Authors: Travis Luedke
Fuckin’ A right
. Bye bye Aaron Pilan.
Aaron focused on the salt and pepper haired man who artfully
looked and smelled like a drunk bathed in vodka. “You got Urvashi drinking the
cool aid. She’s convinced working with the CIA is a path to enlightenment.”
He started chuckling again. “Don’t know if I’d use those
words, but it will certainly be a learning experience.” He grinned, but it
didn’t quite reach his eyes all the way. Though he did a good job of hiding it,
there was a heart of darkness deep inside Gavin.
Aaron wasn’t too worried. His own heart had gotten pretty
black as of late. He reached out to offer Gavin a handshake. “I’ll do it.”
* * * *
A day later, and one hundred million rubles shorter, Aaron
Pilan walked to the front entrance of the Petrovka 38 jail, escorted by two
very nervous guards who had earned ten times their annual salaries in this one
act of corruption. The guards retreated into the building as he stepped out the
door.
Gotta love Moscow police
.
Aaron slipped past the iron gates surrounding the square of
the Moscow police headquarters, and kept on walking. Gavin sat across the
street in a gleaming black Mercedes with pitch black window tint awaiting
Aaron’s arrival. He sipped from a steaming mug of Starbucks coffee. When Aaron
sat down in the passenger seat, Gavin reached out with his coffee. “Want some? Starbucks
marks the glorious spread of western capitalism across the globe. Drinking this
coffee is like waving an American flag. Besides, you look thirsty.”
Aaron couldn’t help but grin at the cheesy line. He hadn’t
tasted blood since Svetlana’s visit yesterday, and he was thirsty enough to
drain an entire family of obese Texans cruising through Walmart on a train of
electric scooters. Aaron shook his head and sighed. “Shouldn’t we be getting
out of range of those cameras on the front of the building?”
Gavin started up the Mercedes and cruised off into the flow
of traffic. “I like the way you’re thinking, kid, but you’re about five steps
behind the curve. Those cameras are seeing nothing but snow right now. Every
camera in that building is on the fritz for the next thirty nine seconds, including
the three cameras coming from the retail businesses that have a view of this
part of the street.”
Aaron ate his chagrin and nodded.
Gavin winked at him. “These things are planned out with
methodical attention to detail. The devil is in the details.” He sounded as
though reciting a mantra. Probably Aaron’s first lesson – one of many to come.
“Did I miss anything important while I was gone?”
Gavin shook his head. “Nothing a lot of money and leverage
couldn’t smooth over.”
One part of Gavin’s master plan had Aaron nervous and seemed
like a major loose end. “I can’t really change my DNA, Gavin. Even if I can
mask or hide or burn the skin off my fingertips, the DNA will always be a
match. How do we deal with that?”
“
We
don’t.
You
deal with it. You make damn
fucking sure that you never leave your DNA anywhere near a potential crime
scene ever again. No blood. No bodily fluids. No hair. Nothing. We’ll teach you
habits of cleanliness, how to go in clean, how to sweep clean when the job is
done, but it’s up to you to make sure it happens. You’ve used up a lot of grace
in a very short time, Aaron. You need to start earning some more grace.”
Earning grace by killing people.
Winding through the streets of Moscow, Gavin lit up a
cigarette and huffed away. The smell of it made Aaron want to gag. Gavin
watched him out the corner of his eye and snickered. “I don’t like ‘em either,
but have you ever noticed how many Russians smoke? Russians smoke like dragons.
Especially in Moscow. If you want to blend, to be unnoticeable, you need to be doing
the same thing as everyone else.”
Aaron doubted he’d ever be willing to light up a cigarette
to blend. He shrugged. “So, do I get some kind of salary or contract fee in
this deal?”
Gavin sucked on his disgusting cigarette and nodded. “That
should have been one of the first questions you asked me back in Petrovka. Not
now, after the deal’s already been made.”
Aaron tried not to growl in his face. Instead he looked out
the window at the passing buildings as the twilight of sunset approached.
“To answer your question, yes. There will be a fund setup
for our projects. You’re gonna love it. Urvashi has all the details, she’ll
fill you in. She also has your new identity paperwork and background bio, Mr.
Richard Sanguine. Get used to the sound of it. Aaron Pilan is no more.”
“Sanguine? Seriously?”
Gavin laughed again. The guy smiled way too much for a black
ops CIA man. He slapped Aaron on the arm. “Never let it be said the guys on The
Farm lack a sense of humor.”
