Yanna

I just sat down in my living room when I returned home this morning, and it’s dark outside now. My phone’s on the floor where I tossed it away from me at one point, in an effort not to call Hawk. If I call him, he’ll die. He shouldn’t die. No one must die. But maybe I’ll have to.

The screen of my phone looks cracked from here, but I don’t have the energy to go and check. I don’t have the energy for anything anymore. Never have I felt this paralyzed, this frozen, at least never that I can remember.

What am I gonna do now?

I’ve asked myself that so many times before in my life, and I’ve always found a solution, always found the steel to go on, until there was nothing but that steel left in my soul. But now there’s none of it left. I don’t see a way out of this. I’m as good as dead. I feel dead already.

A black car speeds past my window, and the next thing I hear is the screeching of breaks. Right after, someone starts banging frantically on the glass door in the kitchen.

I’m on my feet, looking from the direction of one sound to the other, not sure what to do, but knowing I have to make a choice.

Glass shatters in the kitchen, just as someone starts kicking at the front door. After a day of frozen silence, this is too much noise to make sense of.

“Get the fuck in here, Yanna!” a man yells from the kitchen and a second later I see him too. He’s built like Hawk and he’s wearing the same kinda leather jacket, but his voice is different. It’s not Hawk.

“Get in here,” he yells again just as the kicks to the door start producing the sound of wood splintering. “Hawk sent me.”

And that finally unfreezes me, propels me toward the kitchen, where the man yanks me roughly through the door, so I’m behind him, as he blocks the doorway with his body.

The front door gives way to the kicks, and a couple of whistling sounds break through the echoes of it crashing open. The man in front of me jerks, then pushes me towards the wide open back door.

He fires a shot off into the darkness in the living room, where a man falls to the floor, but not before another whistling sound makes him jerk again. We’re almost at the door and there’s blood covering his white t-shirt now. I smell it, I see it, but none of this makes any sense.

“Get out and run away,” he hisses. “Go to 5666 West Boulevard. Hawk’ll be there eventually.”

“You’re shot,” I say.

“Run!” he growls, but he sounds like he’s speaking through gritted teeth. “If I’m gonna die for another man’s woman, she better live. Run!”

He fires off another couple of rounds into the living room, stopping the thudding footsteps coming from there dead in their tracks.

“Run now or we’ll both die!” he growls, and this time I don’t think anymore.

I bolt, sprint across the yard and vault over the hedge. And then I just keep running. Across more backyards, over more hedges, past pools, past houses all lit up for the evening. I run until I can’t breathe anymore and even then I keep at it.

I can’t go to Hawk. He’ll die if I do.

* * *

Hawk

Yuri isn’t smirking anymore, but he’s not talking either. His nose is broken and his lips are very swollen, so maybe that’s because he can’t. Scar hasn’t been going easy on him and neither have I. But dusk is falling outside.

I never expected Yuri to be such a tough one to crack. Especially not after seeing his best men die with no ceremony, and not after being the pampered son of a mob boss in Russia. But he hardly even grunts when he gets hit.

Cross wants us to finish it. He also changed his mind about Plan C, and now wants Yuri alive so we can send him back to Russia as a warning not to come mess with us again.

They haven’t found all the other Russians yet either. He needs me to help with that too. But I figure those missing Russians are wherever they’re holding Yanna’s coach, so I’m already on top of that.

I stepped out of the back room to speak to Cross, and Yuri is looking out through the windows behind me as I reenter. I guess he’s looking off into the freedom he no longer has and thinks he never will again. Or maybe he’s just too far gone from all the blows to the head he’s gotten to think at all. But his eyes are surprisingly sharp and clear as he fixes them on me.

“It’s almost dark outside, no?” he asks once I’m standing over him. “My men will go and get pretty fighter Maryanna Sokolova now. I told them to in case I don’t return by nightfall.”

I almost ask who Maryanna is, even though I already know perfectly well. Too well. So well my chest feels like a gaping wound and I want to make his into the same, Cross’ orders be damned.

“They’ll never get her,” I say instead. “But thanks for letting me know where to find them.”

I’m trying to sound tough and cold, and it’s working, because I’m good at faking shit. The number one reason I can spot fakers so well is because I’m the worst of them. It’s also the reason I hate them so much.

But with Yanna, I don’t want to fake a single thing. And I want to keep not faking a single thing with her for the rest of my life.

“She’ll die unless I am returned and freed,” Yuri says, and he’s trying to sound arrogant, but he’s not as good a faker as me.

“I’ll go,” I tell Scar, ignoring Yuri completely. “You take care of him.”

I add the hand gesture we use when we want someone incapacitated but not killed.

Scar nods, then grins maliciously at Yuri, who’s not even trying to hide his fear anymore. With that jagged scar covering half his face, Scar looks scary if he’s just standing there doing nothing. He looks worse when he’s smiling and that nasty scar is all stretched out. He looks scariest if he’s walking towards you, smiling and holding a knife. But he knows what the orders are, he’s just toying with Yuri, because he made us spend the whole afternoon here and told us nothing.

Ink is watching Yanna, and he’s a very dependable guy. I’m not worried. I didn’t send any more guys to help him, because Cross needed them, but now I also told Cross where he can find some of the other Russians at nightfall.

I want to get there first. I want Yanna to know I’m watching over her like I promised her I would, even if she doesn’t want me around. Maryanna Sokolova. That’s her real name, I guess. I didn’t know that, which explains why I couldn’t find much about her prior to her coming to New Jersey.

But from now on I mean to know everything about her. And she better not try and pretend she doesn’t want the same thing.