The Ghost: A Bratva Blood Novella Read online

  I smile at her, and for a moment I could hug her. “Cassie, there’s nothing I would like more. The idea of being here all alone while the men are off fighting makes me so on edge I want to crawl out of my skin.”

  “They’re talking strategy now,” she says. “It’s why I came out of the way. They were saying, though, that there’s always got to be someone here, other than all the soldiers out there. Someone who they trust with our lives. So either, Reece, K, Andrius, or Bohdan.”

  “I think Bohdan will stay. I don’t believe Dasha will want him involved in this, and I don’t think he wants to be either.”

  “She’s hard to get to know, don’t you think?” Cassie asks. “Dasha, I mean.”

  “A little. I wonder if she’s a bit shy deep down.”

  Cassie shrugs. “Could be. I’d think being a world famous ballerina would mean you can’t be shy, but what do I know. She’s so beautiful too, and sophisticated.”

  “She is. I can see how Bohdan held a flame for her for all these years.”

  Cassie grins. “It’s romantic, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. Better than being given to your husband as a gift.”

  She stares at me in surprise for a moment, and then we both burst out laughing. “Yeah, or being kidnapped by him.”

  “Or forced to marry him, like Zoey with Vasily,” I sputter.

  At this point we’re both laughing so much it’s hard to get our words out.

  “Oh my God, it’s insane how we started out with these men, isn’t it?” Cassie shakes her head.

  “Yeah. It is.” I watch her for a moment. “Konstantin scares me a little if I’m being honest, but he seems good to you?”

  I pose it as a question and hold my breath, hoping she won’t be offended. “He is. He’s a bossy bugger,” she says with a laugh. “But he’s my bossy bugger, you know? I’m capable of standing up to him when I must. He doesn’t scare me, not anymore. He did at first. I feel safe with him. He’s even going to build a home for my grandparents when we finally get to the plot of land we’ve all bought. If I told him I wanted a rainbow, I swear he’d try to get it out of the sky for me.”

  I know what she means; Andrius is like that too.

  “I was relieved, though, when Andrius talked him into this change of path because I love him, but I don’t think I could have stayed with him, if he’d still been living his life of crime. I’d never have felt safe. This way, once this damn latest pile of crap is out of the way, we will be safe, and he’ll be doing something good and worthwhile, not something bad.”

  “You worry for my soul, do you?”

  We both jump and turn to see Konstantin standing in the doorway, a pissed off expression on his face.

  “Maybe I do,” Cassie says, not at all intimidated by the dark look he’s giving her. “Then again, it’s probably beyond redemption.” She winks at him, and he stares for a brief moment before he cracks up laughing.

  “When you ladies have done bitching about your husbands, how about you join us in the kitchen? We want to talk to you.”

  He gives Cassie another pointed look, and she giggles to herself as he walks away. “I’m going to get it later,” she says.

  I don’t know what it is, but her expression tells me it’s something she’ll enjoy.

  Then she leans in and whispers to me. “Sometimes, I rile him up on purpose because I really enjoy the result. Does that make me a terrible human being?”

  I feel my cheeks warm a little, but I shake my head. “Not at all.”

  I don’t ask what result she gets because I find it hard sometimes to talk about these things, but I smile at her, and she giggles again as we both get up and cross the room.

  A flashback to what Andrius and I did the previous night hits me, and my cheeks grow hotter still. I love sex with him, but I’m not someone who finds that sort of thing easy to talk about. Even with Andrius, I sometimes find it difficult to tell him what I want.

  I still worry too, that I’m basically not very good in bed. I bet Cassie is. And Maya? I would bet so much money she knows what to do in all the right ways. Maybe I should ask her. Or Zoey. Yeah, Zoey might be a good person to have a few drinks with and get some tips. Justina would, of course, but she’s not someone I feel comfortable talking about such things with.

  After everything that’s happened, I still can’t bring myself to trust her one hundred percent. It’s unfair because Andrius was involved in what went down too, when they found out I was a Babiek, but I’m held over heels with him, so I had little choice in how I reacted. I love him so much I had to forgive him and put my trust in him. I needed him. Still do.