* * * *
Gavin dropped him on the street in front of Dmitri’s
sprawling estate and zipped away in his black Mercedes with plans to contact
him later. Aaron marched through the iron-gated entryway, which oddly enough,
felt like a gloriously strange homecoming. The security guard drove him through
the private streets and around the massive fountain to the front steps of
Dmitri’s mansion. As soon as he opened the door of the security truck Svetlana,
Oksana and Michelle poured out the double doors to smother him with teary eyed
kisses and a massive group hug. He’d begun to really appreciate the unabashed
emotional reactions of Russian women.
Even Urvashi grinned like a school girl as she wrapped him
in her warm, tingling embrace. Her delightful aura poured over him in a shower
of happiness. The ladies dragged him into the heated interior of the mansion
through the great room and into the large, open kitchen.
Ivan stood at the granite countertop with an open bottle of
vodka and several full shots lined up. “Very good to meet you, Mr. Sanguine.
Have we met before?” He grinned as he held up a shot glass in salute and downed
it.
Aaron shook his head and accepted Ivan’s hug. He looked to
all the glittering faces standing around him and wondered where the missing
faces had gone to. “It’s possible we have met, in another life, perhaps.” Aaron
teased and felt warmed by Ivan’s easy laughter.
Svetlana and Oksana each grabbed full shot glasses and
emptied them. Their faces squinted with the burn of the strong liquor. Michelle
clung to his left arm. He sensed all the panic she’d experienced during Aaron’s
absence and the guilt she felt at having made such a mess of those men in
public.
Aaron speared Urvashi’s mind. {{Where’s everyone else?}}
She slipped into his mind with a silent message in return.
{{No one has seen or heard from Natalya. We suspect she’s with the Georgians
you encountered the other night. Gavin has people looking for her now. Anatoly
and Nikolay are in Iraq awaiting Ivan. He stayed in case he was needed to help
with your problems. He is true friend. You would do well to cultivate that
relationship. Friends like Ivan are a rare find.}}
A dark, wicked rage churned in Aaron’s gut at the thought of
the Georgians having their way with Natalya. After steaming for a few seconds,
he found the mental fortitude to set aside his fury for later. He sensed Urvashi
had further news to discuss in private.
Katya strolled into the room with a hesitant smile, holding
hands with Lana. “We’re growing impatient with all the waiting. Has anyone seen
Aaron yet?”
Lana looked at Katya funny and then did a double-take on
Aaron. “He’s back!” She squealed in delight as she took a running leap into his
arms. This was the radiant little girl he’d seen in that brief moment before
her mother died. Day by day she was bouncing back and finding her place in his
world.
Her little girl smell and shimmering aura enveloped the
darkness of his thoughts in a bright light of joy. He had missed this child. After
a few moments of squeezing her as tight as he dared, he kissed her forehead and
set her on the counter. She immediately recounted a stream of all the things
she and Katya had done in the three days he was gone.
His estranged bloodslave had become close with Lana. A whole
new source of worry.
Katya joined the bloodslaves and ate little cube-cut
sandwiches of tuna-cucumber salad while they chattered about plans to
redecorate several rooms in the mansion. Aaron watched her, sensing her
continued avoidance of conversation. She seemed happy to have no connection
with him at all. Though she smiled and drank several shots of vodka, laughing
along with Ivan and everyone, she had closed off from Aaron completely.
They repeated the vodka-snacking routine several times over
with Ivan pouring the shots. Then Oksana, Svetlana, and Michelle exchanged some
sort of silent signal and moved forward to surround Aaron.
“What’s all this about?” They grinned but didn’t say a word
as they pulled him out of the kitchen.
He caught Katya’s eye just before the women pulled him
around the corner. Beneath the façade of a calm happy woman was a boiling churn
of jealousy and spite. She would not be joining him tonight – maybe never
again.
The girls led him down the hallway to one of the many rooms
in the mansion. This one had a king-sized bed. Svetlana locked the door behind
them and proceeded to remove her sweater and bra. Michelle unzipped the back of
Oksana’s dress and helped her strip down to nothing. Then they traded off and
Oksana unzipped Michelle’s dress and helped her take it off. As usual Michelle hadn’t
bothered with underwear.
Oksana pulled Michelle to the bed, and the two naked women
slipped beneath the covers with a series of giggles. Aaron could hardly wait to
join them.
