A New Life

KAIA

^SIX MONTHS AFTER THE ESCAPE^

“I refuse to go to school.”

Irina’s declaration pulled me away from my coding. I shot her a glare as she flopped onto our wornout couch, grabbed the remote, and cranked up the volume on some American game show.

The past six months had been the toughest I’d ever endured. After a few nights in a sketchy motel, a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes, I finally managed to scrape together enough cash to rent a tiny apartment. The landlord didn’t care about IDs, as long as you paid a little extra each month.

I never missed a payment. Sure, the apartment was in a rough part of the city, and the thin walls did little to muffle the nightly noises. But it was our sanctuary. Here, we were left alone. No one pried. For once, we didn’t have to constantly watch our backs.

Upon arriving in the city, I’d swiped a laptop from a distracted cafe patron. I then hid behind the cafe, next to a dumpster, close enough to still use the Wi-Fi. That’s when I found the article I’d been searching for.

It was buried deep in the dark web, on Lipeshin. The article stated that the pakhan had decimated the entire Rostov estate, claiming my father had betrayed him. Viktor Kozlov was a cruel man, and his son, Aleksandr, was his right-hand man, poised to take over as pakhan when his father passed.

As I read, I frowned. My father betraying the pakhan didn’t add up. Why would he risk losing the power the pakhan had given him? And why would the pakhan react so violently?

Even after six months, I was still searching for answers.

I slid the laptop onto the cluttered coffee table in front of us.

“You need to go to school, Irinka,” I insisted, using my favorite nickname for her.

She responded by cranking up the TV volume.

I grabbed the remote and turned off the TV, causing her to jump up in protest.

“You can’t boss me around!” she yelled. “You’re not my mom!”

She was starting to sound like the American teenagers she went to school with.

She tried to sidestep me, but I grabbed her arm and forced her to face me.

“Have you forgotten what we’ve been through to get here? The sacrifices I’ve made to get you into school? To provide a roof over our heads? To put food on the table?” My voice cracked on the last word.

I remembered the days we’d gone hungry, the sound of Irina’s stomach growling as she cried herself to sleep.

Her expression softened, and she exhaled.

“I don’t need school. I can work at the diner down the street—”

“No!” I interrupted. “You’re finishing school. That’s not up for debate. I’ll take care of the money.”

She crossed her arms and gave me that bored teenager look.

“I can learn online, like you.”

“No,” I said, guiding her toward the table where her backpack lay. “Now, go to school.”

Irina sighed and picked up her backpack.

“The kids tease me about my accent,” she mumbled, her back to me.

I tensed.

“Are they bullying you?”

She shrugged, still not looking at me.

“I can speak to the principal—”

She whirled around.

“No! You’ll just make things worse,” she blurted out.

I bit back my response.

“Have you found anything about Mom or Ilya?” she asked quietly.

I knew this was what was really bothering her. Despite my relentless digging, I hadn’t found any trace of them. It was as if they, and the entire town of Lipeshin, had disappeared.

“I won’t stop searching until we know for sure,” I promised, then gestured toward the door. “Now go, before you’re late.”

She rolled her eyes but slung her backpack over her shoulder and headed for the door.

“Come straight home after school, Irina,” I reminded her. “No hanging out at the arcade.”

“All right, all right,” her voice echoed as the door shut with a thud.

I exhaled deeply, reaching for my laptop once more to continue my job hunt.

^FOUR YEARS LATER^

I slid on my noise-canceling headphones, drowning out the sound of Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” that was blaring from Irina’s room down the hall.

Two years prior, I had moved us from our shabby apartment to a modest house in a lower middle class suburb on the city’s edge. Irina was now attending a local community college, studying nursing, while I worked from home, taking on jobs from the dark web that paid well.

I saved most of my earnings, just in case.

Ever since discovering that the pakhan was responsible for my father’s death, I had been digging into his past to understand what had transpired between them. With Viktor’s son, Aleksandr, now the new pakhan, information about the Bratva was tightly guarded.

I had heard that Aleksandr had his own team, including a hacker. This made breaching his firewalls a challenge, even for me.

But that wasn’t the most disconcerting part. I had seen a few grainy photos of the new pakhan. The sight of him stirred something unexpected within me.

Despite the poor quality of the images, his imposing size and sharp features were undeniable. His stern eyebrows, icy blue eyes, noble nose, and commanding lips were all too captivating. I was taken aback by the pull I felt toward him, a man I had never met.

I made a mental note to avoid meeting him in person. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem as the pakhan typically resided in Russia. But not this one.

Rumor had it that he had purchased a vast estate in the city’s most affluent neighborhood, along with the surrounding properties for privacy and housing for his men. The pakhan was undeniably wealthy. I knew exactly how he amassed his fortune.

A year ago, whispers circulated that he had secretly wed, only for his wife to be brutally murdered soon after. Aleksandr had reportedly gone on a rampage, earning him a thin scar that ran from his cheek to his lips.

One might think that the scar would mar his handsome features, but it only added to his allure. It gave him a dangerous, almost lethal beauty, suggesting a beast lurking beneath his poised, regal exterior.

The thought quickened my pulse, and I had to swallow hard to steady my breathing. I shook my head and forced myself back to reality.

For the past few months, I had been attempting to bypass his firewall to access records from his father’s reign. Viktor was a meticulous man. If he had ordered my father’s death, someone else would have been appointed to take over the estate.

Perhaps I could uncover what had happened to my mother and Ilya. But breaching the firewall was proving more challenging than I had anticipated. Unless, of course, I used one of his computers.

That’s how I found myself sneaking into one of his unguarded warehouses in the dead of night, where no shipments were currently stored. I donned my oversized black hoodie and leggings, tucking my dark wig under the hood, and got to work.

Since moving here, I had been wearing brunette wigs to avoid detection by surveillance cameras.

A few hours later, I had successfully planted spyware that would grant me access to Aleksandr’s entire network once I returned home. From there, I began my search.

A notification popped up on my screen, indicating a new job posting for a hacker to locate someone—a young woman. The attached photo revealed a beautiful blonde with melancholy blue eyes.

No additional information was provided, just a contact number and the reward amount. I gasped at the number of zeros following the first digit.

“I can’t pass up this opportunity,” I whispered to myself.

Besides, with surveillance cameras everywhere these days, how difficult could it be to find this girl?

I retrieved my burner phone and initiated contact.