Essence of Fear - Chapter One
Copyright © 2020 Bethany-Kris. All rights reserved.
PROLOGUE.
“NOW, WHAT are you going to do for me, Pavel? Tell me, yes?”
Pav kept a tight hold on the comic book in his twelve-year-old hands as he glanced up from the glossy cover featuring a man in a red cape to see his father staring at him from the driver’s seat. He’d been too distracted by the fact he had a comic book to even realize his father was speaking to him.
He didn’t get comics often.
Rarely, actually.
It wasn’t that his father, Dimitri, didn’t want to give him things, Pav knew. Dimitri gave Pav as much as he possibly could, but only when they were having a good month. Or, that’s how his father always put it whenever he came home with a little toy or a bag of sugary sweetness for Pav.
A good month, son. It’s been a good month for the boss.
Pav never thought his father meant he was the boss, though. Dimitri was always careful to make that clear. Kotovs aren’t anything but scum to use or wipe off around here, yeah? Remember that, Pav.
And he did.
Remember it, that was.
“Well?” his father demanded.
Dimitri’s dark eyes darted from where Pav was sitting in the passenger seat to the big building in front of them. Well, one building. It looked like one of many that was connected to other buildings. A few dark-colored cars were parked haphazardly throughout what might have been a parking lot, but there weren’t exactly lines to designate spots for the vehicles.
Pav had never been here before. Anytime his father worked, Pav stayed with one of Dimitri’s friends.
Looking at the dark, looming building, he wished he could have gone to his father’s friend’s home instead. One was a man they lived with; another was a nice lady with crinkly skin and white hair who always smelled like bread and reminded him of what he thought a grandmother would be like … you know, if he had one.
He didn’t, though.
He didn’t have a grandmother, or even a mother, for that matter. He didn’t even know his mother’s name. Dimitri said the dead should stay dead, especially when the dead was that kind of dead. Pav wasn’t sure what that meant.
But he had a bed that was clean, with sheets that had his favorite superhero printed on them. And he had a few toys that he took special care not to break because he knew to take care of his shit, as his father liked to say. And, of course, he had his dad, too.
His dad who kept him warm, fed, and clothed. His dad who never raised a hand to him and kept him out of trouble.
Pav didn’t want much more.
“Pavel,” his father said. “What did I tell you?”
Pav held tight to the comic and glanced down at the glossy cover again. “Stay here, don’t get out of the car, and be quiet.”
Dimitri’s shoulders relaxed a bit, and his stare softened. Without a word, his father reached over, cupped his head in his large palm, and drew Pav close enough to hug him and press a kiss to the top of his forehead.
“That’s it, my boy. That’s it. I’ll be out in a few.”
He thought he heard the shake in his father’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure. That was the thing about Dimitri Kotov. Even when he was afraid of something, he didn’t show it. He taught Pavel to be brave in that way.
“Don’t you get out of this fucking car; I will be right back.”
His father said it like Dimitri was the one who needed to hear it, and not Pav. He didn’t get the chance to ask his father about it, though, because in the next second, Dimitri was out of the car and slamming the door to their shitty Corolla shut before Pav could even open his mouth.
He watched his father walk toward the building and waited for Dimitri to glance over his shoulder even once. He didn’t.
That was the last time Pav ever saw his father. Walking into the Boykov Compound. Dimitri never came back out.
Not alive, anyway.
• • •
Pav was still clutching to that comic book hours later when he was dragged across the cement floor of the Boykov Compound and tossed at the feet of a man who, from the ground looking up, seemed bigger than a bull.
And the man looked about as irritated as a bull, too.
Sneering a bit at him, the man nudged at the comic book in Pav’s hands with the tip of his shoe. “What is your name, child?”
Pav heard the shudder of papers, caused by the comic book’s pages fluttering as his hands shook. He bet his eyes were peeled as wide as they could go as he struggled to find words to say to this large, domineering man waiting for an answer.
Around him, shoes shuffled on the floor, and a cough echoed. Other than that, it was all silence and fucking dampness.
He would remember that the most about this place, later in life when he relived these memories. The dampness and silence.
“Your name.”
“Pa-Pavel,” he whispered.
The man above him grunted, and Pavel tried to ignore the stinging in his arms and legs from the many scratches and scuffs he’d received as he’d fought against the men who had dragged him out of his father’s car.
Dimitri had told him to stay, after all.
They didn’t listen, though.
“Could just … get rid of it,” a man behind Pavel suggested. “I know the kid’s father—there ain’t a person to take him, boss. He’s got no family. A mother who died from shooting poison in her veins, and everybody else is gone, too, or they want to stay gone because of what his father was involved with.”
Again, the man above him grunted as cold, gray ices looked Pav’s way once more. “Seems a shame, no? A child as a sacrifice because his father’s a thief. But what else could be done with him? Look at him—small, and frightened. Like a puppy.”
“Puppies can be trained and kept,” someone else muttered.
The man’s eyes lit up for a minute as he regarded Pav with a hint of a smile forming. “Yes, trained and kept. Just like a puppy.”
Pav blinked.
What?
The large man kneeled down, but was careful to never let his dark, fitted suit touch the dirty cement floor as he came eye level with Pav. He pointed between Pav’s wide-eyed gaze with two fingers, and then at his own narrowed eyes in the same way.
“I see you, Pavel Kotov,” the man murmured, “and soon, you’ll learn to see me, too. My name is Vadim Boykov, but like everyone else, you may call me boss. Learn it quickly, follow the rules, and unlike your father, you may someday see the outside of these walls again.”
Vadim.
Pavel was never going to forget that name.
Then, Vadim used those two fingers of his to tap at the bottom of his throat. An action Pavel didn’t understand, but the coldness that radiated from Vadim as he did it was enough to make him shiver on the ground.
“You belong to me now. To the Boykovs.” Vadim tipped his head to the side and nodded to himself, adding, “Beware of those who show you mercy, young Pavel, for those are the people who know the essence of your fear.”
• • •
Ten years later …
The screams down the hall were only muffled when a morbid crack echoed down the corridor. Pavel continued his work three chambers down, as though he hadn’t heard anything at all and nothing was wrong. That was best. A decade working in the Boykov’s Compound taught him there was nothing worse than sticking one’s nose where it did not belong. Unless something directly involved him, Pavel was better off staying far away.
