Distilled Duplicity Read online

  DISTILLED DUPLICITY

  By Louise Furley

  Distilled Duplicity

  Copyright (©) 2020 Louise Furley

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic of mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN- 978-1-7357712-0-5 (Paperback)

  ISBN- 978-1-7349807-9-0 (eBook)

  Cover design by Pixel Mischief Design

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Also by Louise Furley

  Solitar

  Halo Valley

  Isle of Orainn

  Anastasia

  The Kissing Number

  The Poser

  Wrath of Wolf

  Devil’s Prince

  Devil’s Seed

  Distilled Duplicity

  Chapter One

  Zhilov Adranokov’s eyes narrowed in contempt at his youngest son as the twelve-year-old came in the door. “Naithon Rámon, in the sacred breath of Dio, you let your brothers beat you again? When are you going to stand up for yourself?”

  One of Naithon’s eyes had swollen almost completely shut, a gash split his lip, and a gouge near his cheek was deep enough it will scar him for life, compliments of his brother Misolav.

  Yet, clearly he had fought back against his older brothers, his knuckles were lacerated and bleeding. A young boy with three against one, he had given as good as he got.

  Without responding to his father’s belittling, Naithon started across the grand room stripping off his torn bloody jersey. The material had covered massive dark bruising rapidly spreading over his thin torso.

  Not a wisp of a feminine touch appeared in the décor of the house. Verona Adranokov, the matriarch of the family had no say in decorating Zhilov’s ancient, ancestral mansion.

  Just as dark and gloomy as it had been in the medieval era, high ceilings overlooked heavy, dark furniture comprised of masculine leather with gold studding.

  Brown bricked fireplaces lent only warmth, not cozy comfort. Vintage burgundy drapes held back with gold tassels let in muted light through lead-paned, mullioned windows.

  Gilded photographs of ancestors progressed above the burgundy carpeted stairs. An edge of fear in their whispering, guests claimed ghastly sightings of a phantom Dracula disappearing down sinister, shadowed hallways.

  Following his son, in a base Romanian dialect, Zhilov groused, “It is your fault, Naithon. If your mama hadn’t died while bearing you, I could have kept her and you set up in the townhouse in the city, housed you apart from this family, my wife and your half-brothers. They beat you because they’re jealous that I loved your mother more than theirs.”

  Naithon took a sharp turn to avoid him, but Zhilov stayed on his heels still going at him. “I’ve never hidden the fact that I loved your mother, my mistress, more than I cared for their mother, my legal wife. The crappy matter of it, boy, is that you have her beautiful face, her flaxen hair, and those strangely contrasting, black eyes. On her they were intoxicating and mysterious, on you, hell, they’re just spooky weird. You’re a constant reminder of my loss, I can hardly bear to look at you.”

  Shaking his fists, Zhilov continued railing at his son. “Why did my beloved Iyla have to leave me? You took her from me in your selfish birth, boy, every single day I wish you had died instead of her.”

  Naithon halted so abruptly Zhilov gasped and took a step back. Annoyed that his young son could so easily unnerve him, he waved at the boy demanding, “Go, get the fuck out of my sight, your presence sickens me.”

  Wiping the dark green football jersey across his bloodied nose, Naithon didn’t cower when his father got back in his face.

  Zhilov sneered at the jersey. “I told you, boy, you are not playing football. You will work the business. When I grow the company big enough, I’ll bring it to America. You will put school and your useless dreams of playing football aside, and when you become good enough, I will make you a leading exec.”

  “What,” the youngster snorted, rolled the jersey in a ball, and clenched it in his fist. The shiner already dark purple, his young voice sardonic, he sneered, “You call being a conman, a thug, a murdering gangster an executive? You want me to drop out of school to sell fraudulent credit card protection, collect protection payments from the neighborhood shops? Bah,” he spat.

