“Come with me,” the boy encouraged the girl, sneaking into her bedroom on the ground floor of her father’s mansion. He checked that none of the Byki were near enough to catch him.
“Where are we going?” the girl asked sleepily. Crawling out of her bed and throwing on a sweatshirt over her pink tank and short set, she accepted the boy’s outstretched hand. He was hanging out of the window. He was dressed all in black, like a thief. The girl couldn’t help but laugh.
The boy tilted his head to one side, pursed his lips, and asked, “What are you laughing at, solnyshko?”
“You,” she teased but took his hand anyway as she melted under his smile. Her bedroom door creaked open. The boy and girl froze in panic and the girl’s brother staggered into the room.
“What’s all the noise, Kisa?” her brother asked, wiping the sleep from his eyes before lowering his hand and fixing his gaze on the couple sneaking out the window. He wasn’t surprised to see the guilty faces of his twin sister and his best friend. The brother rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Where the hell are you taking Kisa at this time of night?”
The boy looked to his best friend and shrugged. “Out? For fresh air? Any of them work?”
“At one in the morning?”
The boy shrugged again. Then the brother crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his eyebrow. The boy came into the room and faced the brother. “Rodion, come on, man! Don’t be an asshole! I want to spend time with Kisa away from our fathers.”
Rodion pointed at Kisa. “That’s my sister you’re trying to corrupt!”
“And my girlfriend,” the boy shot back. “I’d never do anything to hurt her. You know it. I’m going to marry her one day.”
“Please, Rodion, we’ll owe you,” Kisa pleaded from behind the cover of the boy’s protective stance. Rodion stared at his sister, then the boy, then back again. Then her brother shook his head.
“Fine, go! I need to sleep.”
He began walking out of the room, dismissing them with a wave, but looked back and said, “Don’t get her pregnant, or Papa will cut off your balls. She’s thirteen and she isn’t your wife yet.”
The boy rolled his eyes at his best friend, but Kisa’s face flushed bright red and she threw a pen from her desk at her brother. He laughed playfully in reply.
Rodion left the room, and the boy knew he’d cover for them. He then turned back to the girl, taking her hand and leading her out of the open window.
“Where are we going?” she whispered as he led her down toward the beach.
Once they were out of sight of the house, he draped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. “Our cove. Where else, solnyshko?”
Kisa wrapped an arm round his waist. Within a few minutes, they were at the closed-off cove, and the boy led them to their favorite spot. Taking off his sweatshirt, he spread it on the sand and, sitting down, he gently pulled Kisa to sit between his legs and wrapped his arms around her waist.
The boy and his Kisa watched the rolling waves in silence, the bright moon huge against the dark water. Kisa dreamily looked up at the boy and smiled. They were alone on a beach and it was perfect.
Kisa’s blue eyes were misty as she looked at the boy. He knew right then how much she loved him. She was so beautiful to him. He didn’t have a single memory that she wasn’t in. Even from young kids, she was always with him, and he’d always kept her close, protecting her, cherishing her. He couldn’t see anyone but her. Even then, at fourteen, no other girls enticed him to look their way. He loved this girl. He knew she was it for him, a gut instinct telling him so. Together, he believed they were perfect.
They were from the same criminal life. The boy knew as the years passed and their duties came into play, she would support him and never question his line of work or choices as the Bratva called upon him to lead the Russian underground in New York.
Kisa wasn’t fazed by death and danger.
The boy smiled to himself and thought of the tale his mama always told him as he was growing up. That God created them to match, in every possible way, the smudge of blue in his left eye perfectly mirroring the girl’s blue.
Dipping his head, the boy pressed his lips against hers. Kisa moaned into his mouth, her hand lifting to slip around the back of his neck.
The kiss became deeper. He broke away to shift her down on the sand, and he crawled on top of her, feeling her warm body beneath his.
It didn’t take them long to lose control, and the boy broke from Kisa’s mouth on a gasp. Her lips were swollen. Her hands gripped his neck and she tried to pull him back down.
“Kisa-Anna,” he said and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. “We have to stop. I can’t … We can’t … I need to stop … We need to stop.”
Kisa’s blue eyes dipped. She turned her head to the side, staring at the moon. The boy dropped his head to her shoulder, trying to get himself under control, breathing through the tingling in his stomach.
She placed her hands on his cheeks, pushed until he lifted his head and stared into her eyes. “Please,” she whispered, “I want to do this with you.”
The boy’s eyes widened and his heart beat faster in his chest. “Kisa, are … are you sure?”