Filling the bucket with ice-cold water from the tap sticking out of the wall again, he headed to the man shackled in the corner. Other than the food Pavel brought him once a day—which wasn’t much—water and bread, just enough to keep him alive in between daily beatings and whatever punishment he was delivered from Vadim—this was the man’s hell.
Cold water splashed on him regularly. A beating whenever someone came in to deliver it, unless it was Pavel ordered to do it. Food when the time struck twelve in the afternoon. A hard, cracked cement floor that was always cold and wet. Shackles around his wrists and ankles, and occasionally one around his throat when he needed to be reminded that he was now a Boykov dog, and nothing else—an animal made to sit in his own waste, and be fed or taken care of when someone else deemed it appropriate.
He was no longer in control of his life.
Pavel didn’t even know the man’s name. He also didn’t know why this man—or why any of the other people locked in the chambers of the Boykov Compound—had been brought to this place. All he was told was that quite simply, these people deserved to be here because perhaps they had broken the rules, or maybe they had stepped out of line and needed a reminder about who exactly was the boss.
It didn’t matter.
He’d never asked for more details. His curiosity was not important enough to risk his own safety. He could be the next person shackled to a cement floor getting cold water poured over his head regularly with daily beatings in between.
Wasn’t it bad enough he was here?
That he’d been here for ten fucking years?
It was easier this way.
Hauling the water across the floor, Pavel tipped the bucket over the sleeping man’s head. How he was able to fall asleep while a man was killed just two chambers down—making sure he screamed the entire time, right up until his last few seconds on earth—was anyone’s guess.
Maybe because they became numb.
This was life now.
It took the cold water splashing down over the man’s shaking body—even in his sleep, he trembled, his bruises darker than normal and his one arm twisted at an awkward angle—for him to wake up. The man gasped and his eyes flew wide. Bloodshot and terrified. Like for the moment, he was somewhere else in his dreams. Now, he was awake again.
“Welcome back to hell,” Pavel murmured.
Bending down to be at a similar height to the man, he used the rag he’d tucked into the pocket of his black jeans to wipe at the mess of the man’s face. No one had ever told him not to be kind to these prisoners. No one had ever told him that while he often was made to deliver harsh punishments, and keep them alive until their next ride through hell, that he could not give them some sort of reprieve.
If anything, it helped him.
The man’s trembling didn’t let up, but he was far more relaxed to see Pavel standing in front of him and not someone else. Pavel knew that who woke this man up would determine how the remainder of his day would go.
Either pain, or … well, less pain.
Sometimes.
“Death,” the man croaked.
Pavel’s hand slowed from wiping the rest of the dried vomit from the man’s mouth. “What did you say?”
They were the first words he could ever remember saying to the man. He rarely spoke—if he didn’t indulge conversation, it was highly unlikely that he would learn anything about them. Learning things about them might cause him to get attached. He could not afford to be attached to people who were only destined to die.
Possibly by his own hand.
“When I see you,” the man whispered, “I see death.”
Pavel stilled in place. “Why?”
“Doesn’t death always offer a kind hand before he pulls you to the other side?” Swallowing hard, the man said, his voice tired and raspy, “Your kindness only hides what you’re here to do. You will use that same kind hand that you use to feed me and help me, to kill me someday, won’t you?”
“I—”
“You are the Zhatka—the Reaper.”
Pavel hadn’t realized it, then, but conversations always traveled in the chambers. This man hadn’t been the only one to hear that nickname. He wouldn’t be the last one to use it, either.
It was not a name Pavel wanted.
Not one he needed.
And yet, as the days melted into months, and then into years … he found being Zhatka in the chambers was easier than being Pavel. He even started to forget who Pavel was.
1.
Present day …
“YOU CANNOT stay here forever, Viktoria.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Of that, Viktoria was most sure. Not that she needed to tell her father that—she was sure the man already knew, like he always did.
That was the thing about Vadim Boykov … he was far too intuitive for his own good. He simply needed to look at her, the same way he had done time and time again during her life, to know she was struggling in her mind and heart. On the outside, she appeared cold and calm. Nothing new for her. Inside, she was a ball of blackening human, dying and disappearing.
Vadim only needed to look at her to know.
She wished, often, that wasn’t the case.
“Are you pretending to be deaf now?” her father asked. “I’ve spent twenty-four years helping to raise you, I know you can hear me.”
She sighed, and glanced away from the window overlooking the private property, which was surrounded by a rather large stone fence. Despite being Russian, she wasn’t fond of the Russian countryside. Perhaps because she much preferred the cement and noise of a city. There, it was always cold and distant.
A lot like her.
Here, the countryside was none of those things.
She couldn’t connect.
Vadim arched a brow at the same time she did, when their eyes met. That was probably the only thing that she took from her father—her expressions and her ability to seem indifferent to everything and everyone. Even if she was anything but …
Everything else, she’d taken from her dead mother. From her platinum blonde hair, to the ice blue of her gaze. Her angular features, soft lips, and wide eyes all came from her mom, too. She wished she remembered the woman better, but she’d been a bit young when her mother passed. All she was left with were the stories her brothers shared, and the occasional memory her father liked to tell when he was a little too drunk and free with his tongue.
Vadim, on the other hand, looked nothing like Viktoria. He was as big as a barrel in his chest, his face mean and weathered with age. Thin lips and a strong jaw that set off his roughened features.
The two of them didn’t look alike at all, but they were more similar than she cared to admit.
“I know I can’t stay here forever,” she said.
Vadim smiled a bit, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. To be fair, the man rarely smiled, anyway, and when he did … something bad was sure to follow. No one was exempt from that rule, not even his children. He had never hurt her. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that he wasn’t capable, though.
“Then, why are you still here?” Vadim asked, coming over to take a seat on the bench near the window with her. “You don’t even like Russia, girl.”
When she opened her mouth to lie and deny his statement, Vadim grinned and chuckled.
“Don’t bother with lies, yes? I know how you feel about the country.”
Of course, he did.
She wasn’t quite sure what he wanted her to say, though. The truth about why she hadn’t gone back to Chicago, where her brothers were waiting and reorganizing the Bratva that had once belonged to her father, was not as simple or as clean-cut as Vadim would like it to be. Or maybe it was Viktoria who didn’t think her answer was easy to understand.
