Kostya A Dark Bratva Hate Story Read online

  Me: Stop it! I told you not to come! You're working full time and taking summer classes. If you quit your job and dropped out of school to come here, I'd have kicked your ass.

  Raisa: OK, well, I can't take any more money from you.

  Me: You’ll take my money, and like it. Seriously, it was like one week of my allowance. And I’ve got my credit cards. I never even miss it.

  Raisa: I will pay you back every cent as soon as I get my RN license. Don’t say no; I’ll slap you silly. How are you holding up?

  Anya: I’ll get through this.

  Raisa: Any progress with Kostya?

  Anya: _Dickbreath’s totally ghosted me. I don’t care anymore, I’ve moved on. Kostya who?

  Raisa: You were too good for him. He’s just made room for someone better.

  Raisa: I’ve got to go study, got a microbiology test tomorrow. Love you to the moon and back. TTYS

  I haven’t told her the latest news - that my father has announced we’re never going back to Chicago. Again, striking out at my mother beyond the grave. She loved America? Fine, we’ll never set foot there again. I’ll finish my degree in Russia, and then he’ll find me a husband. He even knows who, but he won’t tell me.

  He’s out of his mind with grief and anger; there’s no point in arguing with him.

  I’m praying that he’ll calm down and let me come around, but just in case, I’m making preparations. I’ve started smuggling my mother’s jewelry out of the house and pawning it. One good thing about growing up among criminals; I have plenty of connections, both in Russian and America. I bought myself several fake passports. Also wigs, colored contact lenses, and theatrical makeup, which I’ve stashed in a storage locker.

  Fortunately, my father is too distracted to notice my comings and goings. And Masha either believes me when I say that I’m visiting friends, or she’s too dispirited to care. She’s stopped trying to monitor my every move. She knows what my father has planned for me, and it’s breaking her heart.

  Two weeks ago, I still had some say in my destiny. Now my mother is dead, and I can either live a life in hiding or endure a miserable marriage to whatever wealthy, connected old pervert is paying my father for the privilege.

  And as if my mood isn’t awful enough, I look up from my phone and see that Pasha’s walking towards me, with a big, smirking grin. I think he’s having me followed these days. He keeps showing up wherever I am, and it’s really creeping me out.

  As usual, he’s got a group of friends with him, his little posse of boot-kissers, and they’re all wearing those stupid thug track suits and ropes of gold chains. The mood in the café changes instantly. This is a nice upper-class neighborhood, not Bratva-ruled, and their muscular, bullying swagger is out of place. The Bratva have a lot of power in some parts of the city, but in other parts, the cops are happy to swoop in and kick their butts if they cause trouble.

  Kostya would know better to shove his way through a café, knocking over chairs and talking too loudly and glaring at a bunch of paper pushes in business suits. In this neighborhood, it’s the kind of thing that will get the cops called and draw unnecessary attention. But then, he doesn’t constantly have to try to prove himself, like Pasha.

  That brief moment of respect Pasha showed at the funeral is a thing of the past. When he reaches me, actually leans down and tries to kiss me on the lips, the pig. I jerk back, startled.

  “Pasha, what a surprise to see you here.” I make sure my voice is flat and uninviting. “I was just leaving.” I grab my purse and my coffee cup and stand up.

  "Here she is!” he shouts to his friends. Why can’t he ever speak in a normal tone of voice? This is just one of the many things I hate about him. “The most gorgeous girl in Moscow! Her mother was an actress, did you know that?" he yells.

  Suffering Jesus. What is wrong with him? It’s like he knows his presence is small and pale and weak, and he believes that bellowing will make him seem bigger.

  I try to step back, but he throws an arm around my waist. Annoyed, I shake him off.

  "I heard from a friend of mine at the Palace last night,” I snap at him. “You were busted screwing one of the bottle girls in the men’s toilet stall.”

  He flashes a huge, gloating grin at his friends. He’s got a gold tooth. On purpose. He’s the ultimate gangsta wanna-be. "Hear that? My little wifey is jealous!" The entire café is staring at us.

