The gentle breeze lifts the ends of her hair.
The sunlight beaming down on her face makes her look younger than she is. I keep seeing her as a kid in that picture. That picture was taken a year before all the evil was done to her.
I look at her and wonder how anyone could hurt her.
We’re sitting by the river that flows through the grounds of my home. I haven’t been out here in months, but I thought today would be good for both Ava and me to go out for a walk and talk.
It’s good for my rage.
I’ve been trying… trying not to lose my head.
The beast inside me went mad with a thirst for blood when she told me what was done to her. As she spoke yesterday and I processed what she was saying, I had a hard time convincing myself to calm the fuck down and not go out on the streets and kill every motherfucker who called themselves Bratva.
I mean it. All of them, starting with her fucking uncle. The only thing that stopped me was her.
She needed me more. She needed to know that I was with her, and I needed to support her. That’s what I’m doing now while the boys check things out and come up with a plan. The plan, which is to kill, kill, kill. Fucking kill.
They will all pay. I will see to that.
“It’s beautiful out here,” Ava says.
Ava… the name Juliette suits her. Ava does too, but I wonder if she’ll ever use her real name again.
“You like it?” I ask with a little smile, and she smiles back.
“I do. I imagine it in the winter as well. I love winter. In… Russia, it snows all the time. It’s freezing, but it… it’s nice.”
Russia. If she’s talking to me about Russia, that means I’ve helped her in some way. Last night helped.
I made love to her. I felt when she gave herself to me. I don’t know if she knew I gave myself to her too. A thing I never thought I’d be able to do again. Not ever.
“Snow’s a rare thing in Sicily. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. I’m more of a tropical person. Russia’s cold, Sicily’s hot. Cold and hot just like you and me, right?” I smile.
She nods when she pulls in a breath. I know she’s gearing up to talk to me. “My father… well, Mark. I mean Mark. I guess you know a lot about me now to know he wasn’t my real father.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“How’d you know?”
“The same way I found you. I have friends who can do a lot of different things. I could sense that something bad happened to you, Ava, but honestly, I was checking things out with your father from a few weeks back because he couldn’t remember what he did. It was then that I found out he changed his name, and that let us to you too when it came down to it.”
“He was my parents’ best friend. But he was in love with my mother. They grew up together, and she chose to marry my real father. Mark watched over us and would do anything for any of us. He was the brother my father wished he had.” She tenses up, and I know it’s hard for her to talk about. I reach across and take her hand.
“Baby, I don’t want you to go down that road again. I’m guessing the reason why your uncle wants you dead is because you know the truth. You guys didn’t die in a fire. He killed your parents.”
She nods. “Yeah. He killed my parents, but the thing is, if anyone in Russia knew the truth, he’d lose everything. My father had dealings with the president. He worked for the Russian president. That’s how it was set up. I don’t know much, but my uncle wanted the power and the wealth. He was the eldest and was furious that my grandfather wanted my father to take over leadership of the brotherhood. Mark told me that years passed, and he was always trying to infiltrate. I didn’t know he was so evil.”
Fuck. This guy really is a nasty piece of work.
“My parents were always heavily guarded when they travelled. We went to visit my aunts in France, and our flight got cancelled. I had a ballet performance and told them I’d die if I missed it. My father found a way to get us to St. Petersburg, but we didn’t have guards. They were supposed to meet us there, link up with us in a few days. We were at a house that belonged to my grandfather. We got there, and I did my performance, but everything changed before the sun went down. The guards never got the message, and Mark and his sons were away on business. My father’s bodyguard double-crossed him and saw it as a way to get to us. No guards, which meant we were left open to attack.”
Her hands start shaking. But she continues talking. “No one knew where we were. No one knew where we’d gone, and it was a month before Mark and his sons found me. They came and found me locked up in the basement. It was one of Dmitri’s cigars that started a fire. Mark came with men, and my uncle’s men killed them all. The fire made it difficult. We got trapped in the basement. That’s where Mark’s eldest son; Maksim, died. Between him and Sasha, they got me out after my uncle and his men left. We knew it was a lucky break, so we left the country. We knew what it meant if any of us were found. Death. So much death, all because of a ballet performance I could have missed.”
“Ava…is this the accident that stopped you from dancing?” I ask, understanding the story as it continues to piece together.
“Yes… I always wondered, what if I’d just missed that one performance? None of it would have happened. We would have stayed in France and left when the storm blew over. We would have made it back, and all I would have lost would have been a performance.”
“Ava, I’ve learned that we can’t think like that. There’s no way you could have possibly known that.” I home in on Salvatore’s words to me the other week. “It seems to me that your uncle would have found a way to do whatever he had planned. No matter where you were. That was just one opportunity. That’s all it was. These things happen when you’re dealing with people like that. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I appreciate you saying that. It’s hard not to blame myself. For years, I felt I owed Mark my life. Now he’s dead.”
That’s why she offered herself to me. She sacrificed herself, putting herself right back in a similar position she was previously in.
I’m not like those men. I’m ashamed of the way I behaved most times. I hope she never thought of me like that. Like them.
