Until the End Read online

  Amber nodded, but Lauren doubted she believed that. The pain was too fresh for her to just let it go so easily.

  “Enough about me and my pathetic excuse for a cousin. What’s up with you and Mishca?”

  “We…well, it just didn’t work out.”

  Lauren didn’t want to tell her any more than that, not because she didn’t want to—it would be great to finally talk with someone about this—but she didn’t want to involve Amber in it, not when she was already worried about her own safety.

  “Well if you ever want to talk about it, I’m a great listener.”

  There was no one else she’d rather talk to.

  It was considerably cooler when they left the bar, making Lauren zip up her jacket, fumbling with the zipper several times before finally tugging it up.

  “Where do we go from here?” Amber asked in a whimsical voice, spinning in circles while nearly falling off the sidewalk.

  Lauren giggled, hurrying to catch up to her. “What about Florida? I’ve never been to Florida.”

  “Really? You should come with me to Cali for a few weeks.” She slung her arm around Lauren’s shoulders, gesturing out to everything around them. “That would be fun, right? I’d show you the coast, we’d surf, and meet all the hot surfers out there.”

  “Sounds good.” But she wasn’t sure about meeting other guys. Maybe it was because her breakup with Mishca was so fresh that she wasn’t ready to move on.

  Lauren fiddled through her purse, searching for her phone—feeling the buzzing against her side—falling behind. She was still looking when she stumbled into Amber as she stopped abruptly. Looking up, she didn’t have to ask to learn why Amber was no longer walking.

  Rob and Piper were exiting a restaurant—one that Lauren had wanted to go to since she moved to New York—hand in hand, acting every bit of the sophisticated couple they were pretending to be. Grudgingly, Lauren could almost understand Rob’s twisted view of what kind of girl he should be with.

  Piper was everything that Amber wasn’t and that seemed to work for him, not that his opinion really mattered to Lauren. She would have chosen Amber over Piper any day.

  “Let’s just go,” Lauren said so that Amber was the only one that could hear her.

  “I’m fine,” Amber muttered holding her head up, the sadness radiating in her eyes.

  It seemed their movements attracted Piper’s attention. She slinked closer to Rob, holding onto him like she thought Amber was going to attack her at any moment.

  Rob leaned down, whispering something in Piper’s ear that had her laughing softly. Amber was trying to put up a good front, but Lauren could see the tears brimming in her eyes and she had had enough.

  “Time to move on,” she said in a voice laced with steel. “I’m sure you have something better to do.”

  Piper tried to look down her nose at Lauren—an act that was hard to do since Lauren was a few inches taller—as she pulled away from Rob. In her mind, she assumed Lauren was the more passive one which would make her the easiest target, but she couldn’t possibly know that in the span of a few months, Lauren was no longer the same girl.

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?” Piper asked, actually getting in Lauren’s face like she wanted to fight.

  It was for the crowd of people waiting in line behind them, Lauren assumed.

  “You got what you wanted, no?”—Shit, now she sounded like him—“Why don’t you leave.”

  “Or. What?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” Lauren challenged. “You think because you have his attention for a few minutes that it’ll last? Please. You’re the pretty little gem whose shine will wear off in a week tops. Get over yourself, Piper. I’m sure your mouth isn’t all that great despite what you can do with it.”

  Her face mottled with red as the bystanders around them broke out in laughter. It even managed to get a smile out of Amber. Never in her life had Lauren been so bold, but she hated seeing her friend hurt, and alcohol could make anyone brave enough to speak their mind.

  Piper raised her hand, as if she meant to actually hit Lauren, but Amber was done with her shit. In the blink of an eye, Amber balled her fist, slugging Piper in the face.

  Amber yelped in pain, cradling her hand. Piper cried out, stumbling in her heels as she touched her face, sobbing dramatically. Lauren didn’t doubt that the hit hurt, but she was sure Piper was just making a scene.

  “Call the police!” Piper shouted, reaching for Rob, but he was too busy trying to talk to Amber to notice.

