“Zoya!” Zaal bellowed, never taking his eyes off Valentin, who was bracing to fight.
Light footsteps padded on the wooden floorboards of the hallway. In seconds there was a light knock on the door. “Enter!” I called. The doorknob turned.
Zoya Kostava entered, long black hair hanging to her back. She was dressed in black jeans and a sweater. Without any need for explanation, Zoya’s dark gaze zeroed in on an increasingly agitated Valentin. Zaal pushed back his chair, readying to protect his sister. But she gestured for him to stop. As she looked to her brother, she shook her head. Zaal stilled, though he remained primed to strike if needed. As was I.
Zoya stepped forward. As she did so, Valentin’s lost eyes slammed to greet her. She walked forward, no fear in her stride. Valentin’s muscled shoulders relaxed in response. His scarred face melted to one of deep sorrow.
“Valentin,” Zoya murmured softly, as she approached her male. Valentin reached out and drew her in to press against his chest. I watched as his eyes squeezed shut and he breathed in her scent.
Zoya’s hands lifted to run over his head. “You’re okay,” she murmured in Russian, speaking Valentin’s native language to help calm the savage beast within.
I could see the tension leave Valentin the second Zoya was in his arms. I glanced to Zaal, who was watching the scarred Russian like a hawk. Zaal had slowly, but steadily, grown to accept Valentin over these past few weeks. Worryingly, Valentin’s mood was unstable. A whole lot more unstable than either Zaal or I had been when freed from captivity. We knew that most of this stemmed from a desperate need to save his sister, Inessa. The rest was due to his many years as a slave killer for the Arzianis. Valentin wasn’t adjusting to the outside world as well as we had hoped. His conditioning to kill, only to kill, ran far too deep to undo quickly. But it was his anger that troubled us most. We all had anger. We all had to tamp down its burning heat. To be “normal” in this world was a challenge every unforgiving second, round the clock. But for Valentin, it was much worse. Only Zoya could tame his anger.
“You’re okay,” Zoya murmured gently. Rearing back, Valentin looked down at his female and sighed deeply. His hand cupped her face and he slowly nodded, an unspoken message of love traveling between them.
They stayed that way for several seconds, communicating silently. Then Zoya turned her head to me and asked, “Can we go home?” I could see the desperation in her torn expression. She needed to be alone with Valentin. She needed privacy to truly calm him.
I nodded. Zoya took Valentin’s hand in her own. Without another word, Zoya guided him from my office and out of the house.
As the front door closed, Zaal slumped back in his seat and pushed his long hair from his face. I sat back too, glaring at the blueprints of the Blood Pit, trying to figure out how the hell we could break in safely.
“We need to get into that fucking pit,” Zaal said eventually.
Sighing, I ran my hands down my face and nodded. “I know. But with their numbers and their home-field advantage, I can’t visualize how to take these fuckers down.”
Zaal glanced out the window to the street beyond and admitted, “Valentin isn’t coping. He needs his sister back to fully heal and move on.” He turned back to me. His face darkened. “I’ve only just gotten Zoya back. I will not see her destroyed because she alone can calm him down. It’s affecting her. I can see it in her face every time she enters the room and sees his rage.”
He was right. We could all see it.
“I am the Lideri of the Georgians. You are the knayz of the Bratva. We run this city. I know this. The New York underworld is ours and ours alone. But if we don’t find Inessa soon, before long Valentin will snap and he will kill.” Zaal shook his head. “Even we cannot prevent him from killing in public twenty-four/seven.” Zaal’s hands flattened on the tabletop, and he added, “Then people would realize he wasn’t like them. That he was different. Changed. Too many questions would fall back on us.
“The real world isn’t ready to handle our reality. How could they accept that the gulags, the drugs, and the Blood Pit are real? It is the stuff of nightmares. How could they believe that males are being raised as killers, for sport and greed?
“Worse, it would surely implicate the Bratva and my people in too many ways. We can fight the police and the system here in our city, but we can’t take on the whole world.” Zaal shrugged and tapped the map of the Blood Pit. “We need a way in. We need a solid plan, and we need it fast. I won’t have our freedom jeopardized. I won’t have what I’ve found with my Talia taken away from me, after being without her all of these years.” He raised his brow. “And we know you won’t give up Kisa. We need to act, Luka, and we need to do it soon.”
Lifting the glass of water sitting beside me, I brought it to my lips and drained it in one motion. Zaal stood up. As he passed by, he pressed his hand on my shoulder. I didn’t move until I heard him leaving my house with Talia, who had been sitting with Kisa.
Pushing back from the table, I got to my feet and walked down the hallway. In the living room, Kisa was waiting for me on the couch, hand lying on her swollen stomach.
She took one look at me, her face sympathetic. Silently, she held out her hand. I took it in an instant and dropped to the couch beside her. Kisa fell against my chest and her hand landed on my stomach.
She didn’t say anything. Once I’d fought through my pride, I admitted, “I can’t see a way to defeat Arziani.” The minute I had confessed what was torturing my mind, a heavy weight lifted from my chest.
Kisa froze, then tilted up her chin to meet my eyes. I stared down at my beautiful wife and sighed. “They run a damn fortress, solnyshko. Arziani seems insane from what Valentin has said. He’s deluded, thinks he’s some kind of king, some Roman Caesar. The king of his prisoners. Males, just like me, he drugs them and forces them to fight on until they die. Kids plucked from families and orphanages, made into his monsters.”
I ran my hand over my tired eyes and asked, “How the hell do we stop him? How do we even breach his Blood Pit?”
Kisa sat up and brought her face to hover above mine. “You’ll find a way, baby. I trust you, we all do.”
I shook my head. “And that’s the problem,” I said harshly. “Everyone expects me to work this out. Everyone expects me to find a way in and execute a plan to bring Arziani down.” I pressed my hand to Kisa’s pregnant stomach, to our baby she was carrying. “But more than that, I need this Arziani to be fucking killed. I need to cut off the head of the snake. Everything, everything we have all been through starts with Arziani. The gulags, his contact with the Durovs. Levan Jakhua worked with Arziani, using Anri and Zaal as his prototypes. Then we found out how he keeps so hidden—by using drugged killers as assassins. They take out anyone who is a threat.”
Kisa blinked, then blinked again when what I was saying hit home. “You believe he’s coming for us. You believe that now we know about him, he’ll send another Valentin.” Her words were not a question. Because she knew what she said was exactly what I’d been thinking.
An ache caved in my chest, and I leaned in to run my lips over hers. “If he came for you. If someone took you away from me…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Stop,” Kisa said, moving back to press her finger over my lips.
I took her hand in mine. My mind took me back to the gulag. I could still smell the dankness of the cells. I could still smell the richness of the blood spilled hourly in the ring. I could still feel the heavy veil of death that draped us all, waiting to strike, waiting to deliver another soul to hell.
“Luka, lyubov moya, come back to me.”
I gasped as I heard Kisa’s soft voice cut through the memory. I tightened my grip on her hand. Once again I looked down to her stomach. My teeth clenched together, then I said, “I have to find a way to take him down. I can’t, I won’t, have our baby brought into this world knowing that the male who condemned me, us all, to that life is still breathing, still stealing children from homes, forcing them to be killers.”
A tear escaped Kisa’s eye to fall to our clasped hands. “Luka,” she whispered, “this man scares me more than anything else in the world.”