  Some days I wonder if it makes me pathetic. He’s my everything, him and Eliana. The only thing that makes me feel less so is that I know it works both ways. I’m his everything too. I know it from the way he looks at me. The way all he does is to keep me safe. The way he holds me tight at night even in his sleep as if he can’t bear to be parted by a few inches of bed.

  Yeah, my husband loves me as much as I love him. Thank God because if he didn’t, I’d be a mess. I have no one else. Not really.

  I know that’s not healthy, but I find it hard to make friends. I find it difficult to socialize easily. Time to pull my big girl pants up and make the effort with Cassie, and Maya when she comes on one of her regular visits.

  Alesso rarely brings Stella with him but I’d quite like to get to know her better. She’s seems quite independent from what I’ve seen of her, and I think they both live their lives together, but they aren't joined at the hip the way me and Andrius are.

  I check my watch and see it’s time to feed Eliana. I pop my head around the kitchen door and find Andrius’ gaze. “I need to feed our daughter,” I tell him.

  “Can it wait just two minutes?” he asks.

  I nod and shuffle into the room.

  He gives me a smile, and it warms my insides, against the cold creeping in at the thought of what they’re going to say.

  Vasily is here too, along with Zoey and Bohdan. Our kitchen is large, but it suddenly seems a whole lot smaller as it is filled with huge men.

  “We wanted to share our immediate plans with you both because you’ll be impacted by them,” Andrius says. “We want to go after The Starz Allianz piece by piece. We want them to feel unsafe wherever they are. Eating lunch. In bed at night. Taking a fucking piss even. We want to terrorize them by making them understand we can get to them anywhere. In order to do that, we’re going to go in small teams and hit certain members. Two or three of us at any one time. The rest will be here in this house. Not only will we have our soldiers on the grounds, and all the security we do at present, but there will always be at least three of us at home. Bohdan and Dasha are moving in here, and only Vasily, Esme, and Zoey will stay in their own home across the yard. It means the place is going to be full, and we might have to convert a couple of the downstairs rooms into sleeping quarters, but it’s the safest way.”

  My heart sinks a little. It will be bad enough Andrius being gone, missing him like crazy, but having people like Bohdan and Dasha in the house will feel strange.

  “We’re going to fit an alarm system this weekend,” K says. “It will ring in Vasily’s house if there’s any trouble and vice versa. When Vasily is away, Zoey will have two armed guards staying with her to keep her safe.”

  Vasily’s face tightens. “Really? Or is it to guard Cassie from my fucking wife.”

  Konstantin sighs and scrubs a hand over his jaw. “Don’t be fucking stupid, Vasily. We’re facing the fight of our lives, and I wouldn’t play games at this time. Zoey can use a gun, she will have two armed guards over there with her, and she will have an alarm to here. And vice versa. If you want, anytime you’re away working on this, we can have one of the men from here stay with her too.”

  “Actually,” Andrius interrupts. “Justina and Angela are arriving from the UK tomorrow. They’ve thought about things, and due to the danger they might be in, they feel it’s be
tter to be here too. Perhaps they could stay with you and Zoey? You have the room, and we really don’t. Justina can shoot. You’d have Zoey, Justina, and two guards. When he’s not working with us, Alexei can stay at your place too.”

  “Okay,” Vasily says in a surly voice. If There is Justina, Angela, and Alexei with Zoey and Esme, then I’ll feel they’re safe. It means Alexei can’t come this time, Andrius.”

  Andrius sighs, but Priest shifts in his seat. “I’ll come on this first run. Don’t mind.”

  Vasily smiles. “There you go,” he says to Andrius.

  “Fine,” Andrius bites out. “Either you or Alexei will always be with Zoey at your place.”

  Vasily turns his gaze on Konstantin. “I don’t want this to be a new divide. I’m well aware of what my wife did to you, K, but she is my wife, and she’s going to be helping on this down the line, so I don’t want her left out in the cold when she’ll be risking her life for us.”

