36. Bronwyn

36

brONWYN

Four days later, it was my bachelorette party. Jen organized it like a military operation, with all of us in sparkly dresses of different colors and a long list of cool bars to go to. By midnight, we were in a neighborhood I’d never been to, climbing stone steps that led to a set of enormous wooden doors. I was glad I’d brought my crutches because it was turning out to be a long night. I still didn’t like them but since that talk with Radimir, I was a little less self-conscious about them.

As we approached, doormen pushed open the wooden doors and?—

Wow. The place was one huge room with a beautiful, vaulted wooden roof that reflected the thumping dance music back down until it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. The bar was a long slab of glass, lit up from within so it glowed with an ethereal light, and in front of it was a sea of Chicago’s young and beautiful: chisel-jawed guys in suits and women who must be models in shining, colorful outfits: suddenly, the cyan, sparkly dress Jen had persuaded me into made sense. The whole place was misted with smoke and lit up cobalt blue by lasers. I looked down at the floor: huge slabs of stone, worn smooth by time. That’s when I realized the place used to be a church: there were marks where they’d ripped the pews out.

Something scratched at the back of my brain, a ghost of a memory, but I’d had at least two Porn Star Martinis too many to figure it out.

“Isn’t this place great?” asked Jen, grinning. And it was, classy and cool without being intimidating.

There were big, round tables made of burnished copper and as soon as we sat down at one, a waiter came over and took our drinks order.

Jen and I looked at each other and our eyes locked. It still felt like our friendship was cracked...but she’d put the tension aside for tonight to give me a great time and I loved her for that. She grabbed my hand, interlacing her fingers with mine, and the diamond on my engagement ring flashed blue and silver in the laser light. “I still can’t believe it,” she said slowly. “He must be quite a guy, for you to fall this fast.”

I swallowed. “Yeah,” I managed. “He really is.” The last time we’d had this conversation, in the Italian restaurant, I’d had to lie about how I felt about Radimir. Now I wasn’t lying...and in some ways that scared me even more because I had no idea if he loved me back.

The waiter returned. That was fast! But his tray was empty. “Ladies,” he announced, “my boss has told me to upgrade you to our VIP area. If you’ll follow me?”

We all gaped at each other and then fell into line behind him. I was last and as I got my crutches under my arms and set off; I saw a guy watching us from the podium where a preacher once stood. He was in his late twenties, lean, with his hair shaved down to stubble, and he was wearing a sleek, white suit. He must be the boss who upgraded us. I gave him a nod of thanks, still not understanding why.

The waiter showed us to a flight of wooden stairs at the back of the room and down a dark hallway to the organ loft. The organ was still there, a huge thing with silver pipes that stretched up to the ceiling. The rest of the space was filled with black velvet couches and armchairs, and thick glass had been installed so that we could look down onto the main room, but the sound was damped down enough that we could talk. There were even velvet drapes that could be pulled if you wanted privacy. Another waiter arrived with our drinks.

“See, this is how we should roll,” said Jen, falling into one of the couches.

“Do they think we’re someone else?” asked Luna, sounding worried.

“It’s fine,” said Sadie. “If someone asks you for an autograph, just smile and do a squiggle.”

The door opened and the guy in the white suit strutted in. “Ladies! Having a good time?” He spoke with some accent I’d never heard before, metered and precise, with a hard edge. That memory scratched again, but I still couldn’t recall it.

“Yes!” Jen told him. “Thank you!”

Two more men filed in behind the boss. Their suits were black, and they had the heavy build of bouncers, but there weren’t the guys we’d seen on the door.

The boss gave us a big, mocking grin as he looked around at the four of us. “We didn’t know we were being visited by someone so important…”

Alarm bells began to ring in my head.

He looked right at me. “...Miss Hanford. Or, soon, Mrs. Aristov.”

Too late, the memory clicked into my brain, sharp and clear. The Armenians. They bought a fancy bar as a base. A place called Worship.

Worship. A bar made out of a deconsecrated church. Jen had unknowingly brought us into the home of one of Radimir’s enemies.

