The Killer’s Vow by Aria R. Blue
Vera
“Ihad the strangest dream,” I say, padding into the living room.
Inessa is curled up on the couch watching Star Wars. She pauses the movie and turns to me.
“What was it about?”
I shake my head. “It was weird. It was by the lake, and there was this man with me.”
Everything about him had captivated me.
His aquamarine green eyes framed by lush eyelashes. The burn of his skin against mine. The way he spoke like he had secrets too.
Inessa gapes at me. “Wow.”
“What?” I ask, settling down in the armchair next to her.
She raises her eyebrows. “You really don’t remember anything, do you?”
Her words hit me like a truck.
And then my heart starts to pound.
My thoughts spin as I try to recollect last night’s events. “I don’t remember getting home last night.”
“That’s because you were high as a kite.”
“All I had were those pink shots by the swimming pool. It had more sugar than alcohol honestly.”
Inessa’s jaw drops. “You had the Copacabana?”
“The what?”
“I can’t believe you tried it without me.”
It’s starting to come back now.
Dread makes the tips of my fingers tingle.
He knew too much.
I went too far.
“What’s in the Copacabana, Inessa?”
She looks back at the screen, which is paused at Yoda’s serene face. “It’s a new type of ecstasy.”
Well, fuck. “What does it do?”
“What did it do?” Inessa asks.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Did you do anything naughty?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “The dream was kind of wild. I didn’t think it was real until now.”
The rest of the night is faded.
Most moments of my life are.
But my memories of Simon are crystal clear.
I look back at Inessa’s eager face. It’s only then that I notice her wet lashes and splotchy cheeks.
I move closer. “Inessa, were you crying?”
She gathers her hair in a high ponytail. “There was an emotional scene in the movie. Tell me about the man you met.”
Men.
“There were two,” I say.
“Two?” she shrieks. “I’m not sure if I want to hear about this after all.”
“No, one was before, and the other was after the pink drink.”
“Are you sure they weren’t the same men?”
“Yes, one of them was Mikhail. He’s back.”
Inessa was only ten years old when Mikhail was sent away. I don’t know if she even remembers him.
But there’s recognition in her eyes. “Papa’s old guard? What was he doing at the party?”
I fill her in on everything I learned about him, including the fact that he’s a part of the Originals now.
“What about that other dude?” she asks.
“The other man was a gentleman,” I say, blushing as I think about how he refused to touch me. The words he whispered in my ear weren’t gentle in the least, but he was still very considerate.
“Ooh, tell me more,” Inessa asks, propping her chin on her hand.
I freeze, thinking about that moment in time. About the words he said.
“He knew about our family,” I say, dread crawling up my throat.
“A lot of people know about our family,” my sister says.
“But I was wearing that mask,” I say. “It covered most of my face, but he recognized me anyway.”
Inessa lifts a shoulder. “Okay, so your disguise wasn’t as foolproof as you thought it was.”
“That’s not all,” I say, glancing at the TV where the Star Wars movie is paused. “He knew.”
I don’t have to spell things out for my sister.
Inessa instantly catches my drift.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she says, standing up. Lion darts into the room before I can even get to my feet.
Sometimes, I swear he understands every word we speak.
Especially the word walk.
“You wanna go for a walk too, my l’venok?” I ask him, using the old nickname from when he was a puppy.
“He’s hardly a little lion now,” Inessa says, scratching that spot behind his ear he likes.
Apart from me, Inessa is the only person Lion even tolerates.
If anybody else tried to pet him, they wouldn’t walk out with the same number of fingers.
With Lion in tow, we head to the garden next to the greenhouse.
Every other place in the house has men and cameras around. My greenhouse used to be the only place that wasn’t bugged, but I’m not sure if it’s safe to talk there anymore.
So that leaves the outdoor gardens.
I put on Lion’s leash, and like always, he’s a diva about it.
“Come on, boy. You know I can’t take you out on a walk without it,” I say.
After a whole minute of refusing and pouting and snarling, he complies.
Lion’s visible joy on being outside to stretch his legs almost eases the panic coursing through my veins.
“He knew about the plants?” Inessa asks as soon as we’re safe.
“I think so,” I whisper back. “He mentioned them before I did. And because of the pink drink, I told him that I wanted to study biology and stuff.”
“Did he look like someone we know?”
“No, he wasn’t one of Papa’s men.”
“He could be an outside spy,” Inessa says. “Sent to investigate you.”
“He could also be a serial killer,” I joke. “But I don’t know. He seemed like a genuine person.”
“Vera, the drug alters your perception of reality. It makes your emotions stronger and your judgment weaker. Are you sure he was innocent?”
I run my hand over a bed of winter roses.
Something strange is happening to my body.
Thinking about him brings a sense of peace. Except for my dog and my sister, nobody ever made me feel this way before.
