The Bratva’s Locked Up Love by Jagger Cole

27

Maksim

“Tebya trudno ubit', ublyudok.”

I can’t help but grin thinly under the black hood over my face. The voice is right. I am a hard motherfucker to kill.

“Ty znayesh', zachem ty zdes’?”

Do you know why you are here?

“Have I won a cruise?”

The man chuckles roughly, which turns into a hacking cough. I hear the flick of metal on flint, and then smell the hazy scent of tobacco in the air. The smell becomes powerful, and I wrinkle my nose when I realize he’s blown it in my face.

“You are a comedy man, no? A funny guy? Yes?”

“Take this bag off and uncuff my hands,” I say thinly. “I can be a fucking riot.”

The man chuckles deeply. “I am sure you are, Maksim Zaitzev.”

My jaw clenches. My ears tune, trying to get a sense of where I might be. My feet do the same, shuffling slightly on the ground to see if I feel a distinct texture—wood, gravel, grass—anything that might help me figure out where I am.

But the ground doesn’t tell me much. It’s just smooth and hard. Possibly laminate. So I’m probably inside. The silence speaks more than it should, too. There’s nothing—no background sound of traffic or anything. So I’m inside someplace quiet.

There’s a vague hum of mechanicals in the background though—maybe the soft buzz of florescent lighting. The glow I can faintly see through the thin mesh of the bag over my head backs that up.

“But we are not here for jokes,” the man grunts, puffing loudly on his cigarette.

“Then how about you stop playing fucking games,” I growl. “And just tell me why I am.”

The fist slams into my face out of nowhere. I hiss, grunting at the surprise sucker-punch. My head snaps back, but I shake it off with a snarl.

“We are here for that,” he growls.

I smile beneath the bag. “I’m fine with tickle fights. But only if we can braid each other’s hair and talk about our crushes later.”

This time, I’m more than ready for the hit. It still hurts like a motherfucker getting popped in the nose, though.

He hits me again, and then again. Suddenly, a hand grabs the bag, yanking it from my head dramatically. I blink, blinded by the bright fluorescent lighting and the blindingly white surgical room. Slowly, my eyes adjust. When I realize where I am, I could almost laugh at the circumstances.

Jesus Christ, I can’t seem to stay the hell away from this place.

I’m in one of the surgical cells of Quinn’s father’s prison. Possibly even the very same one where I first laid eyes on her. But the person standing across the room leering at me with a cigarette dangling from his pudgy lips is not the spell-binding beauty I fell for that first time before.

The man smiles thinly, glaring at me through piggish eyes.

“Do you know who I am?”

“We’ve established that you aren’t here to gift me a cruise, yes?”

His eyes darken. “Keep making jokes, funny man.”

I smile back. “A priest, an oligarch, and a tzar walk into a bar—”

He rushes me, crashing his fist into my jaw again. But I’m more than ready for it. And the man trying his best to hurt me pales in comparison to those who have actually hurt me before. He’s weak, with the build and look of a bully who is used to fighting unfairly, or having others fight for him.

“You killed my uncle,” he snarls.

It clicks into place. The fucker glaring at me shrouded in cigarette smoke is Sergei Belsky, Semyon’s nephew.

“I didn’t kill your uncle,” I grunt. I didn’t. Not really. I didn’t pull the trigger. Another hidden rival of Yuri’s did. But it was me who played double agent, fooling that idiot Semyon into believing I was playing his side.

“He trusted you!” He snarls.

“He paid me,” I hiss back. “And if that made him trust me, then your uncle was a bigger fucking idiot that I thought he was. And that’s saying something.”

I can see the fury in his eyes. I can almost admire the zealous need to avenge a family member. But not when that family member was a low-life, miserable little shit like Semyon.

“You also killed my cousin, in this place.”

My mind flashes back to the shower room without showers, where the guards left me handcuffed to be jumped by three armed men. I grin as I look up at Sergei.

“Ahh, yes. Him I did kill.” I shrug. “Perhaps your family should be less easy to kill.”

His face clouds with rage. But he does manage to keep it together. He stands there, bristling as he huffs the last of his cigarette. He pulls the pack from his pocket and lights a new one with the embers of the last.

“You can’t smoke in here.”

I smile thinly and nod past him to the “no smoking” sign on the wall. Sergei ignores it and stares at me with hatred in his eyes.

“I should kill you.”

My jaw tightens. I flex, feeling the bite of the handcuffs around both wrists. They’re tight, and strong. I glance down for the first time at the office-style metal chair I’m sitting on, locked to. Slowly, I drag my eyes back to Sergei.

“Then what are you waiting for?”

His lips curl. “I know you, Maksim. I am not an idiot. I am a smart man.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

His eyes narrow. “I know you crave this—pain, abuse, violence. I know it is nothing that will hurt you, and that you in fact welcome its escape. I know you, Maksim. I know of your past, fighting in the pits in Kyzyl. I knew men from Kyzyl.”

“Well perhaps we can add ‘friends’ to the list of uncles and cousins of yours that I’ve taken from you.”

Sergei smiles darkly. “I know what you are doing. Trying to make me angry? If I am angry, I am careless, no?”

I glare back at him, and he chuckles.