Svetlana didn’t look away. She didn’t even flinch at this
public display. In uncharacteristic fashion, she moved in and molded herself to
Aaron, letting her naked breasts press against the thin fabric of his shirt.
Facing her nose to nose, she kissed him gently on the lips, testing his mouth
with little flickers of her tongue. With the physical connection, he caught
snatches of her emotions leaking past her mental blockade. She wasn’t ready for
sex
yet
, but she trusted him, even liked him.
For the first time since Dmitri’s brutal sessions of rape,
Svetlana had let someone into her tightly-closed heart, and now saw a glimmer
of hope that she might find a way out of the darkness of Dmitri that had ruled
her life for the past four years.
She gently laid her head on Aaron’s shoulder and bared her
neck for him. “I know you think I have done so much for you, and you think me a
hero for helping you out of jail. The truth is you’re my hero. You saved me
first.”
With a smile that wouldn’t quit, Aaron bit down into her
dainty little neck and gladly took what she offered, what they both needed.
* * * *
Urvashi closed the doors to what was once Dmitri’s private
office and locked the deadbolt as she faced Aaron. She had something very
important to discuss, and the anticipation turned his stomach over in flip
flops. He trusted her, to a point, but recent events had twisted his world
inside out, and he didn’t know what to expect from his master anymore.
She sat behind the desk with a folder of papers in front of
her and indicated for him to sit in the dark brown leather chair on the other
side of the desk. “Dmitri’s estate settlement will be finalized in a few
months, but I have the summary of it here.”
She flipped open the folder and flicked her finger across
the first page, letting it slide across the smooth surface of the desk towards
Aaron. He picked it up and flipped it around to read.
Urvashi didn’t wait for him to digest the paper. “Each of
the wolves will have a relatively small percentage of the estate value. The
size of Dmitri’s holdings are such that a fraction is the equivalent of
millions of US dollars.”
Aaron scanned the list that showed names, percentages, and
approximate values listed in rubles. Everyone showed the same number, a
whopping 900,000,000 rubles each.
Aaron tried to do the conversion in his head, but Urvashi
interrupted him. “Katya, Ivan, Anatoly, and Nikolay are receiving roughly
fifteen million US dollars each. You and Michelle are also receiving the same.
Your share will be wired to a Swiss account under the name Richard Sanguine, of
course.”
Aaron was dumbstruck. He couldn’t move his mouth. He could
hardly breathe. His brain refused to engage his speech mechanisms.
Urvashi smiled in genuine happiness, but her eyes told him
there was more. “While I am receiving the same share as you all, something we
determined out of equal fairness, there are other parts of this settlement that
involve you and I. Shortly, I will inform the wolves of their shares, but the
rest of this estate settlement is private knowledge, never to be divulged to
anyone.
Not even the wolves.
Gavin is the only other person who knows of
these provisions, and do not be mistaken – I do not trust Gavin – not entirely.
Apart from me, and possibly Michelle, there is no one else in the world you
should ever trust completely.
No one
.”
Aaron didn’t have the capacity to speak. He simply nodded.
“A portion of the estate is being allocated to a secret
trust fund run by an attorney firm in Luxembourg. This fund will be your source
of project revenue and expense reimbursement for the work you do with Gavin. It’s
valued at one hundred million USD.”
“The CIA gets a hundred million dollars for giving us a ride
in their fucking helicopter?” Aaron stood up, claws out and teeth down, furious
at the ridiculous idea.
Urvashi’s aura flowed over him with her powerful command. {{
Be
calm
.}}
He suddenly relaxed and felt it was a good idea to sit back
down and listen to the rest of what she had to say. The woman had a power over
him that he simply could not fight.
“Gavin has been instrumental in a number of ways. Without
his help Dmitri would still be terrorizing these bloodslaves and half of
Eastern Europe. The good we did here, the good we are still doing, will have
ripples across many boundaries and affect many people’s lives. We have put a
stop to a great and powerful evil. The work you do with Gavin can achieve a
similar result. It’s worth the investment of a small fraction of Dmitri’s
wealth. Let his corruption pave the way to something better.”
The perverse logic spun around in Aaron’s mind. The world
needed killers to selectively assassinate key people. This was supposed to be a
good thing, yet it didn’t sit well in Aaron’s gut. How did you measure the evil
of people deciding who should die against the evil of their targets?
Urvashi’s piercing eyes conveyed understanding of his
unspoken reservations. “Regardless of what orders you are given, the decision
to kill rests with you. Gavin has not gained a blind servant. He has empowered
you with the ability to shape the world by the stroke of your sword.”
