Last Kiss, Page 2

  I owe this man a favor, and I knew from the moment I saw his name on the screen of my phone that my reckoning had arrived.

  “When there is a change in leadership, some are disconcerted. That will change,” I reply.

  “My people tell me that the council has set a challenge for you. Meet it and the Petrovich brotherhood is yours.”

  I meet his boast that he has infiltrated our organization with my own. “And my people tell me that your son has no interest in following in your footsteps. What will happen to the Dostonevs then?”

  “Bah! Vladimir is young. He wants to drink and fuck. Let him have his fun.” He swallows his vodka and gestures for me to drink. I do, tipping the glass and allowing the clear liquid to coat my tongue and glide down my throat. “Enough of the niceties. Fifteen years ago, you asked a favor of me. I granted it. Now it is time for you to repay your debt.”

  “Of course.” There is relief in finally discharging my debt. For so long I’ve wondered, not what I would be asked to do, but when. The uncertainty will soon be behind me. “What is it?”

  “I want you to bring me the Caravaggio.”

  His request astonishes me.

  “Why does everyone love this painting?” I’m truly bewildered.

  He holds out his arms; heavy jewels adorn nearly every finger. Put him on a throne and one would easily mistake him for a prince of old. “I’ve always wanted it. It hung in the palace of Peter the Great. It was commissioned by the great Cosimo de’ Medici.”

  “And you thumb your nose at the Petrovichs.”

  He grins. “That too.”

  “No.” I refuse tersely. “Ask something else.”

  “I want nothing else.” He waves his hand. “You know they are setting you up. This painting means nothing to them. They want you out of Moscow so that they can weed out those amongst your young soldiers who look up to you. The old guard will not give up power so easily.”

  I stare impassively. The old guard is senile. Their plays are so obvious they are read by outsiders. “I did not know you had interest in the Petrovich holdings. You’ve always said Moscow is full of peasants.”

  He flicks his fingers in disgust. “I do not want your precious Bratva. I have no interest in your businesses. And frankly, Vasya, neither should you. Let the Petrovich Bratva burn. Find me the painting and you can bring her home. Fifteen years is a very long time to have not laid eyes on your precious sister. What would you do to have your family restored to you?”

  I fight not to bare my teeth at him, to not jump over the table and strangle him until pain replaces his smug smile.

  “I know they expect me to fail and be distracted for months, but when I return with the Caravaggio, they will not be able to deny me. They have prepared their own shallow graves.”

  “So you have found it?” He quirks his eyebrow.

  I shrug but do not answer.

  “Well, well. I am impressed, Vasya. It is a shame I did not find you all those years ago. You would have made a marvelous part of the Dostonevs. Still, I want the painting. You will have to find a way to bring me the painting and still gain power within the Bratva. For you see Vasya, if you do not bring the painting to me, I will summon your sister home and she will become exactly what you do not wish—a target for all your enemies. I helped save your sister once. It is easy enough to help kill her, too. Choose your course wisely.”

  —

  “They are setting you on a fool’s errand,” Igorek announces as I enter my office. He is standing next to the single window that overlooks a dirty alley and the brick wall of the building next door. Igorek is a young warrior with a brother and a mother to protect. He worries, for good reason, that he and his loved ones would be imperiled if I am gone for a long period of time. He is not the only one who has invaded my sanctum. Aleksei, an enforcer whom I trained with as a boy, is also present.

  “Only if I cannot return with the Madonna. When I present the painting to them, they will be forced to back me. I will remove Elena to some dacha in northern Russia, and we will jettison any who would hew to the old ways.”

  “Merely remove her?” Igorek raises an eyebrow.

  “What else would I do with her?” I meet his inquiry coolly, for speaking out loud of the murder of Elena Petrovich would not be met in all quarters with approval. She needs to die, but I cannot kill her until the Bratva is firmly under my control.

  “Mne pofig.” He shrugs. I don’t care.

