THE GATEKEEPER
1

Prologue

Kira, 13 years old

A splintering pounding sounds on our front door.

I'm in my nightshirt, brushing my teeth for bed.

My father has been missing for two days. It's not unusual. He has his addictions: alcohol. Gambling. Low-level grifting.

But unlike our mother, he's a decent parent. When he's home, he laughs and jokes with us. He may break every promise he makes, but at least he gives us attention.

Our mom is shut up in her room, as always at this time of night. She's a living ghost. She's emotionally checked out from living with our dad, I guess. She works to pay the rent and put groceries in the refrigerator but, otherwise, barely functions.

I run out to the living room.

"Kira, come here!" My sister, Anya, who is seventeen and more of a mother to me than our own, grabs a butcher knife from the kitchen.

The door bursts open, and our dingy apartment floods with tattooed men.

Bratva. The Russian mafiya. I've heard my dad speak of them, but I've never seen them before. Still, there's no doubt in my mind that's who these men are.

I fly to my sister's side, behind the protection of her butcher knife. Our mother doesn't even come out of her room.

"Grigor. Where is he?" one of them demands. They're looking for our father. I know he does business with the bratva. I'm not sure what kind. Maybe that's where he gambles.

"Wh-why? What has he done?" I ask.

"He owes us, and we've come to collect."

"Well, he's not here," Anya says.

One of them advances. His upper lip curls. I don't like the way he's looking at my bare legs. At my sister's breasts. "Where?"

"We don't know!" Anya spits. "He's been gone for two days."

"Take the older one," a man says quietly. He must be the leader because the men surge forward to obey.

One of them puts a gun to my forehead, but he speaks to my sister. "Come nicely or your little sister's brains will cover the floor."

Anya, shocked into submission, lets another man take the knife from her hand and grasp her firmly by the upper arm.

"You can't take her!" I'm not begging, I'm shouting. As if I have any power to persuade them.

"Shut her up," the leader says, and the man with the gun slams the side of it against my head. Everything goes black. When I wake, Anya is gone.

Maykl, 13 years old

I stand, pistol shaking in my sweaty hand. My breath rasps in and out in harsh measures. I used this pistol four days ago to kill my own father. It was kill or be killed, but I'm still sick over it. I'm still in shock. I've barely slept in the nights since. I'm grateful the bratva took care of everything. Got rid of the body. Gave me a place to stay. Put money in my pocket. It was Peter, one of the lower leaders, who gave me the gun in the first place.

"For protection," he said when they were at my father's auto shop, and he saw the bruises on my face.

Now, though-what he's asking of me is too much.

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"This is how you prove your loyalty, Maykl. Do you want to join the brotherhood?"

I stare down at the beaten man at my feet. Sweat beads along his greasy blond hairline. His light blue eyes bulge with terror. Breath rasps in and out at a rapid rate. "Nyet...nyet," he pleads.

I do want to join the brotherhood. Rather desperately. I assumed I was already in. I won't survive without them. I'll go to prison for killing my father.

"Take my daughter again! Use her," the man pleads.

"We already tired of her," Peter says.

"The younger one, then."

"It's easy," Peter murmurs behind me. "Just pull the trigger. This guy would sell his own daughters. He is scum."

I stop thinking. I have no other choice. I squeeze the trigger...

And miss.

"Again, Maykl." Peter's patient. "Right between the eyes. You can do it."

The second time, I don't miss. Clean shot in the head.

He dies immediately.

Grigor Koslov. I memorize his name as the ink is pressed into my skin to memorialize the crime.

My first murder on behalf of the bratva.

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Chapter One

Sixteen Years Later

Kira

I stand in the Cook County morgue and stare down at the wasted body of my sister. A wave of nausea rolls through me, even though I prepared myself for this sight. She's skin and bones, reduced to a skeleton long before the final overdose took her. Her arms are covered in needle tracks.

This is the conclusion to yet another life ruined by the bratva. The second family member I've lost at their hands.

I barely slept on the plane from Russia, but seeing Anya's horrific form instantly clears the fog from my brain and brings on an urgent sense of purpose: I need to replace my nephew. I came to bring him home with me. It's what I should have done years ago.

I was still in school when Anya left with Mika, but I begged her to leave him with me. I already knew the bright future she fantasized about for them here wouldn't happen.

"That's her," I tell the morgue attendant. I started learning English the day she left with Aleksi, her client. Or boyfriend. Or whatever you call the bratva thug who pays you for sex and treats you like shit.

I suppose I always knew this day would come. I'm grateful now that I can understand and speak English well enough to get by.

"What do you want to do with the body?" The attendant at the morgue asks.

"I...I don't know yet."

"You have twenty-four hours to make arrangements. I'm sorry to rush you, but she's already been here three days, and we need the space here," the sharp-nosed attendant tells me. He's nice enough. He tries to warn me off actually viewing the body and just identify her through a photograph, but I refuse.