After all, it was wrapped up in her father.
Vadim had been exiled to Russia—for good reason—by her older brother, Konstantin, after he’d taken over the Bratva. And while, sure, Viktoria had her brothers and a handful of friends in Chicago, it didn’t feel the same without her father.
Viktoria was the favorite.
The favored.
And still, she knew her father lied and hurt those she cared about, herself included. She was still struggling to connect the man who she knew had done terrible things to her brothers and the man she adored.
Because that was the thing about daughters and their fathers, wasn’t it?
Daughters adored their dads. Daughters saw their fathers as kings on unmovable thrones; as men above other men; as Gods among mortals. They put their fathers on a pedestal, and when they crashed down, it was always the daughters breaking the fall at the bottom.
Or rather, their misguided hearts and beliefs.
Squashed and shattered.
She was not exempt to the rule. If anything, she had been willing to pretend the bad parts of her father and the things about him that scared her the most hadn’t existed until she no longer had a choice but to face them head-on. By then … it was already too late.
She hadn’t been able to get out of the way when her father fell from his throne. So, she’d been crushed by the weight of his misdeeds, a lot like everyone else around her, too. Although … Viktoria, more so than others, if the way she felt meant anything at all. She wasn’t sure that it did.
Vadim gave her a look from the side, saying, “Chicago would be a far more comfortable place for you to be—especially with your brother taking over. I’m sure that extends you some grace and status. Why stay here longer than you have to?”
Maybe she wasn’t ready.
Maybe she hadn’t said the things she came to say quite yet.
She still wanted to love her father. She still wanted to adore him, even in his much-deserved exile from their family and life after all that he had done. He was her favorite, too.
“You know,” she said, “you asked about Konstantin and Kolya …”
“Mmm, my sons may hate me, but does that mean I have to hate them, Vik?”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
That wasn’t what she meant to ask.
“But you’ve yet to ask about her,” Viktoria said quieter. “Zoya Bennett, I mean.”
Vadim stiffened, but his expression didn’t flicker with even a hint of his emotion at her blatant, pointed statement. The other daughter he had—the one he’d hidden from them. The child she had never known about until the girl was practically grown, and even now … instead of embracing the young woman, Viktoria felt cold toward her. Like just her presence was enough to make Viktoria feel like her entire life with her father had been a lie.
My only girl. My printsessa. My favorite.
Maybe she was spoiled. Maybe she had an unhealthy adoration for her father, and that’s why this stung her so badly. Maybe it wasn’t Zoya or Vadim’s fault at all for her feelings, but rather … her own.
Zoya, the half-sister her father had decided to keep hidden and lie about, was just another piece of the puzzle. Viktoria didn’t see the girl—never said more than a couple of words to her when she did meet her. It wasn’t like the young woman had a problem with that, or so it seemed. Viktoria didn’t have room in her life for yet another person she was meant to care for, but didn’t feel like she could trust.
So, she stayed away from her half-sister.
She was still pissed at her father for lying to her for all these years, though. Although, if she were being honest, Zoya was just one piece of many. And not a piece that Viktoria cared to think about very often.
Why was she still here again?
Viktoria really didn’t know.
Vadim tucked one of her stray strands of straight, blonde hair behind her shoulder. A tender action for a man she knew had almost killed one of her brothers and tried again with her other. “I haven’t asked because there is nothing I need or want to ask about her.”
No, that really didn’t help.
Viktoria still felt cold.
“Sir, your lunch is ready to be served. Will you take it in the enclave again?”
At the sound of a man’s voice—unknown to her, despite her visit having lasted several days here at her father’s Russian estate—she stiffened all over. It was like in a second, she couldn’t breathe, her gaze tunneled and blackened at the edges, and her heart raced out of control. All it took was the voice of a man she didn’t know coming from behind her, and Viktoria felt two seconds away from passing out or throwing up.
Either one, or both, was likely. That was the thing about fear. There really was no controlling it. She wasn’t good at hiding it.
Vadim’s gaze darted to her, and then to the man wherever he stood at her back behind the bench seat. “In a moment, Anatoly.”
Footsteps receded.
Viktoria still wasn’t okay.
Her father knew it.
“Izvini,” Vadim murmured, his gaze drifting down to her shaking hands she’d balled in her lap. “I never thought to explain to the men who work here about your … issue.”
Issue.
Yeah.
That was a good way to put her absolute terror of unknown men. Which was funny because the man who had caused this hadn’t been unknown to her at all.
“And I’m sorry it happened at all … this,” her father added, nodding at her.
Viktoria forced herself to speak—if she didn’t, she might not say a word for hours. “Can we just eat, yes?”
Vadim nodded. “We’ll eat, but then you’re going home.”
Home.
Where even was that anymore?
• • •
From up above, Chicago seemed bright in the darkness, what with the clusters of lights from the city. And yet, Viktoria knew the second she stepped foot into the city, the wind would remind her just how cold the place was on its good days.
The pressure in the plane’s cabin released just a fraction before it started building again. Viktoria focused on the sights down below, which were getting closer and closer as the plane dropped for its final descent. There was always a brief moment before the plane’s wheels touched down to the tarmac that would have her heart leaping into her throat, but for the most part, she enjoyed flying.
What could happen twenty-thousand feet in the air?
Very little.
She shot the guy sitting next to her a look. Well … except when she had a chatty neighbor. It wasn’t like she gave off the let’s talk vibe, but God knew this asshole had tried again and again to engage her. He’d finally gotten the hint when Viktoria had literally stared him dead in the eyes, put her earbuds in slowly, and then cocked a brow as she turned the music on in her phone before turning to face the port window.
She was sure it’d hurt the guy’s feelings a little bit. And if not that, then it certainly hurt his pride. She wasn’t the chatty type, honestly. She certainly wasn’t going to talk to some stranger on a plane just because she was sitting beside him, he was bored, and he figured she would be a good conversationalist.
Surprise.
She wasn’t.
Did that make her a bitch?
Absolutely.
Did she care?
Absolutely not.
Bitch and Viktoria had become synonymous in her world. People threw that word at her like it was a knife. They said it with the intention to hurt her—to cut. It was funny, really, because instead of letting it affect her in a bad way, she just turned it around on them. They wanted to see a bitch? They didn’t like that she was cold?
