Gangsters with Guns Episode #3 (11 page)

Bile filled her throat. If she were a heroine in a movie, now would be the moment when she lifted her chin and told the Georgian villain that her husband would finish him if he hurt a hair on her head. But she feared Artur might be relieved if she came home in a body bag.

So she lifted her chin and kept quiet. This wasn’t a movie, and no one would ever have cast her as the leading lady. Not anymore. Her time in the spotlight had been all too brief.

Dato gripped her chin again and steered her gaze back to Aleksei’s house. The drapes caught fire. The inside of her son’s dream house glowed brightly as the furniture and cabinets and light fixtures were swallowed in bright flames.

In a few minutes, the whole structure would be nothing but ash and the stones from the fireplace.

“You like that?” Dato crooned in her ear, as if he were a solicitious lover. “We’ll hit your son’s pharmacies next.”
 

All of Aleksei’s hard work, his hopes and ambitions, the dream life he’d finally started to achieve—Dato was destroying everything. Even if Aleksei survived, what would he have left? She felt a mother’s pain for her child’s loss.

“Why?”
 

“An eye for an eye,” Dato said. “He stole from my business and killed my man. He thought he’d get away with it, but he won’t. I’ll take everything from him. His business. His home. His family.”

“It wasn’t Aleksei,” she said, pleaded. “He didn’t do anything to you.”

“No? Who did, then? Tell me what you know, Mrs. Koslovsky.” He squeezed her jaw with his long fingers.

“No answer? We’ll collect your whore of a daughter next,” he threatened.

“It was me,” she said. “All of it was me. I’m the mastermind. I made the drugs for him and told him where and how to sell them.”

Dato let go of her and then slapped her hard across the cheek. Her skin smarted, but she didn’t dare feel the spot with her hands. His dark eyes burned through her. “I don’t like liars. Do it again, and I’ll cut out your tongue.”

She snapped her mouth shut. In the rearview mirror, she caught sight of the driver watching her and Dato with his good eye. She couldn’t read his emotions—whether he also thought she was lying, whether he felt sympathy for her, whether he wanted to revel in destruction the way his boss did.

Yet, through the separation between the front driver’s and passenger’s seat, she saw him fumble with her backpack. He sneaked a hand inside and stole a wad of the poisoned cash. Human nature was so dependably consistent.

Maybe all wasn’t lost.

WHEN INNA FINALLY arrived at the precinct and was seated in an “interview” room, her clothes stuck to her skin. The dampness wasn’t from the rain and drizzle outside, but her own sweat.
 

Her palms and forehead were slick with a sheen of perspiration, no matter how often she tried to wipe it away, and her mouth was unbearably dry. She had a tremor in her hands.

Her own weakness, her body’s betrayal, galled her. She had come so far, survived so much. She had even managed to get herself to work this morning.
 

And now she could hardly cope, could hardly breathe.
 

Falling apart. She was simply falling apart. She couldn’t handle the stress of all of this. She was going to die—if not at the hands of whoever was stalking her, then from the strain.
 

Detective Hersh entered the interrogation room and gave her a pitying glance. “Do you need something? Maybe a cup of coffee?”

“Water,” she croaked, breath coming fast, as if she were running. Her chest burned. Her mind sent the right signals to calm down, to breathe. But her body had other ideas. The panic she’d almost banished now took over her involuntary functions.

She needed a pill and peace and quiet. She needed to go home and lock her door and wrap herself in her down comforter and tell herself she was safe.

That tactic had worked in the past, when she could dismiss her imaginings about the intrigue around her as fantasy. But she couldn’t imagine away the horrible, violent things that had happened in the past few days. Those things had really happened. There were witnesses and evidence.
 

And victims. Vlad and Nick had both been shot. Igor was dead.

No one patted her soothingly and told her she was imagining things now, least of all Detective Hersh.

“Have you heard what happened at Troika tonight?” the detective asked.

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

“Someone decided to throw a few Molotov cocktails and light up the place.”

“What?” She blinked at him. Surely she was hearing things.

