Nikolai: The Complete Collection

14. Nikolai

14

NIKOLAI

“ H e won’t get close enough to touch you, I swear.” Maya peers up at me, blinking and mute. She’s panicked about my request for help but mindful her assistance will be greatly rewarded. “I need someone who matched the description of his previous victims at short notice. You were the perfect candidate. He likes them…” I stop before I say small and malnourished like you. I want her help, not remind her about how poorly Vladimir treats his children.

Maya is my half-sister—well, she would have been if I had Vladimir’s blood as my mother led me to believe. Her mother was a French tourist who was as blinded by Vladimir’s dark insides as she was the bright lights of Vegas.

Vladimir pulled all his best tricks on her—a promised penthouse with views of the strip, a sleek new ride, and a sworn oath to end his promiscuous ways.

All she ended up with was a dungeon-like room in the basement of the Popov compound and three children who are treated more like slaves than family.

Although Rico endeavored to help as many as he could before he was killed, the effort was bigger than anyone could have comprehended. Over the past fifty years, Vladimir has had many whores. With his view on protection as lax as his ideas on equality for women, his offspring grew exponentially each year. The age of his children extends from forty-three to six weeks old, his latest daughter compliments of the twenty-three-year-old Scandinavian woman he purchased on the black market in the middle of last year. Their daughter wasn’t immaculately conceived, nor was she born in the safety of a hospital.

If the last reports are accurate, her conception and birth traumatized her mother so much, Vladimir is on the verge of sending her to live with Maya’s mother in the underbelly of the Popov mansion. It is gruesome, but it’s a better outcome than the one Vladimir’s other insubordinate whores were handed. Her life will be spared, although I can’t guarantee it will be full of rainbows and sunshine.

I’m pulled from my thoughts when Sergei enters Justine’s dining room on Trey’s heel. I hate that I’m being forced to bring Sergei into this, but he is a master at removing tracking devices without alerting the authorities. The scope of my ankle bracelet perimeter should include the alleyway where Officer Prentice is about to meet his timely demise, but I’d rather local law enforcement officers not know I was in the alleyway at the time of their fellow officer’s death.

It’s easier to get off a murder conviction when you have a solid alibi, hence the reason Justine’s apartment is being swarmed by my crew members and the whores who keep them occupied during stints of chaos.

After slumping into one of the chairs squashed around the dining table, I hook my foot onto the warped wood, then nudge my head to the swinging door. “Go with Trey, Maya. Lia brought some clothes for you to change into.”

I need to get things moving. Justine left nearly twenty minutes ago. If she shops as quickly as she comes, I don’t have a minute to spare.

After giving me a warning look, announcing his unease about my plan, Trey guides Maya into the living room where Lia is waiting. I had originally intended to use Lia for my ruse. She’s another one of Vladimir’s many daughters, but instead of cowering in the shadows like Maya, waiting for the scraps Vladimir’s sons leave behind, she fights for her share. Not even a run-in with Satan himself saw her knees knocking in fear. All it did was make her more determined.

Lia will never be seen as an equal in the ruthless, male-dominated world she was born in, but she has earned the respect of siblings the past ten years. Some say that’s compliments to her sharing my bloodline, but I’m not so quick to agree. She has the determination and grit of our mother and refuses to settle for anything less than perfection.

Regrettably, those traits made her unsuitable bait to lure Officer Prentice out of his car parked on a pedestrian-littered street, so I had no choice but to look elsewhere.

Maya is the perfect candidate. Her short height and petite frame make her appear years younger than she is, and she gives off the vibe of a woman beaten into prostitution—Officer Prentice’s ideal plaything. His run-in with a teen prostitute last month wasn’t his first soirée with underaged women. His unknown ‘record’ is almost as long as mine.

With my blood hot with annoyance, I lock my eyes with Sergei’s almost black gaze. If the bags under his eyes are anything to go by, he didn’t mourn Nina’s decision to return to LA for long. Since he wrongly believes he’s ‘one of the crew’ now, he used his membership to the exclusive club to his advantage. He only left Cliché because Trey dragged him out of there at my request.

“What will it take to get this removed?”

Sergei twists his fat lips as I wish I could his neck. “These units aren’t worth the materials used to make them.” He yanks my foot to the left before slowly dragging it to the right. “The GPS portion of the tracker doesn’t work everywhere, so if you’re staying close to base, you don’t need to remove it. Just hit it on the brickwork a few times to weaken its signal.”

