Chapter Three – The Truth Unfettered.

New York

They say it is often difficult to find somebody that shares your pain. Somebody that shares your desires, and in my case, somebody that shares my want for vengeance.

I guess I'm just lucky to have that one person, my best friend and closest confidant, Ricardo.

I know this mission is as important to him as it is to me. Romanov had personally seen to it that Ricardo and I were tortured and starved during our days in prison.

All the horrendous things he'd done to us flashes through my mind and I can swear Ricardo knows what I'm thinking because his eyes darken with pain...and fury, his fingers clenching tightly over the leather of the Italian sofa.

I sit back in my chair, letting his news sink in.

I'm shocked, extremely so, but the deviant gleam in my best friend's eyes tells me that Ricardo is not playing around.

He sloshes the remnants of his beer in the nearly empty bottle, his calculative blue gaze sharp with focus.

I lean in on the opaque, glass table, finally finding my voice.

"You found Romanov?"

He gives me a grim nod,

"Damn straight, I did. Even better, I found one of his allies, someone that used to work for him. Turns out, the fucker's been hiding in London."

Well, this is news. I have speculated on the fact that Romanov might not be in Russia after all. The sniveling dick had escaped to London.

I mentally begin to plan the logistics and man power it would cost me to get to London and ransack the city in search of the old fucker.

Ricardo snaps his fingers in my face, pulling me from my train of thoughts.

"I can already see the wheels turning in your head, man and that is awesome, but you've got to listen to my plan first. There's someone I know you would love to meet."

He leans across the table and activates the intercom, alerting my secretary.

"Lala, send her in."

"Right away, Sir" comes her reply

I narrow my eyes in confusion just as the doors open revealing my secretary—a leggy, attractive brunette, and another woman.

I watch with hooded eyes as Ricardo gets to his feet and ushers the mystery woman to one of the seats in front of me. There is something...off about her.

She's dressed in tight jeans and a coffee coloured cardigan, the hood pulled up to cover most of her downturned face. She appears cautious, wary.

But of course, anyone with intentions of betraying her former boss would be.

Ricardo lays his hand over her shoulders and she flinches, confirming my thoughts that she must have been abused sometime in the past. He withdraws his hand immediately and gives me a grim look, shaking his head.

"Luca, this is Thelma. She used to be Romanov's housekeeper until about a year ago."

She lifts her head, revealing a part of her smooth olive face, obviously trying to access me beneath the safety of her cardigan's large hood.

I merely fix her with a cold, hard stare until she gives in on a resigned sigh and pulls off the hood. Her heavy Chestnut hair tumbles over her shoulders, finally free from its confines.

She raises her head and I almost do a double take when her face comes into view. She is a beautiful woman...or she once was.

An ugly, long scar stretches from her left brow, over her eyelid and extends to her ears. She grips the table with shaky hands, revealing other similar slashes on her wrists and forearms. The scars disappear into her sleeves. Obviously, there's more of them.

I shift my eyes, giving Ricardo a "what the fuck?" look. His lips form one word, 'Romanov' and pure, raw fury fills my veins.

My gaze clashes with Thelma's and I find her piercing me with an icy green stare, her once beautiful mouth covered in healing bruises and pulled in a tight, straight line.

"I am not here for your pity, Mr. Blackstone." She finally speaks up.

" I did not for once think you're here to be pitied. The anger in your eyes says that much. Let's get on with the business of the day, shall we? What information do you have for me, Thelma?"

Her green eyes turn defiant and she stretches one battered hand towards me. I look down at her upturned palm, finding it shaking with strain.

I drag my gaze back to her eyes, pinning her with an inquisitive stare, one that has her squirming in her seat.

"Where's my five million?"

"Ah, going straight to the monetary aspect of today's business, are we?" Ricardo asks with a dangerous smirk.

She pins him with a narrow stare, the scar on her left eye making her look eerie as fuck. Ricardo however does not flinch. He has seen worse, had worse done to him. He still has scars covered by his ten thousand dollar suits as proof.

"I have the information you seek and you have the money I need to disappear. I do not think it is wise to keep playing around the subject, do you?"

I make to speak but Ricardo stops me with a lift of his finger. My eyes narrow but I give in, not saying a word. Ricardo knows the woman after all.

"You are talking to the two most powerful men in New York City, Thelma. Only we have the power to give you the protection you need..."

