The Bratva’s Locked Up Love by Jagger Cole

26

Maksim

“Ty tsel?”

I smile at Yuri’s question. I nod, gazing out over the still water of what Quinn has told me is Ten Acre Pond—the small lake where her friend’s cabin sits.

“More or less,” I grunt in response to “are you in one piece.”

“More would be better than less, but I’m glad to hear your voice in any case, my friend. I won’t lie, when you went radio silent, I was a little worried.”

“C’mon, takes more than that to kill me,” I grin. “You know that.”

“I do,” he chuckles darkly. And he does. Of all the enemies I’ve faced—all the near over-doses, the men in the killing pits of Kyzel, sociopathic prison guards with axes to grind, countless kill-or-be-killed moments in the Bratva—this is the man who has brought me closest to death. Ironically, or maybe just bizarrely, he’s also the one person in this world I could call family.

It took me years after Yuri ripped the demons from my veins and my soul to really appreciate what he’d done. When it was over, back then those years ago in that farmhouse, I was broken. A shell. A husk of a man. People who come back from near-ODs, or who use heavy psychedelics talk about “ego death.”

What I experienced at Yuri Volkov’s hands was actual death. As in I actually, really did die, medically speaking.

Twice.

There’s a reason heroin addicts wean themselves with methadone or other “lesser” opiates. It’s because quitting heroin cold turkey is like deciding you don’t want to go parachuting anymore when you’re halfway to the ground already.

Heroin withdrawal is hell, but it won’t really kill most addicts. But I wasn’t “most” addicts. I’d been a hardcore, pushing the upper limits user for seven fucking years. How the fuck I never caught anything from needles is a mystery of the universe I’ll never quite understand. But with the level I was at, quitting cold turkey wasn’t parachuting out of an airplane and calling it quits. It was parachuting out of a rocket halfway to the goddamn moon.

My heart gave out twice in that farmhouse basement. I saw the devil face-to-face, eye-to-eye, and came back. Twice.

After that? Yeah, I was a shell. Broken in more ways than I could count. But it was Yuri who remade me. Who made me whole, who taught me how to be a man, and reminded me what it was to be human.

Of all the shit I’ve face in this world, no one but him truly understands how hard it is to actually kill me. Although, Quinn might have a decent idea at this point with how many times she’s patched me up.

I take a breath and fill Yuri in on everything—how Quinn helped me, how the phone was lost when our hideout was breached. How I’ve been in solitary for a month being tortured by wannabe GI Joe douchebags.

When I’m done, I hear his breath inhale sharply.

“Fuck, Maksim…” his voice breaks. “There is a limit to loyalty—”

“No there isn’t,” I say quietly. “Not to me. Not when it comes to this family.”

He says nothing. But I can almost hear him smiling in that way he does.

“This Doctor…” he chuckles. “Her name is really Doctor Quinn?”

I frown. “No, Quinn is her first name. Why is that funny?”

He laughs. “There was an American TV show, when I was much younger and living there. It was about a Doctor in the American West named…” he sighs. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. She can be trusted?”

“With my life,” I growl.

“Ahhh, I see,” he chuckles again.

“What does that mean?”

He laughs. “It means you have a tone in your voice I’ve never heard before, and now you’re playing house with a… I can presume pretty doctor out in the woods?”

“Beautiful,” I growl.

“I see.”

I smirk. Yuri knows exactly what the situation is.

“She filled me in on your message.” I frown. “This commander—”

“Colonel Rockland Coolidge,” Yuri grunts. “A real cowboy. Twenty years in the US Navy SEALs running black-ops missions. He retired early to start Coolidge Security Consultants. I assume it wasn’t long after that that he created the place where you were kept.”

I close my eyes. He needs to know.

“The Doctor,” I growl quietly. “Quinn.”

“Yes?”

I frown. “Her full title is Doctor Quinn Coolidge.”

Yuri swears quietly. “Is she—”

“The Colonel’s daughter.”

“Jesus, Maks…” my boss groans.

But I shake my head. “I stand by what I said, Yuri. I trust her with my life. She’s the reason I’m out of the place. Entirely. She put everything on the line, including crossing her own father, to get me out.”

He sighs heavily. “You mean that?”

“I do.”

He blows air out slowly. “Okay, then,” he grunts. “If you trust her, I trust her. But if she is in fact Colonel Coolidge’s daughter, she should probably hear this, too.”

A few minutes later,Quinn is by my side on the couch, with Yuri on speaker phone.

“Doctor Coolidge?” he growls.

“Yes, Mr. Volkov,” she says warily. She knows Yuri is a man I trust implicitly. But she’s fully aware that he’s also one of, if not the, most powerful Bratva kingpin in the world.

He chuckles quietly. “I am in your debt, Doctor. You saved a very good man, who is a very good friend of mine. And for that, I must apologize twice for what I’m about to tell you.”

I take her hand as she looks down. “It’s about my father, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I am sorry. No daughter should have to hear this about—”

“I can handle it,” she says icily.

Yuri sighs. “So be it. My contact in Washington DC confirmed what I’d heard whispers about. This place, this black site that your father runs… he’s using its position as an ‘off the record’ type place to conduct…” He growls. “Business. The type of business that goes to the highest bidder. And in this case—in Maksim’s case—that bidder was Sergei Belsky.”

My lips curl into a snarl. And I have to catch myself before my hand squeezes Quinn’s too hard.

Sergei is the little-known nephew of the late Semyon Belsky, the kingpin of our rival family that I played a part in killing a little while ago.

“So it’s true, then,” I grunt.

“Yes.”

The Belsky Bratva not immediately collapsing with Semyon’s death wasn’t unexpected. Of course, when you kill a king, his underlings will vie for power in the ensuing vacuum. But though they were knocked down hard, the Belsky Bratva has continued to fight us. And no one was sure who the fuck was running the ship or pulling the strings over there.

