Kisa’s hand began shaking as she held mine, and I saw her face pale, the reality of that fact hitting home just as the dam of my blocked-out past broke and memories came flooding out, blindsiding me.
“Rodion,” I whispered, feeling like I’d just taken a punch to the kidney. “Rodion was my best friend, wasn’t he? We were like brothers. Yes? Is that—”
I watched tears fall from Kisa’s eyes. My eyes grew wider as I pictured Rodion’s features: light-brown hair, blue eyes. I dreamed of him sometimes. He was the boy in my dreams. His features had always been blurred, and I was unable to ever make out his identity. But now I could picture him with crystal clarity. I knew him. I—
Shit …
I looked at Kisa again. She was slumped over, her back shaking with the force of her tears. And then in my mind, I saw her and Rodion together: at church, at the beach, round a table, by their father’s side …
Lifting my hand and pressing it on her back, I swallowed hard. “He … Rodion was your brother, wasn’t he? Fuck, Kisa, Rodion was your blood.”
A sob slipped from Kisa’s mouth and she slumped onto the sand. Crawling forward, I covered Kisa with my body and wrapped my arms around her waist. She leaned into my arms and cried harder, her hands reaching out to grip onto my thighs while I tried to breathe through the memories of my past hitting me with the force of a truck.
“Kisa,” I murmured. “Durov killed him … He killed him…”
Another loud sob ripped from her throat and she began shaking. Pushing herself upright with her hands on my thighs, Kisa lifted her head. Her beautiful face was red and wet with her tears.
“No! I always thought his death must have been an accident. A misunderstanding. Some other explanation. I-I—” Reaching out, she gripped my biceps, desperation in her expression. “Why? Why did Alik kill him? What had Rodion ever done to him? I don’t understand! They were friends!”
I squeezed my eyes shut, holding my breath like I could force the memory.
“Please remember. Please remember,” Kisa begged.
The Volkov heir’s no more. I did what my papa commanded.
Dragging in a gasp, I looked at Kisa and suddenly saw a man’s face in my head. He was tall, dark, older, a fucking evil glint in his eyes. Just like the guards, I thought. He had that sadistic, controlling look in his eyes that the guards always wore.
“His papa,” I said, and Kisa could only blink. “His papa told him to take out the heir … so he would be next in line. So he could lead when he was old enough.”
“No,” Kisa said, shaking her head. “No! Abram wouldn’t do that. He loved Rodion!”
“Alik stabbed Rodion because his father told him to. That’s what Alik said!”
The shaking of Kisa’s head grew faster. “No, no, no, no!” She staggered to her feet and wrapped her arms around her waist. Her feet suddenly stopped in the sand, and she asked, “And Alik? Wh-why did Alik stab himself and blame you? Why take you from me too?”
Every muscle in me froze and my heart thundered in my chest. Kisa saw my reaction and her arms dropped to her sides. “What?” she asked, her voice laced with dread, fear … anxiousness.
Feeling a sudden rush of protectiveness, I lurched forward and crushed my mouth against hers, Kisa moaning in surprise. Her hands slammed to my hard pecs, but her mouth moved against mine like she couldn’t resist what we had, the spark that was between us.
Pulling back, breathless, I pressed my forehead against hers, gripping tightly onto her neck.
“Luka … please … tell me,” Kisa begged, her voice barely a whisper.
Inhaling a ragged breath, I closed my eyes and answered honestly, “Because of you.” I opened my eyes, and Kisa backed away, her gaze searching mine. She was shaking her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. “He needed someone to blame and he wanted you, Kisa-Anna. He wanted you away from me.”
“No!” Kisa turned her back to me and held on to a nearby rock. Her head shook back and forth, and all I could do was to stand there watching her, every muscle tensed with the unknown … the unknown of how to be with her … how to make her feel better.
I stood there like a mute and watched her fall apart. But when a pained scream ripped from her throat and she fell to her knees, my feet seemed to move of their own accord, and I dropped behind her, wrapping my arms around her slight body.
