by Roxie Rivera
Kostya stayed silent and let the man confess it all.
“When I found out what happened, I lost it. I found him, and we hauled him out to the middle of nowhere and beat the shit out of him. Then we handed him a shovel and told him to start fucking digging. When it was deep enough, I killed him, and we filled in the grave.”
“We?”
“Romero and me and—”
“Scorpion,” Kostya finished for him, already piecing it together. Spider wasn’t Marley’s stepfather. He was her uncle. “What happened to your sister? Why did you need to lie about the identity of her mother?”
He didn’t answer at first. He swallowed a few times, as if choking, and finally said, “Annie killed herself. Stuck a goddamn hose in the tailpipe of her car and locked it in a garage. I found her later that night. The baby, Marley, was screeching her head off in her crib when I got there.”
Spider glanced away, his gaze moving to the gentle roll of the ocean. “After the funeral, I made a decision. I didn’t want that shit following Marley around for the rest of her life. So, I started looking for a mama to take care of her. I didn’t have to look far. Kim had practically grown up with Annie. They’d been best friends since they were kids. She didn’t have a family so I didn’t have to worry about other people keeping our secret.”
“So, you gave Marley to Kim?”
Spider nodded. “She loved Marley from the first time she held her, and I could tell that she just wanted to be a mother. She wanted a home and a family. Romero helped me get a forged birth certificate. Kim was young, maybe too young, but I didn’t have the skills or the time to be a father. I was wrapped up in the club. Back then, I was an angry son of a bitch, and I had no business being a parent. We made up our story and started living it. Eventually, I married Kim because it made sense and kept Marley close to me. And we just—well—we’ve never told the truth.”
“Blyat.”
“Now you understand why I have to find him.”
“Even if you kill Scorpion, he’s probably told that story to someone else by now. They’ll use it to hurt you or blackmail you.”
“I’ll go to prison before I roll on my crew,” Spider said resignedly. “But Marley…”
“I’ll make sure she’s taken care of,” he promised. “It’s the least I can do.”
“I’d appreciate it. I’ve got her set up with life insurance and some investments. She’ll be all right when I’m gone, but if I’m just in the pen? She’s going to struggle.”
“From what I’ve heard, she’s a very smart girl. She’ll be fine.”
“I hope so,” Spider said with a sad smile. “I hope to God she’ll forgive me when she finds out I’ve been lying all this time.”
“I wish I could help you with that, but I can’t.” He held out his hand, and Spider shook it. “Good luck.”
“Yeah,” Spider clasped his hand tightly, “good luck to you, too, brother.”
“Cut your fucking hair,” he ordered, stepping back. “I recognized you in the dark because of that braid. You’re going to want to blend in soon.”
His advice given, he walked away from Spider. Feeling the cool sea breeze on his skin, he followed the worn wooden path back to the parking lot. When he was behind the wheel, he scanned his surroundings, looking for any sign of a tail, and left the lot. He found Boychenko at their meeting spot.
“Where are we headed now?” the kid asked as he fastened his seatbelt.
“Webster.”
“The fuck is in Webster?”
“Two girls. One of them with a big fucking secret…”
Chapter Sixteen
“NOW, LISTEN,” KOSTYA said as they idled in the driveway, waiting for a garage door to open, “whatever you see or hear today, you take to the grave. If you don’t think you can handle the secrecy, you stay in the car and wait for me.”
“I can handle it,” Boychenko assured him.
The garage door began to move, and he inched forward into the space. “Don’t talk. Don’t ask questions. Find a corner and stay in it. Listen. Watch. Learn.”
Boychenko nodded studiously. “Got it.”
When the garage door closed behind them, the side door into the house opened to reveal Sunny. Seeing that it was him, she visibly relaxed and stepped away from the door, disappearing back into the townhome. Getting out of the car, he noticed the sleek black SUV sitting in the space to the right and the neatly organized shelves lining the back wall of the garage. Apparently, Sunny spent more time here than he’d realized.
