Chapter 82: Chapter Eighty-Two

“Nu razve eto ne milo? –Isn’t this quaint?–” Ivan said. “Odin, dva, tri, chetyre i… pyat' predateley –One, two, three, four and… five traitors.–” Ivan raised his handgun toward Gromov who immediately raised his hands in surrender.

“Ivan, net,” Aleksander Gromov pleaded. “You do not understand.”

Gloria was several feet away from the scene, watching seemingly as an outsider. While Ivan took a few steps toward his enforcer, set on getting answers, Johnny crawled toward Charlotte as she stared up at the ceiling, fighting the pull of unconsciousness. Frankie joined Johnny and ripped the sleeve of his button-down to help stifle some of the bleeding in Johnny’s stomach. Instead, Johnny used it to dab away the blood from Charlotte’s eyes.

“Make me understand,” Ivan demanded. “Tell me how you started working for the imbecile that threatens to derail decades of my work?”

“He has Dmitiry, Ivan, he has my…”

A single gunshot. Gromov dropped to the floor. Ivan wheeled toward the trio crouching around each other. He raised the gun again, and the stance he took forced Gloria into action.

“No!” she screamed. She rushed her father and body slammed him.

The act succeeded in knocking him off balance. The gun fell to the floor, and Gloria grappled for it. Ivan grabbed her by the waist and threw her away. Gloria’s head cracked against the wall, but she didn’t let it keep her down. She staggered to her feet and gasped. Frankie had the gun, and it was trained on her father’s forehead. Frankie’s face was set, stone, giving nothing away.

“Gloria, go with Johnny and help the others,” he ordered.

“Wh-what? That’s not the…”

“Plans change. Johnny needs help now. Help him.”

The fear evaporated as the searing heat of anger rose. “I am owed an explanation from him, Frank,” Gloria spat. “I am owed this confrontation.”

He turned to her while keeping the gun trained on his target. “And you shall get one, Vixen. For now, there are others to think of.”

Gloria looked at Johnny and Charlotte, bleeding out on the floor. She thought of the women sitting in the basement below, waiting for her father’s men to bring them up to be passed around. Gloria thought of the promise she’d made to Juniper, the desperation Johnny felt to find his sister. She shut her eyes hard. This was the work. This was the job. The girls would never trust Frankie. But they would trust her. She opened her eyes, set her jaw and nodded once to Frankie, who winked in return. She walked around her father and started shuffling through his desk. She found two handguns. Then she walked to Aleksander Gromov. Gloria ignored the single bullet hole wound in his forehead and the way his vacant eyes stared upward at a heaven he would not be granted permission to enter. She rummaged through his pockets until she discovered his own arsenal: one handgun and two knives.

Gloria walked up to Frankie and tucked two of the knives into his waistband.

“Mm, careful, Vixen, your father may think I’ve ruined you for every other man,” Frankie mocked. Gloria looked at her father whose eyes narrowed further in anger.

Gloria grabbed Frankie’s chin and pulled him down to kiss her. Frankie groaned as her tongue slid over his lips. She shoved him back and stared hard, her grip on him still firm.

“I want my answers, Frank,” she reminded him.

“You’ll get them,” he promised.

Gloria nodded, satisfied. She looked at her father with disgust. “Don’t let him behind the desk. There’s a panic button in the top drawer.”

“Ohh, naughty, naughty,” Frankie taunted with a tsk of his tongue. Gloria turned away and helped Johnny get Charlotte off the floor. “Leave her,” Frankie ordered.

“What?” Johnny hissed as he clutched his stomach.

“She’ll drag you down,” Frankie explained.

“I am not leaving her,” Johnny growled. “She needs help.”

“And she’ll get it,” Frankie admonished. “Carting her around after you won’t do her any good. Leave her with me. I’ll look after her until you’re done.”

“Johnny, he’s right,” Gloria reasoned, putting her full trust in the man she chose to love.

Johnny sighed and looked down at Charlotte, who had long since passed out. He brushed some hair from her face, bent down and kissed her lips softly. He bobbed his head toward the couch, and Gloria helped him lay her down on the soft fabric.

“Let’s go,” Johnny said. At the door, he turned. “Frank.”

“Yes, precious?”

His glare turned hot as he looked at the Pakhan, whose mind was turning a million miles an hour trying to think of the best way out of this situation. “Make it fucking hurt,” Johnny told him.

“Only way I know how,” Frankie said.

Gloria wrapped an arm around Johnny’s waist and helped him out into the hallway. Johnny groaned as he pulled a wire earpiece from his pocket and placed it in his ear.

“Galante… Galante, you there?” Johnny asked as they made their way down the hallway, away from the party, and toward the back of the house. “Cause I just ran a marathon, man. I got fucking shot, okay? Does it matter? Are you in place or not?” Johnny looked up, and Gloria followed the path of his eyes. He raised his left hand and flicked off a camera as they walked under it.

“I take it he’s in place?” Gloria asked, out of breath from having to support Johnny’s weight.

“Yeah, there’s a guard around the next corner. Get your gun ready,” Johnny told her.

Gloria’s stomach clenched as she raised her gun. They rounded the corner and she didn’t even let the thought of what she needed to do process before she pulled the trigger. The guard dropped and gargled.

“You didn’t kill him. Shoot him again.”

