Distrust (Smirnov Bratva Book 1) (14 page)

A knock comes on my door when I lie down. I pretend to be asleep until I hear Maso’s voice. When I open the door, he’s holding my bag. I’m shocked, to say the least. I had my bag at the club, I remember seeing it on the floor of
his
house when he had me tied to the couch.

“Where did you get this?” I ask him pulling it to me.

“A girl dropped it off to the guards,” he says eyeing me. “Why did a girl do that? Then she told me to tell you ‘sorry for the black eye.’”

“She punched me, obviously,” I state.

He cocks his head at me. “And you let her? Don’t act dumb, Elina, if I punched you you’d kick me in the balls and drop me so you could continue.”

I smirk up at him, he knows me well. “She had an unfair advantage,” I say, pulling the door shut to go back to bed.

“His number is in there. Don’t call him.” He shuts the door the rest of the way, and I drop it all on my bed. Everything’s still there. He must have gone through my phone, the sneaky bastard.

I leave everything where it is and lay back on my bed. My hands run over my stomach, feeling the cut that’s bandaged, wondering if it’s something I could ever forgive. Wondering if it’s something he could ever forgive me for.

Chapter 23

Kazier

I haven’t seen her or touched her for four days. I didn’t want to let her go, I wanted to keep her here, locked away just for me. Someone so wild like her, though, can’t be contained. I saw it the minute I was bandaging her. The look of loss, hurt written all over her face. I’ve never seen a look so sad in the two years that I’ve known her, and it shocked me to the core. So I knew right then, no matter how much I wanted to keep her locked away in my house, I couldn’t do it. I thought for a second she’d choose to stay. She said her father is a prick. I thought perhaps I’d be the better devil out of the two, I guessed wrong. Because when Freya took her things back, she was there.

I shake her from my thoughts when I enter my father’s house, he’s sitting at the head of the table, a glass in his hand, his wife by his side. She doesn’t look up at me when I enter, her hand brushes his shoulder, showing affection that’s totally fake.

Useless fake cunt is what she is.

Another reason I let her go. I never wanted to force someone to be with me. I want them to choose me, not for my power, not for my wealth, but because she wants me. I want what my father had with my mother. He loved her, she loved him. Up until the day she died. He changed then, grew harder, more distant. Sometimes I don’t even recognize him. All I see is a man who thinks with his cock, and his balls are sitting right next to him, touching his arm like she loves him. What a load of shit.

“Sit, Kazier,” he says looking up to me. I take my seat and the evil cunt looks my way, a smile etches across her lips, and I know whatever is about to leave his mouth I won’t like one little bit. “You
will
marry her, and you won’t argue about it. Ever since I found out about
that girl,
it’s not acceptable. Not at all. So you will marry the Russian.” His hand comes down on the table in finality, indicating the end of the conversation.

I start to laugh because he’s serious. His face scrunches up, and so does Catara’s as she watches me.

“Go fuck yourself!” Both mouths fall open. My father’s snaps shut fast. He stands, knocking the chair backward while Catara’s hand goes to her mouth as she watches him.

“You speak to me that way?” He raises his voice. I can basically see plumes of smoke leaving his face. He’s not angry, he’s infuriated, and I like it. I stand as well, matching him.

“You’ve had your control over me long enough, old man. No more.”

His hand comes up, and before he can strike me with it, I capture it and hold hard. “You don’t run anything anymore. You can’t control me any longer. Stop and think! Do you want to be killed at the hands of your son? Because the way you’re going that’s what
will
happen.”

“Get out of my house, Kazier.” I drop his hand and he points to the door.

“My pleasure, just remember who’s in charge now. I may be your son, but I am also much more than that. You know that. You’re even scared of it. So stop while you’re ahead.”

He doesn’t say a word when I walk out. I hear
her
voice as I leave, reassuring him. It won’t work. He knows. He knows he can’t win over me. It’s just a matter of time before I prove it to him.