  Konstantin says something in Russian, and Vasily nods as if accepting it. I couldn’t understand it all as it was said fast, but something to do with all debts being equal now, and he bears no ill will.

  Personally. I’m glad she won’t be staying here. Cassie would hate it.

  “So the plan is this: three or four of us go and carry out various … jobs.” Andrius clears his throat.

  My stomach sinks because I know he was about to say hits. It hammers home the danger of what they’re doing.

  “The others stay here and bunker down with you ladies, keeping everyone safe. For example, if myself, Priest, and Vasily leave for the first assignment, then there will be Alexei and Justina with Zoey, plus two guards. Here, there will be K, Cole, Reece, and Bohdan. If I come back, and Cole and Priest leave with K when he’s recovered, there will be myself, Bohdan, and Reece here, and Vasily across the yard. There’s always going to be enough of us here to protect you, alongside the guards we’ve hired and trained up.”

  “But,” Konstantin says. “We still want you both to learn to defend yourselves in case.”

  I did shoot once, a long while ago now with some of the Brit Special Forces guys, but I haven’t done it in a long time.

  “Training starts when we get back from this trip,” Andrius says. “You’ll both need to know how to use a weapon if things get bad.”

  I nod and swallow hard. I need to get out of this room. My head is spinning. I fake a smile. “I’ve got to feed Eliana,” I say.

  Andrius gives me a piercing look. He knows I’m upset, but he lets me slip out of the room.

  Climbing the stairs, I blink away the tears that threaten. I won’t cry. Not now. There’ll be plenty of nights for that when he’s gone.

  Eliana is cooing in her crib, and I pick her up, holding her to me and smelling the top of her head. I swear, I’m addicted to the way my girl smells. It’s gorgeous. I kiss her soft head and then her cheek. She’s so perfect. So precious.

  As I look at her, a deep understanding of why my husband has to do this fills me, and it actually gives me some comfort and peace. I only hope it can last.

  Chapter Three

  Andrius

  The next few days are busy, but I keep an eye on Violet. Something happened. She walked out of the kitchen looking about ready to cry for a month straight, and then she came and found me after feeding Eli, and she seemed composed, serene almost. I hope her serenity holds, but I fear it won’t.

  It gives me comfort to see her making friends with Cassie. She needs some friends because she has so few. Her only real friend from before we met spends her time traveling in far flung places, and Violet rarely gets to speak to her.

  I basically plucked her from her world and brought her into mine. Now I want her to blossom here. With Cassie as her friend, I think she might. And she has Isla too, who she talks with a lot. Isla is married to Ethan, one of the Brit SAS guys we work with on occasion, and a close friend to Reece.

  I won’t leave until Reece arrives. I trust K with my life and with Violet’s, but he’s injured, and the only other people I truly trust with Violet and Eli’s lives are Reece, Damen, and Alesso.

  Damen and Alesso because they’re longtime friends, and Reece because we went through the sort of shit that bonds you for life.

  I’m awaiting Zoey. I need my hair cut like it used to be. Now, it’s longer, so it curls over my shirt at the back, and it’s grown lighter in the sun. If I’m going back into battle then I need my armor, and for me that was the sharp suit, the neat hair, and the absolute precision I brought to all I did.

  It’s psychological. To be the killer I once was again, I must wear his skin.

  A timid knock at the door has me ordering an impatient, come in.

  Zoey enters, and she’s nervous. As well she might be. I wanted her dead at one point. I still dislike her, but apparently she can cut hair, so here she is.

  I eye the sharp scissors in her hand. “You’re not going to use them to gut me, are you?” I ask casually.

  Her eyes widen, and then she shakes her head. “Jesus, Andrius. I never know if you’re joking or serious.”

  “You know how to cut hair?” I move the conversation away from her using those scissors for nefarious reasons. I know she won’t, but I don’t think I’ll ever trust her. K might have smoothed things over with Vasily yesterday, but the reason they aren’t staying in this house is exactly for the reasons Vasily suspected. I don’t want this woman in the same house twenty-four-seven as my wife and daughter.