  "I'm not jealous, I'm disgusted!” I yell, taking a couple of steps back and glaring at him. “And don’t call me your wifey!”

  His friends snicker at him, and he glares at me, his good mood evaporated. His swagger vanishes, and he’s a sullen little boy who’s been told he can’t buy that toy he wants. “Don’t you ever speak to me like that, bitch. When we’re married, I’m going to teach you some respect.”

  And then it hits me.

  This is who my father has selected as a husband. That’s why he refused to tell me who it was – because he knew I’d run for the hills.

  No. Way.

  My father knows I hate Pasha! I’ve complained about him nonstop ever since he started stalking me this summer! How could he?

  All of my anger and hurt and frustration explode inside me like a detonated hand grenade, and I hurl my entire cup of coffee in his face, mug and all. The mug strikes his forehead with a dull thunk, and coffee splashes on his face and track suit.

  Screeching with rage, he tries to slap me. He’s still blinking coffee from his eyes, though, and his slap goes wide. I dance back out of his reach.

  Pasha lunges at me, but he slips in the coffee that’s pooled on the floor, falling on his ass. His friends howl with laughter, doubling over and clutching at their stomachs.

  I run from the café, and leap into my car, which is parked out front. I’m so furious at my father I spend three solid hours and the gross national product of Peru at the mall. I review all of the plans I’ve made for my escape. I was hoping for more time, but it can’t wait any longer.

  Finally I head home. My plan is to pack up a few sentimental trinkets, quietly say goodbye to Masha, and then vanish.

  But today is just a disaster all around. Something’s going on in our neighborhood. Police cars and ambulances keep passing me and I keep having to pull over.

  As I round the corner to our street, I see that fire trucks and police cars have pulled up in front of our apartment building. And a coroner’s van. There is smoke curling from the ground floor window of our apartment, and the windows are shattered on all three floors of our flat. Hundreds of people are standing on the sidewalk across the street, gawking.

  The crowds, the noise, the smoke that leaks through my rolled-down window, all overwhelm me. For the briefest of moments, time stops and I hang suspended in a world of confusion,

  Two paramedics are walking down the front steps of our building, carrying a man on a stretcher. He’s covered with a blood-splashed sheet. Then the truth comes crashing down on me in horrible clarity.

  They’re carrying my father’s body. After I humiliated Pasha in front of his friends, he must have called his father – and this is the Bratva’s reply.

  Sick with horror, I quickly turn my car down a side street.

  This is my fault. I did this with my words, with my foolish pride and one hurled cup of coffee. I killed my own father, and there will be a price on my head too now.

  I pull out the burner phone I’ve been carrying with me ever since my mother died, and call Masha, praying for just one small mercy. Please, God, leave me something. Don’t let her be dead too.

  “Hello?” She answers and her voice is frightened and angry, but she’s alive.

  “Masha! They killed my father!” I choke on a sob.

  “I know!” she wails. “I thought they killed you too. I was out shopping when it happened! Where are you?”

  With a mighty effort, I shove back my pain, my fear, my panic. I must focus only on survival now. I tell her where we’re going to meet up. And then, dying inside, I drive towa
rds my storage unit to fetch my disguise and cash.

  Chapter Four

  Present day

  Anya

  It’s a hot summer morning, and this cheap dive of a restaurant doesn't have air conditioning, but that's not why I'm sweating. After three years on the run, I’m strolling into the lion’s den. I know how unlikely it is that I’ll walk out of here again, at least as a free woman.

  But for Raisa's sake, I have to try.

  And what about my life is so precious, anyway? Nothing – anymore. The Bratva have taken everything from me.

  I’m not suicidal – just resigned. I’ve done my best to take precautions. The bar is in a suburb of Chicago, and it’s a Bratva hangout; I might run into someone I know, so I took extra pains to disguise myself.

  My blond hair is dyed black, shoulder length and razor-cut, and I flat-ironed my natural waves away. I have brown contact lenses disguising my blue eyes. Carefully applied makeup blurs and re-arranges the contours of my face. I used to be pale; a spray tan gives me an exotic, ambiguously ethnic appearance. I also weigh twenty pounds less than I used to.

