“You couldn’t come by yourself?” she asks.
Viktor’s eyes flash to her then he walks off the same way Anton went.
I wait till he’s gone before I speak. “You crushing on one of my men?” I ask her while stepping closer. She blushes and shakes her head. “It’s not a crime, Freya. Just would be an issue if we married.” Her head drops down. “He’s powerful. If I were to die, Viktor would be the man to take over and become Pakhan. He isn’t a bad choice, but he has more demons than me, believe it or not. He once slit his girlfriend’s throat in their own bed, all because she cheated on him.” Her eyes go wide. “Just warning you, he’s not one to take lightly.” I don’t wait for her to reply, as I walk off the same way the boys went.
As soon as I enter the kitchen, the boys are sitting on the stools around the large kitchen bench. Anton holds up the bottle high before he takes another chug. I hear her come in from behind me, I don’t turn to acknowledge her. Instead, I walk to the other side of the room and grab the bottle.
“So, how do we bond? Do you tell us all your sexual fantasies? That could be some good bonding,” Anton laughs.
Freya walks around to where I am and snatches the bottle from Anton’s flailing arms and chugs it before she places it back on the bench.
“Tell me yours,” she says, leaning on the counter. I think she’s joking, she apparently doesn’t realize Anton doesn’t joke about sex, he lives for it.
“Okay so… I love anal, right. Love slamming into a tight ass, especially one that hasn’t been fucked. At the same time I want to use a gun for her pussy, you know, two holes and one goal and all that. Then just as she’s about to come, I want to load that gun, then…”
Freya starts waving her arms around. “Stop! If you’re about to say what I think you are, you are one sick fuck.” She snatches the bottle back from Anton and takes another chug.
“I wasn’t, I was just saying…” he pulls his gun from the front of his jeans, “…this is my baby. She goes with me everywhere. Why not the cunt as well. You know?”
“Sick… fuck…” she spits.
Anton starts laughing because that’s a compliment to him, where she thinks she’s just insulted him.
“So you’re going to be the boss’s wife soon. How do you feel about that? You do know he likes to tie his women up and keep them in the basement,” Anton continues to tease her.
“Well Anton, if I’m his wife, I won’t be his woman now, will I? And if he even thinks of tying me in the basement, I’ll castrate him when he sleeps.”
Viktor laughs, he actually laughs. Anton and I look to him, eyes wide, mouths open, shock written all over our faces. We haven’t heard him laugh since we were teenagers, that was when he started dating his bitch of a cheating girlfriend. Never once since. “Why are you all staring like he grew a third head?” Viktor stops and stares at Freya, it’s then that I see it. He likes her,
a lot
. More than he’s letting on. His face isn’t hard when he looks at her, it’s full of sympathy.
“Viktor is stone. Viktor doesn’t laugh,” Anton says pushing the bottle of vodka along the bench. I look back to Freya, wondering how I can marry her, how I could even love her. I don’t know, I know more about her than I know about Elina, but she doesn’t make my belly burn or make my toes tingle. I see her more along the lines of a sister that one day I may have to kill.
I go to tell her, tell her we can’t do this when my phone rings. When I look at the caller ID, I don’t know who it is—it’s a private number.
Freya snatches it from my hand and smiles when she answers it. “Future wife of Kazier Smirnov,” she says cheerfully. I don’t know if I should be pissed. A part of me is, a part of me finds her amusing as all hell. Her face drastically changes, then she drops the phone slightly from her ear and looks to me, then looks back at the phone, ending the call. We all stare at her, she’s now angry, her face scrunches up. She throws the phone on the bench, looking at it like it’s grown a third head. Then it starts to ring again.
“Don’t answer it,” she says, her voice has lost all its humor and she’s now pissed.
“Who was it?” I ask because I have no idea with it being a private number.
Her nose scrunches up. “Your whore,” she spits. As soon as she says it, my brain flicks and I know I’m reaching for the phone and putting it to my ear before I register what I’ve done.
“Elina,” I say.
She never calls me, ever.
