Chapter 54

Nikolai

Thankfully, my car was close by. I knew I told Hannah it wasn’t that cold tonight, but it was fucking cold.
Hannah. I can’t say I’m sorry we ended up having sex—it was fucking amazing. I’d never had sex without a condom, so having sex with someone like her, someone I actually cared about, and without a condom was fucking incredible. I could still smell her on me, on my hands, my face, all over. I fucking hated leaving her. I knew she was feeling upset because I just took her virginity and then had to leave, but it’s not like I could have stayed over. I figured her mother would have been less than thrilled to discover her formerly virgin daughter snuggled up to me in the morning.
I got in my car and immediately cranked the heat. I’d gotten a message earlier from Drago. Apparently, Roman got the girl, but there were some problems. Not surprising. He had to take some people out. People in our own organization. My father’s people. Now my father knew some shit was going on, but I didn’t know if he realized that Roman was the one who got her out. I had to meet with Drago in about an hour, which was another reason I had to leave Hannah.
I needed to run home, take a shower and grab a shirt before meeting Drago. I had no idea if my father was home, but I fucking hoped he wasn’t. He knew just what buttons to push with me, and with us so close to taking him out, I had to exert a lot of motherfucking control around him. I walked up to the door, noticing how dark the house looked. I quietly opened and closed the door and had one foot on the step when I heard him.
“Ahh, son, you have finally decided to come home,” my father’s accented voice purred with soft menace.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m headed back out again. I just need to change,” I responded nonchalantly, hoping that would stop this conversation before it began.
“Well, I’m sure you have a few minutes for your father. I’d like to speak with you,” Yuri said this last sentence as he walked closer to me, a drink in his hand and a hard, sinister gleam in his eyes. I didn’t like this one bit.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked, folding my arms over my naked chest.
“Come into my office.” It wasn’t a request.
I debated ignoring him, but with everything so close to happening, I decided to humor him instead. Maybe I could plant some seeds that would get him off Roman’s trail.
I watched my father, his shirt now half untucked, his gray hair looking like he’d repeatedly run his fingers through it, his face sweaty. He filled his glass with more vodka. Always vodka. He really took patriotism to new levels. When he turned to look me in the eye, I realized he looked high. Not just on alcohol, but something stronger. I stood near the doorway in case I needed to exit in a hurry.
“So, son, were you with the American whore I saw you with before?” I clenched my fists briefly, then focused on unclenching them. Revealing weakness to my father was always a mistake.
“Which American whore are you referring to? I fuck a lot of girls,” I responded casually.
Yuri laughed as he weaved his way to his chair and sunk his bulk down. My father used to have a physique like mine when he was young, but he’d gotten heavy and soft. “I know who your girl is. Hannah Prescott? Her mother, Jessica, works at Reggie’s Diner, and her sister, Emily, attends Briar Ridge. Her father, Gregory, hasn’t been around for years. She’s a senior at your school. Fairly unremarkable life from the information I’ve gathered. Of course, that can be changed.”
My father didn’t have to finish his threat, I knew what he was saying. That he would do something to “liven up” Hannah’s life. Something violent and traumatizing.
He wanted something from me; he wasn’t threatening Hannah for no reason. “What do you want?”
“Ah, so the girl does mean something to you?” Yuri inquired slyly.
I shook my head. “She doesn’t. She’s a piece of ass, like the rest.” God, I felt like a fucking asshole saying that. “That doesn’t mean I want you to fuck with her, or any other high school girl.” I was trying to make Hannah appear unremarkable in my life. I’d heard my father use threats like these in the past; he knew how to toy with people.
Yuri chuckled again. “I raised such a humanitarian,” he mocked.
“What do you want?” I repeated.
All humor left his face, and his gaze sharpened. “There are people in my organization who are not as loyal as they once were. They need to be taken care of. Immediately.”
I snorted. “You think I, your high-school aged son, is the one to head up this task?” I asked doubtfully.
Yuri shook his head in disgust. “At your age, I was one of my father’s most trusted enforcers. I had been in the organization for years, eager to prove myself to him. Eager to move up. I killed who needed to be killed, I found rats who needed to be found and removed them. I didn’t complain. I wasn’t weak.” He ended his diatribe venomously, mocking my resistance to joining him, my resistance to becoming him.
That was his real issue. I didn’t want to be a mirror image of him, but his ego demanded that I follow his footsteps, outdo him in his levels of depravity and remorselessness. I had probably been well on my way, too, before last summer. Fortunately, I saw what was going on before he eradicated my conscience completely.
“Who do you suspect?” I figured I might as well learn as much as I could for Drago.
“Oh, I know who several of them are, I just need you to find one specific individual and take him out. The rest will fall quickly once he is gone.” Yuri finished his command by swallowing the entire contents of his glass. His face immediately flushed.
What the fuck was going on? I’d never done anything of this magnitude for the organization before, even when I was more actively involved. I quickly recovered from my surprise and confusion. “You want me to assassinate someone in the organization?” I asked in what I hoped was a neutral voice.
Yuri hopped up and slammed his fist down on the desk. “It is time! Time for you to be groomed for this position. This is how you show loyalty, this is how you become a leader. You kill the cockroaches that are betraying us, put fear in your enemies and rise to the top. You will do this!”
Shit, he was losing it. “And if I don’t?” I know I was poking the beast, but I needed to know how dire this was, what his plans were.
Yuri smiled coldly. “Your girl, she will end up in a brothel in Thailand being fucked by every degenerate that can pay five dollars for her. Of course, that’s after every man from here to Asia has had her, used her, degraded her. Maybe her sister, too?” He looked at me and shrugged, as if I would give him some feedback on this. “She’s cute too, and probably a virgin. I’ll get a lot of money for her. Don’t worry, son, I’d make sure the girls know why they are there. That you put them there.”
I felt sick with rage and frustration, my fists clenching and my teeth grinding in impotence. I wanted to swing on him, but unless I actually killed him, which I wasn’t above doing, there would be consequences.
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
“Of course, you will,” he asserted smugly. “You have twelve hours to have the traitor removed.”
Fuck, twelve hours? “That’s not enough time.”
“It better be. For Ms. Prescott and her sister’s sake,” he asserted ominously.
“Who the fuck am I looking for?” I asked irascibly.
“Drago Volkov.”
Fuck, he knew.