“Who said I’m staying close to base? You know me, Sergei. Forever restless.” My voice is calm and collected even though I’m anything but. He’s digging for information he’s not privileged to know, and I don’t fucking like it.

Sergei smiles a slick grin, loving my ruffled appearance. “Just assumed, that’s all. From your eagerness last night, I thought it would be a day or two before you’d go back to your old ways.” He twists his lips again, this time more in mockery than amusement. “Perhaps her cunt isn’t as sweet as the generous swell of her tits.” He watches my hands ball into fists before continuing, “Or perhaps you didn’t fuck her how she needs to be fucked… hard and brutal like the many whores before her.”

Snickering at my narrowed eyes, he threads a thin wire-like contraption through little loops in the side of my tracker. He thinks his birthright will excuse his arrogance.

He’s dead fucking wrong.

I don’t care who you are. If you disrespect me, expect to die.

After fiddling with my ankle monitor for a few seconds more, Sergei raises his scheming eyes to mine. The bigheaded glint in his eyes tells me he has no clue how thin the ice is beneath his skates. “I bet it would only take a cut or two to have her whimpering beneath me.”

A jeering grin touches his lips when I fail to respond to his rile. He knows he has me wedged between a rock and a hard place. Without him, my ankle monitor will remain, and Officer Prentice will get off his charges scot-free, but by keeping him around, I need to remain cautious because his crimes are as vile as the man I’m attempting to prosecute.

He doesn’t just cut women.

He kills them too.

With my annoyance hidden as well as I plan to hide his body, Sergei returns to disarming my ankle monitor. You’d think he’d need more than a thin piece of wire, a bolt, and a nut to get the job done, but within minutes, the lock mechanism pops open without the tracking light missing a beat, and I have Sergei nailed to the wall of Justine’s kitchen by his scrawny fucking throat.

He claws at my hand like a girl when my death-like grip stills his legs. His pulse is fading fast, the light in his eyes almost diminished in under a minute.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Sergei? How many times must I warn you about goading me the way you do my brothers?” I tighten my grip, loving the blue tinge of his lips that are attempting to disperse the same excuses he always gives me. “You were joking, right? Just playing. Having fun. You’re my cousin, my blood, so I should know you didn’t mean to upset me with your comment. You were keeping things interesting, right?” I sing, canarying the excuses he constantly gives me.

My clutch on his throat prevents him from nodding, but not even being on the brink of death can hide the agreement in his eyes.

“But the thing is, Sergei, you didn’t just disrespect me this time around. You disrespected her.” When his eyes bulge, seemingly confused, or perhaps because I’m squeezing his neck too tight, I endeavor to squash his confusion. “You called Justine a whore.”

It’s virtually impossible for him to do, but he manages to shake his head in denial.

“You may not have straight up said it, but you implied it.” And it pissed me off more than I can explain.

I’ve been surrounded by whores my entire life. I was raised by them, fed by them, and fucked many of them, but hearing Justine being called a whore caused something inside me to snap. Sergei is family and killing him guarantees I’ll be dead by the end of the week, but no matter how much the voice inside my head demands for me to loosen my grip, I can’t. I’m nobody’s savior, but I sure as fuck want to be Justine’s.

By killing him, I’ll terrify them all.

By freeing him, I’ll terrify no one but myself.

Usually I’d end a life without a second thought, but even with hate heating my blood so much it turned black, I know there’s more at stake here than just the repercussions of my actions. Every decision I make from here on out will affect Justine as much as it does me. I told my men she’s off-limits, and I warned them what would happen if they so much as look at her the wrong way, so I’m just as confident it won’t be solely them questioning why I sentenced Sergei to death years after his crimes. Vladimir will make inquiries as well.

With that in mind, I loosen my grip on Sergei’s neck before issuing a threat I’ll uphold no matter how affluent his DNA. “If you touch a single hair on Justine’s head, I’ll slit your throat and leave your body for the vultures because even a shallow grave in a roadside ditch is too good for you.”

As Sergei slumps to the floor to suck in some lung-deprived breaths, I push through the swinging door of Justine’s kitchen, more than eager to get the party started.

“Let’s go. I want Prentice’s blood hosed off the sidewalk before Justine returns from the store.”

After snatching the letter opener off Justine’s desk, I make a beeline for the door with Trey, Roman, and Maya closely shadowing me. Even with my emotions belonging to those of a stranger, I know who I am.

I am not a vigilante or an adversary of the devil.

I am Nikolai, Russian Mafia Prince.