Page 9 of Vows of Blood
I sigh. I’m twenty-three now. It was easy to keep my legs closed when I was just a little catholic school girl. Now it’s like everybody’s expecting me to be fucking. I don’t even know if I’ll ever give it up, actually. If I’m being honest, nobody’s felt worthy enough.
“You don’t have to worry, though,” I tell my mother. “He’s not exactly a knight in shing armor. Alexei… he’s an animal. You should have seen how he beat the guy who tried it with me. It was scary. I mean, I get it. Sometimes, the best weapon against an animal is a worse one.”
I think about my sister. God, I’m so scared for her. That beast is about to be her husband.
“What are we gonna do, Mom?” I say softly. “I wish you were here to tell me it’s going to be all right.”
And I do. I really, really do.
4
ALEXEI
“He’s still there? Good. Keep him there.”
Pavel hangs up the phone, his face twisted in anger. He’s been in a mood all day today. Actually, he’s been kind of off since Damon Pecora’s funeral. Our conversations have been normal, but there’s been an edge to him that I can’t put my finger on. It’s like he’s got a permanent chip on his shoulder all of a sudden. Thank goodness I’m driving this time.
“He’s not going anywhere,” I say in an effort to calm him. “Not so long as he’s in front ofbubckis. If they send all the girls home, then maybe we’ll miss him. He practically lives at the strip club.”
I glance over at him, hoping to see a smile. There’s none. He’s watching the world spin by through the passenger’s side window, rubbing his upper lip with one finger in a rough, back and forth motion. “If he knows we’re coming,” he grumbles, “some stripper’s tits aren’t going to hold him there.”
I shrug. “As far as we know, that’s not the case.” He doesn’t respond. He just sits there with a set jaw, staring at the road.“You know, he might actually have our money. This might not go so bad.”
That finally cracks him. He smiles and says in Russian, “You’re a dreamer, Alexei.” He glances at the purplish bruises on my hands as they grip the steering wheel. It’s been a few days since the funeral. My knuckles are scratched up, but they’re healed for the most part. Pavel asks, “How are your fists?”
“They’re fine,” I tell him. “Hopefully, I won’t need to use them.”
Pavel shrugs. “Yeah, whatever.”
A few minutes later, we’re pulling into the parking lot of the club. As we get out, I notice Pavel adjusting the gun in his waistband. “Hey, leave that here,” I tell him.
He scowls at me. “You’re kidding.”
“Father said he doesn’t want Kozlov killed,” I respond in Russian.
He rolls his eyes and takes the gun out of his waistband and puts it in the glove compartment. “He’d better not give us a hard time,” he says in English.
This club is one of at least three around Fortune and probably one of my father’s more successful ones. It’s almost always filled with people around this time of night, especially in the VIP room. It makes thousands of dollars a night, a portion of which goes directly to my father in tribute.
Years ago, he gave me the option to have my own club, but I declined. That was mostly because of Kira. She never felt right about it and I guess that transferred over to me. Since her death, I’ve become a kind of silent partner in this part of our overall businesses. My brothers under me run the places withthe tributes trickling up to me and my father. It’s a system that works well and makes it so neither I nor my father has to physically be in the building too often.
The moment the bouncer lets us in, the music blasts us as we walk through the door. The beat thumps so loudly that it rattles my chest as we move through the crowd. On stage, there are three topless strippers on the poles, performing for the drooling masses around the stage as they wave the dollars. We weave through a mix of women in lingerie and customers who can’t take their eyes off their asses as they willingly give up their hard earned cash with tits in their faces.
A couple of the waitresses say hello to Pavel and give me a polite, but cautious, look. That’s pretty normal. My brother is the handsome, approachable one, the one the girls always talked to. I, on the other hand, carry my father’s legacy. In the years that Maxim Mechnikov spent as akryshawhen my grandfather wasPakhan, he earned the nickname ofMedvedor ‘Bear’. He spent years fighting in underground circuits, earning his so-called nickname to the point where most people who knew him feared him before he ever spoke a word.
That is his legacy. And so, as his firstborn, I’m nicknamedMedvezhonokor ‘Little Bear’, but mostly just by those in our inner circle. Uncles and Aunts and the like. I guess it’s a term of endearment. I never really cared for the name. Either way, the girls who work under us usually give me a wide berth when they see me coming.
“Hey, Alexei! Pavel!”
We both look in the direction of the VIP section and see one of myboyeviks, Mikky. He stands about six-four and is rumored to be nearly three hundred pounds of muscle. He’s the one man inmy outfit who’s directly from Russia, and it’s said that he used to be a wrestler. When I assigned him to this club, the joke went around that I wouldn’t need any bouncers with him around.
We walk over to him and greet him with a one-armed shake and hug. “What brings you here? Checking up on me?” he asks in Russian, and thank goodness. His English really is terrible.
“We’re here on business,” I say. “Looking for one of our associates. Maybe you’ve seen him?”
Mikky nods slowly. “Who is it?”
“Nikolai Kozlov,” says Pavel. “He’s late on a few payments and we need to collect.”
