The Bratva’s Locked Up Love by Jagger Cole

28

Quinn

“You owe me, you know.”

I grin as I hand June her guitar case and beanie hat back and then throw my arms around her.

“I do know that.”

She grins back at me. “I’m just kidding, you know you don’t owe me.”

“Yeah, I do.”

She laughs and shoves me towards my car. “Well, go!”

I hug her once more before I jump behind the wheel, gun the engine, and then peel out towards the 155 out of Nashville.

I’m supposed to be home “resting” after my “ordeal.” My hands grip the wheel as I think of the way things played out late last night. How I fell asleep in Maksim’s arms, only to wake up later to men yelling, guns in my face, and my hands bound to the headboard.

I blink back the tears. I should hate him for what he did, but I know why he did it. It makes my heart wrench in two, but I know Maksim. I know it was him that tied me in my sleep, to distance me from any culpability of helping him.

But I hate that he’s gone. The men who took me—my father’s mercenary goons—wouldn’t tell me shit about where Maksim was. Or even if they were the ones who took him, or if he’d taken off before they’d gotten to me. But in my heart, I know he’s with my father. I know the Colonel has him locked up again in his profit prison run by bribes.

Since last night, “pending a medical and psychological evaluation,” I’ve been confined to my apartment. “To rest,” my father said. But it’s a little hard to rest when there are armed guards posted outside my apartment door. And at the doors to the building downstairs.

Guards who would under no circumstances let me leave. So, I called in the cavalry.

I called June.

The reason “I owe her” is because my best friend went and used her charms to get Ken, my creep of an upstairs neighbor, to let her onto his fire escape. Again. From there, she grabbed me, bypassing the guards at my front door. Then we went back through creepy Ken’s apartment, down the side staircase, and out the back patio door of my building. I wore June’s beanie and carried her guitar case, just in case.

I floor it on the highway before I switch to the backroads that lead to the farm. My hands grip the wheel and my jaw sets. I’m about to have a reckoning to end all reckonings with my father, and I have no idea how this is going to shake out. But I know it’s been ready to happen for a long time.

One way or another, I’m finding out what the hell he’s done with the man I love.

The guards at the front gate stop me, of course. But when I pull out the “Colonel’s daughter” card and give them a snippy response about why I’m here, they usher me right through. I roar down the dirt road to the main farmhouse and skid to a stop. The guards at the front door seem to sense my wrath, because orders or not, they kind of wave me right through the front door on sight.

I blow through the farmhouse offices like a hurricane. My dad’s assistant makes a feeble attempt to stop me. But my glare has him withering back into his chair before I all but kick down the door to the Colonel’s office.

My dad lurches to his feet behind his desk. Tom does the same from the chair he’s been sitting in.

“Quinn!” My dad glowers at me. “You are supposed to be—”

“I’m supposed to be working in a hospital, dad!” I yell, slamming the door shut behind me. Tom backs away, folding his arms over his chest.

“Quinn,” my dad grunts. “I’m warning—”

“What I am supposed to be doing is using my intelligence and my skills to help people in need, not dancing on your fucking puppet string patching up stabbing victims!”

His eyes narrow. His jaw sets.

“Look, dad…” I sigh, my hands on my hips. “I know you have a hard time with feelings. I know losing mom—”

“That’s enough,” he growls dangerously.

“It was hard on you, and you thought keeping me close would stop anything else bad from—”

“I said that is enough!!” His voice booms through the office. “Your orders were to stay in your goddamn apartment—”

“There are no orders, dad! I’m not a soldier! And neither are you!”

His face turns red. I know I’m on very thin ice here. But this has to be said. I have to ask, because I have to know if what Yuri Volkov said was even a little it true.

“You run a prison. You’re a warden! A CEO!”

“Quinn…” he hisses.

“This is profit business, dad! There’s no war here!”

“Get out of my office!” He snaps, jabbing with his finger. “Go home and—”

“Where is he!?”

The office goes quiet. He knows who I’m talking about, though. I see it like a neon sign across his face when he smiles thinly.

“Him?” He hisses. “You are never seeing that fucking monster again—”

“The monster you were paid to bring in here?!”

He stops cold. His eyes harden, and I see his hands clench at his sides.

“The monster you took a bribe to put in here, dad?” I snap. “To torture, or kill, to get information on his boss? That monster?!”

I see Tom’s brow furrow out of the corner of my eyes. But I focus on my dad as leans over his desk, his knuckles clenched on the top of it.

“You are way out of fucking line here, Quinn,” he says icily. “I am your father! I’m a fucking patriot! I serve my country, and the idea that I would take a bribe from Sergei fucking Belsky to put that fucking monster in here is…”

His voice flounders and catches. His mouth snaps shut, but the pin has already dropped. In one breath, I know what I was hoping wouldn’t be, is in fact true.

Tom stiffens, his eyes narrowing on my father as the Colonel scowls and stands upright, trying to back-peddle on what he just let slip out.

“I just mean—”

“No one mentioned Sergei Belsky, Rock,” Tom says quietly.

My father swallows, his eyes darting to his second in command as he scowls.

“Well, I don’t fucking know, Tom. It’s in his goddamn file.” His eyes drag back to narrow at me. “Quinn, I am warning you—”

“No, it’s not.”

I glance to my left to see Tom looking ashen as he stares at my father.

“It’s not what,” the Colonel snaps.

“Any mention at all of Sergei Belsky or the Belsky Bratva family at all. It’s not in Maksim Zaitsev’s file.”

My father’s face starts to lose color as his jaw grinds tightly.