“Firebombs. At the nightclub. Three people are dead, and more seriously injured.” He explained, as if he were almost reluctant to break the news to her.

“Is Aleksei okay?” she asked. “And Jack? Were they there?”

“We’re looking for your brother. We need to question him,” Hersh said. “But we don’t think he was there. Jack is fine. Any idea why someone would try to catch their nightclub on fire? Or target you?”

“No. None.”

“What do you know about your brother’s business?”

“You mean the nightclub? Or the pharmacies?”

“Does he work with your father?”

“No. They had a falling out. Papa wanted him to make it on his own.”
 

“But your father let you join the business.”
 

She thought she detected the slightest challenge in his words, a hint of doubt.
 

“Sort of,” she said. “I run my design business out of the import-export office, and I order furniture and decorative items through the company that I think will appeal to our clients. He’s my partner in that, but the rest is his show.”
 

“The rest?”

“The alcohol and packaged goods.” And the mysterious deliveries she had previously refused to consider. She took a sip of the water, almost spilling it from the Styrofoam cup with the shaking in her hands.

“The question makes you nervous?” He perched on the corner of the table and leaned toward her. He smelled of Old Spice and spearmint gum.

“What? No.” His questions didn’t make her nervous. The true answers to them did.
 
What kind of business were her father and brother really involved in?
 

“Do you have any idea who your father or brother might have upset? Or who their competitors are?”

“Is that what you think this is all about? Some business competition?” She took another sip of water.

“No, Inna. It’s not what I think it’s about. It’s not what you think it’s about either. Is it?”

The events of the day were taking their toll. Tonight was a hell of a night to stop her medicine cold turkey. She gripped the empty cup under the edge of the table, holding on so tightly to her slipping control that she crushed the cup in her hands.

“Your family’s involved in organized crime.”

She inhaled sharply at the idea and choked on the water in her mouth. She coughed and sputtered. “You mean, the mafia? That’s not possible,” she said reflexively.

Once, she had imagined the very same thing, only to reject the notion. Her papa, the honorable and distinguished man she knew him to be, couldn’t possibly be a white collar criminal. Instead, she had latched onto the idea that he might be a spy, a theory terrifying in its own right, but one that elevated him above the criminal element. She recognized the romanticism now.

Organized crime? She thought about Igor, dead in the back of his own delivery truck. Maybe it was possible. She had vowed to consider the possibilities. To look at what was in front of her.

Detective Hersh cocked his head. She could feel him studying her, eyeing her sweaty face and shaking hands. She imagined she looked like a junkie in detox, not at all credible. Mentally unstable, Dr. Kasparov had said. Paranoid.

If she truly considered the possibility of her family’s involvement in organized crime, was she now lucid, seeing clearly? Or was she sliding into the rabbit hole of fear and suspicion that would ultimately land her in an asylum, where white was the new black and no one cared if you drooled out of the side of your mouth?

She shuddered at the thought. The threat of institutionalization had always snapped her back to reality and motivated her to bury her unfounded suspicions.

But maybe they hadn’t been unfounded.

“Are you okay?” the detective asked.

“No,” she said as the repressed memories bubbled up—snatches of conversation that quickly ended when she entered the room, an expired Russian passport with her father’s picture and a different name printed on it, and the lucrative warehouse almost empty of supplies. Puzzle pieces that together had seemed so damning.

A lot of nothing, Dr. Kasparov had told her. An overactive imagination. Paranoia that latched onto conspiracy theories. Hallucinations. With each new sliver of evidence she presented, Dr. Kasparov had told her that she was clinically delusional and needed her medication adjusted.
 

She hadn’t broached this particular topic with Dr. Shiffman, too afraid of opening the Pandora’s box of fear and illness. She wanted to get better. She wanted a normal life.

Hersh took off his glasses. He took his time cleaning the lenses with a cloth that he pulled from his pocket. Her hands shook harder as he waited for her to speak, as if a demon locked inside of her rattled its cage to get out.

She wasn’t ready to voice any suspicions
again
. Perhaps it was enough, for now, to acknowledge them to herself.
 

