Vanity, Vengeance And A Weekend In Vegas Part 24

CHAPTER 23.

"I just learned that chaos theory has to do with physics and cosmology. I always a.s.sumed it was a metaphor for my life."

--Death Of The Party I dropped my fake gun on the ground. "But...you let me take that gun before. The real one..."

"And I suspected I could get it back from you. I made a big show of taking the bullets out and proving to you that I didn't mean you any harm. After that display who could blame you for not examining that...prop more carefully."

"So you brought us in here to kill us?" Dena sounded so calm I half wondered if she was in shock. She put both hands on her cane and leaned her weight forward. "You could have done that while we were on the stairs."

"I don't want to shoot you. I want Anatoly."

"Get in line," I said quietly. "I really don't know where he is."

"I believe you," Alex said, his voice deceptively kind. "I have an idea, why don't you two sit down here," he waved toward the bed, "and I'll tell you a...a bedtime story."

Keeping my eyes firmly on his I walked over to the bed and sat down putting the duffle bag at my feet. Dena sat next to me.

"Seven years ago the...oh, let's call it the Ignatov branch of the Russian mafia, was doing business with the Mexican Drug Cartel, Los Tres Seises. Los Tres Seises supplied and the Ignatovs sold. But at some point some of the top members of the Ignatov family got themselves in a personal financial pickle. They had spent some money that wasn't theirs to spend. See, the Ignatovs are only one syndicate of the Russian mafia. They don't run the whole show and they don't get to do whatever the h.e.l.l they want. They have to work by the rules of our organization. The Ignatovs conveniently forgot that. They decided to get back the considerable amount of money they had lost by selling the drugs Los Tres Seises was going to supply without paying out the wholesale price."

"Stop being cute and get to the point," Dena growled. I turned toward her, truly impressed. But when I looked at Dena's face I didn't see calmness I saw intense anger.

"The Ignatovs managed to confiscate the drugs from Los Treis Seises," Alex said with a smile, "and they made it look like it was another cartel who stole them. While the cartels were fighting each other the Ignatovs were selling the drugs without splitting the costs. Los Treis Seises was never the wiser...until I told them about it."

"When and why did you do that?" I asked. I glanced down at his gun. "I did it after my brother was killed."

"So this is all about revenge?" I asked and shook my head. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

"No," Alex sighed, "it's about power. Los Tres Seises will kill the top players in the Ignatov family, the ones who orchestrated this whole thing. The rest of the Russian mafia will quickly become aware of the Ignatov's misuse of funds and I will step in and engineer a peace between the mafia and Los Tres Seises again. Like I said, the mafia is a business. They want to deal with profits not criminal rivalries and they're certainly not going to shed a lot of tears over some people who had secretly managed to betray their trust. When I get Los Tres Seises to back down and even reestablish a trade relations.h.i.+p with them I'll be a hero to the mafia bosses. The Ignatov territory will be given to me to run and Los Tres Seises will work with me because they'll know that I owe my position to them. They'll be able to trust me and count on my business. A lot of drugs are sold through the Ignatov famiy's networks. We're a good account to have. There are a few people who work with the Ignatovs who I trusted enough to bring into my plan. Unfortunately, thanks to Natasha's meddling, two of them are dead."

"Tanya and that guy Anatoly killed."

"Yes. Anatoly came back on Natasha's radar when I tried to convince everyone that he was the one to introduce Daniil to Kenya. She's been tracking his movements ever since and when she found out he was in Vegas she went to see him. She screwed everything up when she followed him to that room."

Dena made a face of disgust. "So, just to break this down, you don't give a s.h.i.+t about your brother being killed--"

"Of course I give a s.h.i.+t!" Alex shouted and for the first time I saw the emotion that had elicited the previous sobs. "When I'm in control no one will ever, ever hurt those I care for again! The decision of who gets to live and who gets to die will be mine! I will have the power and the control and if you have that you have everything."

"Okay," I held up my hands in a plea for calm. "Why do you need Anatoly for any of this? Just have Los Tres Seises kill those who they need to kill and be done with it."