  Zhilov swept the tails of his suitcoat apart and tucked his hands in his trouser pockets. Bending over to tower above his son, he snarled at him, “Ja. You will do as I say starting tomorrow. I will train you to be the best fucking knee breaker in the business. You will be in charge of collecting from the gamblers. You get good enough you can manage the hotels and clubs I plan on opening in the States.”

  His son merely blinked at him with his good eye, which raised Zhilov’s ire. He snapped, “You hear me, boy?”

  At Naithon’s stony expression and refusal to eagerly acquiesce to his father’s demands, Zhilov’s face pulsed red in fury. Shoulders bunching, mirroring his son he clenched his fists, “Go, get the fuck outta my sight before I scar up the rest of that pretty face.”

  The boy stood firm, lifted his bruised jaw, not cringing from his huge angry father.

  Wearing a designer suit with silver tie, ebony hair slicked straight back, Zhilov appeared more the elite businessman than the lowlife criminal gangster that he was.

  Father and son glared at each other, neither backing down.

  But then Zhilov was the first to lower his eyes. When he looked up, Naithon was gone.

  Chapter Two

  Three Years Later

  America

  Smoke of all kinds, cigar, cigarette, weed, filled the back room of the restaurant. At 15, Naithon was the youngest of the five men playing poker, but he was one of the biggest, brawniest, toughest males there. European cigar crunched in the corner of his mouth, he hunched over his cards.

  He’d barely started shaving, voice still deepening, but to do the enforcement job his father had thrust on him, he spent every second of his free time lifting steel at the gym or running the hills, boxing or fighting MMA. Every second that is when he didn’t have a girl under him. Even now, young women in tiny outfits strutted the room.

  The young males were part of a terrorizing gang headed by Zhilov Adranokov that made a lot of money, and also made a lot of grown men quiver in fright at the mere thought of them. However, sleazy females knew where the big bucks hung out.

  Mercedes Mardelini perched on Naithon’s knee. Plucking at a button on his shirt, she stroked his chest to get his attention, he ignored her. Below the rolled up sleeves, she raked long blue nails down his rocky forearms. Concentrating on his game, he absently swatted at her hand.

  Pouting, she whined, “Come on, Nait, you’ve been playing for hours, I wanna go down by the wharf. You’ve only been in the country a short time, there’re places I can show you. I can drive, I have a license, I-”

  He may be only fifteen but that didn’t stop Naithon Adranokov from doing anything he pleased. Drive, gamble, drink, smoke, fuck. Having a stepmother who despised the sight of him, and surrounded by strippers and whores since birth, Naithon had little respect for women.

  Right now, he resented the girl throwing his age in his face because she was six years older than him. That she was legal to drive. Her skirt microscopic, the front of her tight blouse cut so low she might as well not be wearing it, Naithon put his broad hand on the bare top of her bosom, and shoved her. She tumbled off his lap and landed on her ass with a squeal.

  “Shit, Nai
t, quit foolin’ around, you holdin’ or you gonna call?” The young man across the table grumped at him.

  Grunting Romanian curses, Naithon threw money down on the pile, at that moment his cell buzzed in his pocket.

  Sitting at his feet, Mercedes griped and whined for his attention.

  “C’mere honey,” another man leaned over and dragged her off the floor and sat her on his lap. His hands slid underneath her blouse and skimmed up to fondle her breasts. “I’ll take care of ya, babe.”

  Glowering at Naithon, Mercedes snuggled into the man.

  Nait grunted into his phone, shoved it in his jean’s pocket. Scraping his winnings off the table, he stood up, folded the wad together and stuffed it in another pocket. Stabbing his cigar out in the ashtray, speaking in English but his accent was so thick it distorted his words, he muttered, “Gotta go, Vlad’s in trouble.”

  “Wait, bro,” one of the young men grabbed his own money and got up. “You need back up.”

  A second male copied them, said, “Yeah, my ride’s out front.”

  Without a word to rest of the group, the three young men left the room, trod through the darkened restaurant and out the front door. They climbed into Yashin Varushkin’s BMW SUV and peeled down the street.