“Now you know… That’s the story. That’s the reason for everything. That’s why they want to kill me. They stand to lose billions and their lives, Vincent. It’s not like I’m just some person. I’m Roberto Lobonov’s daughter. People will know me the minute I dye my hair back the color it used to be. It’s a strong testament of what happened if I give it.”
“Have you ever thought of going back to do just that?” I’m just curious.
She’s shaking her head before I can even finish.
“No. I can’t. I’m not strong like that. Do I want revenge for my parents’ death? Yes, of course, I do. Every day, I avenge them in my mind in some ways. Sometimes I even save them. Sometimes it all feels like a bad dream that just came to screw with me. Then I remember it’s real and my uncle is a man of serious power. Mark was so distraught from the loss of Maksim, that I think part of him died in the fire too. Then, when Sasha died, it was like he was gone. Part of me hoped he would get strong and avenge my parents’ death and overthrow my uncle. The more he deteriorated, the more I realized that was never going to happen.”
I give her hands a gentle squeeze.
It must have been so hard for her.
“I’m going to fix things, Ava. I’ll get you your vengeance,” I promise.
Her gaze clings to mine. “Vincent… I’m scared because I don’t want you to get hurt. You’ve lost so much. You have a son to worry about, and you can’t worry about me.”
“It’s not up for discussion, doll. I’m just telling you. I can’t let them take you, and I can’t let them get away with what they did to you. It’s not in my nature to let a thing like that slide.”
Maybe I let love in and it made me crazy. Pa hasn’t called me crazy yet, and I’ve seen him twice today. Both times, he fell in line helping out. The same as everyone else. We’re doing what we always do when we have situations like this.
I’m just waiting on a location, and then I’m gone. I don’t plan to wait for the enemy to strike.
She throws her arms around me and hugs me hard. “Thank you. Please… be safe, Vincent. Please be safe. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”
I hold her close to me and think of that too.
Yesterday was close for me. That bomb could have taken me out. It nearly did.
We stand, and I slip my arm around her as we start heading back to the house.
As we get to the concrete path, I hear a helicopter. Then I see it coming in the distance, and two more.
It’s very uncommon to see helicopters in these parts, and since I’m on high alert, everything is suspicious to me.
“Ava, get in the house! Go to Nick. He’ll take you down to the basement,” I shout, and she runs into the house.
I’m glad she does because as the helicopters get close, I realize I was right to be suspicious. I run toward the house too and signal everyone. All my guards are spread out with guns at the ready while the helicopters lower and men with gas masks start jumping down. They look like army guys. Bullets start flying, and I run inside to make sure Timothy, my mother, and Marguerite are safe.
Everyone has a task. Nick is to take Ava to the safe room down in the cellars. Gabe and Salvatore are muscle. Pa is to contact Claudius. There’s about fifty men on the grounds that are skilled to deal with these guys, but not if we’re vastly outnumbered. And we are.
Fuck… there are too many of them, and they’re all coming in the house. I shield myself behind a pillar to dodge the bullets that fly my way and fire back when I can. Timothy was upstairs with Marguerite.
These fuckers. They’ve attacked my home.
In the height of everything, I see a haze of green gas filling the room. Tony drops down first like a rag doll, then a few others follow.
When I see that, I run, covering my mouth and nose so I don’t inhale the gas.
I have to get to my boy.
I leap up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and run into his room. He’s not there.
Shit… Fuck. God, please tell me they got to the safe room. I don’t know where they were in the house. Marguerite and Ma know the doors that open up to it. I had them installed to mirror the setup at my parents’ house.
“Vinny!” Pa calls out. He’s to my left coming out of the library. He collapses, and a trail of green smoke follows through the door.
I run across the platform to the other side of the house. That’s where I find Salvatore on the ground and Gabe trying to revive him. He’s barely able to shake him before the gas gets him too.
It must be some kind of knockout gas.
It swirls over me, tickling my nose. There’s no way that I can avoid being affected by it. The men had on gas masks.
Clever.
That bastard. I give him credit. Ilya had to basically tie us up to beat us. Couldn’t fight like a real man. At the end of the day, though, what does it matter? The end result is the result you want, and that’s what he’s getting.
He did say I wouldn’t like it if I pissed him off. He wasn’t joking. I dash back to the second floor in an attempt to get to the entrance to the safe room by the bookshelf. Then I hear it. The sound of my little boy’s cry.
I look through the window in an instant as his cries gets louder. It’s a loud screech like he’s in pain. My heart shatters when I see Dmitri carrying him. The men file back into the helicopters.
Dmitri gets in with my boy.
“Noooooooo!” I wail.
I hoist myself up through the window and jump down onto the roof.
Adrenaline fuels my moves, but everything is a hazy blur.
The green gas must have got me too.
“Timothy! No… bring him back!” My lips are moving, but I don’t know what I’m saying. I lift my arm to do something, but it drops heavily to my side, and I drop to my knees, sliding down into the crevice of the rooftop as the helicopters take off.
“No!... No.”
Darkness swallows me, taking me whole.
Dark like the deepest part of a nightmare where I just lost my child.