Okay.
Then she could be worse.
Nobody had ever thought to figure out the reason why Viktoria was the way she was, anyway. Other than her brothers, maybe. Not that they needed to figure it out—they already knew. Everyone else, though? It was easier for the people who didn’t know her to just label her with a slur, and go on their way.
She just owned it.
The remainder of the flight passed by rather quickly. Before she knew it, the plane had taxied into the gate, and they were allowed to deplane. Slinging the messenger bag that she’d used as a carry-on over her shoulder as she came down the arrival’s escalator, her gaze landed on the person waiting a few feet away from the bottom of the moving stairs.
She might have been surprised to see him, but she couldn’t be, given he always seemed to know everything anyway. Even when he wasn’t directly told something, her brother, Konstantin, just seemed to have … a way about him.
Kolya, her oldest brother, was the one who scared everyone because of his size, and ever-changing moods. His coldness could rival hers on his good days, but it was the sudden bursts of violence that he was very capable of that really lingered in the minds of those around him when he was long gone.
Konstantin, though?
He was a little different.
Konstantin was calculating—he was the king on the chess board, in a lot of ways. He thought several moves ahead, and he never let anyone know what those moves were before he made them. Some people might call that unpredictable, but she didn’t know if that was the word she would use. The fear Konstantin invoked in others came from his ability to seem harmless until it was far too late, and he was never obvious.
Nothing he did was obvious.
Standing there in his three-piece suit, Konstantin looked almost out of place in the rest of the crowd. There was just an air about him—something that warned people from his aura alone to stay back; don’t engage. His usual smirk was gone as he looked at something off to his left, giving her a good view of his profile and the hard lines of his face. It was his features, that strong jaw and the coldness in his gaze, that reminded her of their father. But it was the structure of his face that reminded her of their long-dead mother.
Kolya looked just like their dad.
Her and Konstantin, though?
They took more after their ma.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about her brothers, but more importantly … she didn’t know how she felt about Konstantin. He’d been the one to send their father away, after all. He’d made Vadim leave Chicago and exiled him to Russia.
Viktoria wasn’t stupid. She knew that the way her father treated and raised her was quite different from the way Vadim had behaved toward his sons over the decades. She’d always blamed that on the Bratva—on her father being the Pakhan, and her brothers being his soldiers. But she couldn’t ignore that there had never been a time when Vadim acted like their father, either. It was always just the boss and his men. Even when they were young, Kolya and Konstantin had needed to be men and not boys.
She was always able to be Vadim’s little girl—his daughter. Nothing more and nothing less. It was that reason why seeing Konstantin waiting for her because, apparently, he’d gotten news she was coming back home without her actually telling him, put her on edge. It left her feeling confused.
She loved her brother.
And her father.
Now, her father had been taken from her. Konstantin had done that. It left her with a complex that she wasn’t exactly ready to deal with, not that she knew the first place to begin with it all.
All at once, Konstantin turned, and his gaze leveled on her. That was another thing about her brother. His stare was always penetrating—yeah, that was the best way to describe it, she supposed. Penetrating.
A person didn’t need to say a thing when Konstantin was around. He didn’t need words and explanations to know what someone was thinking or feeling. It was like he just stared at you and he knew it all, anyway.
Viktoria was not an exception to that rule.
“Your trip was good?” her brother asked.
Viktoria came to a stop a couple of feet away from him. It allowed her enough distance that he wouldn’t assume she wanted to greet him with something like a hug. “Good enough.”
Konstantin nodded. “And Vadim?”
“You don’t care.”
Her brother arched a brow. “Vik—”
“You sent him away. You wanted him to go and you took over his place here. You don’t have to pretend that you care about how he’s living in Russia, brat.”
Konstantin’s jaw tightened before he relaxed and offered her a smile. “I wasn’t asking for him, actually. More for you, hmm?”
Well …
“He’s making do,” she replied.
That was about as much as she wanted to give her brother, regarding their father. She had no doubt that Konstantin had a whole handful of people to watch Vadim. Likely the same people who reported back to him on their father’s behavior and actions while he lived out the rest of his life in exile, away from his family. He didn’t need her filling him in on the details.
“Was the trip … worth it, then?” Konstantin asked.
Viktoria sighed. “If you’re asking if it helped me with anything, then the answer is no.”
“I figured.”
“Where is Kolya?”
“Busy with Maya. You know how he is about that wife of his. She comes first.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Konstantin smirked. “No, I don’t. You simply hear it that way, sestra.”
“You can’t tell me what I hear. Unless, of course, my ears have suddenly become attached to your head. Let me know when that happened.”
She didn’t even try to tamper the coldness in her tone. She didn’t particularly have a reason to be icy to her brother, but this was her life, now. It was easier to keep people at a distance, and let them know their place, than it was for her to keep fighting them when they tried to get too close. Better to make that line in the sand clear before they ever got started.
Konstantin nodded. “I take it you don’t want to tell me the things you discussed with Vadim, then?”
“Nyet.”
“A hard no, huh?”
Viktoria smiled thinly. “Take it how you may.”
“You seem like you’re feeling …”
“What?”
“Extra nasty.”
Viktoria stared at the people passing them by instead of her brother. It was just easier. She didn’t need him to see the war in her gaze—a battle of emotions that was ever-present, and always constant in her heart and mind.
Life was not nice to her.
Not lately.
“We have an upcoming party,” Konstantin said when Viktoria kept quiet. This was typical for them. He’d try to engage her, and she just stayed silent until he gave up. “A baby shower for Maya and Kolya. I expect you to be there, be pleasant, and bring a proper gift.”
“Fine.”
“Oh, and since I know how Vadim always puts you in a headspace, perhaps you should go see your therapist while you’re back in the city, yes?”
Her jaw ached from how hard she was clenching her teeth.
He wasn’t wrong, though.
It wasn’t just Vadim and her brothers who left her with a complex whenever she was in her father’s presence. It was far more than just that. It was like every conversation with Vadim thrust her right back to a time when he had failed her the very most.
That made her feel angry.
Guilty.
So ashamed.
Dirty.
She didn’t want to blame him for what had happened to her, but she still did. She loved him, and she hated him.
“I think I will visit her, actually,” Viktoria said.
Konstantin smiled briefly as she looked back at him. “Good.”