Boy trailed him into the house where they found Tiffany sitting at a dining table drinking a Sprite. The girl looked tired and sick, her skin pale and her eyes ringed with purple. Her wet hair hung limply around her face, and he was struck by how old she looked. The stress of what she had survived had aged her ten years in the span of a few days.
“Where’d you find this kid? Recess?” Sunny teased, eyeing Boychenko with some curiosity as she hopped up onto the counter and picked up her mug of hot tea. “This your first day playing Kostya’s shadow?” When Boy nodded, she said, “Well, good luck, kid.” Gesturing to the Keurig on the other counter, she asked, “You want some coffee, K?”
He started to turn down the offer but then decided he needed another jolt of caffeine. After fixing a cup, he sat down across from Tiffany and stretched out his legs. He sipped his drink, savoring the heat and bitterness, before saying, “You probably won’t believe me, but I’m here to help you. My goal is to get you back into Houston, with your family, and without the police involved in any way.”
A panicked expression crossed her face. “Please, I can’t go home.” She glanced at Sunny and pleaded, “You promised I wouldn’t have to go back!”
“I did, and I mean it,” Sunny assured her. Looking at him, she explained, “Once you hear what she has to say, you’ll understand why she doesn’t want to go home.”
Certain he was about to uncover yet another layer of shit that would make his life even more difficult, he sat back in his chair. “Well…let’s hear it.”
Tiffany ran her thumb up and down the side of her Sprite can, moving the condensation around as her lower lip wobbled and her cheeks flexed rhythmically. “I don’t know what I was thinking getting involved with that psycho. At first, it was exciting, you know? My heart was always racing when I was with him, and he was so different than all the other boys I’d dated.” She closed her eyes. “And then he showed me what a monster he was.”
“You slew that monster,” he remarked. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Oh, yes he can,” she insisted. “He knows things about me and about my family. Things that are going to get us all killed!” She started to cry. “That’s the only reason I agreed to meet him again after the way he beat me up the last time I saw him. He said that if I didn’t come meet him he was going to call ICE and have my whole family picked up. He said my aunt and uncle would be deported, and my mom would go to prison for life.”
He glanced at Sunny who sat stone-faced before asking Tiffany, “What did he tell you about your family?”
Tiffany wiped her eyes. “He had all of these pictures of my mom when she was younger. She was in, like, these army uniforms learning to use guns and knives. There were pics of my mom with dark hair and a headscarf. I swear to God it looked like she was in Afghanistan or Iran.” She sniffed loudly and shook her head. “It didn’t make any sense to me. My mom is the freaking president of the PTO! She was a homeroom mom when I was little. She made cupcakes and brought juice boxes and apple slices. We don’t have guns in our house. We’re just—we’re normal people!”
Kostya’s heartrate increased. Was Tiffany’s mother the one who had brought the dossier on Nikolai and the others to Houston? Was she the one who had given it to Eric? Was she a former operative? KGB? FSB?
“What happened after he showed you the photos? Where were you?”
“I met him at Stripes. We were parked in the back where it was dark. After I threw the pict
ures at him, he freaking hit me and then handcuffed me. He had a gun! The psycho kept telling me he would shoot me if I made any noise or tried to get someone to help me. He took me to a couple of different places, a gross motel with stains all over the bed and carpet and then to that doublewide where he told me about his kid.”
“What was his plan?”
“He was going to use me as bait to get you guys involved.”
“Us? Me?” He touched his chest. “Or Nikolai?”
“All of you, I guess. He said that my mom would go to you guys for help, and they would send you to find me. He was going to kidnap you and take you to meet someone else. Some bug guy.”
“Scorpion?” he guessed.
