The Bratva’s Locked Up Love by Jagger Cole

8

Maksim

Moscow, Russia, Ten Years Ago:

Adrenaline surges,mixing with the poison already coursing through my veins. My fingers curl tightly around the gun in my hand. My jaw grinds. It’s almost time.

The man in the suit—our target—walks through this park almost every night. He’s a fool to do so. Dressed like that, dripping in wealth, in a park where junkies like Andrei and I prowl like hyenas? He has this coming. Even if he didn’t, I’ve poisoned the empathy out of my heart years ago.

Heroin has no empathy. Addiction takes no prisoners.

“Vy gotovy?” Andrei mutters with a twitch. You ready?

“Da,” I grin. Fuck yeah, I’m ready. We’ve been watching this guy for a week. He must be new here… maybe he moved into one of the newly renovated townhouses they’re selling on the edge of the park. And yeah, maybe someday soon, gentrification will drive guys like me and Andrei out of here to new hunting grounds.

But not tonight it’s not.

We’ve been watching this guy. Fancy suit, gleaming Patek Philippe watch. We’ve watched him get in and out of chauffeured Bentleys. Fuck, those townhouses they’re selling where he might live are going for a king’s ransom.

Andrei and I are eating good tonight. By which I mean, we’re going to get high as fuck on as much heroin as we can possibly jam into our arms.

The funny thing is, we’re not even friends. You don’t have friends when you’re a junkie. Just partners in crime. Partners in self-harm. Partners in selfish self-destruction. When push comes to shove, neither of us would actually help the other. It doesn’t work like that. Our “camaraderie” is based on one single thing: our love affair with a poison that will almost certainly kill us one day. Probably sooner than later.

The target walks casually under a streetlight. It’s thirty paces to the next one. And he has to pass us, hidden behind the pile of rocks and trees. My pulse races as he approaches. Closer. Closer still. When he’s right in front of us, we pounce.

“Day nam svoye der'mo, ublyudok!” Andrei screams in a raspy voice. Give us your shit, motherfucker.

The first red flag should have been that our target didn’t immediately piss himself. In fact, he barely flinches. Instead, he turns casually, and he’s smiling. He’s amused by this. The hairs on my neck stand up. Something’s wrong.

“Now!” Andrei screams, jabbing the gun with wobbly, shaky, junkie hands at the guy. “Give us your—”

“Ty znayesh' kto ya?” The man asks with an amused tone. Do you know who I am?

“I don’t give a shit who you—”

“That’s a shame.”

The man moves so fast I barely even register what’s happening. Andrei panics and pulls the trigger. But we’re junkies, and we’re high. We couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if it was on top of us.

His shot misses wildly as the man in the suit dodges to the side as he rushes. Andrei fires again, but the man shoves the gun up in the air. He twists, and suddenly, the gun is in his hands, not Andrei’s.

“Fuck—”

The man is cool and composed as he simply levels the gun at Andrei’s confused face and pulls the trigger. High-me watches like I’m watching a too-real movie as my partner in harm—not friend—jolts backwards, suddenly without half a head. His body crumples to the ground. The man in the suit calmly turns to me and brings the warm gun barrel against my forehead.

I drop my gun, and I drop to my knees.

Fuck. This is not how I pictured I’d go. Seven years of heroin abuse, and this is what kills me? It’s almost comical. It is comical. I even laugh quietly, even as the crippling fear seizes my heart.

“Ty znayesh' kto ya?” The man asks again, his voice cool and level. Do you know who I am?

I shake my head. “Nyet.”

He smirks. “Really.”

I nod.

His eyes narrow at me. Just then, seven hard looking men in suits with guns come rushing down the park path. They swear at me, and one kicks me onto my side as they draw guns on me. One pushes the barrel of a pistol against my temple. I close my eyes. This is it.

“Zhdat,” the man in the suit suddenly growls, raising his hand. The men pause. He gestures at the man holding a gun to my head. The guy nods and pulls the gun away.