Gloria swallowed, and as she passed, she pointed the gun at his head and fired again. She felt it then, the moment when the last of her humanity was ripped from her soul.

“Two rushing toward us now. Better give me a gun,” Johnny instructed her.

Gloria hurriedly handed him the gun she had just used and pulled the second from her cleavage. Johnny shot the first man who rushed them, and Gloria shot the second as he spoke into a microphone on the inside of his coat sleeve.

“Stairs to the left up here,” Johnny said. Gloria huffed as she readjusted his weight and kicked the door open with her heel. “Thank God I don’t have to wear those fucking things.”

Gloria laughed, though it came out as a wheeze, as she helped him down the stairs. “Don’t thank God, he made the man who designed these things. Thank the fact that you have a dick.”

Johnny nodded at something Conor said, and he pulled on her to stop. She leaned him against the wall and tried to regain her breath.

“They’re through this door. Five guards on the inside. Two as soon as we walk in. Three scattered around the girls. I’ll need you to convince the girls to drop to the ground. It’s possible one or two will be used as shields. If that’s the case, don't worry about holding me up. Keep your gun trained on them. There is no room for hesitation. There is no room for nerves. Do you understand?”

Gloria nodded and held the gun close to her. Johnny closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Before they could open the door, two guards pushed through it. The impact knocked Johnny down. His head cracked against the floor and his eyes rolled upward. Fuck. Gloria raised her gun and fired. One man dropped. The second guard knocked her against the wall. Gloria locked her index finger against the trigger. The bullets whizzed past his head, up to the ceiling, into the wall as they grappled for the gun. Then a grunt. She’d managed to get his shoulder. He jerked back, and she wasted no time putting one more bullet in his chest.

Gloria screamed as a bullet grazed her thigh. She ducked to avoid a few others. She grabbed Johnny’s gun and spun. Just as predicted, the three other guards were using women as shields while the other pets screamed and ducked out of the way of the bullets flying through the air. One of the captured girls lifted her right foot and brought her heel down on the toe of the man holding her. As she wrestled for control, Gloria focused on the other two. One was distracted, staring at the pet who was managing to get the upper hand on his comrade.

“Drop!” Gloria yelled at the pet in his arms.

Though the girl’s face was streaked with tears, she let gravity take her weight. Caught off guard, the man holding her started to fall. When most of his upper body was exposed, Gloria fired three rounds, two of which landed in his neck and head. Searing red-hot pain scorched through Gloria’s shoulder, the source of which she would not have recognized if she hadn’t been shot before. She whipped around, using the hallway as cover as she tried to push the pain away and focus her mind.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she cursed as the pain spread through her shoulder, up her neck, down her arm and into her back. “Fuck.”

“Ivan warned us you were here, Printsessa,” the man who had just shot her called from the room. “You think because you have Donati’s cum in your pussy, you can overthrow the most powerful Pakhan this country has ever known?”

Gloria laughed, and though the shaking of her shoulders made her wince, the taunt was enough to dig up the remainder of her courage.

“I would recognize that fanboy bravado anywhere. How are you doing, Vlad? Has daddy promoted you yet or are you still cleaning up dog shit and thanking your lucky stars he lets you lick his boots?” Gloria yelled.

“I’ve been promoted, thank you for asking,” Vlad said, his voice closer. “Though I suppose I should thank your new fuck buddy cause his murder streak has left a few positions open for me to fill. Maybe before I turn you back over to Ivan, I’ll fill your position too. Seeing as how you’ve already gotten passed around to the Italians, I doubt he’ll notice the havoc I wreak on your loose cunt.”

Gloria looked down and noticed Johnny’s eyes were open. He shook his head and held his hand flat out, five fingers splayed.

“I doubt your tiny cock will be able to find my cunt, let alone wreak havoc, Vlad,” Gloria taunted.

Johnny brought one finger into his palm, then two.

“Those Italians think fucking is about passion, but you’re Russian, Gloria. You need domination, control, pain to cum,” Vlad said, his voice only a few feet away now. Johnny brought a third finger in, four. “I’ll have you singing ‘Rossiya – svyashchennaya nasha derzhava…’ while I fuck you without…”

The fifth finger curled inward. Gloria pivoted into the open doorway. Vlad’s eyes widened, he reached for the girl he’d allowed to get to arm’s length. Gloria smirked.

“Promise?”

Gloria squeezed the trigger. Vlad’s head whipped back. The girl clutched in his fingers screamed as she fell with Vlad’s body. As soon as they hit the ground, the woman scurried away on her palms into the waiting arms of several friends. Gloria immediately deflated, her breathing became staggered as she glanced around the room. The fifth guard screamed as several of the girls aided the original who had stabbed her heel into his toe to beat him unconscious.

A woman in all red lingerie with bright green eyes and a scowl that said she’d spent too many years being controlled by a man, held her hand out for Gloria’s gun. Gloria gave it to her with a nod. The woman turned, walked five steps, told the girls to step away, and fired a single shot. Then the women all turned to Gloria. There were over a dozen of them. All dressed in lingerie, too skinny, too beaten down. Yet, their chins rose in defiance, in a collective show of courage that said they wouldn’t let this act of bravado be squandered.

“Who are you?” the woman in red asked.

Gloria stood straighter. “My name is Gloria Rubanov. I am the future Pakhan of the Rubanov family. I’ve come to kill my father and claim my birthright.”