Lying and Kissing (32 page)

Adam considered. “What are you meant to be doing with him, later today?”

“He’s taking me out in the city, around where he grew up. He wants to show me his old apartment block and things.”

Adam nodded slowly. “Stay with him for the rest of today. Make the break tonight and go back to your hotel. Make sure you keep your cell phone on, just in case I need to call you. Tomorrow morning, I’ll have a car pick you up at nine a.m. and take you to the airport.”

I’d known it was coming, but it was still like someone had slammed a wrench into my chest. Tomorrow, I’d go home and then I’d never see Luka again.

***

Two hours later, we were in Luka’s car with Yuri behind the wheel. I craned my head to look out at the apartment blocks on either side: grim monoliths of concrete encircled by rusting cars, some burned out. Garbage was mixed in amongst the overgrown grass. Graffiti covered every available surface that could possibly be reached, even if it meant leaning precariously out from a balcony. The mood was somber, but it wasn’t just the war-zone surroundings. There’d been a tension between us ever since I got back from meeting Adam. The knowledge of what I had to do hung over me like a storm cloud and Luka could sense it, too.

“This is where you grew up?” I asked.

“No. But I wanted you to see this first,” said Luka.

We drove on, no more than five minutes. We swung into a similar neighborhood. Similar in some ways, at least. The apartment blocks were the same, but there was no graffiti at all. There were no wrecked cars and the lawns were green, the grass short. The people looked...normal. Mothers with strollers, people going to and from work. A poor neighborhood, but a good one.

“This is where I grew up. This was Brotherhood territory. Malakov territory.” He looked around. “My father and I walked the streets, meeting the people, checking they were okay. Kicking out the ones who tried to deal drugs.”

The guilt was churning in my stomach. I wanted to find something bad, something about him that would make me feel better about betraying him. “You make it sound like you were protecting them,” I said. “But you’re talking about protection
money,
aren’t you? You weren’t looking after them out of the goodness of your heart.”

He frowned and then nodded. “Yes. The businesses paid, not the individuals. But in return, we really did look after them. No drugs where people lived. No street crime.” He sighed. “I’m not saying we’re good people. But we created order. You remember the neighborhood we just drove through?”

I nodded.

“Ralavich territory. They take the money and give nothing back. The alternative to order is chaos.”

I tried to hate him. I tried so hard. But in this broken world where vultures like Ralavich would sweep in and tear neighborhoods to pieces, was his way really so bad?

Despite all my instincts, I was beginning to understand. The coldness I’d seen when I’d first met him was a shield, because showing weakness would be fatal in his world. The brutal violence I’d seen was horrifying...but maybe it was necessary.

I closed my eyes. Jesus, what was I becoming? Was I really justifying what he’d done? I’d seen him beat a man nearly to death—he would have killed him, if I hadn’t intervened. And yes, part of me had wanted the guy dead, at that moment, because of what he’d done to those women. But that didn’t make it right.

I realized he was staring at me, waiting for a reaction. I shook my head. “I can’t...I understand, but I can’t—”

“I never lied to you about what I was, Arianna,” he said. He said it gently, but I could hear the concern in his voice. The frustration. He could sense, on some level, that I was going to end it.

I nodded miserably.

“I can show you the hospital where my mother died,” he said. “I can show you where they gave me my tattoos. I’m showing you my past.”

“
Why?
” I said desperately. “Why?”

“Because if I share my past, maybe you’ll share yours, too.” He stroked my cheek and then tucked a lock of hair back behind my ear. “I want to help you, Arianna. You are too good a person to be in so much pain.” He shook his head. “Even if you won’t be with me, I want you to be happy.”

I don’t deserve that.
Even if talking about the crash would help, what right did I have to feel better, when I was about to destroy his whole life?

I closed my eyes, trying to stop the tears coming. I couldn’t last until that evening. I had to do it now. “Luka,” I said. “We have to talk.”

And that’s when the truck slammed into the side of the car.

That sickening flying feeling I’d felt once before, and countless times afterwards in flashbacks. This time, we didn’t just skid and then fall. We shot sideways, Luka’s body crashing against mine, our heads almost cracking together. Then there was a crunching impact right on the other side of my door and we were flipping. I lifted off my seat, weightless for an instant. The ceiling became the wall and then the floor.

We did a full turn in the air. The car slammed down onto its wheels and my spine felt as if it was trying to force its way through my head. Then silence, except for a hiss of steam from the engine.

I looked around. The air was full of choking white dust from where the airbags had fired. They were all around us, cushioning us from the sides of the car. The car itself seemed to have stayed in shape, although most of the windows were cracked. Beside me, Luka was groaning but awake. Yuri was slumped over the wheel, either unconscious or dead.

The door next to me was wrenched open and hands freed my seatbelt and hauled me out. I was still blinking from the dust and I thought for a moment that they were police, and that we were being rescued.

Then I saw the van, with the door already open.

A bag came down over my head.