Shaping the world through assassination
. Sounded like
the title of a bestselling novel. Aaron slapped the paper down on the desk and
sighed. “Urvashi, you have a way of making ugly things appear beautiful.
Whatever.”
She acknowledged him with a nod.
“Is there anything else?”
“Yes. As you probably realized, these numbers do not reflect
the bulk of Dmitri’s wealth.”
He actually hadn’t realized that yet, but he did now.
“There is another trust being established in Luxembourg on
behalf of the primary benefactor of Dmitri’s estate.”
Aaron watched in confusion as Urvashi grinned like a
Kardashian at her third wedding.
“Kristina made a very strange but prudent decision when she
gave her daughter Dmitri’s surname. For whatever reason … Dmitri never denied
parentage. Lana Nazarov is legally Dmitri’s daughter, and the only living heir
to his estate. She will inherit a value equal to one point two billion US
dollars.”
“Holy shit!” A huge stupid grin broke across his face, a
match to Urvashi’s smile.
“By the last words of her mother, you have been designated
Lana’s legal guardian and the trustee of her inheritance, under your new name
of Richard Sanguine, of course.”
Aaron was at a loss for words, but his ridiculously stupid
grin would not go away.
“As I have explained numerous times, what concerns you
concerns me. Any major decisions regarding Lana or her inheritance will be cleared
through me first.”
Urvashi’s smile slowly faded and she turned her office chair
to the right, to face a laptop which she opened up. After typing in a password
and clicking through to a certain file, she handed the laptop to Aaron.
“Svetlana has been working with me from the moment you were
incarcerated. The woman is an asset and a friend, but her intimate knowledge
and experience with Dmitri’s corruption leads me to wonder how much of her soul
she gave up in the name of survival.”
Aaron had trouble switching gears past the jaw-dropping
news. His eyes couldn’t focus on the laptop screen, and Urvashi’s words didn’t
make much sense.
“After I pressured her, she agreed to help figure out the
password to his laptop. I suspect she knew it all along. Most of what’s in
there we already knew, his businesses, his contacts, his assets. But there was
something I found that you need to read for yourself. Dmitri kept a diary.”
Urvashi’s eyes conveyed something Aaron had never seen in
her before –
guilt
.
“If you run a search through his diary files for the word
‘otrok’, you’ll encounter the entries where he chronicled some very disturbing
findings that he received from his laboratory, Pharzyme.”
* * * *
With a lightness of heart he hadn’t felt in months, Aaron
made his way downstairs through the corridors of the mansion to find the six
year old billionaire playing chess with her millionaire friend, Katya. Like a
metaphor of universal truth, the billionaire was winning the game.
After watching for a few minutes, Lana’s queen and rook
combination dominated Katya’s side of the board with a quick and inevitable
checkmate. Aaron was impressed.
Katya scooted back out of her chair. “That’s quite enough
for me. Your turn to have your ass kicked.”
Lana’s eyes crinkled into her sweet smile as Katya tried to
make her escape, but he hadn’t come to chat with the billionaire. He needed to
get inside Katya’s head once more and find out what the fuck was going on.
He pecked Lana on the forehead. “Give me a moment with her.
I’ll catch up with you later.”
Katya was cruising fast down the hallway when Aaron snagged
her wrist and slowed her down. She tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn’t
let go. “What do you want from me? Haven’t I given you enough blood and sex to
last a lifetime?”
Her eyes glistened wet, but the set of her face conveyed
determination.
“You can’t avoid me forever, Katya. We need to talk.”
“There’s nothing I have to say to you,
Richard
.”
He tried not to smile as he pinned her against the hallway
wall, face to face, eye to eye. “My name isn’t important right now. Stop
pushing me away.” He ran his finger down her cheek and wiped away the lone tear
that had fallen.
“Don’t you dare bite me! Keep your ruddy teeth off me.” She
was starting to growl and her eyes turned golden wolf.
“It’s not a fight, Katya. It’s a relationship. I’m trying to
talk to you.”
“I can’t replace her, Aaron. I’m Katya, a wolf. I eat the
flesh of my enemies. I am a predator, a killer. I’m not your sex doll chew toy.
And I’m certainly not a stand in for your dead alcoholic wife, Anastasia.”
Her words hit him where she’d intended, right in the balls.
His eyes fell away from her, unable to face the bitterness she shoved at him.