“But not because you told me to.”
“Of course not.”
“NOW, WHAT are you going to do for me, Pavel? Tell me, yes?”
Pav kept a tight hold on the comic book in his twelve-year-old hands as he glanced up from the glossy cover featuring a man in a red cape to see his father staring at him from the driver’s seat. He’d been too distracted by the fact he had a comic book to even realize his father was speaking to him.
He didn’t get comics often.
Rarely, actually.
It wasn’t that his father, Dimitri, didn’t want to give him things, Pav knew. Dimitri gave Pav as much as he possibly could, but only when they were having a good month. Or, that’s how his father always put it whenever he came home with a little toy or a bag of sugary sweetness for Pav.
A good month, son. It’s been a good month for the boss.
Pav never thought his father meant he was the boss, though. Dimitri was always careful to make that clear. Kotovs aren’t anything but scum to use or wipe off around here, yeah? Remember that, Pav.
And he did.
Remember it, that was.
“Well?” his father demanded.
Dimitri’s dark eyes darted from where Pav was sitting in the passenger seat to the big building in front of them. Well, one building. It looked like one of many that was connected to other buildings. A few dark-colored cars were parked haphazardly throughout what might have been a parking lot, but there weren’t exactly lines to designate spots for the vehicles.
Pav had never been here before. Anytime his father worked, Pav stayed with one of Dimitri’s friends.
Looking at the dark, looming building, he wished he could have gone to his father’s friend’s home instead. One was a man they lived with; another was a nice lady with crinkly skin and white hair who always smelled like bread and reminded him of what he thought a grandmother would be like … you know, if he had one.
He didn’t, though.
He didn’t have a grandmother, or even a mother, for that matter. He didn’t even know his mother’s name. Dimitri said the dead should stay dead, especially when the dead was that kind of dead. Pav wasn’t sure what that meant.
But he had a bed that was clean, with sheets that had his favorite superhero printed on them. And he had a few toys that he took special care not to break because he knew to take care of his shit, as his father liked to say. And, of course, he had his dad, too.
His dad who kept him warm, fed, and clothed. His dad who never raised a hand to him and kept him out of trouble.
Pav didn’t want much more.
“Pavel,” his father said. “What did I tell you?”
Pav held tight to the comic and glanced down at the glossy cover again. “Stay here, don’t get out of the car, and be quiet.”
Dimitri’s shoulders relaxed a bit, and his stare softened. Without a word, his father reached over, cupped his head in his large palm, and drew Pav close enough to hug him and press a kiss to the top of his forehead.
“That’s it, my boy. That’s it. I’ll be out in a few.”
He thought he heard the shake in his father’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure. That was the thing about Dimitri Kotov. Even when he was afraid of something, he didn’t show it. He taught Pavel to be brave in that way.
“Don’t you get out of this fucking car; I will be right back.”
His father said it like Dimitri was the one who needed to hear it, and not Pav. He didn’t get the chance to ask his father about it, though, because in the next second, Dimitri was out of the car and slamming the door to their shitty Corolla shut before Pav could even open his mouth.
He watched his father walk toward the building and waited for Dimitri to glance over his shoulder even once. He didn’t.
That was the last time Pav ever saw his father. Walking into the Boykov Compound. Dimitri never came back out.
Not alive, anyway.
• • •
Pav was still clutching to that comic book hours later when he was dragged across the cement floor of the Boykov Compound and tossed at the feet of a man who, from the ground looking up, seemed bigger than a bull.
And the man looked about as irritated as a bull, too.
Sneering a bit at him, the man nudged at the comic book in Pav’s hands with the tip of his shoe. “What is your name, child?”
Pav heard the shudder of papers, caused by the comic book’s pages fluttering as his hands shook. He bet his eyes were peeled as wide as they could go as he struggled to find words to say to this large, domineering man waiting for an answer.
Around him, shoes shuffled on the floor, and a cough echoed. Other than that, it was all silence and fucking dampness.
He would remember that the most about this place, later in life when he relived these memories. The dampness and silence.
“Your name.”
“Pa-Pavel,” he whispered.
The man above him grunted, and Pavel tried to ignore the stinging in his arms and legs from the many scratches and scuffs he’d received as he’d fought against the men who had dragged him out of his father’s car.
Dimitri had told him to stay, after all.
They didn’t listen, though.
“Could just … get rid of it,” a man behind Pavel suggested. “I know the kid’s father—there ain’t a person to take him, boss. He’s got no family. A mother who died from shooting poison in her veins, and everybody else is gone, too, or they want to stay gone because of what his father was involved with.”
Again, the man above him grunted as cold, gray ices looked Pav’s way once more. “Seems a shame, no? A child as a sacrifice because his father’s a thief. But what else could be done with him? Look at him—small, and frightened. Like a puppy.”
“Puppies can be trained and kept,” someone else muttered.
The man’s eyes lit up for a minute as he regarded Pav with a hint of a smile forming. “Yes, trained and kept. Just like a puppy.”
Pav blinked.
What?
The large man kneeled down, but was careful to never let his dark, fitted suit touch the dirty cement floor as he came eye level with Pav. He pointed between Pav’s wide-eyed gaze with two fingers, and then at his own narrowed eyes in the same way.
“I see you, Pavel Kotov,” the man murmured, “and soon, you’ll learn to see me, too. My name is Vadim Boykov, but like everyone else, you may call me boss. Learn it quickly, follow the rules, and unlike your father, you may someday see the outside of these walls again.”
Vadim.
Pavel was never going to forget that name.
Then, Vadim used those two fingers of his to tap at the bottom of his throat. An action Pavel didn’t understand, but the coldness that radiated from Vadim as he did it was enough to make him shiver on the ground.
“You belong to me now. To the Boykovs.” Vadim tipped his head to the side and nodded to himself, adding, “Beware of those who show you mercy, young Pavel, for those are the people who know the essence of your fear.”
• • •
Ten years later …
The screams down the hall were only muffled when a morbid crack echoed down the corridor. Pavel continued his work three chambers down, as though he hadn’t heard anything at all and nothing was wrong. That was best. A decade working in the Boykov’s Compound taught him there was nothing worse than sticking one’s nose where it did not belong. Unless something directly involved him, Pavel was better off staying far away.
