Chapter 105: Chapter One Hundred and Five

Everyone around the table grabbed what their arms and holsters could carry before running up the stairs. They all crowded around the back windows.

“Fuck,” Frankie sighed.

Gloria held back a gasp as she looked out on the backyard. The one Marge let out was enough to express the horror of the moment. Frank Senior pulled his wife into his chest, hoping to shield her from seeing anything worse. Nora was on her knees in the center of the yard, on the aisle where she and Gloria had walked down to the altar. Her face was pale and her body trembled as she swayed from side to side. Blood oozed from her temple and soaked the grass at her feet but there was nothing center mass that made Gloria think she was on Death’s door… yet.

“I got your friend,” Ivan called with a wave at the window she and Frankie stared out of. “What did you say your name was, sweetheart?”

Nora gasped as he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back so she would be forced to look up at him. “Fuck you, Russian pig!” Nora yelled before spitting blood in his direction.

“Odd name, but if I had that name I’d be in a bad mood too, I suppose,” Ivan said, unaffected. “That beautiful piece of ass, Juniper, told me this is the girl responsible for taking all my pets away from me. She even said this bitch helped my wife hide my daughter away. Is that true?” Ivan asked, looking down at Nora, whose head was still craned at an unnatural angle.

“You bet your fucking ass it is!” Nora screamed. “And I’d do it again! I promised your wife I’d keep your daughter safe and I intend to see that promise through! Don’t let her out, Frankie! Don’t listen to…” A well-delivered rise of Ivan’s knee knocked Nora square in the jaw. He released her hair, allowing her to collapse forward onto the aisle, which she turned red with her blood.

“I wouldn’t worry so much about the vows you made to my wife,” Ivan said, wiping his hands off with the help of a rag held out by one of his men. “She broke many vows of her own. Like the one to obey, for example.” He sighed and shook his head. “No matter, back to the objective at hand. I’m here for my daughter, Donati. You will return her to me, alive, mind you, and I will take her to her fiance. We’ll complete the contract your boss signed nearly two decades ago and go about our lives as we once were. I can assure you I have girls aplenty for you to choose from. I’ll even let you pick the one you want out. My daughter, to you, is a dime a dozen. To me, well, thanks to an injury I sustained shortly after she was born, she is one in a million. That leaves us with one clear course of action: I take my one in a million, you take your pick of a million. I think that’s more than fair.”

“I don’t know,” Frankie called. “I’ve gotten accustomed to that slight Russian accent.”

Ivan snorted. “The girl has spent less than three months in her homeland. There is no accent.”

“Clearly you’ve never heard her get mad!”

“Mad? At her father? She was taught at an early age the meaning of respect. But I have Russian girls for you. Not to worry.”

“With brown hair that almost looks gold in the sunlight?” Frankie asked, taking his gun from one of his holsters. Gloria glared at him, not sure where he was going with this.

“Sure, sure, whatever.”

“And honey eyes? The kind where you can’t seem to find a color that exists anywhere else no matter how many farmers markets or superstores you visit?” Frankie asked.

There was silence for a minute. “What?!”

“You said I could get whatever I want. I’m telling you.”

“I’ll get you a fucking catalogue but…” Another beat of silence. “Ah, I see, you’re stalling.”

“For someone who’s been doing this their whole lives, you’re a bit slow on the uptake,” Frankie said with a laugh.

“Then let’s speed things up then, shall we?” Ivan asked. The sound of a gun being racked echoed across the quiet yard. “Otday mne moyu doch', ili ya vykrashu mebel' v krasnyy tsvet krov'yu etoy suki. –Give me my daughter or I paint the furniture red with this bitch’s blood!–”

“What did he say?” Marge asked. She gripped Frank Senior’s arm, then looked at Frankie in desperation. “What did he say, Frankie?!”

“It’s okay, Ma,” Frankie said, sending her a smile.

“Frankie…” Gloria whispered.

“Don’t fucking move,” Frankie warned with a look that froze her on the spot.

Only a moment later, though, when she looked out at Nora, who was back on her knees with a gun pressed to her temple, she thawed.

“Frankie, maybe…”

“I said fucking don’t,” he growled.

“What did he say?!” Marge screeched.

“He wants…” Gloria began.

“No!”

“He wants me for Nora,” Gloria said quickly.

Marge looked between them. “Do it.”

“Ma, what the fuck?!”

“He won’t hurt her! He needs her, right?! That’s what you said!”

“Marge,” Frank Senior said, trying to quiet her.

“It’s Nora! We practically raised her, Frank!” Marge yelled.

“Objectively speaking...” Conor began.

“I want everyone who is even considering that plan to shut the fuck up,” Frankie ordered.

“We could hand her over, get Nora back, clear out the place and then regroup and track her,” Conor continued.

Frankie stared at him, open-mouthed. “The fuck did you just suggest?”

“You did send Gen into a similar situation with Galante,” Accardi reminded him.

“Oh, I see. Want some payback, do you, Accardi?” Frankie asked.

“No, I just don’t see how this situation is all that different,” Accardi said.

“What’s different is we have just as many men here to back us up as Ivan does. Do you really think he’ll just walk away at this point? Just throw his hands up, do a little curtsy and leave us be?!”

“He’s got a point,” Leo agreed.

“Thank you!” Frankie said with a deep exhale.

“To be clear, I never said I was for the plan…” Accardi said, picking at his cuticles.