“He’s … he’s troubled. He’s always been troubled with voices in his head. Urges to hurt people. He needed me, even then, he needed me to stop the urges,” she whispered. “He’s always been so possessive of me. But I never thought … I couldn’t have imagined…” Kisa’s breath hitched and she began turning in my arms. I froze, unsure of what she was doing, when she crawled on my lap and laid her head on my shoulder. I fought to breathe quietly, her actions making something within me warm, like her touch her closeness thawing the thick ice in my blood.
Kisa’s bloodshot eyes traced the graphic demons I had tattooed on my chest—a gift from the guards who wanted me to look evil to the Gulag crowd—and her breath blew against my neck, sending shivers down my spine.
“I can’t … I can’t take that he blamed it on you, my beautiful Luka, my best friend, my soul’s other half … because of me … because he wanted me…”
She sucked in a shuddering breath and her hand dropped to trace round my stomach. “That he would injure himself so … so … brutally to create such an impressive lie against you.”
I closed my eyes, trying hard not to lose grip of my rage at the thought of Durov and what he had done.
But that was shot to hell when Kisa said, “He never even let me grieve your death. He just swooped in and took me for his own. I was only thirteen. But I was his. My father didn’t complain, he was lost, and then a couple of years later my mama died of a heart attack—the pain of losing my brother was too much for her to bear. Papa’s only child was now with the only heir—it was the perfect outcome from such a horrific situation. And I was so numbed by grief of losing everyone I loved, that I never fought him. In fact, I was glad someone was there for me.”
Kisa lifted her head and pressed three kisses on my rigid jaw. “I had lost you … I didn’t care much about anything after that … until you saved me in the alley and my heart began to beat again.” She sucked in a breath. “I hadn’t even realized it’d stopped.”
Not knowing how to respond, I gripped her tighter.
“Luka?” she asked. I grunted a reply. “Where did you go? What happened?”
I narrowed my eyes and concentrated on my past. “Your father took me to his office, along with Alik’s.” My eyebrows pulled down, my head aching. “Someone begged for my life. Another man was in the room with us, I think, but I can’t make out his face.”
Kisa stiffened in my arms. “You don’t know who that man is? What he looks like?”
The man was older and maybe had light hair, but that was all I could see. I tried to keep going while I still had this memory in my mind. I was afraid if I focused too much on the man trying to spare my life, the whole memory would come tumbling down.
“He pleaded with your father to not kill me, but Durov’s papa wanted me dead. I…” My heart started pumping hard and I could feel my blood rushing through my veins. “I remember feeling fear, but I couldn’t open my mouth. Durov’s father was so angry that he intimidated me … He stole my voice with his glare. Gestured to me that he would kill me if I spoke. I was mute with shock. The man who tried to defend me started arguing with him, and … and guns were pulled.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, parts of the memory becoming grainy. “The next thing I knew, your father told me there would be no cops involved in my crime, in my murder of Rodion, but that I was going to be sent to the motherland, to Russia to a contact he had there. He told me I would be punished. He told me I would be in a prison for kids, doing manual labor on a farm deep in the Russian countryside … He told me I would never come back to Brooklyn.”
Kisa came closer, almost melding herself into my chest like she wanted to crawl into my skin. “My God, Luka … I remember them taking you away. I was taken home … and all I remember is being numb as I lay in my bed.”
Kisa looked up at me and placed her palm upon my skin. “What happened next? Because … because after you left, and I didn’t know where they had taken you, we were told you were dead.”
The smell of smoke burned my nose. The sounds of screeching tires skidding to a stop. There was a bus …
“I was in a bus. It was cool outside. Night. I remember not being able to see through the glass because the windows were so steamed up. There were four, maybe five of us being taken away somewhere. Nobody talked. We all sat separately. But I could feel that we were all scared. We were all young … teens? Some could’ve been even younger. Some had been sold by their families to work on the farms.”
I stared off at the lights on the pier, almost feeling drained by how much I had remembered tonight. But the lights blurred and I could suddenly see something else in my mind. The lights … the screeching of tires …
“The bus was run off the road,” I blurted, my voice speaking aloud a memory it was currently processing. “Headlights from a van blinded us on a dark road. There was a loud bang and the driver of the bus swerved and we rolled into a ditch.
“We were all screaming, but the driver wasn’t moving. I remember climbing over the seats, hearing the other boys moan from their injuries, and crawled to the driver. But when I got to him, I could see blood. I could see a hole in his head … a hole I knew he didn’t get from the accident.”