  Of course he cares or he would not suggest it. I, too, care, but it is not the time or place. “Once the Bratva is mine, then we will talk about protecting our own.”

  “Fine, so you look for a painting that has been lost for decades?” Igorek is skeptical.

  Aleksei, whom I’ve known longer, is much less circumspect. “The Madonna? Holy Mother of Mary, are you crazy? Did killing Sergei cause you to lose your motherfucking mind?” Aleksei kicks at a chair and stomps around the room, looking for more things to break. I pull down a Meissen vase that is part of a set we’d recently discovered being transported inside a large set of ornamental—but very cheap—concrete dogs imported from China. Peddling antiques is more lucrative than I had anticipated. We started just a few years ago, as part of my goal to supplant income from the sale of krokodil and humans.

  Sergei had been lured to the easy money, but trafficking in drugs and people is not only dangerous but also short lived. The problem with Sergei was that he lacked vision. Now he’s dead, his body dumped in a hog lot so that the only thing he’s possibly seeing now is the inside of a pig’s belly. An ignominious end to the crime boss of one of the largest brotherhoods in Russia, but a fitting one.

  “It’s out there.” I sit at my desk and check my emails. I’ve been searching for the Caravaggio for months now and while I have not found it, I believe I have discovered a person who can.

  “You should shoot yourself now and save yourself the misery.” Aleksei exhales grumpily and seats himself in one of the two low-backed leather chairs in front of the desk. I suppose it is my desk now. Once Sergei sat here and before him Roman Petrovich.

  I hate the Petrovichs, all of them, both dead and alive. They had promised me safety but delivered only fear and torture. But my revenge will be to rule over this entire Bratva until the Petrovich name will be only known in connection with me, Vasily.

  “What is your plan?” Igorek asks.

  “There are rumors on the deep web of a collector who has not only the Madonna but the Golden Candelabra as well as a few other holy relics.”

  “Wonderful,” Aleksei scoffs. “You know not of but rumors. Even if these rumors are true, one would have to assume that these artifacts are owned by a capitalist and are held in a safe that is virtually impenetrable. Just shoot Elena Petrovich and be done with it.”

  “If I kill her, who else will I have to kill? Thomas? Kilment? All of them? How about you, Aleksei? Or Igorek? And do I just kill the male members or every issue to the fifth cousin?” Aleksei pales at his name, at the mention of his family. “While it is better to be feared than loved, each act of ill will toward one’s own people must be done only when there is no other action. If bringing this painting back means new leadership without bloodshed, it is worth the risk.”

  He is unconvinced by my speech, but he has a new wife and a child coming. Either of those could be used as bargaining chips against him.

  “Igorek, you talk to the others, prepare them for my absence and be on watch.” He nods. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Not long.” My inbox dings and I read the email swiftly. Finally. I give the two a ghost of a smile. “There is one person who can find the source of the postings on the dark web. One person who can lead us to the Madonna. And one person, I suspect, no modern security system can withstand. The Emperor.” I lean back in my chair and point to the computer. “The Emperor appeared out of nowhere eighteen months ago and built an untraceable trading network for drugs, guns, flesh. And each of these transactions were paid in digital c
urrency that flowed back to the Emperor in the form of tribute. He has made a fortune. A man who can create that? There is no bit or byte that can hold secrets from him.”

  “And you think you’ve found him?” Igorek asks.

  “I know I have. He is in Brazil. He is in the employ of the Hudson gang or perhaps another local. But Brazil is the base according to the information we have been able to glean. I have paid for information that should be delivered to an associate of mine. With that, we should be able to locate and extract the Emperor.”

  “And how will you get the Emperor to work for you?” Aleksei is still dubious.

  “By giving him whatever it is that he wants.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Now

  NAOMI

  Everything is so much easier when everyone follows the scientific method. Science doesn’t have emotions. Science doesn’t base findings on anything but science. If you have something you need resolved, you formulate your question, do your research, hypothesize, test, and analyze your data. It’s all very logical and regimented, and it works.