  “Let’s go.”

  Lauren grabbed Amber’s arm, dragging her away in case someone was actually calling the police.

  “Amber! Can we just talk about this?” Rob called after them, his hands in the air.

  “Screw you!”

  Just their luck, there didn’t seem to be any taxis in the vicinity. Her next option? Finding somewhere crowded enough for them to blend into without being noticed for a while.

  Music was pounding through the walls of a building across the street, scores of people standing outside it. Perfect. Lauren hurried them across, checking behind them to make sure thy were no longer the subject of attention.

  They weren’t even on the sidewalk yet when the bouncer unclipped the rope, waving them ahead. The first couple of patrons in the line complained, but Lauren was too grateful to care.

  Passing the rope, however, she felt strange, like this was the last place she needed to be.

  As soon as they were inside the club, Lauren understood that sense of foreboding that filled her. She had only been to this particular club a handful of times, but the interior was one she would never forget.

  Same sleek, white furniture. LED-lit shelves, making the bottles of alcohol resting on them glow blue.

  It seemed she had stumbled her way into Mishca’s club.

  Club 221 was an exclusive spot and now that she thought about it, there was no reason for the bouncers to allow them in, neither of the pair were dressed for a night out on the town…unless they recognized her. She couldn’t help but wonder if the bouncer had already used his walkie-talkie to alert the owner.

  Glancing around, she quickly hunted for him in the crowd of people, but with so many people, she couldn’t spot him anywhere.

  Trailing behind Amber—who seemed oblivious to their surroundings—they made a beeline for the bar, and when she passed Lauren a shot, she happily gulped it down, wanting to dull the apprehension blooming in her chest.

  Realistically, she could get out of there, talk Amber into waiting a few minutes before they left again, but a nagging voice in the back of her head reminded her why she was at the bar, in direct view of the office above.

  In a corner office above the sprawling dance floor of Club 221, Mishca Volkov sat at his desk, holding a framed picture in his large hands, briefly tracing over the girl’s smile with his thumb.

  For months he had left it in the bottom drawer of his desk, but even without seeing it, he could practically feel it hidden away and worse than that, he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

  Born and raised in a lifestyle full of secrets and death, he had hardly lived for anything else in his twenty-five years…not until a year ago when he met a girl that would disrupt the delicate balance between his personal life and his obligations to the Bratva.

  He had tried for months to get her out of his head, doing just about anything to get a reprieve. A few girls, but after the third attempt at trying to take one home—and feeling absolutely nothing—he turned to the one thing that took away the memories.

  In his office, Mishca drank freely until the wee hours of the morning, but only on the days when he was not needed by the Vory v Zakone. Their mandate demanded that they not drink to the point of excess, but Mishca often teetered on the brink.

  He didn’t know how to handle it, the emotions she sparked inside of him. Nothing he did would turn them off. The only time he had a modicum of peace was when he drank.

  A
hard knock drew Mishca from his thoughts. Sighing, he dropped the picture into the drawer, slamming it shut with his foot. Barking an ‘enter,’ he watched the door swing open, Jonathan standing in the doorway.

  His partner was one of the few people outside of the family that knew what Mishca really was, but he was also someone Mishca trusted with his life.

  Currently, he looked apprehensive, rubbing his hands together as his eyes shifted from Mishca’s face to the half empty bottle of Vodka that was doing nothing to lift Mishca’s ever darkening mood.

  “Hey, Boss.” Though Jonathan had a stake in the club, and wasn’t one of the brigadiers, he insisted on calling Mishca by the same title as his men. “I know you’re busy,”—another pointed look at the bottle, then to the drawer where the picture was hidden.

  Frowning, Mishca turned in his chair, blocking the view. “Get on with it.”

  “Right.” Jonathan snapped his fingers, shifting on his feet. “There’s a saying I’m rather fond of. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’ Have you ever heard that before?”

  Mishca was slowing losing his already short patience. “Spit it out!”

