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Chapter 16
I open the bag of dog food and reach for Mimi’s bowl as arms wrap around my waist, and a kiss lands at the top of my head.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Sergei asks and rests his chin on my shoulder, watching as I pour dog chow into the dish.
“You barely sleep as it is.” I look at him sideways. “When are you planning to start sleeping in bed?”
It’s been almost a month since we slept together for the first time. Every night since, we’d cuddle up together in bed, but when I wake up, Sergei would be dozing on the floor. I tried to convince him to stay with me, but he only shook his head, waited for me to fall asleep, then moved to his sleeping bag on the floor next to the bed.
“Is Felix around?” He always changes the subject when I start talking about this.
“I haven’t seen him,” I answer.
“He’s probably at Marlene’s. Let’s go walk Mimi before breakfast.”
Sergei whistles, and Mimi comes running around the corner. She lifts her head for Sergei to scratch her neck, then turns to me and licks my palm. I still find it hard to believe that such a scary-looking dog would have such a mild personality. Felix once said that Mimi can kill a man in under a minute, but looking at her as she runs around us, first nudging Sergei and then me with her nose, I wonder if he was just teasing me.
* * *
“I know what you and Felix did before you joined the Bratva,” I say as we’re walking down the sidewalk, making Sergei stop in his tracks.
“He told you?” he asks through his teeth. “When?”
“Some time ago.” I don’t mention that most of it I got from the pakhan, and Felix only filled in the gaps.
“I’m going to kill him.”
I squeeze his hand. “How was it? The training, I mean. I know you can’t talk about the missions.”
Sergei takes a deep breath, wraps his arm around my middle, and leads us toward the park. “Believe it or not, I liked it,” he says. “I wasn’t in a good place when they brought me in, and they offered me purpose. A sense of belonging, in a way. It felt good. In the beginning, at least.”
“How were the other guys in the group. Were you friends?”
“I can’t say we were friends, exactly.” He shrugs. “But we were in it together, so it created a sense of comradery.”
“Do you know where they are now?”
“One died on a mission early on. David. He was a good kid. The other one, Ben, I killed,” he says and looks down at me, waiting for my reaction. It was probably the guy Felix mentioned, the one who attacked him while Sergei was zoned out. I stare right into his eyes without blinking.
“And the others?” I ask.
Sergei watches me for a few seconds, then looks away and continues walking. “Kai and Az. Kai was an extremely deranged guy. Violent. Aggressive. When he got fixated on something, no one was able to get whatever it was out of his head. They had to restrain him a couple of times. Az was the complete opposite. Withdrawn. A recluse. Over all the years we spent together, I think he spoke less than twenty sentences to the rest of us.” He smiles. “He played mean poker, though. Not even Felix, with all his cheating, could beat him.”
“Az?” I ask. “That’s an unusual name.”
“It’s a nickname. No one knew what his real name was. He wouldn’t tell. Kruger, the guy who ran the unit, tried to beat it out of him. He collected him from the street with no documents, and when they ran Az’s prints, they didn’t get anything. But even when Kruger broke his arm, Az wouldn’t say his name or anything. So, he ended up being just Az.” He chuckles. “Crazy motherfucker.”
“What happened to them?”
“I assume Kai is still working for the government. Az vanished six months before Felix and I left.”
“Like lost on a mission?”
“Nope. Just disappeared.” Sergei looks over at Mimi, who’s running between some trees, and whistles. “There was a traffic accident. Az’s wife was killed by a drunk driver. The following day, they found his house burned to ashes. No sign of Az.”
“Jesus. Someone burned down his house?”
“He torched it himself.”
