AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Enough of this,” I say, softly. In Russian. Kat doesn’t miss a beat. Her chin jerks toward me, eyes glinting and wild. Maybe, too, she senses the change in the air, like an electrical current.“We are men of the same world, Konstantin. We settle things as we must. And we both know how to settle this fairly.” I take the pistol from my hip and hand it, grip-first to Kat at my side. Looking a little baffled, she hesitates, then takes it. “Let us settle it the way they would have, once. The way our fathers would have.”
His men, who have materialized among the SUVs in the hazy light, look warily to one another—they know what this means. No doubt they’ve seen fights just like these play out, just like this before, in headlights, in the fog, in some nameless clearing in some forgotten wood. Hands, no weapons. All honor.
And to the death.
“I’m certain you’re joking,” says Konstantin, but his smile is almost curious. Almost daring. My own men are moving in out of the woodwork now, watching with glinting eyes, with rifles held across their chests. “You really think you’re so much of a prize, Aleks? You really think you alone are worth all of this?” He gestures grandly, and he’s right, it is a grand scene. So many of us men, so far from home. Willing to die for this.
When I could end it all, so easily.
I study my enemy. I know in my bones that this is what he wants; it’s all he wants: to kill me, here, like this. In front of his men and mine, over a woman, over my wife. To kill me like this would be a story for the books, for the ages. A legacy he could sell, and tell to his children.I beat him to death, with my own two hands; the bastard barely put up a fight, put a blight on the name Lukin, he died in the fog there, in the wasteland between New York state and Canada, and we left his body there for the animals; I made a widow of his wife.
I can practically taste it, scent it like blood on the air. If I do this, it ends. Konstantin will have nothing at all to gain from pursuing Kat or her son—my son. His vendetta will be satisfied, in the way of old kings.
Yuri has appeared at my side. Even in my periphery I see the panic in his pale face. I can hear him saying, without saying a word:Aleks, don’t. Don’t do this. It doesn’t have to end this way.But there is no other way.
I take the rifle from my back and swing it firmly against his chest.
“Aleks,” he finally says, his voice thick with warning. “Wait, please—consider what you are doing.” This he says in English, and Kat looks at me hard, her eyes bright with fear.
“Do what?” She presses, her voice wavering. “Aleks, what is he talking about? What were you saying, just then?”
I turn to her, now divested of all my weapons. All, of course, but the knife in my boot—and that I never part with. A gift from my father. I wonder if when they prepare my body, Kat will think to pass it onto our son. The boy whom I will never know.
And will it be for the better, that he never knows his father? Will it spare him the hell his mother has faced?It will, I know it will. And that alone is worth dying for.
I take Kat’s face in my hands. “I love you,” I say, simply. “I need you to trust me.”
“Aleks,” she whispers, tears rising in her eyes. “Please. Tell me what to do, tell me what’s going on—”
“Stand back,” I tell her. “And no matter what follows, do not interfere.”
“Aleks,” she whispers again, and this time panic enters, a high thin sound, into her voice. “Don’t, don’t do this,” she says it as she realizes, but I mute her again with a kiss.If he senses I am going to let him kill me, this won’t satisfy him at all.It needs to feel like a win, a real win; I need to make it look real. Or all of this is for nothing. Konstantin would never be satisfied with a martyr or a sacrifice—neither of those net vengeance.
“Remember your promise to me,” I say softly against Kat’s mouth. She tastes of blood, and of herself, of her musk and herskin and her scent; witchlike as she was that first night on the road, rain-drenched and lit white and black with lightning.My wild girl.I wasted all those years, but I got these days, these nights.My fighter, my wife.“You did well.”
She stares at me, maybe disbelieving. Maybe making her peace. And when I step back, though she hesitates, her fingers twined with mine, she lets me go.
“You’re serious,” says Konstantin once more, his smile slowly falling at the edges. His eyes have a dim and hungry glint to them now, and I know I’ve hooked him with the promise of a vendetta settled, a life avenged. Now I just have to give mine, and with him none the wiser for it. “You must think me very weak. You must think this is settled already, without either of us having even thrown a punch. Is that right, Aleks? You always were so very arrogant.”
He says it with thin rage. But he is the one who has always been arrogant. Tonight, it will be founded. To his eyes, at least. And all those watching us. But in his anger, I see a way to ensure this battle happens, and the old-fashioned way—with no interference.
“I have taken you for many things,” I say in Russian, unzipping my jacket and shrugging it off my shoulders, tossing it to Yuri. “A coward was never one of them.”
A twitch of discomfort pushes down the line of his men and mine, many of them shifting from foot to foot, eyes darting. They don’t understand it, my baiting him, when I’m down and he’s up. When he’s got my son.
But the hungry glare in Konstantin’s eye only brightens, and he smiles, and then I know I have him for certain. “As the old gangsters did it,” he says. “No interference.”
“No interference.” He’s shot and so am I. We’ve both taken a beating this last week. It’s a fair fight, but one I can’t let myself win. “And this settles it. The flesh is paid for with flesh.”
“Oh, yes,” says Konstantin with relish, his grin dark. He shrugs off his own coat and tosses it to one of his men. The one who brought Adam steps forward and pulls him back by the shoulders. In English, Konstantin says to him, “Keep your eyes open, boy. I will show you what kind of a man your father is.”
I look at Adam. His dark eyes are wide, full of fear. And of anger. He may not understand it, or any of this, or why his mother is over here, on my side, and not with him. Maybe he understands in that moment, or just hears, who I am to him—I don’t know. But I know then, that if things were different, I’d give it all away. The life I had in Russia, the life I had before her, before him. My son. I would trade it all to be with them. I’d give up the riches, the power, the blood of it all, to be theirs. I never knew it was a life I could want. Now, when I know I must die, I see so clearly how it’s the only thing I ever could have wanted.
Too late, always too late.I pull off the sweater I’m wearing beneath my coat and cast it aside, then the shirt below. My heart is pounding now, and I feel the cold, visceral and in my bones. I turn to look one last time at Kat, and I drink her in. Her face says everything her lips can’t:Why are you doing this,andI love you,anddo you know what could have been, do you see what we could have had?
But this is for her. This is for Adam. I turn and face Konstantin.
“A fight to the death,” he says, and his face is full of delight. Yet underneath it, I see the tick of fear. He is wise to fear me, even now. “Oh, how I have waited for this.”