****

I end up on Death’s doorstep, I haven’t been here since I was a teenager. He’s the only person that I know that won’t have an opinion on any of this. Actually, I doubt he cares. When he opens the door he’s dressed in an apron, a very heavy duty black apron. His hands have sturdy black gloves covering them. A mask covers most of his face. He lifts it when he opens the door for me, nods, and walks in letting me follow. I shadow him all the way to the basement, where the smell is so bad that I lift the shirt I’m wearing to cover my mouth and nose, but it doesn’t stop the stench from permeating through.

“Fuck! Death,” I swear at him. He walks to the table I didn’t see when I stepped inside the basement. But now I’m looking and it’s revolting. He doesn’t acknowledge me as he turns the stereo back on, blasting it through the walls, then continues on with what he was doing before I knocked. I watch in fascination. He’s dismembered a body, pieces of it all over the table. He lifts a hand, dunks it into a big bowl, then that’s when I hear it, and remember his earlier comment about torturing Elina. He’s using acid. The place stinks, like literally death. Now I understand why the people who work for him don’t like to be around when he does his work, it’s disgusting, and he doesn’t seem to have a care in the world.

He repeats this process with feet, torso, and I sit there and watch each one in fascination just as much as him. No wonder he’s the clean-up guru, no one would be able to trace anything, especially after the acid bath.

He places the head in last. Looks like a man, mid-thirties. Once it’s in there, he removes the apron and gloves and smirks at me.

“Acid… isn’t it beautiful,” he says walking past me to the door we just came in from. I follow, turning back when I hear the sizzle. He waits at the door, as he holds it open waiting for me. “Did you use it on her?” he asks as he steps through the door and back up the stairs to his house. He goes to the sink and starts washing his hands, over and over again. Like he can’t seem to get them clean enough.

“No, I would never.”

He stops, grabs a towel to dry them and turns to face me. “She is only meat,” he says with a shrug. “All meat can melt… die… age.”

“Do you like anyone? Or love anything?” I ask him amused at his reaction to people.

He thinks about it for a second. “No.” And that’s it, that’s his wisdom to his answer, just no.

“So, never loved a woman?”

He shakes again. “It’s just a chemical in your brain that tricks you. If I ever get that chemical reaction in my brain, I will slit the woman’s throat.”

“That’s not exactly how it works, Death.” He pulls a bag from the drawer and starts popping peanuts into his mouth, looking at me amused.

“You watch me. The second, the minute that happens…” His hand lifts up, his finger makes a cutting action across his throat. Fuck! Would hate to be that person who falls in love with him. “What about you? You love that bird?” He pops another peanut in his mouth.

“Possibly.”

He nods his head. “You want me to slit her throat?”

“Fuck off, man.”

“I’m serious, it would help ya in the long run. Women are fucked. Men are such easier creatures to work out. We fuck. We shoot. We eat. We sleep…” he pops in another peanut, “…and we’re even more natural in death. No tits to work around,” he says nodding his head.

“Do you have friends?” I ask him because I’ve never seen him speak to anyone outside of me. Fuck! He hardly speaks to Anton and Viktor, and we’re all related.

“Nope, I don’t have time for that shit.”

“What am I then?”

He drops his head to the side, and looks at me before he answers, “You are Pakhan. So for you, I have time and respect.”

“And if I wasn’t?”

A simple shrug of his shoulders is all I get. Just as I’m about to ask him more, my phone starts ringing. I notice the caller ID and my hand freezes, my mouth drops open, I don’t even know if I should answer it. I look up to Death, and see him opening another packet of nuts, he doesn’t care.

“Yes…” I programmed her number into my phone when she was passed out, knocked out, whatever.

“Kazier, it’s me.” Her voice not as strong as it usually is.

“I know who it is, Elina, I have your number.” I turn and walk away, out the front door without saying a word to Death when I leave. “Why are you calling?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that the most truthful thing you have ever said to me?”