"I do not need your damned protection!" She screams, bottom lip quivering,

"Just give me what I need, I'll give you the information you seek and I'm out of here."

I raise a clenched fist, stopping Ricardo from saying whatever he's about to say. My voice rings cold and clear,

"Very bold of you to think you can come into my territory and raise your voice, miss. Very, very bold."

I fix her with a hard stare and derive a measure of satisfaction when she squirms in her seat.

"I do not tolerate such acts of insubordination. Even my underbosses do not dare to raise their voices by a single octave when they speak to me."

I pause to take a sip of my now lukewarm beer, immediately regretting that decision when the warm flavour hits my tongue.

"I understand that you're Russian and therefore owe no allegiance to the seat of the New York Capo, but you will address us with respect. Is that clear?"

She merely looks up at me. Then she whispers,

"Is it true?"

I raise an eyebrow at her soft Inquisition.

"What exactly are you asking?"

"Is it true that you're Ryan Scandinavian's only son? Did he really buy you from our Pakhan?"

I tense at the mention of my Father's name, pausing a beat for the familiar ache that comes with grief to pass. In front of me, Ricardo just fixes her with a puzzled stare.

"Why do you ask?" I inquire when I finally find my voice.

She looks me in the eye and I see a flash of pain and grief in her green depths. Pain very similar to mine. It disappears so quickly, for a moment, I wonder if I had imagined it. My gaze wanders to Ricardo and he confirms my suspicion with a subtle lift of his brows.

Thelma knew my Father, on a very personal level.

"What happened to you, Thelma?" I ask quietly

She's silent for a moment, head bowed. She raises her head slowly, fixing me with a weary stare,

"What happened to you, Blackstone?"

It takes great effort to keep my face passive. I lower my hands and begin to drum my fingers on the silver surface of my closed MacBook.

"Let me make something very clear to you. I'll be the one asking the questions. You will be given two point five million, in cash, right here. The rest will be deposited in an offshore account, ready for your taking whenever I finally have Romanov's face squashed beneath my shoes. Do you understand?"

Her green eyes assail me. She's an attractive woman, even with the barely healed scars that decorates her once smooth skin.

"You're just like your father." She whispers, her thin arms wrapping around her frame.

I give Ricardo an exasperated look and he clears his throat,

"I suggest you give us whatever information you have on the whereabouts of Romanov and his family. We do not have anymore time to waste."

"We're all Romanov's victims," she turns to Ricardo, " some more than others."

I am well aware that Ricardo suffered horrible things at the Bratva prison. Things he still refuses to talk about, not that I shared my entire experience either. We had come to an unspoken agreement to close the chapter on the painful parts of our past.

Father had coerced me into going for therapy sessions in a bid to get it all out of my system and I must confess, it helped a bit with the pain...and the nightmares.

Ricardo however refused to talk about it at all.

"I worked for that monster for ten years" Thelma continues, "Ten years of suffering, molestation and abuse."

She pauses to wipe a stray tear that crawls down her pale cheeks.

"He took me from my home when I was nineteen and made me serve the Pakhan. I was just a cook, an ordinary maid. Then three years later, the head maid tells me that I'm being transferred. I'll be working for the Russian Enforcer now. I was shattered. Everyone in Russia knows how much of a monster Romanov is. I begged,"

She sniffs against the influx of tears that now spills down her cheeks in torrents.

"I begged and begged. I even agreed to work for free but was still forced to go home with that monster. I wrote letters to the Pakhan but even he said he owed Romanov a favour. Apparently, Romanov had saved his only son from a blast integrated by the Italian mob family a few years back and he was promised a reward. He came back to collect and it was only me he wanted."

Ricardo gives her a cotton handkerchief and she blows her nose quietly, giving him a wet 'thank you.'

"I finally agreed to relocate to London when he assured me that I would only be performing housekeeping duties for him. My thoughts even changed for the better when he showed me pictures of his then three year old daughter, Skylar."

She smiles fondly through her tears. She obviously loves Romanov's daughter.

I shift uncomfortably in my seat, deciding to keep out the fact that we would not only be eliminating Romanov but every member of his damned family.

"I loved that little girl from the day he Introduced us and she called me Mama instead of Thelma. She and Yulia are the only people that kept me sane in that prison of a mansion..."