  Anya Lebedev has been erased. That poor girl, who thought there was hope and goodness in the world; she was a naïve little fool. Now, I am bitter and suspicious, and I change names as frequently as my underwear.

  Today my fake i.d. says I’m Laura Johnson. Not that it matters. Odds are against my surviving to see nightfall.

  I explain my business to the bored looking bouncer who strolls over to greet me. At first, he looks baffled, then amused. He walks away to talk to a man who is sitting at a booth by himself.

  The bouncer returns and pulls a scanner wand out of his pocket. He waves it from my head to my toes, running it over the messenger bag I’m carrying too. It doesn’t beep, which shows him that I don’t have any metal objects on me.

  As he scans me, I sweep the room with a quick glance, taking in the bartender, and the two men sitting at the bar. Then I return my attention to the bouncer, who is tucking the scanner into his pocket.

  His gaze roves over me, and everywhere it lights, I feel filthy. I’m wearing a baggy t-shirt, a sports-bra to flatten my boobs and make me look less appealing, dirty jeans and scuffed sneakers.

  He smiles, showing a mouthful of metal. “I need to pat you down.”

  Ugh. No, he does not, because the scanner showed him what he needed to know – or at least what he thinks I need to know. But I raise my hands above my head.

  I gave up on up myself long ago, abandoning all dreams of happiness and just focusing on simple survival.

  But Raisa? She was my best friend. She’s sweet, and pure, and good, and she deserves happiness.

  I’d kept tabs on her over the last few years, checking in with old friends of mine from time to time.

  Everything went downhill for her after I went on the run. She dropped out of college, because she couldn’t make ends meet without the money I sent her. She’s been struggling to make ends meet ever since, and I haven’t dared to send her cash or contact her directly.

  Then, I got the word from one of my friends. She was taken by the Bratva last week, when she applied for a job as a cocktail waitress at a local Bratva nightclub.

  And my contact tells me that she’s being held somewhere in the area, with a couple of other girls. They are scheduled to be sold in a few weeks.

  The bouncer is grinning at me as he runs his hands over my body. I flinch as he kneads my breasts. He takes his time, cupping each breast and staring right into my eyes with his lips curling up in a revolting smirk.

  He squeezes so hard that I have to bite my lip to keep from crying out in pain. Then he moves down to fondle my ass, spreading my cheeks open and running his fingers up the crack. I keep my face blank. The man who is sitting at the booth is watching me with a cruel smile, amused by my discomfort.

  If they’re doing this to me right now, what is being done to Raisa?

  My only hope for her to emerge relatively unscathed is that I am pretty sure she’s still a virgin. She’s very religious, and vowed to wait until she was married. Virgins are a lot more valuable at auction, so she won’t have been raped yet.

  But what other hell is she being forced to endure?

  The man squeezes my crotch, rubs it and then starts to slide his hands inside my pants.

  I jump back. "No way! You already know I'm not carrying."

  His eyes glow with malice. "You can't talk to my boss until I finish examining you. You could have a gun in your snatch. Or up your ass."

  "Then I guess we're done here." I can't let them think that they can take things too far, because these men don't respect weakness. Of course, they also don't respect women in general, but they are more likely to negotiate with me if they don't see me as a total pushover.

  I turn and start to head for the door.

  "Stop," a voice cracks through the air like a whip. I obey him, and turn around.

  The man in the booth gestures at me to sit down, which I do, facing him. I recognize him now, and pray he doesn’t recognize me. His name is Arkady. He did business with my father, but I haven’t seen him since I was fifteen.

  I plop down in the seat in front of him. Arkady is a short, squat man whose stomach laps over his belt. His silk shirt is unbuttoned to show off his gray chest hair and the thick chains roping his neck. He pulls a knife from his shirt pocket and, watching me with little pig eyes, starts cleaning his nails. I repeat what I told the bouncer. "I am here because you have taken my friend Raisa, and I want to buy her freedom.”

