desire to claim her. I don’t understand it.
“What’s in Russia?” Her voice breaks through my rambling mind and almost startles me … almost.
I look over at her. She is still sitting comfortably in the seat; only, she is looking straight at me now. Her blue eyes are inquisitive, once again ripping the details from my mind. I can sense my words forming, ready to be vocalized for her.
“Russia is where Cubby lives. We need to go there to speak to him,” I say simply, hoping that will be enough to appease her. I know better, though. It will only open the floodgate of questions.
“Who’s Cubby?” She pulls her feet from the dash and readjusts in the seat, turning herself sideways to fully look at me.
I clench my jaw in agitation, uncomfortable with her scrutiny.
I swallow down the newly formed feelings and reply, “Cubby is the only man I know who’s been freed from the Vory V Zakone and lived. We worked very closely together. If I had to be sent on a job with anyone, I preferred Cubby.”
I hold the smile back when I think of my old acquaintance. Cubby has a past similar to mine. A single mother raised him. She had died when he was a child after she plunged a heroin-filled needle into her arm. She spent her days whoring herself out for drugs while Cubby lay in his bed, crying from starvation. Cubby was very young. No one was there to help him, and there was nowhere for him to go. He was sent to the same orphanage as I was, but I was long gone by then.
We actually met during my first stint in the juvenile detention center. He was angry and looking for an outlet. Stravinsky picked up on that, as he did with me, and Cubby and I were taken under his wing. I didn’t spend too much time with him when we were first involved because of my brother and Stravinsky’s fascination with having identical twins working under him. But, soon after I helped my brother escape, Cubby became a household face amongst Stravinsky’s group of thieves .
“How did he manage to get out?” Josslyn unfastens her hair from the twist and begins running her fingers through the strands. She shakes it out, the smell of her lavender shampoo filtering through the air. It makes me stir with excitement. “I mean, I thought once you’re in, that’s it. Blood in, blood out—”
“That’s exactly right, my dear. If you want to earn the stars on your shoulders and knees, you have to be willing to do what your leader asks, which usually means you’re taking a life. Stravinsky was different, though. Of course, you need to kill, but you need to do it in the manner he demanded.”
“I don’t know why Cubby officially wanted out. Rumors swarmed that it was because he fell in love with the whore he frequented, but that was never shared beyond Stravinsky and him. He was presented with an impossible task. He had to take out an entire Ukrainian crew. It was much like Stravinsky’s at the time. The task would be impossible for some of the best assassins this world has seen, but not for Cubby. He was responsible for killing over twenty men. I had to kill five to be awarded my stars.” My skin twinges above my shoulders where my stars are located. Before I made it to Blythe Harbor, I ran my knife over the ink, Xing across them, denouncing my affiliation with the Vory V Zakone.
“I’m assuming he was successful considering we’re on our way to see him.”
“Yes, and he did it all with one loaded clip.”
Josslyn’s blue eyes widen in shock, her mouth frozen in a stunned line.
“He’s a master assassin. Many of his skills are just as good as or better than mine. He is extremely intelligent, which makes him deadly. He’s a dangerous man, Josslyn. If he doesn’t want to see me, he will kill me—kill both of us.” I look at her with a cold, hard stare.
She has to know this will not be an easy task. Cubby has gone off the map, living in one of the most dangerous places in the world—Chechnya. The situation in the country is unstable.