We both pause as Ricardo's bottle shatters on the marble floor, sending pieces of shiny brown glass in all directions.

He does not seem to notice. His concentration is fiercely on Thelma, his eyes widened in shock. Shock that is slowly giving way to anger.

"Did you say Yulia?"

Thelma regards him with an almost close lidded gaze, confusion creasing her features.

"Yes. You know her?"

I wait for my best friend to offer an explanation to his strange behaviour but he remains tight-lipped...and furious.

"Ricardo? Any connections to this Yulia lady I should know about?"

He shakes his head absently at me but the shadow that crept into his eyes when Thelma mentioned Yulia's name is still very much present. As far as I know, those shadows only appear when he is being reminded of his bad past.

Whoever this Yulia girl is, she was once a part of his past. One he refuses to discuss with Thelma in the room. I'll get the information out of him later. Right now, important issues still need to be addressed.

"Please get on with your story, Thelma"

She gives Ricardo a strange look before turning to me,

"Um...well, Skylar was three when I began working for Romanov. Yulia was ten, but she was raised to become Skylar's personal maid. I never met her Mother or any other children so either Skylar is Romanov's only child or he's very skilled at hiding the rest of his children.

Everything went smoothly for a few years. I even forgot about my fear in the hopes that I could be happy there. But that was when my world came crashing down. When Skylar turned ten, Romanov began visiting the mansion more often."

She pauses to take a sip of water and a slight tremble rocks her frame, sending the water sloshing over the glass.

"When he returned to London, I knew something was wrong, so I asked around. One of his men informed me that your father was dead and the Russian Pakhan had withdrawn all forms of protection he'd given to Romanov. His only option was to go into hiding.

His mansion in London is a fortress. No one can come in unseen and it is almost twice as difficult for anyone to get out."

"How did you escape then? Why did you leave?" Ricardo asks

"I'm coming to that. Romanov began abusing me shortly after he returned to London."

I feel the temperature in the room drop by a few degrees. My fists tighten over the arm of my chair in a desperate attempt to subdue the anger that roars in my veins. Thelma merely takes a deep breath and continues,

"It started out as a push. I did not make his tea hot enough. His bath water was not ready on time. Those kinda things. He would rant and rant and when I merely ignored him, he would grab my arm tightly or shove me by the shoulder. He never lost his temper around Skylar though. It is important for her to keep thinking of him as some kind of Angel."

"Any particular reason for that?" I ask

She flicks me a glance.

"I'm getting to that. He often threatened to kill off what little family I had left. The abuse got worse about two years later. Skylar was twelve then. Romanov began drinking heavily. He would drown himself in whiskey every single night – after kissing his daughter goodnight, of course. Then he would come to my room and begin to...to touch me. To grope me."

Tears course down her cheeks,

"I tried to argue. I even fought once. But all that got me was fifteen brutal strokes of his damned whip"

The sadistic fucker!

"He derived insane pleasure from hitting me. The monster would sport a raging hard on each time he was inflicting bruises on me. Sometimes, he would lock me in his underground sex dungeon and torture me for days."

She pauses and takes a sip of her now lukewarm water, fingers trembling.

"I endured that torture for six years. Six long years. Then I couldn't take it anymore. I needed out. I was slowly going insane. My mental health was at stake. One day, on one of our weekly grocery runs Inside town, I ditched Romanov's guards and escaped. I stayed low for a while. I knew he would scourge the whole of London, searching for me so I lived in the countrysides until it was safe for me to return to my family in Russia."

I see a new wave of pain in her eyes and curse to myself.

Romanov, that fucker. He killed them all. She sniffs and continues,

"Romanov beat me to them though. I returned to Russia to find out that my entire family had been killed in a house fire. Mysterious men had stormed the place in the middle of the night and torched it down. My mother, father and little sister, all gone."

Her features twist suddenly and her face darkens with fear and rage.

Beside her, Ricardo flexes his fingers over the butt of his gun on the table. Romanov's cup is full. It is high time he paid his debts.

"I was more than ready to move on and forget about that monster completely, you see. But Romanov went too far. He crossed all his boundaries when he killed my parents and I am ready to punish him for that."

Ricardo shifts in his seat,

"How do you intend to do that?"

Thelma picks up the leather bag she'd been clutching so tightly when she first walked in. She unzips the bag and gets a set of papers.

Eyes flashing and fingers still trembling, she tosses the paper to me from across the table.

