Noticing the byki beginning to move back toward the stairs, I crept back to the hallway, following the sound of Kisa and Luka talking in the kitchen.
Pulling myself together, I tried to shake the image of the man slumped brokenly on the floor, and joined the others.
Kisa saw me enter as she cleaned Luka’s wounds, his hands gripping tightly to his waist. As I saw them in the kitchen, and heard the byki moving to clear the van from the driveway, anger bubbled up threatening to erupt.
“Why did you bring that man here?” I blurted, my voice betraying every emotion I was feeling.
Kisa’s blue gaze found mine and I saw sympathy flood her expression.
“We needed to get him out of Brooklyn. This was the only place I knew where we could bring him to be safe,” Luka replied. I crossed my arms over my chest.
“And who is he, Luka? Who is this man you brought to our family’s house, disturbing what was meant to be my one real chance to get away from it all?”
“All of what?” Luka asked, his face marring with confusion.
“This!” I bit back, louder than I meant, and gestured to the basement. “A man you seem to have stolen from our enemy. All the Bratva shit I wanted to escape from for a couple of months. The violence, the fighting, everything! I’ve only been here a few days and you bring this to my door!”
Silence reigned after my outburst. Kisa dropped the rubbing alcohol she was holding. “Luka had to do it, Tal. He had to. He needed to honor his friend that died in the Dungeon’s cage.”
My eyes widened.
362 … 362 was the friend Luka had to kill in the cage?
I could see Kisa had realized that I’d made the connection. I briefly closed my eyes. That man chained in the basement was … “He’s 362’s brother?”
Luka’s sad eyes looked to me. “He had a twin. An identical twin.”
Luka looked down at the floor as though he could see through the partition to the man chained up in the basement.
“What?” I whispered, in shock.
Kisa, seeing Luka’s head hanging low as if in exhaustion, said, “He and his brother were taken as children, their family massacred and they were. They were…” Kisa pressed her hand to her stomach and took a deep breath. “They were experimented on for many years. Used as subjects for developing drugs. Anri, 362, was not completely susceptible, but Zaal was.”
Zaal, I thought, sounding the name in my head of the newly incarcerated man. His name is Zaal.
“He’s under the influence of some new drug, Tal. We’re not sure what it is or what it does, but Levan Jakhua has used him as his pet killer we believe since he was eight.”
This time bile rose to my throat as I imagined Zaal going through all that hell. “Bozhe moy,” I whispered. Kisa nodded her head. “Does our father know?” I asked. Luka’s head snapped up.
“Yes,” he replied with a curl of his upper lip. “He’s been no help.” I stepped back, instinctively moving away from my brother. Darkness filled his expression.
Kisa pressed her hands on either side of Luka’s face. “It’s okay. You got him out.”
“Why hasn’t our father been any help?” I asked. I watched Kisa’s face pale. I stilled, suspicion on my mind. “What?”
Luka looked my way and declared, “He’s a Kostava.”
It took me a moment to digest what he’d said. My heart started to race. A Kostava, I must have misheard.… “What did you say?” I asked again, my voice barely audible. My hand instinctively lifted to hold my necklace in my hands.
Luka wore a stormy expression, looking every inch the Bratva knayz, and repeated, “He’s a Kostava. He and Anri were the Kostava heirs.”
I stepped back, my eyebrows dragging down, as I absorbed my brother’s words. “What have you done?” I whispered in shock. I gazed upon my brother, who’d now risen to his feet. He looked like a stranger to me at this moment in time.
“I can’t believe you would do this!”
I watched as Luka seemed to radiate rage and I squared my shoulders. Stepping forward, feeling my hands shake with the depth of my anger, I said, “You’re shaming this family saving a Kostava and bringing him here, to our home!”
Luka’s fisted hand slammed down on the granite countertop and he roared, “I am honoring Anri’s death! I’m seeking the revenge he didn’t get the chance to fulfill!”
Luka marched round the counter to meet me toe to toe, and snarled, “Anri was my best friend. He taught me to survive.” His chest rose and fell from his panting, and he said, “He may not have been my blood, but he was still my brother!”
Feeling like I’d been stabbed in my heart, I fought back a sob. Luka’s dilated brown eyes never moved from mine. I nodded. “I get that I don’t understand, cannot understand, what you went through. I never will. I get that the animal in the basement’s brother saved you and helped you survive, but he isn’t your blood. You do all of this, even defy our father for him, the brother, the sibling, you never had. But he isn’t your sibling.” Luka’s expression remained unchanged until I whispered, “But I am. I’m your blood. I’m your sister. And when you were taken, it was me who cried for you, prayed for your lost soul. It was this sister who mourned my big brother, the boy who would always protect me and read to me as a kid, and tell me that family was the most important thing in our world.”
Luka’s head tilted to the side and he blinked furiously, but no words came from his mouth.
I shook my head and began to walk away. “I get that you feel you need to do this for your dead friend, but I’ll never support you bringing that monster here. For the first time, you have disappointed me.”
“Talia!” Kisa called loudly as I walked to the staircase.
Stopping, I turned back and asked, “How long is that man to stay chained up in the basement?”
Luka was still standing in the same spot. He coldly replied, “As long as it takes.”
I laughed without humor at his evasive answer, then said, “Careful, Luka. You worry you can’t be in this life, that you’re not fit to be a Bratva boss. But you’re sounding more like a Russian knayz than you’re giving yourself credit for.”
Marching up the stairs, I beelined to my bedroom. Passing Luka’s patrolling personal byki, I slammed my door shut and pressed my back against the hardwood. My eyes stung as I pictured Luka’s furious face.
He was, is, my brother.…
Feeling drained by the twists and turns of the day, I took a quick, hot shower, dried my hair, and lay down on my bed. I stared at the ceiling waiting for sleep that never came.
But as hours passed, my anger gave way to calm, and I found myself torn.
Luka had survived. He’d returned when all hope was gone and a fucking Kostava had been his salvation in that gulag hell.
Running my hands down my face, the memory of the Kostava monster downstairs filled my mind. My heart actually hurt when I pictured him tied up in chains, his large body bloodied, limp, riddled with scars and incision marks. How unkempt and unclean he looked, like he hadn’t taken a shower in months. Like he’d known nothing but abuse and cruelty.
And the tattoo across his chest, the slave identity number that signified he’d been taken as a child, taken and made to endure unspeakably evil things at the hands of the Jakhua Georgians.
Derr ‘mo!
No matter how hard I tried to hang on to the hatred drilled into me against the Kostavas since birth, I wasn’t a monster. I wasn’t unfeeling. And that man, that dark, huge animal of a man had clearly been through hell.
B‘lyad! I screamed internally.