“You really don’t know who I am?”

I shake my head through the heroin fog. “Nyet.”

He chuckles. So do the men around me.

“You should do your homework next time, before you try and mug someone.”

“Yes,” I blurt quickly. “Yes, sir.”

He chuckles. “That was a joke.”

“Okay.”

He frowns suddenly. His eyes narrow on my bloodshot bleary ones. And suddenly, it’s like he sees.

Seven years of heroin will make you an expert on two things: heroin, obviously, and spotting other people who are experts at heroin. And that’s who I’m looking at, I realize. Just as he recognizes it in me.

“Show me your arms,” he growls quietly.

I swallow and nod. I try and tug up the sleeves of my long-sleeve shirt. But the cuffs are too tight. And I’m high as fuck. The man scowl and turns to the man next to him. “Help him,” he grunts.

The guy grins and pulls out a mean looking knife. I grunt as two of them grab me, while he uses the knife to cut my fucking shirt off in ribbons. They yank my bare arms up for the man in the suit. His eyes sweep the tattoos but narrow on the track marks.

He growls quietly and glares at me.

“How long?”

“Seven years.”

His brows arch. “Impressive.”

“Uh, thank—”

“I mean I’m impressed you aren’t dead yet.”

I shrug. “I’m hard to kill.”

“Despite your best efforts,” he grunts, eyeing my scared-up arms. His eyes move up to my shoulder, to the army tattoo I got in basic training.

“Did you serve?”

I nod. “Afghanistan.”

“That where you got addicted?”

I nod again. “Da.”

“You were strong once, weren’t you. Before.”

I look down. “Da.”

“Mister Volkov, we should dispose of him and go,” one of the men growls. My eyes bulge.

Fuck. Me.

Slowly, dread and recognition of his name filling me up to the eyeballs, I drag my gaze up over the impeccable suit. I drag it over the gleaming watch I daydreamed about selling for dope, all the way up to the face of Yuri fucking Volkov—as in, the head of the most brutal, infamous Bratva family in Russia.

I just tried to mug the devil himself. I’m not just dead. I’m going to suffer first. A lot.

When he sees the recognition on my face, he smirks. “I told you, you should do your homework next time.”

I choke. “Mister Volkov—”

“Take him,” he growls quietly as he casually turns to leave.

My face pales. My heart drops. “Please! Please! Mercy! I didn’t—”

“I’m not going to kill you,” he grunts as he turns back to me. There’s a sadness in his eyes. “But believe me…”

He sighs as two of his men grab my arms.

“There will be more than a few points when you’re going to wish I did.”

Present:

It’spain that brings me out of the darkness. I groan, coming to from the blackness of unconsciousness as the stab of the taser jolts through me.

Around me, I can hear a few men’s voices laughing.

“There he is.”

I blink. I’m disoriented. And everything hurts. I try and focus. I try and remember where I am. How the fuck did I…

I snarl as the taser jabs into my side, sizzling until my fucking teeth hurt. I surge up from the table I’m on. But I realize I’m tied to it. My back is slick and sticky. And suddenly, it starts to come back.

The three men in that locked room, with the Belsky Bratva tattoos. I remember head-butting the first so hard I felt his teeth and nose break against the top of my skull. I remember feeling the slice of one blade and whipping around with both feet. That guy went backwards, with me body-slamming on top of his head. I can remember the feel and the sound of his neck snapping under me against the tiled floor.

After that though, I remember nothing. But I’m assuming the other two are dead, too. Because I’m definitely not. I hurt too much to be dead.

“Welcome back, shithead,” one of the men chuckles. He backhands me across the face, and I grunt.

“My khotim sprosit' vas o Yuri Volkov.” We want to ask you about Yuri Volkov.

I startle at the—albeit broken and badly accented—Russian voice. I turn my head to see a guard with a beard glaring at me.

“Ty russkiy, da?” You are Russian, yes?