I didn’t even know she had my phone number.
“Tell me that was your answering machine, Kazier.” She breathes heavy into the phone. “And that your future wife didn’t just hang up on me, because that would lead to me being very angry.”
I look to Freya and see the hurt in her eyes. She asked me to stop, yet here I am, giving in to my every will just to listen to her speak over the phone.
“It’s over, Elina,” I say while watching Freya. A little hurt lifts, her forehead loses some of the lines she was holding. Elina laughs, and it’s not her usual laugh she shares with only me. I alone know her true laugh. I don’t think she’d laugh the way she does with anyone else. She holds it for me, but this laugh is staged and extravagant.
“It’s never over, Kazier. You are mine, just as much as I am yours,” she says ending the call. I stare at the phone before I can look up, wondering how she got this number. No one has this number apart from my inner circle, this is not my business phone. I grab the bottle of vodka, forcing it down to the very last drop. When I place it back down, I look up and stare at Freya.
She smiles shyly. “Was it hard?” she asks reaching out her hand to touch my shoulder. I’ve told her what it feels like to be with Elina. She understands that she won’t hold a candle to her. Elina could be the devil, and I would still want her. Fuck, she could be God, and I would corrupt her any chance I could. That’s just how she is, that’s just how we are.
“It’s not ended, Freya. She told me so.”
Her nose does this cute thing where it scrunches up.
“And boss man has no will power where Elina is involved. Trust me, I know,” Anton chips in making things more uncomfortable as usual. I stare at him and he shrugs his shoulders opening up the other bottle of vodka, taking a drink and trying to get Viktor to have some.
“You need to. You don’t even know her last name. Have you thought maybe she’s trying to deceive you, that possibly she isn’t who you think she is? What if she works for the Italians? What would you do then?” she asks. I can feel the anger that takes hold, Viktor jumps up straight away and moves the fastest I’ve ever seen him move in a long time. He’s now standing in front of me, with Freya behind him, his hands are holding her back.
“Viktor,” I say, calming my voice.
He looks down at my hands, and when I do, I realize I’m squeezing them tight. I have fists ready to use if need be, and he knows this. I shake them out and see Anton smirking with his head in his hands up on the bench smiling and watching us.
“This was becoming so interesting, best bonding day ever,” Anton says clapping his hands, pushing the vodka bottle to me. I catch it just before it slides off the bench. Viktor walks back around, sits down in his seat and snatches the bottle out of my hands and downs the lot, leaving us empty. He just realized what he did, and how I could hurt him for it. Which I won’t, he just saved me from killing my future wife, who I happen to like in some ways. Would be a shame to bury her, for now anyway.
Chapter 12
Kazier
“You weren’t. You weren’t going to hurt me then were you?” a stunned Freya says after walking away and coming back with another three bottles of vodka, handing one to each of us. She’s shaking slightly when she places mine in front of me.
“I was…”
She shakes her head and grabs my bottle and starts gulping it down. When she starts coughing as she’s drinking, I take it from her hands. “Don’t drink yourself to death,” I say.
“I’ve been drinking vodka since I was ten, Kazier. Half a bottle won’t affect me. The same can’t be said for you.” Snatching it back from my hands, she begins to drink the remaining amount. There’s no way her body can consume that much vodka and not make her fall on her ass when she’s done. She’s way too tiny—the size of an early teen, a young teen. Fuck! Who knows? She’s just tiny. I’m pretty sure I could wrap my hands around her waist, and my fingers would touch. She needs to eat more. Just as that thought leaves my mind, she walks to the fridge and pulls out a basket full of chocolate. Tipping it upside down making the chocolate scatter everywhere she says, “I eat this all day. I love it.” She picks up a bar and chews on it. The alcohol has affected her, she may not be shitfaced, but she’s at the very least tipsy.