  “Your sister is downstairs dancing on the bar.” Jonathan cringed as he said it, waiting for Mishca’s careful composure to come unhinged. It wouldn’t be the first time he had snapped since he and Lauren had ended things—a subject he knew never to bring up.

  In the blink of an eye, Mishca had the bottle of Vodka in hand, hurling it across the room to shatter against the wall. In the midst of the bottle flying, Jonathan made his exit.

  As soon as Mishca got his hands on her, he would strangle her scrawny little neck.

  Since Lauren’s revelation that day, things had slowly spiraled downhill for the Volkov family, at least for the Volkov children. Mikhail had returned his full attention to the Vory v Zakone, putting his men to work to expand their businesses. With Viktor dead they had to take over his obligations.

  Mishca wasn’t hypocritical enough to judge her for the drinks—there were many a night when he found himself at the bottom of a bottle—but he could limit her intake when he was around. He didn’t let her in his club, not just because she was only seventeen, but because of the men that used this place as their hunting ground.

  Though a bar brawl sounded a bit appealing at the moment, he had all he could take of law enforcement lately. Even in death, Victor still managed to bring a cluster fuck of a problem down on them.

  Mishca understood Mikhail’s decision to make Viktor’s death public, though a few members of the Bratva voiced their disapproval. It was a calculated risk, one meant to resolve the problem with the NYPD as well as the Michigan police department. Anatoly’s recorded testimony had been destroyed, there was no physical evidence, and Mishca knew—and made sure to speak up at the last meeting—that Lauren wouldn’t speak a word of it.

  That problem had been fixed.

  Now, if he could just fix the hundred and twenty pound problem he had downstairs…

  Commotion near the other end of the bar had Lauren turning around, nearly spilling her drink when she saw who was at the other end.

  Several college-aged boys were throwing back shots, shouting at each other though they were only inches apart, but the petite girl in the center of their group was who grabbed Lauren’s attention.

  She was dressed in a rose gold sequin dress, her feet bare though silvery anklets adorned both of her ankles. Her blonde hair gleamed in the glowing lights of the club, wayward strands sticking to her damp skin. She looked far older than her seventeen years, wearing enough makeup that she almost didn’t look like herself.

  The girl was Aleksandria Volkov, Mishca’s little sister.

  At one point, Lauren might have thought them friends, but she doubted Alex wanted anything to do with her now, not after that day she revealed the truth about Viktor—Alex’s biological father. Technically, that made Alex Mishca’s cousin, but Lauren doubted either of them wanted a reminder of that.

  She was the splitting image of her mother, Anya, more so in this moment than any other.

  Two of the guys grabbed Alex’s extended hands, hoisting her up and onto the bar top. Cheers rang out as Alex threw back another shot, swaying her hips as she danced to only a beat she could hear. At that point, Lauren knew she had to step in, no matter how much more Alex would hate her after.

  “I’ll be right back,” she told Amber who gave her a drunken thumbs up.

  Lauren maneuvered her way through the crowd, keeping her eyes on Alex in case someone tried to move her. It took more time than she had hoped, but when she was right behind the pack of vultures, she elbowed her way to the front, uncaring of their hostile glares.

  “Alex!” She tried calling, but her voice was drowned out by the music and screaming.

  Reaching up, she grabbed Alex’s hand, trying to get her to come down. Someone else was reaching for her also, but Lauren was too preoccupied in making sure Alex didn’t land on her face to look.

  Between the two of them, they helped an overly intoxicated Alex down from the bar before she tripped and hit her head or something. Lauren was prepared to thank the guy—or tell him off if he was a creeper—until she looked up and met his eyes.

  Mishca.

  It was like the first time all over again, that stunned moment of seeing someone so attractive, but it was different now because she knew him. Just at the sight of him, the ache in her chest grew larger.

  He seemed just as dazed as she felt, both suspended in the moment, too lost in one another to notice Alex drunkenly glaring at Lauren like she was the bane of her existence.