“Yeah. I guess.” She wiped at her teary face. “He kept telling me how he had a deal worked out and showed me all of his fake IDs. I took them and put them in my bag when he was sleeping after he made me…” Her voice trailed off as she grimaced, and he understood what she didn’t want to say. “That’s how the fight started in the kitchen last night. He realized the envelope was missing. He hit me again, and I lost it. I grabbed that knife and, well, you know.”
“I know,” he murmured. “Did he say anything about the people who had given him a deal?”
“Just that she was some lady Fed,” Tiffany sniffled and grabbed a paper napkin from the caddy in the middle of the table. She wiped her nose and said, “She apparently knows everything about all the criminals in the city. He said you were on the top of her list.”
“I’m on the top of a lot of lists,” he replied, not at all bothered by that threat. “Did he say anything else? Is there anything you learned from him that can help me find the people who want to hurt your family?”
She shook her head. “That’s all he told me before…”
“Yeah,” he said, knowing she meant before she killed him. “I took care of that. You don’t need to worry about it. Sunny will help you come up with an alibi that works.”
“We’ve been working on it,” Sunny assured him. “You’ve got enough shit to deal with so let me handle all of this.”
“Gladly.” He finished his coffee in a long pull, stood up and carried the cup to the sink. “Whatever you have to spend, I’ll reimburse you. Just keep her safe and hidden as long as you can.”
“I will.”
“Let’s go, kid.” He reached into his pocket and tossed his keys at Boychenko. “You’re driving.”
The kid seemed surprised but then grinned and hurried out the door. Sunny rolled her eyes at Boychenko’s enthusiasm. “He’s like a puppy.”
“He’s already housebroken,” Kostya said with a smile. “He’s a good kid,” he added seriously. “We can trust him.”
“I hope so.” Sunny’s voice had that warning lilt to it, the one that reminded him she wouldn’t blink if she thought Boychenko was a risk to her own safety. “Listen,” she said, touching his arm as she trailed him into the garage, “I have to get some freelance work done. I’m going to reach out to the Fence.”
The Fence was one of the Professionals. He was their specialist in forgeries, selling and acquiring stolen goods and other similar jobs.
“For the girl?” he asked, certain that was the only reason Sunny would reach out for help.
She nodded. “We have a problem we need to handle as soon as possible, but she’s not old enough to get it done without her mom’s signature. I need some fake ID for her. Just something to bump her age up to eighteen so they won’t hassle us at the clinic.”
“Clinic? Is she sick?”
Sunny shook her head. “Not that kind of clinic.”
And then he understood. “Oh, I see.”
The poor girl’s appearance made sense now. Pregnant, kidnapped, raped, beaten—she had suffered too much. She wanted a clean break, wanted to get away from this horrible period of her life and start over again.
“If you can’t get what you need from the Fence, let me know. There are other options in town. They’re clean and safe,” he added. “Not back-alley coat hanger horror shows.”
“We’ll get it figured out,” she told him. “I just wanted you to know that I was reaching out to your competition. Didn’t want you to get your feelings hurt.”
“Funny,” he grumbled and walked away from her. “Keep me updated. Let me know if you need help.”
“Be careful, Kostya.”
As he slid into the passenger seat, he glanced at Boychenko. “You wreck my car? You get pulled over? You do anything stupid? You’re going to meet my graveyard. Understand?”
Boy swallowed and put the car into reverse as the garage door slowly opened. “Yep.”
Chapter Seventeen
AFTER DROPPING BOYCHENKO at Samovar with explicit instructions on what to tell Nikolai, Kostya drove straight to Tiffany’s house. From the outside, nothing looked amiss. He tried the front door and found it unlocked. Cautiously, he entered the house, drawing his sidearm and listening carefully. If Tiffany’s mother had been a covert operative, she was dangerous.
Inside the living room, it looked exactly as it had the last time he’d been here. There was a magazine on the coffee table, a half-filled cup of tea next to it on a coaster. The house felt empty and too quiet. He took a deliberate step forward and then another. He debated checking the bedrooms or the kitchen first before settling on the kitchen.