Anton’s arms reach out, ready to snatch some up when she slaps his hand hard. “I want some chocolate, woman.” He tries again and she smacks him harder. Just as she’s about to speak, a loud bang rings through our ears, smoke starts drifting in under the door from the foyer. Viktor and Anton stand straight away like they both haven’t just finished off a bottle of vodka like it had no effect on them what-so-ever. Both pull their guns from their pants and walk toward the door.
I turn to Freya. “Find your cousins, stay with them.”
She shakes her head. “They can help,” she says looking back to another door. I turn her head back toward me.
“They can’t. They don’t want to be near us if it’s a war. We will kill anyone that isn’t us. Goes for you as well. Stay away.”
She nods and runs through the door, grabbing a kitchen knife from the bench as she passes.
When I reach the door, Anton kicks it in and starts to walk forward, smoke clouds around so seeing things clearly is difficult. Footsteps are close.
A shot fires off, Anton staggers backward. I see blood running down his arm, it doesn’t stop him as he continues to walk silently now, his senses on high alert to where this person could be hiding. A hand comes around my side, I see the glint of a knife before it makes contact. Knocking it to the floor before I can move to see who it is, Viktor walks in front of me, grabs the man while he tries to stab Viktor in the chest. I’m pretty sure he’s succeeded at least once, then Viktor snaps his neck. I hear the crunch that follows, everything else is silent, just the noise of the crack filling my ears.
A man steps down from the stairs. I hear him before I see him. Before I can fire off my weapon, I hear it, the soft cry for help. Anton and Viktor both turn, Anton half way out the door, with a body at his feet. When we can finally see, there’s a man standing, looking down watching us, a ski mask over his face and he has Freya by the neck. Viktor starts to move, and I stop him by reaching out and grabbing his arm. He tries to shrug me off, but I hold tight forcing him to stay put.
“You do know whose den you just walked into, right?” The man grunts in response. “Not only should you be worried about me, but you should most of all be worried that you’re holding Russian royalty by the throat. She is, after all, the daughter of Russia’s most dangerous man. So I could keep you alive, torture you some, then smuggle you back home to her father, or I could just kill you right now. Decisions, decisions,” I say tapping my chin. He grunts again, pulling tighter on Freya’s neck making her eyes go wide.
“Kill him,” she half screams.
The pressure to her neck is applied more, making her face go extremely white. She tries to struggle from his grasp.
As Viktor decides to run to her, I launch my knife, and it lands straight through his open mask directly in his eye. His hands drop straight away. Freya’s hands go directly to her neck, holding it and gasping for breath to fill her lungs. The man drops where he stands, then starts tumbling down the stairs, dead, with a knife protruding from his eye.
Viktor manages to stop a collapsing Freya before her head hits the floor. He picks her up like a doll, she looks like a small child in his arms. Her head is lolled backward, she must have fainted. Anton walks up to her, slaps her across the face, making Viktor even angrier and she flutters her eyes awake.
“See, women respond great to a good slapping,” he says walking back to the door to shut it. He kicks one of the dead men’s feet in further so he can get the door fully shut.
“Are any alive?” I ask looking around noticing three dead men.
Viktor places Freya back to her feet, and she sees the blood on her. Her eyes scan her body then she looks back up to Viktor, noticing it’s coming from him. She starts to tear at his shirt, removing it with her hands, and he stands there stunned, unsure what to do. I try to contain my laugh where Anton doesn’t. Freya manages to find the wound and wraps his shirt around it. Then she turns to Anton, who’s still laughing and does the same thing, starts tearing at his shirt. What I didn’t see is that she has a knife in her hand. And Anton keeps on trying to smack her hands away which she just ignores and continues to cut it open.
“You’ve been shot,” she gasps when she can finally see his wound.
He smacks her hands away again. “Soon you’ll be shot if you keep touching me,” he sneers at her.
“Just let me see if the bullet is still there.” She doesn’t wait for him to answer as she runs back to the kitchen, coming straight back with a bottle of vodka. She starts to pour it over his wound, and he doesn’t even flinch. Her hands reach up, after placing the vodka on the ground ready to see if there’s a bullet lodged in his body when he steps back, smacking her hands away again.