“Yes,” she replies with honesty. “If I come there, will you behave? You have to promise me you will?”

I stop at my car door, my hand is frozen on it. “Come where?”

“To your house, I think we need to talk.”

“How long?” I ask jumping into my car.

Could I ever really say no?

“I’m here now,” she replies ending the call. I drive like a dickhead just like Anton does all the way home. As soon as I reach my driveway, she’s there, standing against her car, her phone in hand, sunglasses covering her eyes.

Chapter 24

Elina

His walk is dangerous, his voice is deadly. And those hands that are tucked into his pockets are sinful. His mind, though, I don’t trust it, not anymore. He walks closer to me but keeps his distance stopping just a few feet away. Bringing one hand out from his pocket, I watch as it twitches. He wants to touch me. He always wants to touch me. This time, I can’t allow him to. His dark jeans and his black shirt fit him perfectly. Under that covering his legs are toned, covered in ink. His body just the same. No one has more ink than Kazier, and because of that, the look he portrays is frightening and intimidating. People don’t know what to expect from him. Most want to kill him, to end him, so he no longer controls, so he can’t control them. They can’t. Many have tried, even my family, but none have succeeded. He has grown up in it, with it, he has taken it on as his craft. And because of that he’s the ultimate Pakhan, second to none. He loves what he does, any man can see that. Even I understand that nothing else matters to him.

“Inside?” he asks me, pointing his finger toward the door.

I shake my head. I’m not that forgiving to walk straight back into the lion’s den. Not happening.

“The park,” I reply, waving to the park across the street. Out in the open is where I intend to be, not locked up where if I piss him off people can hear me scream.

“The park? Don’t trust me?” he jokes. He smiles then it drops when he realizes that I quite simply don’t. We walk side by side, his hand brushing mine, then me pulling mine away so as to have no interaction at all. I may be his weakness, but he doesn’t know that he is mine also. We walk to a bench, only one other couple is here with their kids. They don’t look at us when we sit down. I feel his closeness, his dark boots tap on the ground beneath our feet.

“Why are we here, Elina?” I know he doesn’t mean here. He means here, in this moment, right now, together.

“You hurt me,” I manage to say. I don’t look at him, my eyes fixated on the couple pushing their son on the swing. They both look happy, something I can never have, something I’ve never experienced. Even with Kazier, my first real anything was fabricated out of something that wasn’t mine. It was forced. It didn’t become forced to see him. I liked seeing him, I liked everything about him. That was part of the problem. You don’t fall for a marked man, and that’s all he was, a mark I was meant to trade in. To eventually help them kill him.

“You made me hurt you,” is all he says. His fingers start tapping on the chair where he holds on firmly. He does that when he thinks, his fingers start to tap away. “I warned you loud and clear, Elina.” He turns to face me, his eyes hard. “You’re lucky I let you go. You should be locked away right now. If you were anyone else, you would be. And that’s not because of your family, I don’t give two shits about them, you aren’t them, it’s because you were scared of me.”

“You love it when people fear you.” It’s the truth, he does, he knows they do.

His fingers stop tapping and he stares at me without blinking. “I did… I mean, I do. I just didn’t expect it to affect me that
you
did. That you feared me.” His hand lifts up slowly, and when he reaches for my face I pull back, his hand stops. Then it continues and knowing that he isn’t going to hurt me I let him touch me, but he doesn’t, instead he pulls my glasses from my face. He stares at both my eyes, one still slightly black from the punch and the other black and blue from where
she
hit me. He drops the glasses onto his lap then touches my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

My mouth opens and I have to force words to leave it because he’s sitting here saying sorry, the man who has a reputation to kill before they take their next breath and then walk away like it’s a normal day. The man who cuts people’s hearts and livers out to sell on the black market. The man who traffics, and destroys lives, is saying
sorry.