Filling the bucket with ice-cold water from the tap sticking out of the wall again, he headed to the man shackled in the corner. Other than the food Pavel brought him once a day—which wasn’t much—water and bread, just enough to keep him alive in between daily beatings and whatever punishment he was delivered from Vadim—this was the man’s hell.
Cold water splashed on him regularly. A beating whenever someone came in to deliver it, unless it was Pavel ordered to do it. Food when the time struck twelve in the afternoon. A hard, cracked cement floor that was always cold and wet. Shackles around his wrists and ankles, and occasionally one around his throat when he needed to be reminded that he was now a Boykov dog, and nothing else—an animal made to sit in his own waste, and be fed or taken care of when someone else deemed it appropriate.
He was no longer in control of his life.
Pavel didn’t even know the man’s name. He also didn’t know why this man—or why any of the other people locked in the chambers of the Boykov Compound—had been brought to this place. All he was told was that quite simply, these people deserved to be here because perhaps they had broken the rules, or maybe they had stepped out of line and needed a reminder about who exactly was the boss.
It didn’t matter.
He’d never asked for more details. His curiosity was not important enough to risk his own safety. He could be the next person shackled to a cement floor getting cold water poured over his head regularly with daily beatings in between.
Wasn’t it bad enough he was here?
That he’d been here for ten fucking years?
It was easier this way.
Hauling the water across the floor, Pavel tipped the bucket over the sleeping man’s head. How he was able to fall asleep while a man was killed just two chambers down—making sure he screamed the entire time, right up until his last few seconds on earth—was anyone’s guess.
Maybe because they became numb.
This was life now.
It took the cold water splashing down over the man’s shaking body—even in his sleep, he trembled, his bruises darker than normal and his one arm twisted at an awkward angle—for him to wake up. The man gasped and his eyes flew wide. Bloodshot and terrified. Like for the moment, he was somewhere else in his dreams. Now, he was awake again.
“Welcome back to hell,” Pavel murmured.
Bending down to be at a similar height to the man, he used the rag he’d tucked into the pocket of his black jeans to wipe at the mess of the man’s face. No one had ever told him not to be kind to these prisoners. No one had ever told him that while he often was made to deliver harsh punishments, and keep them alive until their next ride through hell, that he could not give them some sort of reprieve.
If anything, it helped him.
The man’s trembling didn’t let up, but he was far more relaxed to see Pavel standing in front of him and not someone else. Pavel knew that who woke this man up would determine how the remainder of his day would go.
Either pain, or … well, less pain.
Sometimes.
“Death,” the man croaked.
Pavel’s hand slowed from wiping the rest of the dried vomit from the man’s mouth. “What did you say?”
They were the first words he could ever remember saying to the man. He rarely spoke—if he didn’t indulge conversation, it was highly unlikely that he would learn anything about them. Learning things about them might cause him to get attached. He could not afford to be attached to people who were only destined to die.
Possibly by his own hand.
“When I see you,” the man whispered, “I see death.”
Pavel stilled in place. “Why?”
“Doesn’t death always offer a kind hand before he pulls you to the other side?” Swallowing hard, the man said, his voice tired and raspy, “Your kindness only hides what you’re here to do. You will use that same kind hand that you use to feed me and help me, to kill me someday, won’t you?”
“I—”
“You are the Zhatka—the Reaper.”
Pavel hadn’t realized it, then, but conversations always traveled in the chambers. This man hadn’t been the only one to hear that nickname. He wouldn’t be the last one to use it, either.
It was not a name Pavel wanted.
Not one he needed.
And yet, as the days melted into months, and then into years … he found being Zhatka in the chambers was easier than being Pavel. He even started to forget who Pavel was.
1.
Present day …
“YOU CANNOT stay here forever, Viktoria.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Of that, Viktoria was most sure. Not that she needed to tell her father that—she was sure the man already knew, like he always did.
That was the thing about Vadim Boykov … he was far too intuitive for his own good. He simply needed to look at her, the same way he had done time and time again during her life, to know she was struggling in her mind and heart. On the outside, she appeared cold and calm. Nothing new for her. Inside, she was a ball of blackening human, dying and disappearing.
Vadim only needed to look at her to know.
She wished, often, that wasn’t the case.
“Are you pretending to be deaf now?” her father asked. “I’ve spent twenty-four years helping to raise you, I know you can hear me.”
She sighed, and glanced away from the window overlooking the private property, which was surrounded by a rather large stone fence. Despite being Russian, she wasn’t fond of the Russian countryside. Perhaps because she much preferred the cement and noise of a city. There, it was always cold and distant.
A lot like her.
Here, the countryside was none of those things.
She couldn’t connect.
Vadim arched a brow at the same time she did, when their eyes met. That was probably the only thing that she took from her father—her expressions and her ability to seem indifferent to everything and everyone. Even if she was anything but …
Everything else, she’d taken from her dead mother. From her platinum blonde hair, to the ice blue of her gaze. Her angular features, soft lips, and wide eyes all came from her mom, too. She wished she remembered the woman better, but she’d been a bit young when her mother passed. All she was left with were the stories her brothers shared, and the occasional memory her father liked to tell when he was a little too drunk and free with his tongue.
Vadim, on the other hand, looked nothing like Viktoria. He was as big as a barrel in his chest, his face mean and weathered with age. Thin lips and a strong jaw that set off his roughened features.
The two of them didn’t look alike at all, but they were more similar than she cared to admit.
“I know I can’t stay here forever,” she said.
Vadim smiled a bit, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. To be fair, the man rarely smiled, anyway, and when he did … something bad was sure to follow. No one was exempt from that rule, not even his children. He had never hurt her. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that he wasn’t capable, though.
“Then, why are you still here?” Vadim asked, coming over to take a seat on the bench near the window with her. “You don’t even like Russia, girl.”
When she opened her mouth to lie and deny his statement, Vadim grinned and chuckled.
“Don’t bother with lies, yes? I know how you feel about the country.”
Of course, he did.
She wasn’t quite sure what he wanted her to say, though. The truth about why she hadn’t gone back to Chicago, where her brothers were waiting and reorganizing the Bratva that had once belonged to her father, was not as simple or as clean-cut as Vadim would like it to be. Or maybe it was Viktoria who didn’t think her answer was easy to understand.
After all, it was wrapped up in her father.