Kisa nodded shyly. “Can I have you?” she asked.
Feeling like his heart exploded in his chest, the boy said, “Yes,” and he pressed his lips back to her hers.
Later that night, Kisa lay in the boy’s warm arms, and he couldn’t stop himself from kissing her face. “I love you, Kisa,” he confessed. She turned to him and dipped her eyes, overcome by shyness.
“I love you too. I’m glad you were my first.”
“And last,” the boy promised. He wrapped her tightly in his arms. Both were naked under the modest cover of his sweatshirt.
“I can’t imagine ever sharing this with anyone else … ever,” Kisa said, and she sighed.
He couldn’t have agreed more.
They were young and in love …
But the boy knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was the one and only girl meant for him.
They were meant for each other.
* * *
Fighting to catch my breath, my eyes shot open and I stared at the steel rafters above. I was drenched in sweat. My mind scrambled and fogged from this dream, a dream that felt all so real.
A girl.
A boy.
A beach.
Kissing …
Wait!
Kisa was in it, just a teenager, fucking some boy on a beach. I waited for a surge of jealousy, a wave of anger to sweep through my body at the thought of anyone else touching her, but it didn’t come …
The boy in it reminded me of someone. But I couldn’t think … it was someone I couldn’t place. Didn’t recognize.
He was happy.
He loved Kisa.
And Kisa, as always, looked beautiful. Smiling at the boy and telling him she loved him too.
I breathed heavily through my nostrils, my heart pounding as if she were saying those words to me. My chest began to ache and my hands began to shake.
But she didn’t tell me. She told some boy on a beach that she loved him … not me, not Raze, the monster, the killer …
It made me think about what my life had been like before the Gulag. What I was like at that age?
I didn’t know anything about where I came from. I didn’t know anything about my family. So many events since I’d arrived in Brooklyn had confused me. Flashes of dreams. Glimpses of images. Were they real memories fighting their way into my conscious mind?
My dreams were so real that I woke up with a clear recollection of every detail. I couldn’t remember ever having such dreams before meeting Kisa, and she was in every single one.
She felt so real to me, important.
Or maybe I was so desperate for her that I needed to imagine some connection. So desperate to actually have someone give a shit about me that I wanted to mean something to her too.
Then anger and rage burned in my chest as I pictured her with Durov. Kisa was mine. I felt she was mine. I knew she belonged to me. I wanted her. I wanted her to be mine, not shared with that psychopathic cunt.
Durov was an unfeeling, murdering bastard. I’d seen that look in his eyes, in so many fighters’ eyes. And the way he looked at Kisa, I knew it wouldn’t be long until he killed her too. He’d snap or she’d step out of line, and rather than lose her, he’d kill her to make sure she would never leave him.
Something told me it wasn’t the first time I had protected her from him. Then a gaping hole opened in my gut when I thought of him marrying her, that it was because of me that he made her his possession … that somehow I’d failed her.
I had to kill him. It was the only way I could save her from him. I wanted to puncture his black heart in the cage.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to remember something, anything, from my past. But that same old pain sliced through my head and, in frustration, I slowly opened them again. I rubbed my hand over my nose, remembering the dream. I could smell the sea and feel the sand the boy and Kisa had lain on. I’d been there, but I couldn’t connect the memory to anything real.
And in the dream, Kisa had a brother … a brother who loved her, and the boy was his best friend. I’d never heard Kisa mention a brother before. He wasn’t a fighter. I’d never seen him around the gym.
Shit! Maybe it was just a fucking messed-up dream after all.
The sound of the main door opening made me jump to my feet. I threw on my training shorts, pushing aside the mat and thin blanket that still smelled of Kisa. My mind immediately raced to last night.
Kisa. My Kisa-Anna … under me, wet and hot and screaming my name.
I’d loved fucking her, loved being inside her, stroking her brown hair and kissing her face. I wanted her to be all mine, to have her belong to me. Never before had I had anyone who cared for me. But I wanted her now … only her, and smelling her scent on that blanket spurred me on to kill Durov.
But the memory of last night with Kisa-Anna riding me like she did brought a sick feeling to my stomach. It made me face something I’d never before confronted.
The Gulag, the guards … what they’d done to me for years, taking me like they did …
I didn’t know there was any other way to be fucked. And I’d almost taken Kisa that way. It would have hurt her. I could still taste her panic in my mouth.