“No, Maksim. I am not going to beat you to death. I think I would run out of strength before I came close anyways.”

“It’s good to admit our failures—”

“I won’t shoot you, either,” he grunts, ignoring my attempts at pissing him off. “In fact, I am not going to kill you.” He smiles. “Not directly. Would that make me just as innocent as you with my uncle?”

I say nothing as he turns to open a little case on the medical table behind him. I see him fussing with something and hear the flick of his lighter again.

“I don’t want to kill you, Maksim.” He grins over his shoulder at me. “I want you to suffer. I want to send you to a hell you’ve tried so hard to get away from.”

When he turns, the room goes fuzzy. My head feels woozy as the demons I’ve held at bay inside of me scream for release.

Sergei is holding a syringe. I know exactly what’s inside of it, too.

Heroin.

My smile fades. The world dims around me, until all I can see is the needle in his hands. He moves slowly towards me, and the demons roar in my soul. They want it. They crave it, above all else.

“You want this, don’t you, Maksim?” Sergei snickers. “I know your past, you fucking junkie. You want this?”

He grins and waves the needle at me.

More than you know.

He steps closer, holding it like he’s offering it to me. I groan, my jaw clenching tightly as I ache for the poison in his hand.

“You want it badly, don’t you, Maksim? Here, let me…”

He’s standing above me now, leering down at me. His hand lowers, and my brain splits in two. One half of me wants to punch him and his poison through a wall. The other half of me wants to get on my knees and beg for the release he’s offering.

Sergei drags the tip of the needle over my forearm. My vision swims. My skin craves the pinch of metal piercing it. My fucking molecules hum with the memory of what it contains.

“You want this, don’t you, you little fucking junkie,” he snarls. “More than anything.

I nod in a daze.

“More than food, water…”

I groan.

“More than your freedom.”

My head swims.

“More than you want that little bitch of a doctor.”

It’s instantaneous, like flipping a switch. Instantly, the old me is buried again. The new me is too strong… too driven, too scared by the demons of my past to give in to them again. And I know it’s the mention of Quinn that’s done it.

She’s not my new drug, or my new addition.

She’s my new lease on life. She’s my freedom.

I snarl. And suddenly, the flickering visions fade away. The need subsides. I don’t need this fucking shit. And as I crush the demons inside beneath my heel, I feel the power in me surge.

I don’t even want this. Because Sergei is wrong. Heroin may always hold a certain power over me. But there is something I want and need and crave more than anything else.

It’s Quinn, not the needle. I’ll never need or want that again. But her? Her… she’s my everything and my future. And I’ll do anything to get her back now.

Sergei is still leering at me, twirling the needle in front of my face as he taunts me. But he’s no longer a wizard holding me in a powerful spell. He’s a clown, juggling pies around the ring of a circus.

I strain, gritting my teeth. My muscles go taut, straining. Sergei’s eyes lower, and he smiles with amusement.

“You are strong,” he chuckles, looking at the way my arms are straining to break free. “But you’re not strong enough to break handcuffs, you stupid little bitch.”

But I simply smile inside. He’s right, but wrong again. I can’t break handcuffs with my own brute strength. But I don’t need to break my binds. I just need to break what I’m bound to.

This prison is funded by the military. I was in the military—in Russia, but all militaries are the same when it comes to money. Everything—from the guns we shoot, to the tanks we drive, to the chairs we sit on in offices—was sourced to the lowest fucking bidder.

This prison was built to keep men like me chained forever. But this chair was built by someone trying to save half a cent by cutting every single corner possible.

My muscles strain tighter and tighter. The cuffs dig into my skin until it bleeds. Sergei stares at me with a mix of amusement and confusion.

“What the fuck are you even trying to—”

Metal creaks. My jaw grits so hard my face hurts. I roar, and Sergei pales as he steps back.

“Stop it!” He spits. “You’re never going to—”

With a roar and the sound of wrenching metal, the chair breaks at the seams, the shitty welding snapping under the strain. I lunge to my feet, bellowing like a caged bear who’s just broken free. My body stretches, flexing as I stand tall, looming above a terrified looking Sergei. My cuffs dangle from my bleeding wrists, the arms of the chair swinging from them.

Sergei’s face pales as my eyes land on him.

“Fuck—”

I slam into him, practically denting the wall with his body. The needle drops, and my boot slams down on it, shattering it. I snarl as my hand thrusts out, my fingers curling around Sergei’s meaty throat.

But I wait. I just hold him there, watching him weep and piss himself.

“Please!” He begs, just like the de-clawed bully he is. “Wait, please! Please, Maksim! Mercy!”

I smile thinly. “Oh, I’m not going to kill you,” I snarl. “But you will wish I had.”

I jab my hand into his pocket and yank out the keys to my cuffs. They slip off my wrists and over his. I snap the other ends to the metal operating table.

My eyes sweep the room. And I almost have to laugh at the irony of being right back here where it started.

Months ago, I laid eyes on Quinn in here, and my plan fell to pieces. I couldn’t use her as a shield. I couldn’t follow through on my escape.

My eyes land on the big red button by the door. Then I turn to glare at Sergei.

I will not have that problem this time.