After a moment he let it fall away. It was time to be a better man. He understood
the source of her vitriol, and hoped he could unravel it.
“I can’t undo the past, Katya. I can’t change what happened
to Ana, or you. I can’t change what Dmitri did. All I can do is try to help you
and Svetlana, Oksana, Natalya. I know you don’t like it. You hate it. I guess
you hate me. I thought we had something more than just a bloodslave connection.”
He slid back into her and sniffed up and down her body, reveling in that unique
scent she carried that set her apart from all of humanity. “I’m a vampire. I
bite. You know what that does to women, but there
are
some people I care
about. It’s more than just sex, blood and venom. I care about you, as a person,
what you need, what you want. Look in my eyes and find the truth. I care about
you.”
She looked in his eyes, searching. A slight flicker of hope
crossed her gaze, but then the same old spite returned as more tears spilled
down her cheeks. “Don’t you see the problem? How can I ever know if it’s real?
I can’t see past the intensity of the moment. I can’t
feel
what
I
feel
when you’re hammering me with that Lochness monster and filling me
full of venom. I need to
know
, Aaron. I need to feel for myself what’s
real.”
She looked like she could use a bite right now, and he
caught a glimpse of her need in her aura, but she continued playing the denial
game. “You don’t need
me
anymore. Michelle doesn’t feed from
me
anymore. You have
them
, your bloody harem!”
There it was – the truth. Ugly jealousy reared its head.
Jealousy had been twisting its knife through Katya’s guts, poisoning her
against him.
“I never asked for any of this, Katya. All I want is for us
to live our lives together, you, me, Michelle …”
“And Urvashi, and all the Russian strippers Dmitri left
behind, and any other stray bitch who happens to get caught in your web. Bloody
horndog vampires, you collect women everywhere you go! We could all fall over
dead, and you’d fill this mansion with a new harem of bloodslaves by tomorrow.
It’s not enough for me, Aaron. I need more. I need to know how I feel. I need
to get away …
from you
.”
She had yanked out the dagger of her jealousy and plunged
its cold blade into his heart. Her words hurt with a physical pain worse than
any of his gunshot wounds. She looked away from him, unwilling to face the pain
she caused. “I have a supply of the otrok and I’m taking Lana out of this
country, to a private school in the UK. I know people who can procure new
papers for her.”
Full of her hurt, his heart shredded by the loss of the
woman who hadn’t even left yet, he lashed out at her. “You’re not taking Lana
anywhere. She stays with me! I decide what tutors will manage her schooling. I
decide where she lives. She’s not in your fucking pack.” If the bitch wanted to
take her drugs and run then she could damn well do it. But she sure as hell
wasn’t taking anyone else Aaron cared about. “You have no right to Lana, legal
or otherwise. If you want any kind of relationship with her, you’d better
remember that I am her legal guardian.”
The fiery color of her wolf blazed and Aaron smelled the
beast flowing under the twitching skin of her fisted hands. In her fury, she
was damn near bringing on the change.
The thumping sounds of running feet caught up to Aaron and a
warm little hand slapped his leg. He looked down at Lana, her face lit up with
excitement. “Vashi said I have money to play with! We can go to Paris and see
the Eiffel Tower! I can pay for the trip.”
He laughed aloud and stepped away from Katya, all his hurt
and fury diffused by this little bundle of light and joy. Katya’s fires
extinguished and her hands relaxed. She pushed off from the wall and wiped more
tears from her eyes. Without stopping to face Lana, she spoke over her shoulder
as she exited down the hallway. “Ask
your guardian
if you can have
permission to visit me in London on your way to France.”
Lana’s confused face looked at Katya and then to Aaron. She
shrugged and took his hand. “I googled Paris. There are stores for shopping!”
Aaron laughed aloud again. “Well then its official, we’re
bringing Michelle with us. The quickest way to a woman’s heart is to go
shopping with her.”
Urvashi flowed up the hallway with a dour look on her face
and her cell phone held to her ear. Urvashi waved to Aaron and put her phone
away as he pulled Lana down the hall, still glued to his hand. The fallen angel
eyed Lana and seemed to consider her words more carefully. “That was Gavin on
the phone. He’s found Natalya. She is with the Georgian mafiosi –
but not by
choice
.”
Aaron let out an involuntary growl and Lana frowned at him.
Urvashi laid a hand on his shoulder and imparted a touch of her soothing aura.
“Let Gavin help this time. We don’t need a repeat of the last incident.”