Vadim had been exiled to Russia—for good reason—by her older brother, Konstantin, after he’d taken over the Bratva. And while, sure, Viktoria had her brothers and a handful of friends in Chicago, it didn’t feel the same without her father.
Viktoria was the favorite.
The favored.
And still, she knew her father lied and hurt those she cared about, herself included. She was still struggling to connect the man who she knew had done terrible things to her brothers and the man she adored.
Because that was the thing about daughters and their fathers, wasn’t it?
Daughters adored their dads. Daughters saw their fathers as kings on unmovable thrones; as men above other men; as Gods among mortals. They put their fathers on a pedestal, and when they crashed down, it was always the daughters breaking the fall at the bottom.
Or rather, their misguided hearts and beliefs.
Squashed and shattered.
She was not exempt to the rule. If anything, she had been willing to pretend the bad parts of her father and the things about him that scared her the most hadn’t existed until she no longer had a choice but to face them head-on. By then … it was already too late.
She hadn’t been able to get out of the way when her father fell from his throne. So, she’d been crushed by the weight of his misdeeds, a lot like everyone else around her, too. Although … Viktoria, more so than others, if the way she felt meant anything at all. She wasn’t sure that it did.
Vadim gave her a look from the side, saying, “Chicago would be a far more comfortable place for you to be—especially with your brother taking over. I’m sure that extends you some grace and status. Why stay here longer than you have to?”
Maybe she wasn’t ready.
Maybe she hadn’t said the things she came to say quite yet.
She still wanted to love her father. She still wanted to adore him, even in his much-deserved exile from their family and life after all that he had done. He was her favorite, too.
“You know,” she said, “you asked about Konstantin and Kolya …”
“Mmm, my sons may hate me, but does that mean I have to hate them, Vik?”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
That wasn’t what she meant to ask.
“But you’ve yet to ask about her,” Viktoria said quieter. “Zoya Bennett, I mean.”
Vadim stiffened, but his expression didn’t flicker with even a hint of his emotion at her blatant, pointed statement. The other daughter he had—the one he’d hidden from them. The child she had never known about until the girl was practically grown, and even now … instead of embracing the young woman, Viktoria felt cold toward her. Like just her presence was enough to make Viktoria feel like her entire life with her father had been a lie.
My only girl. My printsessa. My favorite.
Maybe she was spoiled. Maybe she had an unhealthy adoration for her father, and that’s why this stung her so badly. Maybe it wasn’t Zoya or Vadim’s fault at all for her feelings, but rather … her own.
Zoya, the half-sister her father had decided to keep hidden and lie about, was just another piece of the puzzle. Viktoria didn’t see the girl—never said more than a couple of words to her when she did meet her. It wasn’t like the young woman had a problem with that, or so it seemed. Viktoria didn’t have room in her life for yet another person she was meant to care for, but didn’t feel like she could trust.
So, she stayed away from her half-sister.
She was still pissed at her father for lying to her for all these years, though. Although, if she were being honest, Zoya was just one piece of many. And not a piece that Viktoria cared to think about very often.
Why was she still here again?
Viktoria really didn’t know.
Vadim tucked one of her stray strands of straight, blonde hair behind her shoulder. A tender action for a man she knew had almost killed one of her brothers and tried again with her other. “I haven’t asked because there is nothing I need or want to ask about her.”
No, that really didn’t help.
Viktoria still felt cold.
“Sir, your lunch is ready to be served. Will you take it in the enclave again?”
At the sound of a man’s voice—unknown to her, despite her visit having lasted several days here at her father’s Russian estate—she stiffened all over. It was like in a second, she couldn’t breathe, her gaze tunneled and blackened at the edges, and her heart raced out of control. All it took was the voice of a man she didn’t know coming from behind her, and Viktoria felt two seconds away from passing out or throwing up.
Either one, or both, was likely. That was the thing about fear. There really was no controlling it. She wasn’t good at hiding it.
Vadim’s gaze darted to her, and then to the man wherever he stood at her back behind the bench seat. “In a moment, Anatoly.”
Footsteps receded.
Viktoria still wasn’t okay.
Her father knew it.
“Izvini,” Vadim murmured, his gaze drifting down to her shaking hands she’d balled in her lap. “I never thought to explain to the men who work here about your … issue.”
Issue.
Yeah.
That was a good way to put her absolute terror of unknown men. Which was funny because the man who had caused this hadn’t been unknown to her at all.
“And I’m sorry it happened at all … this,” her father added, nodding at her.
Viktoria forced herself to speak—if she didn’t, she might not say a word for hours. “Can we just eat, yes?”
Vadim nodded. “We’ll eat, but then you’re going home.”
Home.
Where even was that anymore?
• • •
From up above, Chicago seemed bright in the darkness, what with the clusters of lights from the city. And yet, Viktoria knew the second she stepped foot into the city, the wind would remind her just how cold the place was on its good days.
The pressure in the plane’s cabin released just a fraction before it started building again. Viktoria focused on the sights down below, which were getting closer and closer as the plane dropped for its final descent. There was always a brief moment before the plane’s wheels touched down to the tarmac that would have her heart leaping into her throat, but for the most part, she enjoyed flying.
What could happen twenty-thousand feet in the air?
Very little.
She shot the guy sitting next to her a look. Well … except when she had a chatty neighbor. It wasn’t like she gave off the let’s talk vibe, but God knew this asshole had tried again and again to engage her. He’d finally gotten the hint when Viktoria had literally stared him dead in the eyes, put her earbuds in slowly, and then cocked a brow as she turned the music on in her phone before turning to face the port window.
She was sure it’d hurt the guy’s feelings a little bit. And if not that, then it certainly hurt his pride. She wasn’t the chatty type, honestly. She certainly wasn’t going to talk to some stranger on a plane just because she was sitting beside him, he was bored, and he figured she would be a good conversationalist.
Surprise.
She wasn’t.
Did that make her a bitch?
Absolutely.
Did she care?
Absolutely not.
Bitch and Viktoria had become synonymous in her world. People threw that word at her like it was a knife. They said it with the intention to hurt her—to cut. It was funny, really, because instead of letting it affect her in a bad way, she just turned it around on them. They wanted to see a bitch? They didn’t like that she was cold?
Okay.
Then she could be worse.