I felt myself being lifted inside, then shoved down against the van’s floor. Hands wrenched my wrists behind my back.

I screamed “
Luka!”
and I thought I heard him shout my name in response.

Something hard surrounded my wrists and pulled tight. A second later, another one tightened around my ankles. Then a hard circle of metal pressed against my cheek through the bag. The barrel of a gun.

I stopped screaming.

The van’s suspension sunk as Luka’s muscled body landed next to mine. I heard him kicking and thrashing as they tried to secure him.

“Stop struggling,” said a voice in Russian. “Or we kill your little bitch.”

Luka went still.

And the van sped off.

I don’t know how long we drove for. My heart was hammering so fast that I thought I was having a heart attack. The bag over my face meant I couldn’t breathe properly and someone was still pushing a gun into my cheek.

Then I felt something against my hand. A big, strong finger rubbing against my thumb. Luka had stretched out his bound hands to meet mine. I grabbed his finger and clung to it with all my strength.

Minutes or hours later, I was hauled out and thrown to the floor. I cried out as my shoulder hit concrete. Luka landed with a grunt next to me.

I was pulled up to an awkward sitting position and the bag was pulled off my head.

Darkness. The person who’d pulled off the bag stepped back into the shadows and disappeared, leaving Luka and I alone. A lone light overhead cast a pool of light around us.

“Are you okay?” asked Luka.

I nodded breathlessly.

“No,” said a voice from the darkness. He spoke English, but with a strong Russian accent. “She’s not. Because she’s with you.”

From the echo, the room was vast. A warehouse, maybe. I searched the darkness for any sign of the man who’d spoken, but there was just blackness.

Then a single point of light exploded, glaringly bright. A match. A second later, a cigarette tip glowed orange.

He walked towards us out of the shadows. A short man in a cheap gray suit. I’d never seen him before, but his piggish eyes reminded me of his son’s.

“Hello, Arianna,” said Olaf Ralavich.

I twisted away from him, trying to get closer to Luka. He laughed and squatted down near our bound feet. I knew he was the equivalent of Vasiliy and must be about the same age. But time hadn’t been so kind to the head of the Ralavich family. Where Vasiliy had maintained his muscles, Olaf was flabby. And where Vasiliy radiated a kind of cold, calculated charm, Olaf was all swagger and brutish violence. A thug, not a criminal.

And he was staring right at me with those dark little deep-set eyes.

“So you’re the one who saved my son,” he said to me. His English surprised me—it was at least the equal of Vasiliy’s or Luka’s. But he spoke with a sneer I couldn’t imagine either of them using. Vasiliy might have hated me—maybe still did—but he’d never sounded like this. Olaf spoke as if I was a lower species, as if all women were.

He turned to Luka. “I heard you were letting some
blyadischa
order you around,” he said, glancing at me as he casually called me a whore. “But I didn’t believe it until now. What is it she’s got between her legs, Luka, that gives her such power? Shall we see?”

Luka kicked out viciously, but Olaf dodged it easily, laughing. My blood ran cold. We were all alone here, tied up and powerless. Easy targets for whatever Olaf and his men wanted to do to us.

Olaf walked around to our heads and squatted down again. “My son is still in the hospital. They may not be able to fix his face. Only the whores will want to fuck him, now.”

“He was chaining up women,” said Luka in a low growl. Even bound on the floor, he managed to exude menace. If he was scared, he didn’t show it. “Letting men pay to rape them. I should have killed him.”

“If you had,” said Olaf mildly, “I would have killed you already. But since you just made him suffer, I’ll just make you suffer. I’m going to teach you a lesson, Luka. About how you and your father can’t just steal our business.”

Shit!
This wasn’t just about Luka beating Olaf’s son. This was about the gun deal. But how did they even know about that? I stared at Luka, terrified. Now they’d beat him, right in front of me.

Two men stepped out of the shadows and grabbed Luka’s shoulders, then hauled him up to his knees. He struggled, but they knelt behind him, their knees grinding painfully into the backs of his legs, pinning him there. Then they wound their fingers into his hair so that his head was held still.

Olaf pulled out a knife and my blood turned to ice water. But then he crouched down and cut the zip-tie that bound my ankles. I looked up at him in confusion and hope.

Olaf grinned. “She’s going to have to open her legs,” he explained.

I remember screaming—a single, long wail of horror that left my throat raw. Then I started shuffling away from him across the filthy concrete floor.

Someone behind me put their boot against my shoulder, stopping me from moving any further.

“Don’t you
touch her!”
screamed Luka. For the first time, there was fear in his eyes. He hadn’t cared what they did to him. But this...I knew this would tear him apart.

I tried to struggle to my feet, but my hands were still bound behind my back. Olaf grabbed the front of my dress and pulled it away from my body, as if he was going to lift me up by it. Then he slashed with the knife again, cutting it all the way down the front. My bra strap was sliced through and then I felt the cold of the knife against my groin and my panties were cut.