Nobody ever made my soul feel at ease.
“It’s something I feel,” I say. “I don’t know how I know this, but I don’t think he was there to hurt me.”
“He came off as a good person, then?”
“I wouldn’t say that either, but he was genuine.”
“Russian?”
“Yes.”
Inessa gives me a look. “Part of the brotherhood?”
“He said he wasn’t.”
“I’d still be careful around him if I were you,” Inessa says.
“It’s not like I’m going to see him again,” I say. A movement behind her head catches my eye. Someone is watching us talk. “Act normal, but Papa is watching.”
She reaches down to pet the dog. “I’m so fucking sick of living like this.”
“We don’t have a choice, Inessa.”
“We can’t even have a conversation inside our own home,” she says, her lips pursing together.
“It’s nothing we’re not used to,” I say, wondering why she’s being like this.
Since she was a child, Inessa had always been the one to question everything.
I just accepted everything thrown at me…until I decided that I wanted to bite back.
“Yeah, but I’m terrified that it’s going to be this way forever,” Inessa says.
“It won’t be,” I say.
“You can’t possibly know that,” she replies.
Both of us watch as Lion sniffs a pansy and then sneezes immediately.
My heart tugs in an unknown direction. It doesn’t want to stay in one place.
“I think I have a crush on him,” I admit to my sister.
Inessa’s eyes widen. “For real?”
“I’m all restless, and everything seems to be a little brighter.”
Inessa gives me a doubtful look, conveying exactly what she thinks is going on.
“No, I’m not still drunk. Or high or whatever. It’s the man.”
“Why do you think he knew so much about you? That doesn’t seem right to me.”
“I don’t know,” I say, glancing up at the white winter sky. Papa isn’t watching us anymore. “I don’t know, but I just feel so fucking happy.”
It’s so scary to realize that I haven’t felt this way in so long.
In defending myself from nefarious men, I had lost sight of the important things in life. Things like love and my own happiness.
We resume walking again.
“Verochka, I never thought the day would come,” Inessa says.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again, though,” I say.
“Did you get his number?” she asks.
“No, just his name. First name,” I say. “Simon.”
“Simon.” Inessa says his name slowly, as if doing so will reveal all the secrets of the name’s owner.
“Ivy and Damian interrupted us, and he walked away,” I say.
“You saw Ivy?” Inessa asks, wide-eyed again.
A flicker of irritation courses through me.
I love Ivy Blackwood, but I don’t like how much my little sister idolizes her.
Iwant to be the person my sister looks up to. And it wounds my ego a little bit that she doesn’t see me that way.
“That reminds me, I didn’t see you there,” I say. “Where were you?”
Inessa looks away and starts humming to herself.
I stop walking. “How?”
She sighs. “I wanted to spend the night doing something I wanted to do. So a bunch of us left the party early. It was easy because of the masks. I just had to fake a Spanish accent.”
“Where did you go, though?”
“A private party on a yacht,” she says.
“Was Luigi with you?”
“Maybe.”
She doesn’t get it.
She doesn’t understand we simply do not have certain options as daughters of the Pakhan.
Going to parties on private yachts with Italian men is one of them.
“This is why I don’t tell you things,” she mumbles. “You judge me for everything I do. And you ask all the wrong questions. Why can’t you just ask me if I had a good time and leave it at that?”
“Inessa, I’m just trying to protect you from having a fate similar to mine. If Papa ever found you two together…”
She grits her teeth and stops walking.
I gently tug on Lion’s leash, and he makes a wounded face like I just stepped on his tail.
I swear I have the most dramatic dog ever.
“I’m tired,” Inessa says, looking at Lion.
She walks over to him and kneels in front of him. Lion gives her kisses on the face, and she smiles with her eyes closed.
Standing up, she gives me a hug too.
“I love you the most,” she says.
“I love you the most,” I say back.
“I’m still tired from last night. I want to be alone for a bit,” she says, looking at the ground and then walking back toward the house.
I hold Lion’s leash as I watch her leave.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to act around her.
The only reason I give her a dose of reality every once in a while is to make sure she’s prepared when her time comes.
Life as a woman in the Bratva is comfortable.
She’ll be spoiled rotten and given every material luxury her heart desires.
But things like loyalty and respect are too much to ask for.
With most men anyway.
It’s only when Lion barks softly that I resume walking so he can smell all the flowers his little heart desires.
My thoughts alternate between my sister and Simon. If that’s even his real name.
The reason I’m attracted to him isn’t just because I found him sexy. It wasn’t even the way he touched me.
It’s something else altogether.
When he looked into my eyes, I felt seen for the very first time.
He paid attention to every minor detail about me, like nothing in this world is more fascinating than decoding me.
That should be enough to scare me, but all it does is pique my own curiosity toward him.
“Lion, come on, boy,” I say, leading him toward the greenhouse.