I fumbled for my watch. My hands were suddenly sweaty but I managed to twist the bezel a full turn. Nothing happened. Did it work? “We’re leaving,” I said, getting to my feet.

The boss reached into his jacket and brought out a switchblade. The blade popped out with a nasty little snkt.

Fuck. My heart was hammering. My friends were staring at me, bewildered and terrified. “Bronwyn?” asked Luna.

“The man your fiancé killed,” said the boss, drawing lazy figure eights in the air with the tip of the knife, “was important to me.”

“You’ve got the wrong woman,” croaked Jen. “Her fiancé’s a property developer.” She looked at me. “Right?” I didn’t reply. “ Right?”

I looked back at her helplessly. Fuck. Why did she have to pick this bar? But it wasn’t her fault. I should have told her the truth.

The boss moved closer. I tried to move but I was awkward on my crutches and he was right in my face before I could get away. “Where I come from,” he told me, “when someone is killed, there must be p’vokhhatuts’um . Compensation.” He looked thoughtfully down at my dress, then slipped the tip of the switchblade under one of the shoulder straps. I caught my breath as the point nicked my skin. “We’re going to extract that compensation from you.” He jerked the switchblade, and the strap parted. My dress sagged.

As if a signal had been given, his men shut the drapes that covered the glass wall. No one downstairs would see what was about to happen. Over the thumping music, they wouldn’t even hear the screams.

The boss moved the switchblade to my dress’s other strap. Fear had made my mouth dry and I had to struggle to speak. “Not them,” I managed, glancing at Jen, Sadie and Luna. “Just me. They don’t even know who Radimir is.”

The boss smirked at his men. “She wants us all to herself.” He leered at me. “Fine. They can watch.” The switchblade severed the other strap, and my dress started to slide down. I grabbed it and jumped back, staggering on my crutches, but the boss just laughed. My back hit the wall: there was nowhere to run. The boss pocketed his switchblade and advanced.

I closed my eyes. Maybe I could block it out, shut down all my senses while it happened. But then I heard Luna moan in fear, and something snapped inside me. The unfairness of it, the swaggering male arrogance of it.

If they were going to have me, they weren’t getting me without a fight.

I opened my eyes and as the boss stepped forward, I leaned on my left crutch and swung the other one up and around. The crutch was heavy, and it made a very satisfying thump as it hit the side of his head. He staggered, clutching at his scalp, and I drove the tip of the other crutch into the middle of his belly, doubling him over. But now I was off balance and when he came for me again, I couldn’t get a crutch up in time?—

Jen, Sadie and Luna all swarmed him, grabbing arms and legs. “ Get away from her!” panted Jen. I managed to get a hit in with the crutch and stepped forward for another.

But then the boss’s men grabbed Luna and Sadie, plucking them off and hurling them aside, and the boss shook off Jen and turned to me, red-faced and furious. He stepped forward and, before I could react, he punched me in the face. My head snapped to the side, and it felt like a bomb went off in the center of my brain. Everything throbbed red and black, and I fell sideways, crashing down onto one of the couches, ragdoll-floppy.

The boss was on top of me in a second. “Just for that,” he spat, “I’m going to make it hurt.”

The door flew open.

A figure stood in the doorway. The flickering blue lasers turned him into a silhouette, but I would have recognized those wide shoulders and the ramrod-straight posture anywhere.

The boss scrambled off me and fumbled for his switchblade, but Radimir was already stalking towards him, a slender dagger in his hand.

“W—Wait,” the boss stammered. He’d gone as white as his suit and he suddenly looked like a kid, playing at being a gangster. “You can’t kill me; you’ll never get out of here al?—”

Radimir stabbed him in the heart. It was so fast and so vicious that the boss was lifted almost off his feet. All of us jerked in shock.

Radimir pulled the boss into an embrace. His voice was ice cold and rough with emotion. “You were dead the second you touched her.” He let go and the boss crumpled to the floor, dead, a sticky red flower blossoming on his white suit.

The boss’s men ran at Radimir, but they were shaken and Radimir was ruthlessly efficient. He stabbed one in the stomach and slashed the other’s throat and they both fell.

