Chapter 7
Anatonia
All us women are directed to a room across the hall. There are two guards at the door. I reach down and pop the wedges off my heels and pull out the two karambit style curved blade knives that have a finger hole. I unhook my jacket and let it fall to the floor. The bodysuit underneath is see-through. My private parts are covered by the flesh-colored panties and bra I have on. I used sweatproof body makeup to cover all my tattoos except for the one on my sternum. I slip the ring on the knife handle over my first finger and wrap my other fingers around the grips. The double-edged blades hang from the bottom of my hands. I hold my hands behind my back.
“I need to piss,” I say, using the vulgar American term. The guards shake their heads and look at me with confused expressions. They don’t understand me.
“Listen, assholes, open the door now or I’ll kill you where you stand,” I say in perfect Russian.
One of the guard’s eyes flare wide, and I swing out my arm, slicing his neck. The second guard starts to raise his gun, but he’s choking on his blood before he levels it on me. I kick the door open and walk into the hall. Two more guards rush me, and I drop as they pull up their guns. I slice one in the groin, severing his femoral artery. Then I jam the knife into his stomach and slice him open. The other guard steps back as he takes me in. Blood-spattered and still wielding my knives.
“I’m here for the Pakhan. I’m the killer bitch,” I yell.
A gunshot comes from the other room and I head for the doors.
I silently open the door, not wanting to get Vitaly killed but knowing that shot had to do with him. My uncle isn’t going to let him out.
“I finally ended that mongrel suka.” My uncle brags to his men.
I see Vitaly slowly bleeding from the gunshot wound and something in me snaps. My heart hardens for a moment. The thought of losing Vitaly is too much. I reach up and pull the wig from my hair along with the skull cap. My dark hair falls around my shoulders.
“Do you mean this mongrel suka? The killer suka. You made me into this,” I yell, and everyone turns toward me.
“No, Anatonia,” Vitaly shouts, and my uncle shoots again without looking. I watch as his body falls to the floor, then I’m in motion across the room.
Konstantin takes aim at me, but I drop and the bullet misses me. I reach under the table where I know a gun is hidden, dropping one of my knives. I shoot him in the arm and then take aim at the guard. My uncle was so confident in his safety he only had one of his personal guards in the room, plus his Brigadiers.
“I’m not here to kill you.” I address them all. “I only want the revenge I’m due. I want the penance he owes me for killing both my parents and now shooting the man I love.” There’s a slight wobble to my voice. The Brigadiers all stand back; they won’t interfere.
“What are you doing? She’s the enemy? She’s a Lupo. A product of the Morellos,” my uncle shouts as he holds his arm. His big body not as muscular as it used to be. He’s more out of shape than I remember.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore, Uncle. I’m not a little girl you can beat into submission.” I push my shoulders back and set the gun on the table. “You did this to me. You made me this.” My hands move down my body to the blood splattered all over me. “You trained me to kill. What you didn’t expect was that I would grow a conscience. That I would grow tired of killing men like these.” I wave my hand to the Brigadiers standing there watching. “I hear you don’t currently have a second-in-command because he was killed, and I killed his replacement. Did you tell them that?” They shake their heads.
“I didn’t tell you to kill Maxim, and that Morello span killed Ivan.”
“No, you didn’t. You just knew I was on the rampage to kill the men who raped my mama. Ivan brought on what happened to him by going after Maria. What about Grigori?”
I watch as Vitaly sits up groaning. I see the blood coming from his shoulder. The first shot was low on his side, the second high. He’s wearing a vest. But I know my uncle will shoot him in the head.
“What about Grigori?” Vitaly tries to stand up.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about. Maybe she killed him for raping my sister,” he says.
“He didn’t rape my mama!” I move closer. “He held me as I watched her die after you shot her.”
“I didn’t shoot her. Maxim or one of the other men accidentally strangled her.” He continues to lie. There are only a few of us left who know what actually happened that night.
“No, you shot her in the head and heart after you had Maxim and several of your former Brigadiers rape her. Did you tell them what happened to their predecessors?” I nod at his current Brigadiers, all new guys. “How you let me kill them so you could hide the fact of how truly sick you are. How you’ve annihilated your own family.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Just like you didn’t send Vitaly to kill me. Just like you didn’t train me to kill so I could be your weapon. So you could use me to kill my own father and the Morellos, but also to keep these men in line.” I wave my knife hand at them.
He turns to look at them. “That’s not true. She’s lost her mind.”
“No, it’s the truth. I have Grigori’s records showing the training and abuse you put her through to ensure she would kill with little remorse. You beat her yourself and had her raped numerous times,” Vitaly says as he gets to his feet.
Konstantin shifts slightly. The muscles in his neck tense into tight cords, and I know he’s about to strike. I’ve heard the story for years of how he killed his father when he least expected it. A double tap to the head and heart, the same way he killed my mama. He thinks he’s sneaky, so I’ll play his game.