Now, it seems we know it’s been Semyon’s nephew.

I turn and quickly explain this to Quinn. Her eyes widen, and her hand grips mine tightly when I tell her.

Yuri continues. “My source says that Rockland has been taking large payments from Sergei Belsky and others in the crime world to put their enemies into his for-profit prison. With the amount of secrecy surrounding that place, and the fact that no politician wants to commit political suicide by even being associated with the place, it would appear that Rockland’s prison has near limitless funding, and basically no oversight at all. And he’s using that to enrich himself.”

Quinn’s hand flies to her mouth. I hurt for her, watching the shadow creep over her face as she shakes her head.

Yuri sighs. “I’m sorry you had to hear that, Doctor Coolidge. And I’m truly sorry you had to hear it from me.”

She nods, saying nothing. She just squeezes my hand tighter.

“If the two of you can lie low for a little while, I’m going to lean on this source of mine. Call in some favors.”

I frown. “Who’s this source, exactly?”

“A secret one,” he grunts.

I grin. Well, it was worth asking.

“I’ll be in touch. Ms. Coolidge?”

She frowns, nodding. “Yes?”

“Thank you again for saving my friend.”

I giveQuinn the space I know she needs after that. I wait in the cabin, watching through the windows as she sits on the edge of the dock and just stares into the darkness. At one point, she raises her head and screams in fury at the moon, sending wildlife panicking for miles around, I’m sure.

I wait until I can see her curling into a ball, hugging herself. Then, I can’t bear to not be there to hold her. I walk out, and she sinks into me as I sit behind her and wrap her in my arms.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

She shakes her head, taking my hands in hers. “You have nothing to apologize for. And I…” she sighs. “I knew about my dad. I mean I didn’t know, but I knew in a sense, I think.” She turns her face to look at me sadly.

“I am so fucking sorry, Maks,” she croaks. She starts to cry as I shake my head and cup her cheek. My thumb brushes a tear away as her breath hitches.

“I’m so fucking sorry for what he… what he…”

“Shhh,” I groan, pulling her close. She cries into my chest, hugging me fiercely. I know she’s crying for what I’ve gone through in the place. But she’s also crying for the loss of a father, in a sense.

My heart breaks, but the realization that slowly creeps into me burns with a truth I can’t ignore.

“Quinn,” I whisper into her neck. I pull back, looking into her eyes. “I can’t put you through this anymore.”

She frowns. “What?”

“This whole thing… this is past anything you have any right to be chaining yourself to.”

She stares at me. “I’m not chaining myself to you, Maks. I’m a part of this. I’m—”

“And I’m not letting you destroy the life you’ve worked so fucking hard for, for me.”

Her brow furrows as she shakes her head. But then her look grows angry as she snarls at me.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” she hisses. She grabs my hands and turns to sink into my lap. She looks me right in the eyes, fiercely.

“Don’t you dare even think that,” she croaks. She bites her lips and brings a soft hand up to cup my face. “Do you know why I became a doctor?”

I shake my head.

“To help people. Not because it was a flashy job, or because I wanted to be in magazines for being so young at it. I wanted to be a doctor to help people. So if you think I’m going to walk away from you, and this, right now?”

She purses her lips, glaring at me with a mix of anger and passion.

“You’re out of your fucking mind.”

She kisses me softly, but then it grows deeper. The feelings, emotions, and certain words that I feel for this girl are almost more than I can bear. I lose myself in her, kissing her deeply before gathering her in my arms and carrying her back to the cabin. My lips never leave hers the whole way.

A few hours later,Quinn is asleep, tucked into the bed of small cabin. But I’m wide awake. I sit on the edge of the bed and watch her sleep. My hand strokes her hair softly, watching her eye-lids flutter. Her lips curl, like she’s smiling in her dream.

My heart breaks for what I’m about to do. I know she may well hate me after this. But so be it. This is what has to be done.

I can’t put her through this. I can’t let her throw away her life for someone as broken as I am. I won’t let that happen, for the sake of her future.

I’m in love with this girl. I know that without a doubt. But she can’t be mine. I’m an ex-junkie who works for the Bratva. There’s no white picket fence in the burbs with her. There’s no me at home playing stay-at-home-dad while she works at a hospital saving lives.

It’s a nice image, but it’s never happening. It’s a fantasy. Dreams end, and reality can be brutal.

I reach to my feet and pick up the length of thin rope I found in the garage earlier. I loop it through the heavy brass bars of the headboard and pull it tight before making two slip-loops.

This is for best, for her. She may hate me, but I’d rather her hate me than let me drag her down and destroy her world.

I slip the two loops over her wrists and pull them tight. Quinn stirs a little, but she doesn’t move. She keeps dreaming, smiling.

Yeah, this is for the best. No part of me wants to leave her. But if leaving her, and making it look like I was the one at fault here—that I dragged her here and tied her up—saves her life and her future? Then so be it.

Outside, I use my phone to call a number I pulled from her phone. It may not be wise to call, but I have to. I have to make sure that after I’m gone, none of this blows back on her. This is me re-writing our immediate history to make sure it’s me who gets the blame for this, not her.

I go back inside and I smile a crooked smile as I watch her sleep for another hour. But then, it’s time to go, or I never will.

I lean down, inhaling her scent and watching her sleep up close. My lips brush hers.

“I love you,” I whisper. Then I’m gone.

I step outside, breathing in the cool air of the wilderness night. There was a farm about seven miles back up the road. I know I can lift a car or truck from that place and use it to put distance—

I never see them coming. The men just materialize out of the darkness, in full combat tactical gear. Before I can make a sound, a black bag is pulled over my head, a taser sparks into my neck, and I fade away.