“Natale, you need to wait for me.” We both pause when we hear screaming, and we take off toward the door. He kicks it in and enters with me and Domino behind him. We’ll pull him back if we have to. Posy collapses and Natale grabs for her.
I raise my gun and take aim on the enemy I’ve let live for too long.
“Igor,” I spit his name out. “It’s my pleasure to send you to your demise. Say hello to Ivan for me.” I pull the trigger without a thought of anything but ending the man who caused me so much terror. Domino takes out a second man. I pull out my phone and text an associate to clean up the mess and make it disappear.
Natale carries Posy out to the car. I’m done. Like I told Natale earlier, I’m ending this finally. I will train Domino to protect them, then I’ll finish my uncle.
* * *
Vitaly
In the week since I last held Anatonia, I’ve watched her. She doesn’t see me as I’ve again changed vehicles and I occupy an empty house near the mansion at night, parking my car blocks away. The pain I saw in her eyes when she shot my tires ripped my heart apart. I did that to her, and I hate that I did it, but I can’t fix what I am. Without being a contract killer for the Bratva, I wouldn’t have found her. I followed her a couple days ago and saw her kill Igor. I knew her uncle would send more men after her, but this time it appeared they came after Posy and not her.
I wonder if the contract against her has gone out to others yet. The contract that I had. Since I didn’t respond back to his text and discarded that burner phone, I haven’t heard from him. My emails have been silent from him as well. More than likely a hit has also been issued against me.
I need to find out if there is any more information on her. My hacker couldn’t get it, but there has to be someone that knew about her. I decide to search the cloud-based files that Grigori kept. He knew things and had been with the Pakhan for years. He never kept anything in paper and didn’t like the other digital file keeping systems. But he entered the dark web and hid files within photos and other files.
I look at the image of a schoolyard on my laptop. It appears to be an innocent image until I zoom in on the small girl in the photo. She has dark hair pulled back into a braid down her back. Her blue eyes even at that young age are familiar. Why would Grigori have a picture of a young Anatonia? I zoom in on her, not recognizing the school, but all the girls are in matching uniforms. I move the cursor over the building and a hyperlink appears. I click it and I’m taken to another file. It’s a records transcript for Anatonia Bocharov from a private school in Petrozavodsk, Russia over five hours from St. Petersburg. It shows that she attended the school from age five until she was twelve. The private school doesn’t appear to be a regular private school. It’s an advanced learning school that pushes students to learn faster and harder subjects. It also teaches things such as kill techniques, military training, knives, guns, and espionage training. She was disciplined numerous times and beaten. She was tortured from what some of the records say. The final entry states that her uncle removed her to attend another special school for problem girls. She was excelling in all her classes and her education was more advanced. Her IQ tests were off the charts. I click out of the file and search for anything else.
I find an image of a teenage Anatonia standing in a military style uniform. Her face hard. Her body taut. Another hyperlink pops up and I click on it. I’m shocked by what I find. She went to a military training camp at an undisclosed location. The records say she was trained by former U.S. Marines. She was trained in hand-to-hand combat. Knife skills. Guns and ammo. Marksmen training and special military forces training. A special note states that her uncle wanted her to be advanced and specially trained in garrote killing styles. The final entry states that her uncle had her moved to work with the Russian government after completion. All her education was to prepare her to be a soldier or spy. But mostly to kill.
The next file I find states that Grigori lost her at eighteen when she disappeared, but he found kills similar to her style done by an MI6 operative. I look through his personal notes. Dates that I thought he was on hits, he was watching her. He also investigated her for killing Maxim Kalshnik, Pakhan’s Sovietnik until his death. This is the Brigadier in charge of support, but Maxim was directly connected to the KGB. He used his position to help Pakhan by killing his opposition and giving him a heads-up on investigations. It was widely rumored that he would have been second-in-command after Ivan.
I’m going to have to ask her how she knew him. When I went to live with Grigori, she would have only been ten years old. A small child and innocent, he would call her. But the records show that he’d been keeping an eye on her for five years at that point.
Grigori states several times that he wants to discuss with Pakhan why she left. Where she could be. But he also questions her treatment. He seemed to care for her and was worried about her.
I leave the motel for yet another, needing to move quite a bit so they can’t find me. The motel serves as my base. A place to grab a quick shower and take care of business I can’t conduct in the empty house or my car. I check in, then head toward the mansion. The last few days I’ve watched as Ana works closely with Domino. He doesn’t appear to be a cop anymore. I wonder what her plan is now. Is she training him as her backup, or something else? I can imagine after the latest attempt on Posy that she is ready to end everything, and I’ll be there to protect her because Pakhan will know she’s coming. He’ll be expecting her.