  She lurched towards her, stumbling in her heels as she tried to grab for Lauren, but Mishca caught her around the waist, grating angry words in Russian that had her shoving away from him, turning that glare back on Lauren.

  “You ruined my life!” She shouted, loud enough to be heard over the music.

  Lauren flinched. No matter her problems with Mishca, she had never meant to hurt Alex in the process. She was all too familiar with what a secret could do, and inadvertently, she had done to Alex what Viktor had done to her.

  “I’m sorry,” Lauren said seeming to shock Mishca though Alex was too drunk to understand what Lauren was saying.

  Looking back at Mishca, she had to stop kidding herself into believing that anything could work out between them. Not because she didn’t want it, but because it seemed the circumstances weren’t right for it to work.

  Taking a step back, Lauren said, “Goodbye, Mish.”

  And without a single glance back, she found Amber in the heavily occupied club and helped her outside to a cab where they went home.

  Despite trying to yank her way free, Mishca kept a firm grip on Alex’s bicep as he hauled her up the stairs in the back of the club, dragging her into his office and slamming the door shut behind them. With little finesse, Mishca dropped Alex on her ass in one of the armchairs, his anger mounting as she tried to straighten the pathetic excuse for a dress she was wearing.

  He went over to the mini bar, grabbing a water from inside it, unscrewing the cap as he handed it to her, careful not to spill any. “Drink it.”

  She glared at it, then him, before flinging an arm out, knocking the bottle to the floor, sending water spraying out onto the front of his shirt. That glare quickly turned into a satisfied smirk as she practically dared him to do something about it.

  “Don’t push me, Aleksandria,” Mishca said not bothering to wipe at the droplets still dripping off him. “My patience is wearing thin.”

  “Like I give a shit,” she spat back at him. “What was she doing here?”

  “Never mind her. What were you thinking? Have you forgotten you’re underage?”

  Rolling her eyes, she reached for his special hundred-year-old whiskey, throwing the top at him. “So?”

  “Aleksandria, I’m not in the mood for this tonight.”

  “You think just because you keep saying my full name, that’s going to make me behave
? You’re not my father, Mish. Matter of fact, you put a bullet in his heart.” He couldn’t fault her for the next swig she took. Grimacing, she held the bottle up in toast. “All thanks to that bitch you’re pining over.”

  Mishca was in her face in a second, snatching the bottle from her. “Don’t call her that.”

  Alex narrowed her eyes, shoving him back, nothing he did would scare her. “Just like I thought. Lauren this. Lauren that. She ruins my fucking life and your still taking up for her!”

  “What do you want from me?” Mishca demanded, shoving his hands through his hair. “I practically forced her away for you.”

  “Oh right, asshole, try to make me feel guilty. You and Mikhail are just alike.”

  “Don’t compare me to our—”

  “Well he ain’t my father,” she said sarcastically, plopping back down. “Isn’t that what your precious girlfriend just had to tell everyone? Now, I can’t even see my mother.”

  “She would have been killed,” Mishca tried to get her to understand. “She didn’t have a choice. You can’t blame her for what Viktor caused.” Even though he had done just that.

  Alex laughed bitterly, clapping her hands. “But it’s okay to blame me? Mikhail won’t even look at me anymore. Sure, he deposits money in my account, but is that all I am now, an obligation?”

  Mishca sighed, his anger draining away when he heard the sadness in Alex’s voice. This was much harder for her than he had realized. She didn’t share Mishca’s bitterness towards Mikhail. So while he would see it as a blessing if Mikhail ignored him, it wasn’t easy for a seventeen-year-old girl.

  They hadn’t even been around to celebrate Alex’s birthday—Mikhail was away on business, Anya wasn’t allowed—and Mishca doubted he had been as caring as he could have been.

  “No, Alex. Give him time, he’ll come around. If you really want it, I’ll set up a meeting for you to see Anya.”

  She sniffled, her eyes downcast as though she didn’t want him to see her crying. He reached for her, gathering her into his arms, resting his chin on top of her head like he had done so many times when she was a kid.