  I warned Justina about staying with them, to be honest, but she said she likes Zoey, and she’s not scared of her. Plus, Justina knows how to use a gun. I also have no concerns that she would use it if needs be. Violet… I don’t know. I can teach my wife to shoot, but my fear is her soft heart would make her hesitate if ever the moment occurred where she had to take another’s life. Hesitation in this world is deadly.

  “So what do you want?” Zoey asks me, biting her lip.

  “Tidy it up, shorter on top and at the back than it is now.”

  “Okay.”

  She comes over to me and takes a comb out of her back pocket. Then she starts to cut my hair. It’s strangely intimate having your hair cut. Having it cut by a woman who put bullets in your closest friend is tense.

  “I don’t know if you want me to style it,” she says as she finishes up.

  “No, it’s fine. I can do that all by myself.”

  “Okay. Well, erm, see you around.”

  I sigh. I still dislike her, but I understand what she did. It doesn’t pay to have us divided right now as a team. No way would I have her living under my roof, but civility—

  that I should afford her. Not least because she’s married to Vasily, and they’re both fighting on our side.

  “Thank you,” I say with as much sincerity as I can muster. “How is Esme doing?” My affection for her daughter, I don’t have to fake. She’s a smart kid, who is full of life.

  “Oh, she’s great. She loves the troughs you got for her, and her gardening tools.”

  “Yes well, thought maybe gardening was a better occupation than the military.”

  She pauses with one hand on the door. “You were military. You wouldn’t want your kid to go into service?”

  “Eliana? Christ no.” I almost choke on the idea.

  She laughs softly. “You Russian guys are so sexist.”

  “It’s no place for a woman,” I state firmly.

  “Oh, really? I did it.”

  I don’t reply that she also fucked up and got herself in a terrible mess. “I wouldn’t want my son to go into the military either if I have one. Not after what I saw. Would you really want that for Esme?”

  “No, not after what happened to me, but lots of my friends loved it. Gives you skills in life too. Look at you guys now. If you hadn’t been Special Forces, would you feel as well prepared for what’s coming our way?”

  “No. I wouldn’t change it for me, despite everything, but I don’t want my kids going through that. Yo
u want better for your kids. Right?”

  “Yes. I want Esme to have all the chances to do what she wants and be who she wants to be. What do you want for Eliana?”

  I laugh at that. “Happiness. Nothing more than health and happiness. It’s simple.”

  “Me too. It’s why we’re fighting these fuckers. It’s why we shouldn’t fight one another.” She gives me a level look. “I know we’ll never be best friends. I understand that there's no coming back from what I did in certain ways, but we ought to be able to work together and be civil.”

  “Totally agree,” I say. “The outside threat is what we need to focus on.”

  “Well, shout me if you ever need another trim.”

  “I will.”

  She closes the door, and I watch it for a moment. I don’t get what Vasily sees in her. She’s spiky, hard to a degree, but each to their own. My phone beeps, and I pull it out of my pocket. It’s a message from Damen.

  Hey, malaka,

  I can’t stop the twitch of my lips. He even calls me a malaka, the Greek word for wanker, via the medium of text. I think it must be his favorite word. He left a few days ago, promising me he’d investigate into the Starz Allianz new leader and send me what he could.

  Here are the details of all I could get on the new head of the alliance. Janusz Nowak, Polish, goes by Jan to his friends. I’ve sent a file your way, but it’s here too so you have it on your phone.

  He’s the former joint second in command, and now leader of The Starz Allianz, currently residing in Berlin where he seems to be simultaneously hiding out and directing his henchmen to set up a network of brothels.

  Age 27. Height five-feet-eight. No allergies. No regular medication.

  Kills under his belt: twenty confirmed. Is reputed to be a good shot but better with a knife.

  Has a cocaine problem. Is living in an apartment with five other men and a revolving door of women. The apartment is likely to be heavily armed. When outside, he carries a knife and a Beretta Storm semi-automatic. He’s into downers as well as uppers, so sometimes he takes heavy doses of barbiturates. The five men he has with him are all long-term allies. Three are Polish, two Albanian.