"Don't you see?" Alex asked, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice. "None of this works if the other people in the mafia aren't convinced the Ignatovs broke the rules. Not many people know about the drug theft in Mexico and only Anatoly has anything that will link them to it! If the mafia leaders believe that the cartel is just indiscriminately killing their members there will be a full on war and no one will get ahead, least of all me."

"Ah." I clasped my hands in my lap. "You told the cartel about this before you realized you would need the proof. And now Los Tres Seises is threatening to kill you just for wasting their time, is that it?"

Alex flinched. "The situation doesn't need to be that dire. If Anatoly thinks I'm going to kill you he will come forward with the evidence I need."

"And then you'll kill both of us?" I took Dena's hand. "You could have played that card a long time ago."

"I could have," Alex agreed. "But I don't want to." He went over to his closet and pulled out my MacBook. "If the information had been on here everything would have been fine. The whole point of this was to make sure those I care for remained safe. I care about you, Sophie. I shouldn't and I do."

"You care about her?" Dena spat. "You have a weird way of showing it. I mean this goes way beyond the whole I'm-pulling-your-hair-because-I'm-crus.h.i.+ng-on-you thing we all had to deal with in grade school. You're holding her and her best friend at gunpoint. You're setting up stupid, desperate traps at your hotel, traps that could have landed Sophie in prison or worse--"

"I didn't want to do this!" he yelled. It was the kind of yell that is so violent it brings an immediate silence.

"I told you," Alex said, this time quietly, "Anatoly is taking my choices away. He has to come forward with the evidence."

"But how is this going to get you Anatoly?" I asked frantically. "None of us know where he is!"

"True," Alex said. He s.h.i.+fted the gun so it was directly pointing at Dena. "If one of your friends turns up dead it'll get back to him, wherever he is. He'll show up."

"No," I chocked. "Come on, Alex, please...don't do this."

"I know it'll hurt you." He stepped back and the broken gla.s.s from the picture frame crunched under his shoes. "Like I said, I'm running out of choices."

Dena put a hand self-consciously on her purse. "So if you had the information you would just let us go on our merry ol' way?"

Alex laughed ruefully. "Well we'd have to work out an arrangement that would a.s.sure me that both of you would remain quiet about all this...but there are ways of doing that which don't involve pain or death."

Dena looked at me questioningly. I knew what she was thinking. Give him the iPad. We wouldn't be out of the woods but maybe we would be buying ourselves time. I don't know why, but I believed Alex when he said he didn't want to hurt me. Maybe that was stupid too, but to use his words, I didn't have a lot of choices.

"Alex," I said slowly, "I have--"

The door to the bedroom was thrown open and in walked Margarita with three men behind her. They all had tattoos on their arms and guns in their hands.

"Well will you look at this," Margarita purred. "The gang's all here!"

Her English was perfect.

"I have this under control," Alex said with gritted teeth.

"Do you?" Margarita asked. She walked up to him. I noticed now that she was the only one who didn't have a gun...she had a knife with a gracefully curved blade. She lifted that blade to his face as the men kept their guns trained on all of us and rubbed it against his cheek without cutting him. "You told me you had it under control when you got Anatoly to Vegas. You told me you had it under control when you lost him. You even told me you had it under control when you suggested I pretend to be your housekeeper. You know what I think?"

"That he doesn't have it under control?" Dena offered but quickly shut up when one of tattooed men took a step closer to her.

"I think," Margarita continued, gently taking Alex's gun from his hand and giving it to one of her companions, "that you should never send a boy to do a woman's job. I'm done playing your games. It's time to start cutting off a few of these ladies body parts and sending them to people who care. Maybe that'll get your Anatoly to step forward," she said, flas.h.i.+ng me a smile. "If not, it'll still be fun."

"Margarita, if you would just let me tell you my plan--"

"Alex darling, I think we've all had enough of your plans."

"Hear me out for five minutes. It'll get you the proof you need and everything else that you want. Five minutes, Margarita."

Alex's expression was cool but I could hear the tremor in his voice.