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, the pain of such memories coming too strong.
“Luka?” Kisa whispered and began rubbing at my back. “Don’t.… don’t push yourself too much. It’s okay, lyubov moya. It’s okay. Don’t rush yourself. This is all too much for you to go through in such a short space of time.”
Anger boiled in my stomach, and I began to shake violently, my inner rage almost too much to cope with.
“No,” I snapped curtly, my voice sounding deadly even to me. Kisa jumped and I heard her hold her breath at my sudden change in mood. “I need … to remember,” I forced out.
“Luka?” Kisa asked and slowly began backing off my lap. “You need to calm down. You’re turning red. Your skin is scalding!”
Tipping back my head, I roared toward the night sky, releasing all the confusion, the rage, and the frustration that had been bombarding me over the last few days.
“Luka!” Kisa cried, and I could hearing her sniffing, sobbing as she moved from my lap and scurried backwards into the rocks.
“The driver had been shot, and men stormed the bus … Georgians … Georgians stormed the bus.” I began rocking on my knees as the scene played out. “They beat us, forced us into the back of the bus…” I sucked in a long, stuttered breath and looked to Kisa, who was now dressed and pressed against the rocks as though she were facing a monster.
She was. I was a fucking cold, sick monster. This was what they had made me … what they’d been ordered to do to me by …
“They knew my name,” I spat out. “Those men … they asked for me by my name.” I blinked, but the memory of my full name didn’t come. “Luka,” I said and hit the side of my head with my fist. “Luka … Luka … ARGH!”
I couldn’t remember my last name!
“Tolstoi,” a soft voice uttered against the breeze. “Luka Jakob Tolstoi … that was your full name. That is your full name.”
Shoulders sagging, I tilted my head to the side as I witnessed the expression on Kisa’s face transform from fear to sadness.
Feeling my legs shake, I fell forward on all fours, my hands fisting into the sand.
“Luka!” Kisa shrilled, and I heard her drop beside me, her hand tentatively resting on my back.
“They had been sent for me,” I rasped, all energy seeping from my body into the sand beneath me. “Fuck … I can still feel it. Like a fucking dagger, Kisa, a dagger.”
“How?” Kisa asked cautiously, her fingers running down my spine. “Why were they sent for you? How did you know?”
* * *
“Luka Tolstoi. You’re coming with us,” the man with the gun said.
“Where? Where am I going?” I asked, but I got no answer.
“To fucking hell, boy. You’re going off the grid. Someone’s paid us a shitload of money to make you disappear.” The guy pointed to the other boys being dragged out of the bus. “You all are.”
“Why?” I asked. “Who ordered this?”
He smiled and shrugged. “You fucked with the wrong family, boy.”
All I felt was dread at his words. “Durov? It was Durov?”
The man looked taken aback, but then he laughed. “Well, at least you’ll know who’s to blame for what lies ahead. Abram made sure you’ll never ever return to Brooklyn.”
* * *
Lurching to a sitting position, I stared at Kisa. “Abram … Abram Durov…”
“What? What else do you remember?”
“He organized for the Georgians to intercept the bus. He emptied it and burned the bus. They filled it with dead teens from the Gulag so there was burned bodies. But it was Abram. He ordered me taken.”
Kisa’s eyes shone, but her face was calmer now, numb. “He needed to protect Alik,” she said, nodding. “He needed you gone so no one would know Alik killed Rodion.”
My teeth gritted together and I lowered my head, taking a long, deep breath. “They never expected me to survive. They thought I’d be killed in the cage.”
We were both silent for a while, but then Kisa stood and held out her hand. I looked up into her eyes and saw only strength. “But you did, Luka. You did survive. And…” She took a breath and straightened her shoulders. Resolve had settled within her. I could see it in her face. “We need to get you back to the gym. You have a fight to win tomorrow.”
I watched my Kisa-Anna, and the anger I had fled my body.
I had to win this fight.
I had to reclaim my life or forever live in the dark.
Slipping my hand in Kisa’s and seeing her eyes shine with tears, I got to my feet and pulled her into my chest. Her gaze met mine, and I raked back her long brown hair with my fingers.