Storming to the punching bag, I slammed my fist into the hard worn leather and tried to pound out my shame, my guilt … my fucking embarrassment. I could have hurt her. I couldn’t bear the thought.
I was so wrapped up in releasing my fury that I didn’t see Viktor come through the door, until he stood before me.
Then all I saw was a red mist.
Launching myself at my trainer, I fisted his shirt in my hands and pushed him away from me until his back thumped into the wall. Viktor’s eyes betrayed his shock, and his face turned a deep shade of red.
“Did you do it too, you sick fuck?” I asked tightly, snarling as my blood boiled.
“Do what?” Viktor choked out.
Leaning in, I growled menacingly, “Fuck little boys in the Gulag. Did you pin them down and fuck them too?”
Viktor’s red face paled and he shook his head. “No…”
“LIAR!” I boomed out, lifting him up to quickly slam his back against the wall.
“No…” Viktor gasped, and seeing his eyes bulge, I let him go and stepped back. I began to pace as Viktor slumped to the floor, rubbing at his throat.
“Raze, I swear, I never did that … I would never do that.”
I looked at him in disgust. “But you knew about it? Knew they fucked little boys?”
Viktor dropped his head. If anything, he seemed to crumple as he slumped even farther. “Yes.”
“And you did nothing to stop it?”
“What could I do? I’ve been paying off my family’s debt since I was a teen. First for the Georgians, now for the Russians. My papa was a gambler and fucked us all over. I was the lowest of the low. I had no power in those places. I’m not the mob. I’m a grunt, disposable.”
I ran at Viktor, getting a kick out of his loud whimper as I approached, and punched the mirror above his head, shattering the glass, which rained down on his head.
“Yeah? No power? Neither did I when I was forced to take guard cock up my ass!”
I stilled as those words slipped out of my mouth, and cold shivers skittered down my spine. I had no idea that what the guards did was wrong. In fact, I’d never thought anything that happened in the Gulag was wrong. It was life. It was what happened day in and day out. Why did I suddenly know it was wrong? Why was something inside me suddenly telling me I’d been raped?
Fuck! I’m feeling too much lately, unable to block it all out. I have to keep it blocked out. I need to kill. To fight. To get my revenge.
My head throbbed, a sharp pain pierced my skull, and a familiar scene abruptly played in my mind. It was of the very first guard that I met, the first one who fucked me, beat me, trained me. It wasn’t of his rape or his baseball bat that he beat me with; it was being pushed down the stairs to the Gulag basement to show me my future, to show me two young boys in a cage, one slicing open the stomach of the other.
“Welcome to hell, boy.”
I closed my eyes, heart pounding, temples throbbing, and tried to cling to the memory.
My eyes snapped open and I stumbled back in shock. That was me … That boy was me. I’d been taken from somewhere. My home? I couldn’t remember, but I did remember that I’d been knocked out and tied up. We traveled for what seemed like days. Then I woke up in a cell, and I was immediately forced down to the basement.
I saw spots in front of my eyes, and then I felt a hand slap my cheek.
“Raze. Snap out of it, son. Raze!”
Blinking furiously, my vision cleared, and Viktor stood in front of me, his face … concerned? Worried?
I wanted to push him off me, but I still couldn’t move. I was paralyzed.
Viktor sat up and stared at me. Holding out his palms, he said, “Raze, listen to me. I’ve seen it with hundreds of fighters who’ve left the gulags, or any of the other underground prison death match rings the mafiyas have. They’re everywhere, son. Hundreds of fucked-up kids like you, only knowing how to kill, not feel. They pumped you full of so much shit and tortured you for years, they conditioned you to not remember anything but the need to kill. You’ve blocked out your past to cope with what they made you do. Then, when you get out and the drugs leave you, triggers fuck with your mind, you start getting memories and remembering things from your past. And you can’t handle it.”
My eyebrows pulled down, but my legs and arms still wouldn’t move. Viktor cleared his throat and moved forward, lifting his hand slowly, finally placing it on my shoulder.
“Just let the memories in. Don’t fight them. Don’t push yourself to remember. If something’s familiar, let it play out. Best way or you’ll end up killing yourself.”
A feeling of dread settled in my stomach. “I don’t know if I want to remember. I came here for one thing and one thing only: revenge. I didn’t come here for memories.” I dropped my head, staring at the tattooed tallies of my kills, my number 818, and said, “What if I don’t like who I was…? What if it sends me over the edge?”