  “Where we going?” Blok Basnakev asked from the back.

  “Got a call from Vlademir, one of our warehouses is being burgled,” Naithon replied from the front seat. “Half of what he said was unintelligible and he was slurring. Didn’t sound like drunk slurring, sounded like broken teeth slurring.”

  The car raced across town until they left the bright Louisiana city lights and tore out of the commerce area to the docks. Focused on what kind of trouble might lie ahead, the men were unmindful of the air cooling in the pitch black night.

  Well past midnight, stars twinkled through hazy clouds. Like Vegas rising from the obscure desert, in the far distance from where they’d come, only a thin line of glimmering lights identified the bustling city of Chaleur they’d left behind.

  Yashin slowed the car, turned off the headlights, the black SUV purred down the deserted street. Rustic warehouses, half with broken out windows crept like crusty roaches along the seawall.

  Yashin parked in the shadows, the men hopped out. Salt from the ocean drifted in mingling with the musty, dank, wooden smell of the docks.

  His voice low, Blok asked, “Which one, Nait, your old man has three down here.”

  Naithon’s voice quiet, he murmured, “Vlad said it was the Krouston at the end. You guys check out the other two, I’ll hit the Krouston.” The trio took off in different directions.

  Naithon wished he’d changed his shirt, white with thin blue stripes, that and his yellow hair would catch what meager light there was. Shoulda grabbed a hat. At least his pants and boots were black, his tanned skin would blend in the shadows.

  He paused near the warehouse and listened. Not a sound but the ocean slapping the seawall, there wasn’t a car in sight. Forklifts and other work trucks scattered the entire lot, but no personal vehicles. Then he saw Vlad’s Mustang.

  With practiced stealth, he stayed silently in the shadows creeping along the back of the warehouse, careful to not scrape his boots on the asphalt or crunch over the broken fragments. Cautiously making his way around the building, he kept on until he reached a window. Most of the windows were intact in the warehouse. The window was over his head.

  Trained to scale any type of structure, the wood and brick building wouldn’t slow him down. In seconds he’d scrambled up enough he could grip the jutting sill, pull himself up and peek in.

  “Aw, fuck,” he ground a string of Romanian curses through grit teeth. The window was caked with grime but he could make out his friend Vlad, one of his father’s staff, an enforcer like Nait, prone on the floor.

  Dropping silently to the ground, Nait hustled quietly around the building, he didn’t want to barge in the front door in case the thieves were still there, but he didn’t know what shape Vlad was in either. There was a side door they used to take out the trash, Nait found it quickly. It was locked. That wouldn’t stop him. Tugging a tool out of his boot, he quickly picked the lock.

  Stuffing the pick back in his boot, he slowly turned the knob, cautiously opened the door and peered inside. It was dark. He could just make out Vlad’s body. One of the few parking lot lamps outside that didn’t have a broken globe dispersed stingy light through the grainy glass, barely illuminating him. It was dim, but Nait could make out blood on Vlad’s head and pooled on the floor around him.

  Urged to help his friend, Naithon pushed through the door and took a step inside. He paused, didn’t hear a thing, no movement. Taking a breath, he moved deeper inside trying to adjust his vision to the darkness-

  Wham-

  Pain exploded in the back of his head, dropping him to his knees with a grunt. Before he hit the ground, bodies jumped on him. Whacked half unconscious from the blow, Naithon fought back, but the four bruisers had the advantage, and they wailed on him. They punched and kicked him until he could do nothing but curl into a ball to protect his head and gut.

  “Ha, you puny pussy, filthy gypsy,” a male voice taunted over him accompanied by a vicious kick to his already broken ribs. “Your old man’s business is infringing on our turf. Take this as a fucking warning, bitch, we see your pretty face again on our turf and you’re dead. Finito,” he kicked him in the head.

  “Actually,” aiming a kick to his kidney, the thug grinned with sadistic glee, “we’ll just save ourselves the time and trouble and eliminate you now. We can use the other fucker we took down to send our message if he’s still alive.” He caught Naithon in the temple with his steel-toed boot.

