descended the stairs. I heard her and Mikhail cross the
marble entrance hall and then the scrunch of their feet
on the gravel outside. A moment later, a car roared
away.
I’d failed.
Rico’s breathing was a wet rasp, his shirt soaked with
blood. Now that I didn’t have Mikhail’s gun on me, in
theory I could try to get him to hospital. But then I
heard footsteps coming up the stairs. One of the guards
who’d survived our attack, a big ex-military type. “He
said to kill you as soon as he and the Malakov whore
were gone,” the guard told me, drawing his gun.
So Mikhail had double-crossed Irina on top of everything
else. She’d have to live out her life as the perfect
subservient wife to that asshole, thinking she was
saving my life, and I’d already be in a shallow grave
somewhere.
The guard took his time walking over to us. I wasn’t any
sort of threat, lying there. I tried to heave Rico off me,
but my cracked rib made the movement agony. Shit!
This is how it ends.
The guard touched his gun to my head. “Arrivederci, Mr.
Baroni,” he said, as if it was the funniest thing in the
world.
And I got mad. It wasn’t just me, or even Rico, or the
loss of my entire fucking empire. It was the thought of
Irina, living out her life in Moscow with that evil bastard.
She deserves better. I glared up at the grinning Russian,
the rage building and building. She deserves better!
I let out a yell, grabbed the gun barrel and pushed it
away from me. It went off, narrowly missing my ear.
The guard panicked and tried to back up, out of range.
But it was too late: I’d grabbed two big handfuls of his
shirt with my bloody hands and heaved him down
toward me.
“Fuck you,” I spat. “I’m not dead yet.” And I headbutted
him as hard as I could.
His legs folded and he landed on top of Rico and me.
My cracked rib screamed at the added weight and for a
second I had to just lie there, panting. Then I rolled the
unconscious guard’s body off us, heaved myself out
from under Rico and checked his pulse.
His heart was still beating...just.
I bent, got my shoulder under him and heaved him up
into a fireman’s carry. I staggered a little getting him
downstairs: Rico’s even bigger than I am and my
cracked rib turned every step into a jolting, jarring
agony. But I wasn’t going to leave him behind.
Outside, Mikhail had driven off in his Mercedes and our
Chrysler was a wreck, its radiator caved in from when
Rico had rammed through the gates. Shit! I found a
black SUV in the garage and dumped Rico in the
passenger seat, then frantically hunted for the keys,
finally finding them in the guards’ quarters. By now,
Rico’s face was deathly pale, his breathing a barely-
audible hiss.
I grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t you fucking die on me,” I
snarled. “Don’t you dare!”
His breathing grew a little deeper. I threw the car into
gear and screeched off towards the hospital.
48
Irina
“Champagne?”
I turned towards the stewardess. “What?”
She smiled at me. “Champagne, madam?” She must
have seen something in my expression because she
frowned. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes,” said Mikhail, taking the glass for me and another
for himself. “She’s a nervous flier.” He gave her a big,
wide grin and she set off down the aisle of the first class
cabin, unaware that he was twisting in his seat to stare
at her ass.
I’d have to get used to that: the Russian norm of
watching your husband leer at other women. Even sleep
with them.
Married. I’d be married. New horrors kept leaking into
my brain like ice water oozing through a jagged crack.
There’d be a ceremony. A dress. Vasiliy would give me
away to him.
And I’d have to smile in every photo. The thought of
that got to me more than the thought of what would
happen that night...and every night.
Mikhail passed me my glass of champagne. “Drink,” he
said. He was smiling but there was an edge to his voice.
Remember your promise.
I put the glass to my lips and drank, trying not to gag. A
wedding. A honeymoon.
Children. I’d promised him children.
We flew on towards Moscow and I tried to hold back my
tears.
49
Angelo
At the hospital, I sat for four hours in a plastic chair
while they operated on Rico. I overheard the staff
talking about notifying the cops, since it was a gunshot
wound, so I put a pre-emptive call in to one of the guys
at the local precinct, to make sure the police report got
lost. It gave me something to do aside from curse
myself for getting Rico hurt.
I was going to personally gut Mikhail for what he’d done
to my friend. For what he planned to do to Irina. For
what he might be doing to her right now—
“Sir?”
I looked up into the face of a nurse. I stood up so fast
that she almost got whiplash following my face. “How is
he?”
“He should be fine. He was lucky: he must have been
standing almost sideways because the bullet went
across more than in. Tore up a lot of muscle but,
um…”—she blushed—”he’s a big guy. It’s going to leave
two big scars, though.”
I let out a long sigh of relief. “Yeah, well, the ladies love
a scar. Can I see him?”
She showed me through to his room. He was bandaged
from his neck down to almost his navel but his color
was better. “He’ll sleep for a couple more hours,” said
the nurse, and left me to it.
I sank down into the chair that faced his bed. He looked
peaceful, for the moment, eyes closed and head thrown
back like he didn’t have a care in the world. I envied
him. I thought for a long time about all the apologies I
wanted to make and how the fuck I was going to
explain it.
“I’m sorry,” I said at last. “I was an asshole.”
I had no idea what I was going to do. Irina was by now
in a strange country where I had no contacts and no
power, a place where I didn’t even speak the fucking
language. I wouldn’t even be able to find out where
Mikhail’s Russian home was.
My head felt like it was going to explode: hate for
Mikhail, hate for Vasiliy for trying to take my territory
and starting all this, hate at myself for being weak and
falling for a woman. I stood up and strode over to the
window, pulling back the drapes. The sun was going
down, the last rays lighting up fresh snow as it blew
against the glass. By now, Irina and Mikhail would be in
the air, on their way to Moscow. Fuck!
I couldn’t fix this with violence or intimidation or the
vicious hatred The Saints had had me believing. Maybe I
needed to think more like the Russians. More like Irina.
Cool and calm and logical. I shut my eyes and tried to
imagine her next to me, silken strands of hair blowing
against my neck in the wind. Her presence calming me,
guiding me….
I opened my eyes. There was only one move I could
make, only one person I could go to for help. And it
would mean going against everything I’d ever known.
Abandoning the SUV at the hospital, I got a cab to
Vasiliy’s townhouse. He was still on lockdown, so there
were guards at every window. They came alert as the
cab pulled up, then did a double take as I stepped out.
Several of them drew their guns.