  Arkady utters a grunt, staring at me with a blank expression.

  My stomach twists with fear. Despite the misery that is my current existence, I don’t want to die, and I certainly don’t want to be kidnapped and raped.

  I keep my voice confident and unwavering. “Raisa is a smart girl, she will never say a word. She will leave the city of Chicago, she will leave the state, and you will never see or hear from either of us again. I am offering $100,000 cash, which is the typical price for a girl like her at auction."

  I open the bag to show them the bricks of $20 bills, a total of $100,000 worth.

  "You seem to know a lot about our operations," Arkady says. He doesn't even try to deny that his men kidnapped her.

  I shrug. "It doesn't matter, I'm not some kind of crusader, all I want is my friend." I’m not lying.

  That doesn't say a lot for me, that I wouldn't try to rescue the other girls. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that it’s hopeless. Notifying the authorities would accomplish nothing. The Bratva always have snitches on the police force; they’d be warned, and they’d just kill the girls and flee, long before the cops had a chance to arrive.

  Arkady glances at the bag indifferently. "Where did you get the money?" he asks.

  It’s pretty much the last of the money from when I pawned my mother’s jewelry, but he doesn’t need to know anything about that.

  "It doesn't matter," I say.

  He shakes his head. "It does to me. If this money is hot, then it could be traced back to me."

  "We both know that you are more than capable of laundering money. Your entire business model depends on it. How quickly can you get Raisa here?"

  Arkady sets down his knife with a clatter. "Why would I sell her to you, and expose my men to such enormous risk? She would talk. She would run to the authorities."

  "Of course she wouldn't," I say desperately. "She's a smart girl, she is Russian, she knows that the Bratva can find her anywhere."

  But it’s no good, I can see it in his eyes. He's not going to do it.

  "Where do you know her from?"

  "That’s not important.” I tap my fingers on the pile of cash. “You're asking a lot of questions that have nothing to do with the business deal we’re discussing. She's a friend. I'm offering you cash, right here and now. When can you get her here?"

  "I'm not going to take that risk."

  I suck in a breath, thinking of Raisa’s smiling face. "
She doesn't deserve this. She's a good girl. She's a virgin. You have a wife, don't you? Daughters, or sisters?"

  "My wife and daughters don't go to nightclubs.” He jams the knife down into the wood of the table and leaves it there, quivering. "Any woman who walks through the door of our clubs is a whore."

  These men are lower than pond scum. "How can she be a whore if she's a virgin?"

  His thick lips curl up in a nasty smile. "Every whore's got to start somewhere, right?"

  My heart sinks. I have one card left to offer.

  "I'll trade myself for her.” And I will. I deserve it. I have made terrible mistakes, done unforgivable things. My father’s death is just the tip of the iceberg. But Raisa is young and innocent, and she has her whole life ahead of her.

  He looks me up and down. "You're pretty, but are you a virgin? I don't think you are. That means you're not worth as much."

  "But I'm willing. She's not."

  He laughs at that. "Being willing isn't necessarily appealing to the buyers. If they wanted willing women, they could just go hire an escort."

  What a sick, evil bastard. My stomach curdles with hatred, and my fingers itch with the desire to close around his throat. If we were alone here, I could probably take him. Ever since I went on the run, I stepped up my self-defense training, and I was pretty good even before that.

  But I’m outnumbered, and these men are armed. And strangling him wouldn’t help save Raisa.

  "All right. The money, and me. In exchange for her." I'm getting increasingly desperate.

  He smirks at me.

  "Fine, your loss.”

  I stand up. I don’t know what I’ll do now. I can’t give up on her, but how can I possibly save her?

  "Gennedy," Arkady calls out. The bouncer moves to block me.

  "We will take the money, we'll take you, and we'll keep your friend,” Arkady smirks.

  I know how these men operate, and I anticipated this might happen. I have a viciously sharp, serrated plastic knife in the handle of the messenger bag, designed specifically to get past metal detectors. I slide it out and jam it up against Gennedy’s throat, grabbing him by the collar. His eyes go wide with rage.