AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh, you didn’t tell her?” My father laughed, grabbed my chin with two fingers, and turned my head so I was forced to look at Kostya. “Look at your husband, Gia.”
Mikhail was staring at me, his body tense and his jaw tight, but he didn’t say anything. I already knew how powerful he was. In this world, you never came into such power without spilling blood.
“He tortured people, Gianna. He killed your brother and your cousins. He tortured them to make them talk. Look at him well and see the real man you sold your family out for.”
I looked at Kostya, willing him to say something. He doesn’t. Instead, he mouthed without a sound, “I love you, I’m sorry.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The world we lived in was a fucked-up thing. I always knew that, and I would be only deceiving myself by believing that Kostya could be anything other than another product of that criminal world. Each item of clothing I owned and every meal I had ever eaten had been paid for with blood money.
Did I condone violence? No. Could I torture a person to get the information I needed? Probably not. I opened my eyes and looked right into those beautiful eyes of his. Would I love Kostya any less because of what he did? No. A fucked-up world created fucked-up people. It was war, there will always be death in a war.
I was probably more fucked up than most because I accepted my reality for what it was. “I love you,” I mouthed the words to Konstantin and watched him go still as he focused on my lips.
“My God, you’re in love with him,” my father stated in awe and then burst out laughing. “But no worries, we’ll find you another monster to marry easily enough.” He turned to Kostya. “Take out the magazine and drop the gun.”
I watched, horrified as Kostya released the gun magazine and then threw it along with the gun on the floor in front of him. No, no, no, I couldn’t lose him, I couldn’t.
“There are handcuffs on the radiator in the corner.” My father nodded towards the other side of the room, still pressing the gun to my head. “Cuff yourself.”
Panic rose in my stomach as I watched my husband walk toward the radiator, put one side of the handcuff on his right wrist and closed the other around the pipe. My father was going to kill him.
“Aldo, please. Let Gianna go. You can do whatever you want with me, but let your daughter go.”
“I don’t know . . .” He lowered the gun and took a few steps toward Kostya. “I think I should let her watch me kill you. Maybe it will make her more obedient.”
Ignoring the searing pain, I pulled on my restraints with all my might, rotating my hand left and right. At the same moment when I felt my hand slip free, a gunshot pierced the air. My head snapped up and I watched in horror as blood started pooling from the wound in Kostya’s shoulder.
“You didn’t think I’d let you off easy, did you? I have several more bullets here, and I’ll make sure only the last one is fatal.” Father took another step toward Kostya and cocked his head to the side. “What should I pick next? A leg maybe? Or the other shoulder? You could give me guidelines, it’s your specialty.”
I sprung to my feet and ran for Kostya’s gun on the floor.
“Gianna!” my father yelled. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Leave that thing alone. You’ll hurt yourself, you idiot!”
“Get out and run!” Kostya shouted at the same time. “Fucking now, Gianna!”
I ignored them both. I wasn’t running, and I was certainly going to hurt someone. And that someone wouldn’t be me. I looked up at my father, who was standing in front of Kostya, and took the gun in one hand, inserted the magazine, and cocked the gun. It took me no more than a few seconds. I had practiced many times with my guards as a child.
The look in my father’s eyes as he watched me stand up and aim the gun at him was priceless. For a few moments, the two of us just stood there looking at each other, my gun pointed at my father’s chest as he regarded me. “You don’t have the guts, Gianna.” He smiled and started turning toward Kostya.
No, I didn’t have the guts to kill my father. I took a deep breath, aimed at his thigh, and pulled the trigger. Aldo Zima screamed, and his gun fell from his hand. He crumpled to the floor, clutching his bloody thigh.
I took a couple of steps until I was standing right in front of him. “That’s for me,” I rasped, then I aimed again, this time at his shoulder, and fired. His body jerked and he fell backward onto the floor. “That’s for . . . my husband.”
Ignoring my father’s weeping, I kicked his gun towards the other side of the room. “Gianna, give me the gun, zaika.” I looked up at Kostya and his outstretched arm, walked to him, and put the gun in his free hand.
~~~*~~~
Konstantin
“Gianna, look at me, zaika.” She raised her eyes to mine, and I saw the tears in her eyes. “Can I kill him, baby?”
I looked over at Aldo who was panting on the floor. If Gianna wasn’t here, he would already be dead, but I wouldn’t kill him in front of her unless she wanted me to. She nodded her head, then pulled off her T-shirt and squeezed it into a bundle. Standing there in only her bra and jeans, she pressed her shirt to my bleeding shoulder.
My hand was still cuffed to the radiator pipe, and my shoulder was screaming in pain, but there was no way I’d risk her going near that bastard to find the key. Instead, I wrapped my free arm around her and held her to my chest, making sure that the gun in my hand didn’t touch her skin.
The door banged into the wall and Nikandr and Daniil rushed in, guns drawn, looking around.
“Eyes to the floor,” I barked. No one was seeing my wife half naked except for me, special circumstances be damned. “The key to the cuffs.” I motioned with my head toward Aldo. “Call Leo to have someone pick him up and deliver his body back to them.”