"Those are the complete blueprints of Romanov's mansion in London."

I pick up the papers, flicking Ricardo a surprised glance.

If these are what Thelma actually claims they are, then we've just landed ourselves a fucking gold mine.

I take a cursory glance at the sleek architectural drawings on the papers, flicking through them quickly. The documents contain a detailed blueprint of the entire mansion. Even the underground facililties that Thelma was being tortured is included.

"How did you get this?" I ask, passing the papers to an eager Ricardo.

"That is my collateral. I do not trust Romanov. No one in his sane mind would. So I stole that. He was making a few structural changes to his mansion and the blueprints just happened to be lying on his table when I went into his office to clean. I picked it up, made a few quick photocopies and here we are."

Ricardo narrows his eyes at her. He clearly does not trust her.

"This sounds way too easy, Thelma, don't you think? Why should we trust you?"

"Yes, Thelma," I add, "How do we know you're not working with Romanov to lure us into a trap?"

Her eyes flash with anger, the scar on her left eye tightening with strain. She speaks through gritted teeth,

"As you can see, most of my bruises are fresh. I escaped from Romanov's clutches a year ago so they must have healed by now, right?"

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you about that" Ricardo cuts in, "Were you attacked?"

"I got these a few weeks ago when Romanov decided to pay me a little surprise visit. He finally found me after searching for me for a long while. I was hiding out at Baltimore. I had gone there with the hopes of disappearing for good after I found out that Romanov killed my family.

I came back home from the gym that night to find the devil himself in my sitting room, smoking a cigar. He came with his men, of course. A bloody coward as always.

I was trapped and scared to death and Romanov like the devil he is, swooped in for the kill."

Shivers rack her entire frame and her eyes harden in anger,

"I was tortured for hours. I cried and begged and pleaded but they refused to let me go until Romanov got an urgent business call and had to leave. He left with his men, thinking I would be too weak to run away the second time.

He was wrong. I wallowed in a pool of my own blood for hours until I got the strength to escape Baltimore to New York with a fake passport. Ricardo found me, or rather, his men did and I was given a place to recuperate after I promised that I had valid information."

I look up with a start. Ricardo, the traitor.

"How long have you known about her, Ric?" I ask

.He holds up both hands in a sign of apology but I do not wish to be placated at the moment.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, boss. We found her at the border two weeks ago. She had almost bled out. Had to give her immediate medical attention or she would've died on the spot. She was pretty banged up, could barely say two words at the moment. I wasn't sure if she was legit or not because she constantly slipped in and out of consciousness for the first two weeks. Besides, you already had too much on your plate with your father getting shot and the disunity amongst the underbosses. I did not want to burden you with news of her existence until I was certain she had useful information for us."

I give him a hard stare, my teeth gritting.

"It is important that I have people I can trust, Ricardo. I put you in that category. Do not ever keep something of this magnitude from me, henceforth. I do not care if I've got a mountain on my plate. You talk to me. Got it?"

"Aye boss, loud and clear."

I shift my gaze to Thelma,

"Please, continue"

She twists her fingers in her lap,

"The blue prints are not the only weaponry I have against Romanov. I have a mole in his mansion. Someone that gives me valid information on most of his plans."

I brace my elbows on the table and Ricardo shifts to the edge of his seat.

"Who is this mole?" I ask

"Yulia, the girl I told you about. Yulia Austin."

I sit back in my chair. Ricardo just stares at her, the surprise on his face slowly morphing into anger. What was up with him and this Yulia girl anyways?

"Isn't that Skylar Romanov's personal maid?"

My question is not directed at anyone in particular but Yulia answers anyways.

"The very same."

Beside her, Ricardo visibly bristles with annoyance.

"Dosen't she realise how dangerous that is? Romanov might torture her to death if he ever finds out that she's informing the enemy about his plans."

Thelma blows a strand of hair out of her eyes.

"She's a brave girl. She knows what is at stake. If Romanov succeeds in his plans, he'll be even harder to kill."

"What are those plans exactly?" I am gradually becoming impatient.

"Romanov plans on making a marriage alliance with the family of the Russian Pakhan."

Ricardo looks over at me with wide eyes,

"If he succeeds," Thelma continues, "he gains utmost protection, not only for his daughter but for himself as well. If that happens, you might never be able to get your hands on the slimy bastard."