“Just added that in to be helpful, I guess?” Frankie asked with a disbelieving shake of his head.

“Trying to get the creative juices flowing.”

“No creative juices need to flow. We just need to stick to the plan and wait for the reinforcements to be in place.”

“But what about Nora?” Marge asked.

Frankie sighed. “Ma, she’s the only leverage they have. He won’t kill her. Gloria being inside here is the only thing keeping him from blowing it to kingdom come, ‘kay? We send her out there, they rain holy hell down on us. They kill Nora anyway.”

Gloria stood at the back door, watching the group continue to bicker, hearing every word they spoke as her own mind worked through the arguments three steps ahead of them. She’d already been considering this outcome from the moment her dad appeared. Frankie was right: if she left with them, everyone within this house would be killed. Marge was also right: there was only one way to save Nora… and everyone else.

“Gloria is going to stay right… Gloria, what the fuck are you doing?” Frankie asked, his voice low, shaking.

Gloria’s fingers hovered over the switch that would disengage the locks. She turned her head to look at him and gulped at the look of sheer desperation painted there.

“YA tebya lyublyu, –I love you,–” she whispered.

“Gloria, don’t!”

She hit the switch and yanked the door open. She felt his fingers closing around her dress but fell forward while he screamed at Accardi and Leo holding him back. The door slammed as Gloria tumbled down the stairs. She hit the grass with a grunt and quickly looked up to make sure no one was raising their guns to the house. She pushed up on her hands and met her father’s cold eyes.

“Zdravstvuy, doch'. –Hello, daughter,–” Ivan greeted. “Prishli vesti peregovory lichno? –Come to negotiate in person?–”

“Otets –Father,–” Gloria stated, wincing as she stood to her full height. “Let her go,” she demanded with a nod at Nora.

“Come closer and I will,” he promised.

Gloria raised her chin and took a step. She could hear commotion going on within the house. She could only guess it was everyone trying to subdue her fiance. Nora shook her head as Gloria walked, as if she were just as against this plan as Frankie. But Gloria was done letting others die in her stead.

“Ivan, if you touch her!” Frankie screamed before his words became muffled behind someone’s hand.

Ivan’s eyes rose to the windows of the house but his smile only widened.

“Ty ikh ne obidish'. –You will not hurt them,–” Gloria said.

Ivan smiled. “Net, vso zakonchitsya slishkom bystro, chtoby oni uspeli chto-libo pochuvstvovat'. –No, it will be over too quickly for them to feel any pain,–” he assured her.

Gloria was only a few feet in front of him now but before she could reach him, she was seized by both arms by two of his men. Ivan knocked Nora in the head and she fell forward, the whites of her eyes showing before she hit the dirt. A female scream echoed in the house. Gloria glared up at her father as he took off her bulletproof vest, patted her down and removed the three guns she’d hidden on her person. He then stepped away and showed them dramatically to the window.

“Otpusti yeye. –Let her go,–” Ivan instructed.

Gloria flung herself free. “The contract you have written will never come to pass,” Gloria seethed.

“No?”

“No. I will see to it. There is one thing you haven’t considered in your plans, father,” Gloria taunted.

“I doubt that,” Ivan said with a snicker.

“You think I value my own life above everyone else’s,” Gloria said.

Ivan raised an eyebrow. “I know you, Gloria Rubanov. I may not have read you a book at night and cradled you in my arms while you were sick,” he admitted. He lowered his head. “But I was always there in the background, checking in on you, monitoring your progress, ensuring you attended your doctor’s visits.”

“Did you watch me train?” she asked.

He scoffed. “I had my best men training you. I didn’t…”

“I know you didn’t,” she clarified. “Cause if you had…”

Gloria pulled the knife she’d picked off Frank Senior’s Kevlar as she’d walked toward the door from the layers of hair at the back of her neck. The lace tie she’d secured it to sliced open as she arched her arm sideways and up. Ivan’s eyes bulged as the point of the knife landed in the soft skin of his jaw and slid upward with ease until the hilt of the knife prevented her from going any further up.

“You would have known what my preferred weapon was and searched me better,” Gloria whispered.

Ivan gargled and started to drop. As he did, she grabbed the gun from his hand. A stunned silence filled the yard as the elderly Pakhan hit the ground with a thud. Everyone waited for him to get up, to make a sound, to give an order. Instead, his daughter stared down at his motionless form, her wedding dress now stained forever red from the sin she’d just committed.

Then Russian commands echoed in the space: orders for everyone to execute the secondary plan they’d discussed. So, Gloria instituted the second phase of her plan. She whirled around, and with her teeth bared, she pressed the cold metal of her father’s handgun to her temple and put her finger on the trigger.

“Strelyay! Davay! Otkryvay ogon' po domu, i smotri, kak novaya glava sem'i Rubanovykh sobstvennoruchno ubivayet za odin den' ne odnogo, a srazu dvukh pakhanov. Sdelay yego smert', smert' tvoikh tovarishchey, sovershenno bessmyslennoy! Nu davay zhe! Sdelay eto! –Shoot! Do it! Open fire on the house and watch as the new head of the Rubanov family single-handedly kills not one, but two of your Pakhan in one day. Make his death, the death of your comrades, utterly meaningless! Go on then! Do it!–” Gloria screamed, voice breaking with her hatred, her resolve, her finger steady on the trigger.