Viktor slumped to his ass and ran his hand down his face. “Isn’t it better than the cold monster you became in the Gulag? That you are in The Dungeon’s cage? And after you kill Durov, what then? Where do you go then? Another death match ring? There’s hundreds over the country. You could keep killing, making money until you’re slaughtered…” Viktor took a deep breath. “Or you could live, son. You could live … get back your life.”
I shook my head. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I only ever had one goal: kill Durov.
“I can help you to defeat Durov, but you need to help yourself, to remember your past. Right now you’re an animal, a machine that can only kill. But you were more, you are more than that.”
My eyes were trained on the ground as my head felt numb, too numb to think, but then a question from Viktor’s mouth tore right through that haze.
“Why Durov, Raze? Why Durov?”
My chest tightened and my hands began to shake as a broken memory pushed through to my mind.
Three boys. Three boys by the falls. On a family vacation. Two of them best friends. The third had a knife. The third stabbed one of the others … Then … then what?
Energy filled my limbs again as I grew frustrated with the memory not showing me what I needed to know. Why Durov? Who were the boys? Who was stabbed? Was I there? Was I one of the boys?
I wanted to know why that was. I wanted to know what I made myself forget, at least forget everything but the name of the cunt I had to kill.
Alik Durov.
Brooklyn, New York.
Revenge.
Kill.
Sounds of fighters beginning to train filtered into my training room. Viktor got to his feet and held out his hand.
“Get up, Raze. Train. And stop letting your past hold you back. Instead, use it to fuel you. This is your chance to take back your life. Get your revenge! Then get back your life!” Viktor glanced to the door, then back to me again. “Then you can get the girl. When Durov’s gone, you get the girl.”
My anger faded as I thought of Kisa. She was my balm, my calm. My Kisa-Anna.
I held Viktor’s gaze for a while, just breathing, centering my focus, coiling the fire inside, then gave him a curt nod. The guy was just as fucked up as me. I could see it in his eyes. But he understood me. I didn’t like him, but he understood me. No one else could.
As I got to my feet, Viktor waved for me to follow him into the main area of the gym to use the ropes. As I entered the training space, the main doors opened from the underground parking and Durov walked in … his hand gripping my Kisa’s neck. Her expression was blank and her eyes unfocused.
I physically shook upon seeing her under that bastard’s control.
Viktor stayed close. “Ignore it. Control your anger. Kill first, live later. Then get the girl.”
I tried to curb my rage by taking hold of the ropes and lifting them to Viktor’s counts, but Alik stopped dead center in the gym, directly in my line of sight, and crushed his lips on Kisa’s. The hardest battle I’d ever had to fight was stopping myself from charging the prick and ripping my woman from his arms.
Kisa let it happen, but her body was stiff and unmoving. Anyone with eyes could see how frightened he had made her, but then that’s what he probably wanted, her too afraid to leave him. I wanted to decapitate him with a blunt knife. But she’d told me to act normal, to not give us away, so I was fucking acting normal.
Dipping my nose to my shoulder, I inhaled deep and could still smell her on my skin, her hands gripping my shoulders as she came. That scent kept me from killing Durov. I held on to the fact that she would see me tonight after the fight … and by the end of tomorrow night, he would be dead and she would be mine.
Durov let Kisa go, and she scurried off to her office without looking back. She looked beautiful in her black suit and her long brown hair tied back.
Then Alik was suddenly in my face, Yiv stepping behind him, ready for him to train. I kept my head low.
“Heard you’re against Goliath tonight.” I could see his face split into a shit-eating grin from my peripheral vision. “He’s a last-minute buy-in by my father. You know, to give the crowd a real show. Really test what you’re made of.”
His eyes dropped to my workout regime that I hadn’t stopped while he shot off his stupid mouth. He laughed. “Looks like you’ll be slaughtered tonight, Raze. That fucker’s going to kill you. Can’t say I’m fucking sorry.” He leaned in and whispered, “And when I win, I’ll drag Kisa back to the holding room and fuck her up the ass. She hates it, tries to fight me … but it only gets me harder.”
Fighting the explosion of rage inside, I let his comment go over my head and kept my focus, but I felt Viktor’s panic beside me. I wasn’t fazed by this fight tonight. I’d never been afraid in the cage. It was my domain, my home.
Durov moved out of sight, and I glanced to Kisa’s office, only to be driven further in my workout when I saw her peering through the blinds, watching me.
Intent refueled my muscles, and I didn’t give a fuck who this Goliath was. I was going to raze him the fuck down.
Just one more tally tattoo to add to my torso and one less person in the way of having Kisa as mine.