unsure if a single handgun will help me escape a compound of Bratva soldiers.
“You’re out of time,malishka,” I hear rumble through the library.
It’s the soldier with the tattooed scalp. His voice makes my stomach roil.
I stand up and angle one side of my body away from him, hiding the gun in my hand. He walks towards me with a look of victory on his face. He stops and laughs when he notices me backing away from him.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asks, as if it’s the most absurd thought in the world.
“I find you disgusting,” I say, holding myself as tall as I can. “Blackmailing women so they’ll sleep with you.”
“You don’t think too clearly,” he says as his mouth widens in a patronizing grin. “I can help you.”
I turn my head to the side in disbelief. “You’re pressuring me to sleep with you.”
“Don’t you want to escape?” he asks. “I can get you out of here.”
I stay perfectly still, not wanting to betray just how much I want to escape. My hatred for him grows, knowing he’s the gatekeeper of both the one thing I want and the one thing I’m afraid of, taunting me with the control he has.
He lifts his hand, opening his palm to a set of keys and jangling them to tempt me. “You would look great on the hood of my car with your legs spread open,” he says as he walks towards me. His eyes narrow as if he’s closing in on his kill.
My fingers tighten around the handle of the gun as I swing it in front of me. The soldier pauses and keeps his eyes on me as his smile fades. This is a gamble I wasn’t at all prepared to make. I don’t know if this gun is loaded, or if it even works, but I have to keep acting as if I can kill him with the pull of the trigger. My eyes widen and I suck in a breath of air as I point the barrel, taking quick glances around his body to see if he’s armed. I’m sure he would have pulled a gun out if he had one on him, but I refuse to lull myself into a sense of victory.
The soldier’s arms fall to his sides as he makes a tsk-tsk noise. “Terrible decision,” he says as he shakes his head. “You’ll learn that soon enough.” He takes a step back and turns to leave. I keep his body in the sight line of the gun, following him as he walks towards the doorway of the library. Before leaving, he turns back to me.
“You don’t have the power you think you do,” he says. “I would have fucked you by now, and you’d be rotting in a ditch somewhere, but…” a sinister look comes over his face before he continues, “…you’re off limits.” He turns back and disappears into the hallway.
I take a step backwards, surprised to hear that phrase again.
“Off limits,” I mouth to myself, confused by what that could mean.
I flip the safety of the gun on and tuck the barrel into the waistband of my pants. I pull my shirt over the gun to hide it and run to the stairwell, scrambling up the stairs back to Viktor’s apartment before he finds out I left.