  Unfortunately, most “normal” people don’t like the scientific method. They prefer to live through emotion. And by that, I mean they yell.

  A lot.

  For example, I’m sitting in the passenger seat in a van, and the driver is yelling at me. He’s shouting something at me in a language I don’t understand. Some Eastern European language. If I had a clear mind, I might try to mentally look for root words to determine the language, but everything is confusion. Five minutes ago, my brother Daniel was in the back of the van, bleeding, but now he’s gone. His girlfriend, too. It’s just me and this stranger who yells and drives very poorly.

  This is all very confusing.

  He bellows something at me again. I don’t know what he wants, so I scream right back. I’m not sure if we’re all supposed to be screaming, or if I’ve missed a cue somewhere.

  The man glares at me, shakes his head, and turns back to driving. “Bozhe moi,” I hear him mutter. He looks angry, but at least he’s not screaming any longer. I’m still not sure why we were screaming in the first place.

  An hour ago, I was the Emperor. Captive of Hudson, hacker extraordinaire and cybercriminal misappropriating funds in exchange for the safety of my family. Now, I’m just Naomi Hays again.

  My wounded brother appeared with the screamer and a new girlfriend. Together, they busted me out of Hudson’s compound. It was all very A-Team and kind of fun until someone shot a gun and a window shattered near my head. The sound sent me spiraling.

  As an Aspie, when I spiral, I get lost in myself. I lose track of what’s going on and turn inward in my mind, where it’s nice and quiet and safe. I’m out of my spiral now, and in the meantime, my brother has disappeared in all this noise and confusion. All that’s left of him is his blood. It’s everywhere, too—on my hands, in my hair, covering my arms. Blood’s so unclean.

  Right now, germs and DNA are all over me. I hate germs.

  I also hate new places, new people, travel, and loud noises. Considering that I’m in a speeding van covered in someone else’s blood and a stranger is yelling at me, it’s safe to say I’m out of my comfort zone.

  So I shut down again. I curl into a ball and rock myself, humming my favorite song—“Itsy Bitsy Spider”—to myself. I need to focus. I can’t function in chaos. I think of the notes of the song and imagine viewing them on a computer synthesizer. I picture them dancing across the screen in waves. I imagine them, each note a flash of color in the melody.

  Eventually I’m so wrapped up in the song that I don’t notice anything anymore. My world exists of nothing but a nursery rhyme, and I repeat it over and over again to myself in an endless loop. When the song ends, I start it back up again, my lips moving and mouthing the words. Soon, it becomes a game to see if I can start and stop the song with no breaths in between.

  I’m back in my happy place, lost in my mind, utterly content. The only thing that would make me happier is a computer keyboard at my fingertips.

  A hand waves in front of my face. “Girl,” a voice says. “Emperor.” Fingers snap at my ear.

  This interrupts my soothing melody, and I blink rapidly, coming back to the world again. I’m not the Emperor right now. The Emperor is a powerful hacker, surrounded by computers, mistress of her domain. Right now, I’m just Naomi Hays. And Naomi is pretty powerless.

  I’m tempted to fake a seizure. It’s my “go to” when a situation gets too difficult. Hudson and his men never figured out that I was faking. They’d always shoot me full of drugs and leave me alone again for hours, and then they’d be careful not to “antagonize” me again because Hudson didn’t like it when they set me off. My fake seizures kept me safe, and the urge to do one now rises.

  The man snaps his fingers in front of my face again.

  “You interrupted me,” I tell him, since he seems to want a response from me. “That’s rude.”

  The look he gives me is incredulous, and I suppose I’ve misinterpreted his reaction. Maybe he was snapping his fingers in time to my music? I hum a few more bars experimentally, but he only snarls something at me in that strange language.

  He doesn’t seem very happy. Maybe he needs a happy place song, too. He’s pissy and insolent, but he’s not hurting me, so I hold off on faking a seizure.

  For now.