"You want to talk?" She took a step back. "But I'm already bored."

"Just--"

"Five minutes, I heard you the first time." She looked back at the tattooed men and barked out some orders in Spanish.

Two of the men moved toward us, each one of them grabbing one of our arms. Dena struggled to balance herself and keep her injured back straight when one of the guys yanked her to her feet. I wanted to kill them for not being careful with her but I worried that calling more attention to her frailty would just egg on their cruelty. She clung to her cane and I reached for the duffle bag but they jerked me away from it causing my purse to fall to the ground.

"Where are you taking us?" I screamed as they pulled us away from our things. But the only answer they gave was to rip Dena's handbag from her arm and throw it toward the rest of our stuff before dragging us down the hall.

I really wished I had taken Spanish in school instead of French.

They pulled us back toward the guestroom I had been staying in and threw us both in before they stepped out and slammed the door closed.

I looked at the bedside table. My phone was gone. They had thought of everything.

I felt sick. If they found the files on Dena's iPad Margarita would just kill us. She was in charge now, not Alex...a.s.suming Alex ever held any real authority at all. Margarita would torture Dena and me until she got what she wanted and then we would die.

I looked toward the window. Could we get out that way? Maybe if I tied the sheets together? That's how they always do it in the movies, right?

I struggled to open the window. "Help me!" I insisted.

"Wait until we're sure they're not coming back in right away!" Dena insisted in a whisper. "We're not going to have a lot of chances here, we can not f.u.c.k them up!"

"Fine, I need to be patient. I'll just count to twenty and then I'll try the window, okay?" I crossed my arms over my chest. "One, two, three, four...nope, can't do it." I rushed right back to the window and this time I managed to pull it open. "I think we might be able to escape this way." I examined the moldings on the side of the buildings...and that tree, could we reach that tree and climb down it? I leaned out the window from my waist...

...and that's when I saw one of the men who had just thrown us in here walking out. He glanced up at the window I was hanging out of. Even in the darkness I could clearly see his toothy grin as he waved his gun at me.

I pulled myself back in and closed the window. No doubt the other one was guarding the door.

Dena was standing in the middle of the room, as straight and unmoving as a Swiss soldier. "Dena, I'm so sorry I did this. I don't know how I'm going to protect you but I swear I'm going to do it."

She didn't turn to look at me. Instead she reached inside the back of her s.h.i.+rt and pulled out her iPad. "Did you really think I was going to leave this in my purse?" She asked. "Obviously it would be the first place anyone would look."

I jumped forward and threw my arms around her before grabbing the iPad from her hand. "Can we email the police? How does that work? Can you make phone calls from this thing?"

"It's not a phone, Sophie." Dena glanced at the door as she took her device back. "I kinda doubt the guys over at the 911 phone center have an IM account. But Marcus does."

She sat down and started typing away, faster than I'd ever seen her type.

"Email Leah too," I said quickly, "it'll go to her phone." I started opening drawers as quietly as possible. There had to be something I could use as a weapon. I felt like such an idiot. I had thought Alex had given me that gun to set me up for a crime and now I find out it wasn't even a real gun? Did the drugs Anatoly slipped me screw with my brain? How could I have not noticed that!

"I don't think we need to contact Leah," Dena whispered. She held up the iPad to show me Marcus' response: Try to stay in that room for as long as possible, HELP IS ON THE WAY.

Now it was my turn to cry. The hot tears burned my eyes and trickled down my cheeks. Maybe there was hope!

Out in the hall I could hear Margarita's voice. She said something in Spanish and the man outside our door replied. I leaned in and listened to their short conversation that I couldn't understand and then the sound of Margarita's heeled shoes walking away. Dena tucked the iPad into the back of her pants, pulled her s.h.i.+rt over it again and I took several steps back. Help was on the way. Everything was going to be okay.

Everything had to be okay.

It became a little harder to convince myself of that when the door opened and the man walked in with a hand pruner. Usually a hand pruner is something you use to prune bushes by hand but I had a horrible feeling that today the name would have a double meaning. He clipped the blades together a few times for his own entertainment.

