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“Who are you supposed to be?” A raspy voice drifts from my right. Looking over, I come face to face with a woman. Her black hair hangs in clumps around her face and her sunken cheeks create alarming shadows across her face in the low light.
“I’m no one,” I reply. “Just a friend.”
“There’s no friends here,” she hisses. “You’re one of them.”
“Them?”
“You know. Them.” She spits dryly at the ground in front of me. “You think you can come in here and act like the next place will be different, but I know how it works.”
“There is no next place,” I assure her. “There’s only the hospital and then whatever you want.”
“Bullshit.” She wets her lips, but they remain as papery-looking as they did before. “You shouldn’t have touched his water.”
Her anger is understandable because her fear shines through as clear as day. I’ve seen it before. It’s a constant in my life now. The family under me see me as unworthy and quietly push back at my direction and control, while my father’s victims simply see me as an extension of him. Or worse.
Giving them a face to hate is the least I can do.
The man beside me remains in the same position, simply holding the water bottle and the cap. My heart squeezes like a hand is reaching up from my gut and trying to drag it down into my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I say. He doesn’t appear to hear me. Viktor’s hand lands on my shoulder, and the pressure is clear. Time to go.
Outside, I breathe in a deep lungful of cold night air and gaze up at the stars twinkling above. The lingering sharp aroma of that building coats the back of my tongue, and I shudder to think of what occurred there to create such a stink. The lengths people will go to in order to fuck someone who can’t say no or to find someone they can doliterallyanything they dream of to.
Therapy won’t be enough for some of those poor people.
Warmth stings behind my eyes. I place my hands on my hips and dig my fingertips into the soft flesh of my waist to calm myself as small stones skitter underfoot beside me. Viktor joins me. I send him a sidelong glance as he clears his throat.
“Anastasia.”
“I’m fine.”
“I wasn’t going to ask that.”
“Oh.” Of course not. In a sea of people all working under my name, I don’t have a single friend among them. “What, then?”
“Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”
The warmth behind my eyes immediately fades, swallowed by the cold irritation that exists within me on a daily basis. “Are you kidding me? Did we see the same thing in there?”
“Of course we did,” he replies. “But this is like taking a meat eater to a slaughterhouse.”
“Excuse me?”
“Listen.” Viktor grabs my arm. “Have you really stopped to think about this in the long run? Every one of these rings you shut down is money out of our pockets. A lot of fucking money. On top of the medical care, the therapy, and everything else you offer these people. I understand you’re on some misguided crusade, but have you looked at our finances lately? The blow from the closure of the pornography was painful enough, but you keep closing down business after business and offer nothing in its place. Before long, we’re going to run out of money, and then you will be a Godmother of nothing.”
I wrench my arm free and glare up at him. “I’m not hearing a downside.”
“Then listen to this. The more you lose, the more aggravated and annoyed our people get. The more that happens, the more likely it is that they will turn to other families, or worse, come for your throat in your sleep. Then you will be powerless, and everyone you could have saved will end up making money for someone else.”
“So, what’s your solution? I let some of these businesses thrive to fund the safety of others?”
Viktor shrugs. “Sure. How else are you going to keep paying for all of this? Our nightclubs are not enough to hold up this family. You have to stop thinking with your heart and start thinking like the Godmother of the clan. Every Russian family looks to us for guidance, and right now, the message you are putting out isn’t one of confidence. And if you go down, I go down with you.”
“So you’re coming from a place of self-preservation, huh?” I glare at him. “How you can stand there and say that after the shit we’ve seen—the shit you helped my father do—is beyond me.”
“He saw the bigger picture, and so do I, Anastasia. You’re young. Inexperienced. And you want to save the world. Whatever. You can’t do that without killing a few cattle.”
It pains me to understand his concerns.