  “Get out of van,” he tells me, this time in English. It’s heavily accented English, but it’s clear he’s not from Brazil. He’s too pale all over, and people from Brazil are lovely warm tones in skin and hair and eyes. He opens the door of the van and gestures at the street.

  I’m not wearing shoes, and I look at the street, imagining my feet touching it. The broken pavement looks filthy. I don’t approve. The van is dirty, too, but I already have its germs. Walking onto the street would mean an entirely new set of bacteria, and I don’t like the thought. “No.”

  The pale man puts a smile on his face that’s supposed to be friendly, I guess, but it looks about as fake as one of my own awkward smiles. “Come,” he tells me. “We abandon van before police arrive. Come.”

  The second come is a command. “Are we going home or back to the compound?”

  “Home.”

  Oh, good. I’m tired of this place with its noise and its blood. The man waves something at me to direct me out of the van again—a gun. Huh. I wonder if he was the one shooting earlier. Who was shooting wasn’t important to me, so I didn’t pay attention.

  I can’t tell you why I’m in a van with this stranger. I can’t begin to guess what he wants. I don’t know where he’s from, where we are, or what day of the week it is, but I can tell you pi to the 3,262nd decimal place. I can recite lines of complex computer code from heart. I can pull apart a car’s engine and then put it back together again without a manual.

  That’s just how my mind works.

  I’m special, people say. That’s one of those “kind but not kind” words people use when they don’t want to say what they mean. I don’t know why they don’t just say it aloud. It doesn’t bother me. I’m autistic. Asperger’s, actually, though I suppose we don’t call it that anymore. But I’ve been Aspie for years now, and still am, in my own mind. It means I function differently than most people. I’m inside my own head more than most, and I don’t know how to deal with people. I’ve been called everything from Rain Man to retard. I’m not, though.

  I’m like one of the computers back in my garage apartment at home—wired differently for optimum efficiency. I like to think of myself as a custom build. Different from the basic model, perhaps a little clunky at first glance, but the interior’s so full of bells and whistles that you overlook the quirks. Mostly.

  The man snapping his fingers at me is clearly unaware that I’m an optimized computer. He gestures at me with the gun again, then sighs and rubs his neck. He glances down the street, then puts his gun away and holds out his hand. It’s a friendly gesture, but the look on his face is anything but, and I do
n’t know how to interpret this.

  Friendly gesture or not, though, I don’t like touching. “I don’t want your hand,” I tell him. “It’s dirty.”

  His scowl darkens. I’ve probably offended him. My fingers move along the brim of my favorite baseball cap, a nervous tic of mine.

  His gaze moves to my cap. He reaches forward and snatches it off my head, then tosses it into the nearby street.

  I make an outraged noise. How dare he? That’s my baseball cap. I glare at him and then climb out of the van to retrieve it, braving the grimy streets. Now it’ll have to be washed, just like my feet.

  “Finally, she moves,” the man mutters, and shuts the van doors behind me. “Come. We get new car. They will be looking for this one. Come.”

  I don’t know why anyone would be looking for that van—it’s all shot up and there’s blood on the inside. But he seems to know what he’s talking about. I shrug and follow his lead.

  We’re in a dirty street in Brazil, in one of the favelas. It’s filthy-dirty. Perhaps these people don’t realize how much bacteria can breed in just one puddle. I did a science experiment once because my mother hadn’t believed me when I said things were unclean. She believes me now. One sight of the mold that I’d grown in the pantry to show her, and she’d become a believer.

  “Come,” he says to me again. “We take that car.” He gestures at a nearby junker.

  It looks like it’s filled with germs. I wrinkle my nose, but there aren’t many cars in this area that seem like better choices. And I don’t want to stay in this squalid area for longer than necessary, so I follow along. He says he’s going to take me home, so he has to be better than the guys that kidnapped me.

  “Can I drive?” I ask. I’m not a great driver—I tend to stay distracted and in my own mind a bit too much to pay attention to things like street signs. But I do love to drive—I love the speed of it, the feeling of freedom.