It’s a gloomy winter day, so I turn the lights on.
The high glass roof shows the thick gray clouds that make up the sky.
Even though the day is boring, something about the abundant foliage energizes me.
Dense climbing vines cover the walls of the greenhouse. I designed it that way to keep people from spying on me.
Exotic plants of all colors and sizes flourish inside the greenhouse.
My favorite is the coffee shrub. Their berries give the visitors a false sense of security. People smell the coffee and immediately assume that this place is safe and harmless.
They’re caught off guard.
Which is exactly what I want.
I go through my routine of watering and pruning and harvesting.
Inessa has bad period cramps, so I clean some ginger for her with a garden hose and place it in a basket.
Lion lies down on his favorite rug and naps as I work.
Once I take care of all the outside plants, I visit the one place the entire greenhouse was built for.
The hidden garden.
It’s located next to a small pond with large blue stones dotting its perimeter.
Nobody would guess that one of the greenhouse’s many pillars has a secret entrance built into it.
Even if they did, they’d just think that it was a place for more plants.
They wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between plants that heal and plants that take lives.
Just to be safe, I have five more secret rooms built into the greenhouse.
In the unlikely event that they found one of these rooms, the next thing they’d do is look for more hidden rooms. Upon seeing the other rooms, they’d end up believing that the building was just designed this way.
I lift the latch that opens the door.
And here lies my real masterpiece.
All of my poisons thrive in this hidden garden.
Like the rest of the greenhouse, there’s no roof here to let the natural sunlight come through.
But the walls are stacked with poisonous plants.
The pink and white foxgloves are in bloom, their bell-shaped flowers hanging from a corner. They contain cardiac glycosides, which are used medically in small doses to treat certain heart conditions.
But in larger doses, they kill.
I’ve always found it fascinating how nature works.
There are plants that cure.
There are plants that kill.
And in some cases, the plants can do both, depending on the dosage.
I harvest the berries of my purple nightshade, being careful not to come in contact with any parts of the plant. A handful of these berries can make a man lose his voice and give him death by convulsions.
I glance down at my hands.
Sometimes, I forget that I’m a serial poisoner. These hands that heal are the same hands that make poisons.
I don’t feel good about what I do.
But I don’t feel bad about it either.
I let myself believe that I’m just defending myself and my dignity. But if I dig into it, I also kind of hate myself for it.
The men my father tries to bring into my life aren’t good people.
Their demeaning actions always prove their real intentions.
All they want is another virgin to fuck.
Being born into a world that never defended me, I decided to do it myself.
One wall of the hidden garden is dedicated to supplies—vials, mortar bowls, and the like.
Herbal remedies are stored in colorful jars of blue, green, and purple. I don’t use these, but they’re still here for the sake of protection.
Alongside the colorful jars are clear jars. Those contain the lethal powders and potions.
Everything about my life is a camouflage.
I’m hiding in plain sight—a mafia princess with messy hair and ten bodyguards.
Nobody would expect me to know how to kill.
I check the root health of some plants and water the ones that need to have moist soil all day long.
The oleander’s flowers are fragrant, and the poet’s narcissus is eerily similar to a daffodil.
After making sure that everything is in order, I clean up after myself and head back out.
Lion is still napping in his favorite sunny spot.
If anyone had entered the greenhouse quietly, my dog would have alerted me to it. And because Lion is with me wherever I go, nobody intrudes when he’s not on a leash.
I lie down next to him and turn my face to his.
The sun hits my cheeks, warming my skin even more. Whenever I’m in the rainforest climate of the greenhouse, my skin gets dewy, and my hair turns fluffy.
But I love it here.
This is the closest thing I’ve ever felt to contentment.
It’s all I have.
I close my eyes, and as expected, his face is waiting for me.
Even when I’m busy, thoughts of him still run through my head. He carved his own spot in the back of my mind.
He turned my stomach into hot lava.
And I think he did something to my heart too. Because it’s been beating different ever since I met him.
It’s an attraction unlike anything I’ve felt before.
This is deeper than an attraction; it’s a yearning. For something I never knew. For something I always wanted but never dared to hope for.
I finally understand why Inessa loves to dream.
Dreams are a hope that there’s a grander design to life. That there’s unearthed magic left in our hearts.
A loud bang brings me out of my reverie.
It’s Konstantin, Papa’s senior-most guard.
Lion jumps up at the sound, growling at first with annoyance and then with pure rage when he realizes we’re not alone. I grab his neck to keep him from mauling the man’s face.
“Where the hell is she?” Konstantin shouts, glaring at me as if he knows that I’m a serial murderer.
“I have a dog, Konstantin. If you keep using that voice with me, I might be tempted to let him loose.”
“Your sister,” he grinds out. “That bitch ran away from home.”
I let my dog loose.