  Clinging to consciousness, through eyes swelling closed, Naithon recognized his attacker. Choking on blood clogging his throat, he spat, “Fuck off, Duce Delducci, go play in your rum farm.” Coughing up blood, his voice weak, he tried to cover his head from another bone-breaking kick from Duce.

  Infuriated at Naithon’s bravado, Duce barked, “Fucking shut him up boys.” The last thing Naithon saw was Duce and his brothers Piero and Janero, and another asshole grinning like marauding jackals down at him as they railed brutal kicks to his punished body.

  *******

  Zhilov blamed the ambush on Naithon. When he visited him the only one time while Naithon rehabilitated in the hospital, he ranted and raved that Nait was so stupid to fall for the trick that brought him to the warehouse.

  Duce Delducci and his men had caught Vlad, beat him almost to death, stabbed him until he was so delirious he wasn’t even aware they were making him call Naithon to set him up for an ambush. Nait was the youngest member of the mob so they had gone after him.

  If Blok and Yashin hadn’t found him and chased the butchers off, Zhilov would be at his son’s funeral instead of his hospital room, and Vlad would have bled out.

  Imprints of Duce Delducci’s ring with his family’s crest on it were embedded in Naithon’s face. Duce’s initials on the side of the ring were easily identified. Of course the police were never called, the Adranokovs and the Delduccis handled their own business.

  Zhilov didn’t want war with the Delduccis so Naithon and Vlad’s murderous beatings were never avenged.

  Berating and swearing some more at his deceased mistress’ son, infuriated at the teen for making him look foolish, weak, Zhilov coldly ordered, “Don’t come back home, boy. Find somewhere else to hang your hat. I don’t need incompetent losers working for me.” He never returned the months Nait suffered his healing in the hospital of broken bones and internal injuries. While his son recuperated, Zhilov wiped out his bank account.

  Finally on the mend, against doctor’s orders, Naithon had had enough of the hospital. He was bored out of his mind. After signing himself out, he changed into clothes one of his friends had brought him, black chinos, shirt and boots. Clasping his gold watch on his wrist, he pocketed his wallet and beat a hasty retreat before any of the nurses or doctors coul
d nag him into staying longer.

  When he exited the hospital with a slight limp and an arm still in a sling, Naithon was shocked to see the Lincoln Town Car and the chauffer waiting outside the front entrance of the hospital.

  His friends were working; he’d planned to catch a taxi to his friend Mazonn’s place. Maz got him a new phone since Duce smashed his other one, and also gave him a key to his apartment yesterday. He’d joked that he wanted his locks to still be virgins when he returned home, not poked by Nait’s tool, that is, his picklock.

  His joke brought the first hint of smile to Naithon’s harsh face since the night of the ambush. Not that he’d ever quite smiled before, but for once his jaw unclenched, and to his friends that was as close to a smile that he ever came.

  Nait stood on the sidewalk with his phone out ready to dial a taxi when the chauffeur left his guard post by the car and approached him. “Mr. Adranokov,” he dipped his head in deference to Nait. “Your father sent me to retrieve you.”

  A dark blond brow rose over a cool onyx eye, Nait asked, “Retrieve me to where?” He was vaguely amused that the man who had to be twenty years older than his own fifteen years called him mister.

  A window in the back of the Town car rolled down, Naithon’s brother, Misolav stuck his head out. His sadistic mouth curving in a mocking grin, Misolav called out, “Come on, get in. We have orders to bring you home.”

  Both blond brows arched. “Whose orders?”

  Misolav’s head dipped back, he said with sarcasm, “The old man’s, who do you think?”

  Naithon was as fair-haired and sharp faced as his mother. He had her high cheekbones and fuller lips. If not for the severity and strength of masculinity in his looks, he would be as pretty as she had been. His three brothers carried their father’s dark looks and heavier features.