"Looks like we got a lead on where your boyfriend is," he said with a heavy accent. "Do you know which finger you want to send him? Your choice."

His gun was tucked in his waistband. How could I get it from him? Dena was a few feet to my right, her cane in her hand. I knew she was trying to figure out how to best use it as an effective weapon.

"You have a lead on Anatoly?" I asked, taking a step back. Maybe if I dived to the floor and tripped him? Then maybe I could get the gun. "Where is he?"

"Here."

I gasped and looked up at the doorway to see Anatoly. The tattooed man whirled around just in time to see the crowbar coming toward his head. He fell to the ground and Anatoly swiftly stepped inside and closed the door behind him before hitting him in the head again. Blood spurted out of his skull and Dena and I instinctively turned away.

When I turned back the man was either dead or close to it. "Help is on the way," I said weakly.

In three swift steps Anatoly was in front of me. He pulled me into a brief, fierce embrace. "We have to get out of here, now."

He took the gun from the b.l.o.o.d.y man on the floor and went back to the doorway where he looked both ways before gesturing for us to follow him out.

"Did you come in the front or the back?" I asked.

"Back." Quietly, he pulled the door closed behind us. "I dragged the body of that guard into the bushes but they'll figure out what's going on soon."

"How many are there?"

Anatoly just shook his head as we crept down the stairs. He didn't know.

"How did Marcus know you were coming?" I whispered once we were almost at the bottom.

"Marcus?" he asked turning around to face me. Alarm registered in his expression as he looked behind me. "Move!" He grabbed both Dena and me and literally hurled us down the last few stairs as bullets flew above our heads. The iPad flew forward but Dena and I were the only ones to notice as Anatoly returned fire on yet another tattooed man. We grabbed the iPad and scrambled to the side of the room.

"Do we really need that anymore?" I asked breathlessly. "I think we may be past the point of IMing."

Dena just gave me a look before glancing toward the front door. It was still a ways away...and we were in serious danger of getting shot if we stayed in the open.

This time we didn't have to wait for Anatoly to tell us what to do. The little hall that led to the library was right next to us and we quickly ducked in there and ran to the room with the vodka. Anatoly was right behind us.

"You're giving up on your gun fight?" Dena yelled.

"He's on top of the stairs, that's sniper position." We got into the library and another man jumped up from one of the leather chairs. The fire raged in the fireplace behind him. He reached for his gun but Dena slammed down on his hand with her cane and before he could turn on her Anatoly took his shot. The man fell, falling on top of Alex's sipping vodka. I started for his gun but the man who had been shooting at us from the top of the stairs was now in the doorway. Dena and I leaped behind the couch. The bay window was right there. We just had to break it and get the h.e.l.l out of here!

Dena must have been thinking the same thing because she crawled to the widow and pounded on it using the metal jaguar of her cane. I had always a.s.sumed that windows were easy to break. People were always accidently cras.h.i.+ng through them in movies but the force of Dena's blows seemed to only scratch this thing. I tried to peek around the couch to see Anatoly. He had taken a position behind a chair. He leaned out and took his shot...and he was out of bullets.

The sound of the trigger being pulled to no effect was by far the most horrifying thing I had ever heard...and it seemed to be becoming the night's theme. Dena was so busy pounding on the window she barely registered what was going on until the tattooed man came around the couch and put the gun to my head.

"I think my boss wants to talk to you," he said, looking straight at Anatoly. Dena stopped banging on the window and Anatoly stood with his hands up high enough for us to all see that they were empty.

"Don't hurt her," he said quietly.

The tattooed man laughed. "But she only wants to talk to you. We don't need the ladies."

I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to block out the feeling of the barrel pressed up so hard against my head. Would there be pain? Or just...nothing? He pulled the trigger...

...and he was out of bullets too. Anatoly dove for the gun by the corpse on top of the vodka bottle just as I elbowed the tattoo man to get free. In one shot Anatoly had him. The bullet sent him flying back into the window...that still didn't break.