The instant his boot crossed the threshold of the kitchen, he felt and heard the unmistakable crinkle of plastic sheeting. It was taped to the floor, the ceiling and the walls. He had used the same setup on numerous occasions to make cleanup easier. It seemed someone had the same idea for cleaning up his death.
And that someone was Holly’s mother.
Wearing all white trousers and a blazer, Frances looked like an ice queen sitting at the kitchen table. She seemed callously cold, her back stiff and straight and her displeased expression warned him not to fuck around with her. Gripping a pistol equipped with a silencer in white gloved hands, she was looking for a reason to pull that trigger.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said in perfect Russian. Having only ever heard her speak English with that slight Texas twang, he was, frankly, impressed.
“I would have hurried back from Galveston if I’d known,” he replied in their mother tongue, holstering his weapon and opening his jacket to show her that was the only firearm he had above the waist.
“Ankle?” she asked, keeping her gun trained on his chest.
He lifted his jeans to show her what he had strapped to each boot. She didn’t ask him to remove the knives or guns. She only gestured to the chair across from her, and he took it.
“So,” he said, stretching out his legs and reaching into his pocket for his cigarettes and lighter.
“So,” Frances parroted, watching him light up. She sneered slightly. “Must you?”
“My last cigarette,” he said, flicking the ash on the table and noticing the file folder in front of her. “I think that’s traditional, isn’t it? One last cigarette for the dead man?”
“I wouldn’t know. My marks rarely get the chance to see my face let alone have time to reach for a cigarette.”
“I believe that,” he replied, exhaling a lungful of smoke. “How else could you have gone this long undetected?”
“I’ve survived this long undetected because I’m fucking good,” Frances countered. “I wrote the book you used to become the man you are today. In some ways, I was more of a mother to you than Nina.”
He stiffened at the mention of his mother. Her remark cut like a razor, slicing at the soft and vulnerable part of him. Not taking her bait, he asked, “Did you work together?”
She nodded. “Once or twice. Their turf was Europe, and mine was here.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I came here as a child. It’s the same story that most of us have. I was chosen from the orphanage and taken to a special training center. After a few years, they brought me here where I grew up as American as apple fuckin
g pie.”
“The perfect cover,” he mused. “And after the KGB collapsed? You started working for FSK and FSB?”
“For a while,” she admitted, “but then I got out on my own terms.”
“Because of Holly?”
“Everything I do now is because of Holly,” she answered truthfully.
“Including killing me?” he asked, his gaze settling on the menacing Grach pointed at his chest.
“I haven’t decided yet.” She eyed him suspiciously. “I’m not sure if you actually care about Holly or if you’re using her to get back at Maksim.”
“For what?” he asked, genuinely confused.
Her suspicious expression faltered. “You don’t know?”
“About Holly being his daughter? Yes, I know that.”
“No, not that,” she said with a sigh. She pushed the folder toward him. “Read.”
Wondering what he didn’t know about Maksim, he picked up the folder and opened it. The stack of photos on top had his full attention. He flipped through them, each photo making his stomach twist harder and more painfully. Holly. Maksim. Nikolai. Vivian. Maksim’s kids with his late wife. Yuri and Ivan with their wives. Dimitri holding his daughter. Artyom walking hand in hand with Chess’s little girl through the zoo. A beautiful young blonde in ’80s clothing. And then finally his own family. My mother. My father. Me.
Each photo had a number scribbled on it in red. The ones who were dead—his parents, the pretty blonde—had large red X marks drawn over their faces. The other photos were numbered. Vivian was six. Nikolai was five. Holly was four. Frances was three. Maksim was two. And I’m number one.
“Who does this hitlist belong to?” he asked, his gaze lingering on Holly’s face.
“I thought you would have figured that out by now,” Frances remarked with disappointment. “I did send you all the clues you needed.”
Of course. “Were both files yours? The one that came to my house last month and the file Eric was given?”