Chapter 30: THIRTY

ANYA

The silence that filled the room afterwards was almost suffocation. She was just sitting… no emotions on her face. Drained of color. I shifted on my couch, the leather crinkling, the tension totally suffocating. I knew I’d crossed a line now, but with the way she wasn’t showing me exactly what line I’d crossed, It made me uncomfortable, thoughts rioting in my head.

Minutes passed.

Still nothing.

It was like she’d totally zoned me out.

“Rosie…’’ I called into the silence of the room.

Because she hadn’t blinked in minutes, when she did, two beads of tears rolled down cheeks.

“I’m sorry…” I immediately started to apologize.

She didn’t argue, didn’t speak, didn’t say I’d offended her. The cat still in her thighs, her eyes trained on me. Her fingers went to the rim of her wheels. She tightened them around the tires… and she rolled.

I got out of the chair.

The wound on my stomach stung so hard I almost slipped back.

“Rosie… was that a touchy question…? I swear I hadn’t known…. I was just….’’

She wheeled past me.

My heart was in a wrench.

“Rosie….’’

She opened the door.

“C’mon…” I was panicking now. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, and most importantly, I didn’t know if Sergei was going to get mad at me for this. I didn’t know what power she held in this house… in… his heart. And now, I was just scared shit-less. “Rosie…’’

Like a sulking child, she slammed the door back behind her.

I sunk back into the couch afterwards, groaning softly as my lower gut stung hard. I didn’t want to touch the wound, but I probably hadn’t wrapped it well because it felt like the blood was soaking through the camisole I had on. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t stand still. I paced in the small of the room, my heart in my throat.  I alternated. I sat. Then, I got up and paced again. I got tempted to part the curtains and stare outside. I didn’t give in. I got tempted to  open the door to find Rosie in the house to tender an apology, I didn’t. The fear that when Sergei came back inside, I was going to be done for petrified me.

But, for a few minutes, that truly did feel like endless hours, he didn’t return.

And when he finally did, it was with a kick to the door, and he was soaked—an understatement—drenched in blood.

SERGEI MOROZOV’S POV.

Pavel’s face was in the ground beneath my feet, the sound escaping his busted lips nothing but gibberish and splutters.

I'd hired him as my little tech guru a few years ago, seven if I was being accurate, when he was eighteen in Russia.

For years, I’d taken care of him. Seen him as a brother, fed him, clothed him, sent him to Harvard because what better way to empower a brother in the mafia than to give him education.. I’d loved him. I’d loved him so much that now… with my bare foot over his head, and hand trembling with rage with my finger on the trigger…. Tears burned my eyes.

It was odd.

I NEVER CRY. I never considered myself human enough to shed tears. I lost the ability to feel empathy fourteen years ago… on the night I lost my family. Tears made a Bravta a wimp. My father had been that wimp before he died. The over expressive Mafia boss who painted his face with his emotions. Who cried, who loved openly, who blushed when his wife made the littlest compliment to him, who’d let his family get massacred by an enemy without fighting back. I wasn’t that man. I was never going to be that man. I was Sergei Morozov. The Morozov that had put up a wall ever since he watched everyone he loved fall to their deaths.

For years, that had stood firm.

Being the emotionless, cold bastard had been my costume.

But now… my chest….

I didn’t understand why it…. ached.

I didn’t understand why one betrayal almost brought me to my knees in anguish.

I didn’t know why eyes burned.

I didn’t understand why the cry of a betrayal made my chest ache this bad. Watching him under my foot. Squishing him into the dirt while he wheezed for my mercy.

“Se–se–se– Sergei,” Pavel wheezed into the dirt, the tears seeping from his eyes a mix of blood and sweat. “Please… Please listen to me first. Please.”

I didn’t listen.

Instead, my heel dug even harder into his face.

His scream a chilling outcry.