Her eyes closed. “You have to win the fight, Luka. Justice must be served. It is the way we live. Blood for blood. You have to do it for you, for us … but I want you to win for Rodion. He should be avenged.”
Leaning down, I pressed my forehead to hers, just being for a minute. I finally pulled away, picked up my clothes and put them on. Zipping up my sweater, I pulled up the hood and finally faced my Kisa. She was staring at the ground, but she looked up and a sad smile pulled on her lips.
I strode toward her and tugged her into my chest, once again inhaling her scent. “Will you still want me after I kill Durov?”
Kisa froze, but her head began to nod against my chest. “Yes, lyubov moya,” she said almost silently. “I have been with Alik for so long. He needed me to live, couldn’t stand being without me.”
Kisa pulled back from my chest but didn’t look up. Her hands played with the string on my sweater. “I’ve always known he was … different, dangerous. Always known he wasn’t like everybody else … but I put up with it because, well, he was all I’d ever known for so long, and I knew he’d kill me if I tried to leave. He wouldn’t survive without me next to him. He’d unravel, he become too dark, too unrestrained.” Kisa sucked in a deep breath as my heart ached at the tone of her voice. “But I didn’t know he’d taken you from me, taken my brother from me. I’d asked him about that day so much in the beginning and he swore to me that you had killed Rodion. Now everything I’ve ever believed has just come crashing down.”
“And your father? What will he do?” I asked, feeling a wave of possessiveness over Kisa. Jealous that Durov had had her all these years. That he’d made her believe he needed her so much she could never be with anyone else.
She was mine. Not his. Never his … MINE!
Kisa glanced away, seeming lost in her head. “When Papa finds out what Alik did to his son, his heir, his pride and joy, and then finds out who you are, that you are innocent, he’ll want Alik dead too.”
“He will?” I asked in confusion.
Kisa faced me and her head tilted to the side. “Luka … do you remember if you had any family here in Brooklyn? Do you know how you know me? Why we grew up together? Why you knew Rodion and Alik?”
My hands started to sweat and my headache grew stronger again. My eyes squeezed shut and my stomach clenched, my breath pausing in my throat.
“Luka! Luka!” Kisa prompted, and I let out a long exhale as my eyes snapped back open. Sweat beaded on my forehead and I felt as though I’d been punching a bag for three hours straight.
“Don’t try and remember right now,” Kisa instructed, and I focused on her eyes, on her hand that rested on my cheek. “Don’t. You’re tired. You’ve put yourself through too much tonight. The color has gone from your face.”
Kisa’s fingers stroked my stubbled cheek and the feeling was hypnotic. I breathed with the rhythm of her caress until my heart began to slow.
“Good, lyubov moya,” Kisa soothed.
Once I had calmed, I nodded my head, telling her I was good.
Kisa’s question stabbed at my mind. A family? People who … loved me? I couldn’t even imagine it. Another stab of pain tortured my mind, but I knew I had to block it out. To block out everything but the fight against Durov.
I would finally get my revenge.
“We need to go,” Kisa said reluctantly, and taking her outstretched hand, we walked back over the sand toward Serge, climbing in his awaiting car.
A while later, we arrived at the gym and I kissed Kisa on the lips.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Luka,” she whispered. “I’ll try and come to you before the fight.”
Nodding my head curtly, I opened the door of the car but paused to look over my shoulder, thinking how beautiful Kisa truly was. “I…” I cleared my throat, tipped my head to the side, and said, “I … love … you.”
The words felt strange coming from my lips, but when Kisa’s eyes began filling with tears and her mouth pulled into a huge, watery smile, I knew these three words were right.
Love. A new yet somehow familiar emotion for me.
Kisa scrambled over the seat and crushed her lips against mine. As she pulled back, she whispered, “I love you too. So much. So, so much.”
Nodding again, I hid the sense of warmth filling my body. It took me by surprise. I didn’t know how to deal with such things.
“Tomorrow,” I said, stroking my thumb across her soft face and stood.
“Tomorrow,” Kisa said in reply.
Serge tipped his hat at me from the driver’s door.
I backed away into the shadows of the gym, once again one with the darkness.
With each step I took to my training room, I mentally chanted the words:
Durov.
New York.
Revenge.
Kill.
Tomorrow night, I would finally get my revenge.