Russian Boss’s Secret Baby by Bella King

Ch 36

SLATE

Mia’s been on my ass about letting her come out tonight and it’s got me extremely worried. I know she’s finally gotten a taste of vengeance, a counterpart to her righteous anger, but she doesn’t understand the full magnitude of what’s going to happen tonight.

She knows that Katya will die. She doesn’t know what it will be like to watch an entire building collapse on itself with people inside of it.

She’s an amazing person, and I trust that she’ll be an incredible mother and partner to me, but she is naïve. She and I have lived very different lives, and she has spent most of hers in a comfortable, nonviolent place.

Organized crime has been in my family since 1987. I watched my first execution at ten years old. She has no idea what I’m trying to keep her from now that I’ve shown her what she needs to see.

Despite my misgivings about Katya and the things she’s done to me, killing her is not an easy task for me. I did love her at some point in my life, and even seeing her threatening to kill the mother of my child brought me back to the place in time when we were happy together. It’s fucked up, and it makes me sick, but it’s true.

I know that what happens tonight will stay with Mia for the rest of her life whether she’s there or not. Even if she isn’t present when it takes place, she’ll be able to hear the blast from miles away, and she’ll know.

All I can hope for is that she understands how far I’m willing to go to keep her safe. Any threat to her is a threat to me, and I’ll eliminate anybody who tries to hurt her. That still doesn’t make it safe or easy to do.

While there is no safety in the natural world, eventually Mia will have to see the other side of her lifestyle for what it is. There’s a large degree of sacrifice that goes into what she has now, and while I don’t want her to take it for granted, I don’t want to terrify her and scare her away either.

It’s 11:50 PM now, and the men have reported back that the explosives are in place and that nobody was caught or questioned. The building seemed quieter than they expected, so they were able to slip in and work quickly.

There’s no good way to test a homemade bomb, obviously, but they seemed confident that everything should be in working order. I’ve got a burner phone with the code to detonate them all at once.

Around 2:00 AM, Luke and I are watching the building for signs of Katya or her soldiers when three ambulances speed up to the main doors followed by two cop cars.

Initially, I begin to panic. Did she call in some kind of backup? Did she get the Miami police force on her side?

Luke and I watch the first responders intensely for the first fifteen minutes, uncertain of what to make of their immediate presence. After watching for another five minutes, we see them quickly wheel three gurneys into the complex, one cop following closely behind while the other attempts to close off the scene.

Immediately, my mind is racing. I hadn’t gotten an update that the men had left the building, just that they had completed their work. I wonder if they go attacked. They could even be dead.

A mix of relief and renewed concern comes over me as I see two unfamiliar, skeletal males wheeled out on the gurneys, the last in a body bag. I turn to Luke, hoping he will have some kind of explanation for me. “Luke, what the fuck is going on?” I ask, just above a whisper as I’m now extremely paranoid that someone could be listening in.

“This area being ground zero for heroin use makes it an easy place to find all kinds of dirty shit like fake pills pressed with fentanyl. It’s highly likely that Katya and her men took over the Imposter’s business of dealing fake or bad drugs to the junkies that live in the lower levels,” he replies, also very quietly.

The fact that I couldn’t stop the fake drugs from being distributed to people before they killed someone fills me with a volatile combination of rage and defeat. The Imposter is dead, and I couldn’t save anybody.

As I watch the cops begin to swarm the area, a deep sense of dread fills me. The entire point of doing this tonight was to avoid the police presence, and here it is without any implication toward Katya or her involvement with the potential deaths.

I could try to do the right thing for once, let the other junkies squeal on her and let due process take over the rest. I just feel like I can’t, though. I can’t watch her live another day on earth knowing what she’s done.

“I think we might have to make another plan,” I say to Luke.

He recoils at the concept. “Are you fucking serious? We’ve been at this for a week, all we need to do is wait for her and blow her shit up. What else are we going to do?” he says, his voice colored by slight panic and major annoyance.

“I don’t know, but this place is going to be shut down for at least the rest of the night. She’s going to see all the first responders and cop cars and won’t even come back here. See what I mean?” I reply.

Luke stares straight out the windshield, the weight of my words setting in. “Goddamn it. You’re right,” he says.

“I mean, you’ve been following her for how long? You’ve got to know another place she would go to hide. Any average-intelligence criminal would have a backup plan,” I reply, practically pleading with him to know exactly where she would be. The longer we wait to attack, she longer she has to disappear completely.

“She might be at the house where you found the decoy Imposter,” he says after a moment of deliberation. “The good news is that we could blow that place the fuck up with an eighth of the explosives we have here, if that’s still the route you’re trying to take. The bad news is that it’s all in there,” he continues, pointing toward the apartment complex that is now crawling with first responders and law enforcement.

I breathe in deeply, trying as hard as I can to not scream out loud at how ridiculous the whole situation is. I do the best I can to not blame the dead junkies or the person who called the ambulances. Improvising has never been one of my best traits, and I’d rather not fight her or anyone else hand-to-hand if I don’t have to.

“I think we just need to make another plan and try again,” I say defeatedly.

“That might be for the best, honestly,” Luke replies, and my anger simmers to a slight bitterness as he starts the car to drive away.