The second one killed Papa.
“No!”
I never saw it coming.
“I’ll always make sure you’re safe, Anya…”
“Don’t ever look back, Anya…”
“They will kill you, too, Anya…”
My head swarms with terrifying thoughts and images I will never be able to erase from my memory.
Mama and Papa trusted them, invited them into our home.
And they took everything from us that night.
“What’s happening down there?” I whisper to my older brother Maks in the darkness of his bedroom. Dishes smash against walls, gunshots explode into the air, piercing screams shattering me to my core. “We need to get Mama and Papa!”
“It’s too late,” he says in a tight voice. “For them.”
He knew this would happen.
He was ready for them.
I pull my arm out of his tight grip. “No, it’s not! We have to help them!”
He grabs me by the shirt, his eyes blazing with rage. “Mama and Papa are gone. And if you don’t want to end up like them, you need to do as I say!”
My feet pound against the snow as I drag myself closer and closer to the boat, my fingertips frozen to the point that I’m not sure I can even press the numbers into the security keypad. My breath freezes as it hits the air, my teeth chattering like I’ve been plunged naked into a pool of ice cubes.
I reach out to hit the buttons, the boat bobbing on the water, and I’m suddenly thrust into the backseat of a blacked-out Ford Expedition.
Maks’s truck.
Pulsating electronica fills my ears through my earbuds, my eyes drooping closed as I sprawl out on the leather. “Did you really need me to come with you? You could have just brought the ice cream home, you know,” I grumble, scrubbing a hand down the front of my face. I’m exhausted from doing a job the night before in a town upstate, and all I really want to do right now is burrow under my covers and sleep.
“Relax,” Maks says. “This won’t take long. Don’t be such a bitch.”
I feel the car turn right and the cool, salty air billowing through my hair tells me we’re at the pier.
“Fine,” I huff. My stomach growls and I rub a hand over it. It’s officially rebelling against me. I guess some ice cream would be good after all. “You need me to come with?” I ask with a loud yawn once the truck comes to a stop. “I’m fresh off a killing spree, so I’m still a little jacked up.”
He snickers. “Thanks, but I’ve got it. I don’t need my baby sister backing me up.”
I sigh, a smirk tugging at my lips. “Suit yourself. Don’t say I never offered.” I’d do anything for my brother and he knows it. He and my uncle are all I have left.
He opens the door and hops out of the truck, leaving me with my thoughts.
Most of the time, I can deal with our shitty circumstances. I mean, we’re still alive, so that’s a big bonus. A few years ago, I didn’t think we’d survive for this long. But thankfully, our Uncle Boris had taken us in after we fled from our home. He brought us here to the States and gave Maks a job working on his crew.
I was too young and inexperienced, though, so he trained me. Turned me into his own personal weapon. Years later, I’m more lethal than my brother.
Uncle Boris never misses an opportunity to warn us that word travels fast, and the same people who killed Mama and Papa are still hunting for us. So most of the time, I keep my head down, flying under the radar and doing my work for that asshole bratva boss Volkov, hoping that one day, I can finally look up and see the light at the end of this dismal and dark tunnel.
Maks has promised me that we’ll be able to write our own ticket wherever we want to go after a few more ‘jobs’.
I’ve heard that before.
Papa used to make that same promise to Mama.
Unfortunately for both of them, he never got a chance to make good on it.
Crack! Pop! Bang!
I sit straight up with a gasp, the exploding sounds blasting through the music.
Holy shit! Did he seriously just shoot someone?
Did he kill someone?
A scream bubbles up from my lungs, but I bite down hard on my lower lip to prevent it from piercing the still air.
Oh my God, Maks!
Two more shots are fired and I strain my ears to hear voices.
They’re yelling something in a different language…
And it isn’t Russian.
My throat tightens, blood rushing between my ears.
Maks…
Police sirens sound in the distance and a car door slams, tires squealing on the pavement outside. The engine fades and my world is plunged back into an eerie stillness, save for the approaching cops.
I try to swallow, but the gaggle of tears in the back of my throat chokes me to the point that I can barely squeeze out a breath.
Maks never calls out to me.
He never opens the back door.
Minutes later…or maybe it’s hours…I reach up, my clammy, shaking hand gripping the door handle and pushing it open. I am greeted by a black sky and a desolate parking lot in the middle of an overgrown tree field near the water. I shakily get to my feet, gingerly stepping onto the pavement as if my legs might give out at any second.
My mouth falls open, but I can’t say the words that hover on the tip of my tongue.
My pulse throbs against my neck, heart galloping like a thoroughbred as I creep around to the back of the truck.
I fall to my knees, crashing hard against the concrete, bits of gravel digging into my hands as I collapse onto my brother’s bullet-torn and lifeless chest.
“Don’t look, Anya.”
“Don’t scream, Anya.”
But I can’t help myself.
I do both…
Again.
“Maks!” I gasp, sitting straight up in my airplane seat, my heart throbbing so hard, I press a hand to it to make sure it stays in my chest.
Yeah, I’m still alive.
I made it out that night.
I survived and my brother…didn’t.
After all we’d been through together…losing Mama and Papa, being forced from the only home we ever knew, on the run and living in hell with our uncle in a shithole apartment in Brooklyn…he was gone.
Forever.
Those splintered memories come back to haunt me pretty frequently, even though it’s been almost a year since he was murdered.
The book I’d been reading right before I fell asleep…when my mind was filled with steamy rock stars, hot surfers, and swoon-worthy FBI agents…falls to the floor. I let my eyes flutter closed for a second, trying to calm my breathing before I bend over to pick it up. Beads of perspiration pebble on the back of my neck as I force the images out of my mind.
Hence, the reason for the book.
It’s one of the reasons why I became such an avid reader over the past few years. It’s my only real escape…when I’m awake.
But once my eyes droop closed, the demons take over and my sexy romance fantasies morph into gruesome horror story plots with me as the main character.