Nobody had ever thought to figure out the reason why Viktoria was the way she was, anyway. Other than her brothers, maybe. Not that they needed to figure it out—they already knew. Everyone else, though? It was easier for the people who didn’t know her to just label her with a slur, and go on their way.
She just owned it.
The remainder of the flight passed by rather quickly. Before she knew it, the plane had taxied into the gate, and they were allowed to deplane. Slinging the messenger bag that she’d used as a carry-on over her shoulder as she came down the arrival’s escalator, her gaze landed on the person waiting a few feet away from the bottom of the moving stairs.
She might have been surprised to see him, but she couldn’t be, given he always seemed to know everything anyway. Even when he wasn’t directly told something, her brother, Konstantin, just seemed to have … a way about him.
Kolya, her oldest brother, was the one who scared everyone because of his size, and ever-changing moods. His coldness could rival hers on his good days, but it was the sudden bursts of violence that he was very capable of that really lingered in the minds of those around him when he was long gone.
Konstantin, though?
He was a little different.
Konstantin was calculating—he was the king on the chess board, in a lot of ways. He thought several moves ahead, and he never let anyone know what those moves were before he made them. Some people might call that unpredictable, but she didn’t know if that was the word she would use. The fear Konstantin invoked in others came from his ability to seem harmless until it was far too late, and he was never obvious.
Nothing he did was obvious.
Standing there in his three-piece suit, Konstantin looked almost out of place in the rest of the crowd. There was just an air about him—something that warned people from his aura alone to stay back; don’t engage. His usual smirk was gone as he looked at something off to his left, giving her a good view of his profile and the hard lines of his face. It was his features, that strong jaw and the coldness in his gaze, that reminded her of their father. But it was the structure of his face that reminded her of their long-dead mother.
Kolya looked just like their dad.
Her and Konstantin, though?
They took more after their ma.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about her brothers, but more importantly … she didn’t know how she felt about Konstantin. He’d been the one to send their father away, after all. He’d made Vadim leave Chicago and exiled him to Russia.
Viktoria wasn’t stupid. She knew that the way her father treated and raised her was quite different from the way Vadim had behaved toward his sons over the decades. She’d always blamed that on the Bratva—on her father being the Pakhan, and her brothers being his soldiers. But she couldn’t ignore that there had never been a time when Vadim acted like their father, either. It was always just the boss and his men. Even when they were young, Kolya and Konstantin had needed to be men and not boys.
She was always able to be Vadim’s little girl—his daughter. Nothing more and nothing less. It was that reason why seeing Konstantin waiting for her because, apparently, he’d gotten news she was coming back home without her actually telling him, put her on edge. It left her feeling confused.
She loved her brother.
And her father.
Now, her father had been taken from her. Konstantin had done that. It left her with a complex that she wasn’t exactly ready to deal with, not that she knew the first place to begin with it all.
All at once, Konstantin turned, and his gaze leveled on her. That was another thing about her brother. His stare was always penetrating—yeah, that was the best way to describe it, she supposed. Penetrating.
A person didn’t need to say a thing when Konstantin was around. He didn’t need words and explanations to know what someone was thinking or feeling. It was like he just stared at you and he knew it all, anyway.
Viktoria was not an exception to that rule.
“Your trip was good?” her brother asked.
Viktoria came to a stop a couple of feet away from him. It allowed her enough distance that he wouldn’t assume she wanted to greet him with something like a hug. “Good enough.”
Konstantin nodded. “And Vadim?”
“You don’t care.”
Her brother arched a brow. “Vik—”
“You sent him away. You wanted him to go and you took over his place here. You don’t have to pretend that you care about how he’s living in Russia, brat.”
Konstantin’s jaw tightened before he relaxed and offered her a smile. “I wasn’t asking for him, actually. More for you, hmm?”
Well …
“He’s making do,” she replied.
That was about as much as she wanted to give her brother, regarding their father. She had no doubt that Konstantin had a whole handful of people to watch Vadim. Likely the same people who reported back to him on their father’s behavior and actions while he lived out the rest of his life in exile, away from his family. He didn’t need her filling him in on the details.
“Was the trip … worth it, then?” Konstantin asked.
Viktoria sighed. “If you’re asking if it helped me with anything, then the answer is no.”
“I figured.”
“Where is Kolya?”
“Busy with Maya. You know how he is about that wife of his. She comes first.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Konstantin smirked. “No, I don’t. You simply hear it that way, sestra.”
“You can’t tell me what I hear. Unless, of course, my ears have suddenly become attached to your head. Let me know when that happened.”
She didn’t even try to tamper the coldness in her tone. She didn’t particularly have a reason to be icy to her brother, but this was her life, now. It was easier to keep people at a distance, and let them know their place, than it was for her to keep fighting them when they tried to get too close. Better to make that line in the sand clear before they ever got started.
Konstantin nodded. “I take it you don’t want to tell me the things you discussed with Vadim, then?”
“Nyet.”
“A hard no, huh?”
Viktoria smiled thinly. “Take it how you may.”
“You seem like you’re feeling …”
“What?”
“Extra nasty.”
Viktoria stared at the people passing them by instead of her brother. It was just easier. She didn’t need him to see the war in her gaze—a battle of emotions that was ever-present, and always constant in her heart and mind.
Life was not nice to her.
Not lately.
“We have an upcoming party,” Konstantin said when Viktoria kept quiet. This was typical for them. He’d try to engage her, and she just stayed silent until he gave up. “A baby shower for Maya and Kolya. I expect you to be there, be pleasant, and bring a proper gift.”
“Fine.”
“Oh, and since I know how Vadim always puts you in a headspace, perhaps you should go see your therapist while you’re back in the city, yes?”
Her jaw ached from how hard she was clenching her teeth.
He wasn’t wrong, though.
It wasn’t just Vadim and her brothers who left her with a complex whenever she was in her father’s presence. It was far more than just that. It was like every conversation with Vadim thrust her right back to a time when he had failed her the very most.
That made her feel angry.
Guilty.
So ashamed.
Dirty.
She didn’t want to blame him for what had happened to her, but she still did. She loved him, and she hated him.
“I think I will visit her, actually,” Viktoria said.
Konstantin smiled briefly as she looked back at him. “Good.”
“But not because you told me to.”
“Of course not.”