I manage to smile. I murmur something weakly under my breath. The men all seem to perk up.

“Get in there, Jerry,” one grunts at the bearded guy. “Figure out what this shitheel knows so we can end this crap. I’m tired of the smoke and mirrors shit.”

“Yeah, you ain’t tired of the paycheck though,” another one snickers. “Saw that new F150 in the parking lot.”

The whole group chuckles. But the bearded guy holds up a hand. “Shut the fuck up and let me listen. I can barely speak this fucking language, man.”

I murmur quietly again. The room goes quiet as he leans real close to my bloody mouth. I resist the urge to grin.

“Da?” he grunts. “Skazhite mne i my vam pomozhem.” Tell me and we will help you.

I take a slow breath as the room goes pin-drop silent, his ear right by my mouth. I smile.

“Suck a dick.”

The man stiffens.

“Oh, I’m gonna enjoy fucking this piece of shit up,” one of the men snarls as they all crowd around me. I count four tasers suddenly out and sparkling. Yeah, this is about to suck, a lot.

Suddenly, the door to the room bangs open.

“What the fuck is going on in here?”

I blink. This can’t be real. But I’d know her voice in my sleep. I have known her voice in my sleep—in my dreams, every goddamn night since I laid eyes on her.

The men all step back, like children caught doing something they all know they shouldn’t be doing. That’s telling. One of them glares past me at Quinn as she storms into the room.

“Stay out of this doc—”

“No!” she barks.

I almost grin. She’s got spark.

“No, this is…” she sighs with exasperation. She steps into view. My heart surges. My eyes slide to her. She glances down at me, and I see something flicker in her gaze before she quickly snaps her head back to glare at the guards.

“Are you fucking joking?! He’s bleeding all over the place!”

So that’s what the stickiness at my back is.

One of the guards snickers as he folds his arms over his flack jacket. “Well, this ain’t a spa, doc.”

“It’s not a Soviet fucking gulag either!” She glares right back at him. At all of them. Like a tiny little badass.

“I need to fix him up.”

“Doc—”

“That is a direct order from Sergeant Kempton,” she snaps coldly. She nods at a phone on the wall. “Call him. He’s upstairs in command right now.”

The men eye each other.

“Actually, I think I’ll call him. I’m very curious what you girls were all gabbing about in here alone with my fucking patient.”

The men bristle. I eye her cautiously. She’s dangerously close to a line here.

“Like I said, doc,” the man from before growls at her. “This ain’t a spa.”

“Well why don’t we call Tom Kempton up and we can all clarify what it is exactly this place is, okay? Because all I see here is a whole bunch of shit that’s getting real close to war crimes. How about you guys?”

The men glare at her. Then at each other. The guy who seems to be in charge purses his lips.

“Fine. Do what you gotta do.”

She cocks her hip. For the first time, I realize she’s wearing a skirt. My eyes sweep down over her, my pulse thudding.

“I don’t work with an audience, Corporal.”

He cocks a brow. “Excuse me?”

“I need to be alone with my patient.”

He snorts. “Are you out of your fucking mind? After last time? Not a fucking chance.”

“Great, I’ll just call Sergeant Kempton and we can sort this whole thing—”

“Hey, your fucking funeral, doc,” the corporal grunts. He shrugs with a thin smile and turns to the others. “Let’s let the good doctor do her job, fellas.” The rest of them nod and start to walk past me to shuffle out. The head guy glares at Quinn.

“Careful, doc,” he grunts. His glare drops to me and narrows. “And watch your goddamn mouth, motherfucker.”

He makes sure to jostle the table I’m on with his hip as he brushes past. I hear the door slam shut, and I groan as I slump onto what feels like might be an operating table.

Quinn takes a slow, shaky breath. She stiffens, like maybe she’s just realized her mouth may have written a bigger check than the rest of her can cash. Like she’s just realized she’s all alone with me, again.

And we both know how that turned out last time.