“How long,’’ I gritted. ‘‘How long have you been selling out my information to them? HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FEEDING THEM INFO ABOUT ME? HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FUCKING STABBING MY BACK. HOW LONG?” Those weren’t even the haunting questions. It was the ‘who?’ Who ‘Is the them’ that wanted Anya Vescovi so much that they paid my favourite man enough to betray me? They had to have paid him enough. Not a little sum. Pavel would never betray me over a couple thousands of dollars. A couple millions maybe. Not even a little. I’d always thought no matter how much was offered to the men in my circle, they would never… not in a million years even think of betraying me.

But it was crazy what money could do.

The little Albanian—In pieces now—broken bones and bloodied mess, face beaten into a mush, until it was nothing but empty destroyed sockets and chunks of meat hanging off his skin—laid dead a few feet away.

But before he’d died, I pressed him for answers on which of my men had helped him get in.

The bastard had pointed.

It was slow to get him to give in.

But after beating his kneecaps in, he did.

He wept like a child as his index finger—broken from a hit—lifted in the air, from Ruslan, watching with wide eyes in the distance, to Ova, slouched against a tree bark expressionless, to Pavel, small and tiny, standing next to Ova’s tall figure… and he didn’t move his finger. He nodded his head. He weeped in some language I didn’t understand.

And… my heart dropped.

Pavel, eyes very wide, left one bruised probably from the attack, made to defend himself…. But I didn’t let him. I beat the Albanian to death. And I grabbed him next. By the neck. Lifting him off the floor. His feet dangling. One of his shoes had been lost—probably from the attack.

One of his arms seemed to be broken—probably from the attack.

His lower lip had been busted—probably from the attack.

He couldn’t push up his frame like he’d done the first time I saw him in torn clothes at the stripper bar in St. Petersburg where he’d been a bartender that had been assaulted by some men in the restroom. Raped. Because he looked too feminine. Acted too much like a girl. Rosy lips. Long hair. Soft cheeks… now crushed beneath my feet.

“HOW. LONG?” I growled. Spittle flew. My heart hurt.

My heart… hurt.

Pavel ugly-cried. “I didn’t do it, man. I swear… I swear… I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t dare.”

“WHO?” I screamed. “FOR WHO?”

His shoulders shook against the ground. “I wouldn’t…” he repeated. “I SWEAR… I SWEAR, SERGEI… BOSS… Believe me… Believe me… I don’t even know them… I don’t even speak their language…”

My finger inched really close to the trigger. My chest… it burned. I wasn’t a coward. I wasn’t a man who didn’t know how to keep his men in line. I knew how to take them out immediately if they cheated, stole, or betrayed me. I’d taken out many in the past. But not… ugly-crying Pavel. All I could see when I stared down at his bleeding face beneath the shadows of the trees overhead was the crying boy I’d saved at the club many years ago. The boy that had crawled to the corner of the bathroom because he thought I was going to be his fifth abuser of the night. The boy who had looked up with hope and tears in his eyes like I was a god standing at the entrance of that narrow bathroom.

But… he’d sold my information off.

I lifted my head… my eyes bouncing to Rus—chewing on his finger, watching, to Ova… running his fingers through his hair… eyes red… and then… to Pavel… the youngest of my men…the boy I’d raised. The boy I’d loved. The boy that had betrayed me.

And, with my eyes closed, and heart rioting in my chest… I pulled the trigger.

A/N: Hello to everyone reading! Thank you so much for following Sergei and Anya's story this far, I am incredibly grateful. This is my first mafia book, and to keep my momentum going, I'm writing the whole rough draft first and saving the big edit for the end. Please bear with the typos for now!

That being said, I need to hear your thoughts on this chapter. Did you expect Sergei to actually pull the trigger on Pavel? I'm sorry we never got a proper introduction to him before his death. It'll probably happen through flashbacks in future chapters. But, for now, I need to read your thoughts. Are you feeling worse for Sergei's heartbreak, or are you just terrified of what Anya is going to do when he walks through that door covered in blood? Drop your reactions in the comments, because my heart was in a wrench writing this one!