“I’m sure it is,” he grunts, waving a hand dismissively at Tom before he glares at me again. “You are going to go home, and you will stay—”

“I got a real strange call last night, Rock.” Tom’s voice seems edged and laced with something. He looks stone-faced and cold as he looks at my father.

The Colonel eyes him back. “Where you going with this, Tom?” he hisses.

“This guy who called, he said I should ask you a couple of questions.”

My father gives Tom a hard look. But Tom gives it right back, without blinking.

“I wasn’t going to, because we go back a long way, Rock.”

“Then don’t,” the Colonel grits through clenched teeth.

“I wasn’t.” Tom eyes narrow. “But now I am.”

“Tom, I am fucking warning you—”

“Why were the guard rotations switched up the other day, before the attack?”

My dad’s face pales. But he tries to shrug it off.

“You head of personnel now, Tom?”

“I’m asking you a goddamn question, Rockland,” Tom says quietly but with a withering look.

“And I’m telling you to shut your fucking mouth, Sergeant Kemp—”

“The guard rotations were switched up. And I want to know why a bunch of fucking knuckleheads I’ve had written up for a dozen infractions who just can’t see to get their asses fired by you were the guys manning our defense stations that day. And manning the front entry down in the complex. That was our line of defense—”

“Yeah,” my father snaps. “And it looks like it fucking worked, doesn’t it, Tom?” His smile is thin and dangerous looking. “I seem to remember that you’re the one who got his ass handcuffed topside after letting that fucking animal run off with my goddamn daughter!”

“Where are the bodies, Rock?”

The Colonel’s brow furrows deeply. “Huh?”

“Our friend on the phone last night. That’s what he wanted me to ask you.”

“What fucking bodies—”

“This crack team of terrorists that somehow managed to get all the way down into our heavily fortified prison complex after we upgraded security.”

My dad’s mouth thins. “You know it is, Tom. Uncle Sam got involved, red tape, all that shit.”

He turns back to glare at me. “I need you to get home and rest—”

“I took a look down where these brave soldiers of ours stopped the attack.”

Tom isn’t done, as much as you can tell from my father’s face that he truly wishes he was.

“Tom,” he growls. “You need to stop—”

“Less than twenty-four hours later, and there’s not a sign of a fire-fight. Not one speck of blood, not one bullet hole.”

“So?! So we’re efficient with cleanup! Jesus Christ, Tom—”

“What I did find was a bunch fireworks that somehow shot off in a maintenance room off C-level.”

The office goes quiet as the two men hold each other’s glares frostily.

“You know I’ve never read or seen a single report on that system failure, Rock,” Tom says quietly. His voice is edged and pointed. “Second in command of this entire place, and I’ve yet to read one fucking word about how it is a massive, critical security breech like that happened.”

The two of them stare at each other, daggers in their eyes.

“Tom,” my father seethes. “We do go way back. And because of that, I need you to let this go.”

“I can’t do that, Rock,” Tom says quietly. “We swore oaths to protect this country from threats foreign and domestic—”

“Oh quit the rhetoric, Tom,” my dad grunts. “We stopped being that shit when we started taking money to house these animals.”

“We never stopped being those men.”

“Yes, we—”

“Well maybe you did,” Tom spits angrily. “But I didn’t!”

I gasp as he tugs his sidearm out and levels it at my dad. His face looks grim and sick.

“I need the truth, Rock!”

“Lower your fucking weapon, Tom!”

“Can’t do that, Rock. I need the truth, and I need to inform you that I am relieving you of your command, under—”

My dad’s hand flies up, a gun in his fist aimed right back at Tom. I pale, gasping as I back away from the scene in front of me.

“Dad!” I scream. But he ignores me.

“Gonna relieve me, huh?” He grunts. “Not fuckin’ happening, Tom. So lower your fucking weapon.”

“The truth, Rock!” Tom barks back. “Is Quinn telling the truth?!”

“You enjoying that new boat, Tom?” Dad snaps. “Michelle loving the new house? All those nice vacations and jewelry you’ve been buying her with all the cash this place is hauling in? Yeah!? Then stop asking question you don’t want the answers to!”

He cocks his gun. Tom does the same as my pulse races and the temperature to the room spikes.

“Put down the fucking gun, Tom!”

“I can’t do that, Rock! Not until you answer the goddamn question—”

“That’s an order!!” My father roars.

“And this ain’t the SEALs, Rock!” Tom bellows back. “You’re not my commanding officer—”

“Well, I’m your fucking boss, and I’m giving you a direct—”

“Then I quit!” Tom roars back as he storms towards my dad. “Now answer the goddamn—”

There’s gunfire outside the office. I scream, whirling as I back away from the door. Men yell outside, there are more shots, and then something heavy hits the door with a thud. Both Tom and my father are still pointing guns at each other, but they’re staring at the door with heavy brows. The thud comes again, and then suddenly, the whole door smashes in.

A chubby man with his hands cuffed, blubbering in Russian, tumbles in. But then suddenly, a huge shape fills the doorway, shrouded by smoke and the haze of an explosion outside. He storms into the room, and my heart leaps into my throat.

“Maks,” I breathe. “I—”

“I’m done with this shit.”

I turn at the sound of my father’s gravelly voice. In slow motion, my face falls as I watch him pull the gun from Tom, sweeping his arm across the room until it’s pointing right at Maks.

The world moves so, so slowly. It’s like I can see the muscles of his hand squeezing, and the trigger pulling back. I see the burst of fire from the barrel and feel my legs spring beneath me as I lurch between my father and Maksim.

I feel the sharp pinch of something hot biting me. I hear my own scream and that of Maks roaring as his arms swoop to catch me.

And then it’s all black.