Finally, he put the glasses back on and let out a deep sigh. “You’ve had a rough day. A rough couple of days. How about I send you home, and I’ll stop by tomorrow to talk with you?” He once again shone his compassion on her and treated her kindly.
 

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak and dreading their next encounter.

He walked her out to the front of the precinct. Mikhail was waiting on a wooden bench, and he rose when he saw her. “I came to take you home.”

He laid his hand on her shoulder, and she almost flinched at the contact. While she was grateful for his efforts to protect her this morning, she didn’t want him touching her. She remembered all too clearly the horrific pass he’d made at her, when he’d promised to grab her hair, rip her panties, and make her scream for mercy. To be fair, he didn’t know what had happened to her in college, but he creeped her out all the same.

He might be her brother’s friend and maybe she should forgive him for the off comment he’d made, but her instincts screamed to stay away from him.

Hadn’t she promised herself not to ignore her intuition?

He was too smooth, and he stood too close. She imagined other women found him attractive. Perhaps they even liked his straightforward offer of rough sex, but she didn’t. She dodged him by turning toward Detective Hersh. “What about Vlad? I promised I’d wait for him.”

“We have more questions for him. It might be a while.”

“See?” Mikhail said. “No reason you should cool your heels here. Look at you. You’re exhausted. And shaking. Have you even eaten anything?” He grabbed her hand and started pulling her toward the door.
 

Inna supposed she must look a wreck. Should she struggle? Cause a scene? She didn’t want to go with him, but maybe he was right. Maybe she needed to go home, eat something, rest up.
 

She glanced back at Detective Hersh. He didn’t seem alarmed at all by the prospect of her leaving with Mikhail. Were her fears unreasonable?

“I’ll let Vlad know that you went home,” Detective Hersh said, as if he agreed with Mikhail’s course of action.

She let Mikhail lead her away, but she stayed wary.

“COME ON, INNA,” Mikhail coaxed. “Look at you. You need to eat something.”

“I’m really not hungry,” she protested.
 

He caught her hand and felt the tremor in her fingers. He stepped closer, into her space. She was seated at the kitchen table in her stark industrial-style kitchen with its polished concrete countertops and stainless steel appliances. The rough wood table was covered with the fast food feast he’d insisted on buying for her, but she hadn’t touched any of it. Not even a salty french fry.

Didn’t matter. He didn’t care what she ate so long as she took a few good long gulps of her milkshake.

“Please, Inna.” He caressed her with his voice while he held her hand. Her eyes widened, but she looked more ready to bolt than swoon.
 

He wanted to kiss her, to see her eyes widen even more, perhaps even to shock her with the force of his passion for her. He held back, careful of frightening her just now, but imagining how he would like to take her here, now, on the floor of her spotless kitchen.

He wondered how long it would be before she relaxed and warmed in his presence. How long before he no longer needed to alter her state to get what he wanted from her?
 

When she was out, he could do whatever he wanted to her, but he thought he might like her participation. He’d like to override her resistance.

He would overpower her, overwhelm her, throw her down hard against the cold tiles, make her writhe under him, and beg for anything and everything. For release. For him to stop. For him to take her harder and faster. It didn’t matter, really, so long as she eventually gave him her total submission.

He relished the vision of Artur’s little princess kneeling at his feet and begging him to dirty her up or let her suck him off.

Abruptly he cut off this line of thinking. Now was too soon to act on even a fraction of his impulses. She was too skittish, too likely to scream and call for help.

A dose of the newest cocktail he and Aleksei were selling, even a small one, would fix that.

This new drug would lower Inna’s inhibitions and make her more susceptible to Mikhail’s expert seduction. Once she stopped being so skittish, the right words and the right touch would light her up.
 

“At least drink some of the milkshake,” he urged. “It’s vanilla. Your favorite. Right? I remembered,” he said. “Drink a little. Just a sip even. Your father won’t forgive me if you pass out from hunger. And he’s already angry at me as it is for the scare you had this morning.” He infused his request with the lies most likely to guilt her into compliance.