Radimir held out his arms and I ran to him, abandoning the crutches. I crushed myself to his chest and he wrapped his arms around me like he wanted to protect me from the entire world. The adrenaline started to sluice out of me and I went shaky, squeezing my eyes shut as I thought about how close I’d come. “I’m sorry,” I babbled. “I had no idea this was their place, I’d been drinking…”

Radimir put his hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back. “Why are you apologizing?” He glared down at the boss. “This was only one person’s fault, and it isn’t you.” The words were iron-certain, and I felt the tension in my chest unwind a notch. He hugged me again, furiously tight, so tight I could barely breathe, but I didn’t want it to end because it felt so good.

Shouts from outside. Running footsteps. Radimir cursed in Russian and reluctantly released me. “We need to go.”

I beckoned to my friends, but they hung back, staring at Radimir in horror. “It’s okay,” I promised. “Please.” They looked at each other, and then Jen walked over and Sadie and Luna nervously followed.

We peeked out into the hallway. There must have been security cameras in the VIP room because four men in suits were running up the stairs and even in the dim light, I could see some of them had guns. They took up position in the hallway, waiting for us to come out. Shit. We were trapped.

“Stay behind me,” Radimir warned, and moved towards the door.

I grabbed his arm. “There’s four of them! There’s only one of you! You’re not getting killed saving me!”

He looked right into my eyes. “If I need to, I will give my life to protect you. But not tonight...because there isn’t just one of me.”

The man furthest from us suddenly disappeared, snatched away into the shadows. Then a figure in a long black coat emerged from the darkness. Valentin! He started creeping towards the next man, who was still oblivious. Valentin slipped an arm around his neck, gentle as a lover, and then there was a sudden, violent motion, and that man was dead, too. My stomach flipped. But he was doing it to save us, and when I thought about what the Armenians had been going to do to me…

As Valentin dealt with the third man, the last man suddenly realized what was happening behind him and spun around...only to get Radimir’s knife in his back. Radimir and Valentin embraced, then led us down the stairs. But as we stepped into the main bar, there were loud crack s from the far end of the room, like fireworks going off, and the glass bar shattered. People started screaming and running and Radimir pushed me to the floor. Oh fuck: that was gunfire!

All I could see were feet as everyone ran for the exits. Then, as the crowd thinned, I glimpsed men with guns, moving towards us. And we were right out in the open...

There was a grunt and a crash. I looked around to see Gennadiy: he’d upended one of the big metal tables and he waved us all behind it. We scrambled into its shelter and my heart jumped into my throat when I heard a bullet ricochet off the metal surface, only a few inches from my head.

“Stay with them,” Radimir ordered. “We’ll clear an exit.”

Gennadiy nodded grimly. Radimir and Valentin hurried away and Gennadiy pulled out a gun and started firing over the top of the table, holding the Armenians back. The shots were deafening, so close, and I threw my arms around Jen, Sadie and Luna as hot bullet casings fell around us. I was shaking. Jesus Christ, people are shooting at us! All I wanted was to go back to my safe little bookstore.

Then I saw blood running down Gennadiy’s calf. He’d taken a hit, either from a bullet or flying glass, running in here to save us, and he was bleeding a lot. I let go of my friends, ripped one of the dangling straps from my dress and tied it tight around the wound. “Weren’t you ready to kill me, just a few weeks ago?” I muttered.

He glanced down at me and I thought I saw a flash of guilt. “I do what I have to, to protect my family. You’re part of it, now.”

I felt an unfamiliar warmth spread through my chest.

Radimir waved to us from a fire exit across the room. We ran, scuttling across the open space while Gennadiy fired again and again. As we burst into the cold night air, we saw a big, black Mercedes holding up traffic in the middle of the street with Mikhail at the wheel. We all piled in and the car roared off before we’d even got the doors closed.

I’d wound up sitting on Radimir’s knee, in the passenger seat. I craned around. “Everyone okay?”

With five people in the back, it was a cramped tangle of limbs, but they all nodded. I let out a long breath. We’re okay.

“Bronwyn?” Jen’s voice was so small and shaky, I barely recognized it. “What’s going on? ”