I want Becky
1166 Words
Chapter 13
1:20 a.m. (26 minutes after Giselle's call)
“What do you mean she’s gone?” Viktor bellowed as he shot up from the bed.
He was shirtless, still in his sleep trousers, and he turned sharply toward the bedside clock. It was twenty minutes past 1 a.m.
“We were not expecting it, sir. She said there was a man with a gun in the library...”
“And you believed her?” Viktor cut in immediately, his voice angry enough to stop the man mid-sentence.
“We didn’t know she was lying,” the guard tried to explain.
But Viktor was already moving.
He crossed to his closet and yanked it open, grabbing a black shirt and matching black trousers with controlled, angry precision.
When he spoke again, his voice was low and dangerous.
“How slow do you have to be to not realize she was f*****g playing you?”
The guard said nothing. He knew better than to argue.
Viktor slammed the closet door shut so hard the sound echoed through the room.
A minute later, he emerged fully dressed, hair perfectly styled, as if nothing had happened. Viktor Koshnov never looked disorganized, no matter the situation.
He walked past the gathered guards, then stopped just long enough to look at them.
“Stop standing there and go to the security room,” he ordered flatly. “Track her f*****g phone. Now.”
He was swearing too much. He hated that.
Without waiting for a response, he turned and strode out of the room, heading down the staircase toward his office.
He hadn’t taken more than a few steps when movement ahead made him pause. It was a commotion.
“Get your Godforsaken hands off me before I cut them off,” a voice snapped weakly.
The sound of a walking cane striking wood followed, and Viktor exhaled through his nose.
“Not again,” he muttered under his breath, already changing direction.
When he reached the source of the noise, his grandfather was on the floor, while two care maids tried unsuccessfully to help him up.
“Unhand me, you idiots,” the old man barked. “You’re lucky I’m old. Back in my day, I would’ve put a bullet in your head.”
A string of Russian curses followed immediately after, and viktor winced slightly.
Sergei Koshnov was seventy-nine years old, diagnosed with dementia and arthritis. He had inherited the largest Bratva in Russia at thirty-two after his own father’s death, and had successfully brought the Russian mob to the United States at just thirty eight.
He swore like a sailor, had an iron will, and quite literally; an iron arm, one he got after an old war injury.
And he hated being handled by anyone who wasn’t Viktor.
“Let him go,” Viktor said calmly.
The care maids immediately stepped back and bowed before retreating.
“You shouldn’t be out here, Papochka,” Viktor said, reaching down to help him up.
Sergei swatted at the air with his cane, glaring at the maids as if he wanted to smack them with his cane.
“I hear commotion,” he said sharply, squinting up at Viktor. “Becky is missing?”
His expression carried that familiar, unfocused edge dementia patients sometimes had; half certainty, half confusion.
Viktor forced a small smile. “Becky is fine,” he said slowly. “She just went out for a drink, Papa. Let them take you back to bed.”
“No.” Sergei stomped his foot again like a stubborn child.
“I want Becky. You’re always saying tomorrow, tomorrow. I don’t like tomorrow,” he snapped, already trying to twist out of Viktor’s hold.
“Papochka, stop moving,” Viktor said, his voice low and tight.
But Sergei only struggled harder.
“I want to see her! You’re hiding her from me!”
Viktor tightened his grip around the old man just enough to keep him steady, his jaw flexing slightly as he looked up at the care staff.
One of the maids hesitated, then quickly stepped forward and placed a syringe into his hand without a word.
Viktor didn’t even look at it. He knew what it was; 5mg of midazolam, enough to shut down a man twice his grandfather's size.
“I told you,” he said softly, more to himself. “Becky doesn’t come out when you’re like this. You go to sleep, and in the morning, you see her. Properly.”
“That’s a lie,” Sergei muttered, shoving weakly at him again. “Everything is lies.”
Viktor paused for half a second at that, before he guided the needle and pressed it into his grandfather's arm calmly.
Sergei tensed immediately, cursing under his breath in Russian, but the fight drained out of him quickly after that.
His body sagged. Viktor caught him before he hit the floor.
For a moment, he just held him there. “I’m sorry, Papa,” he said quietly.
Then he signaled the maids with a small motion of his hand.
“Take him to bed,” he said, stepping back. His voice sharpened again into command. “And I swear, if I find out his door wasn’t locked again, I’m changing every single one of you after I cut off your arms.”
The care staff nodded quickly and lifted Sergei away.
Viktor didn’t watch them leave for long.
He exhaled sharply and pushed the entire moment out of his head.
There was no time for this. He had to find that crazy writer of his.
He walked out through the front entrance, where security was already moving in coordinated chaos around the property. Within moments, Ethan, his personal assistant fell into step beside him, slightly out of breath.
“She’s with her phone,” Ethan said quickly. “We traced it. She’s headed downtown.”
“Downtown where?” Viktor asked flatly when Ethan did not continue, not slowing his pace. “You know I hate suspense, Ethan.”
Ethan let out a short laugh as he handed him a lit cigarette. “Pardon me for trying to put my theatre degree to use,” he said. Then his expression shifted to seriousness. “The bad part of downtown. Miguel Ricardo’s territory.”
Viktor stopped only long enough to take the cigarette, inhale once, and exhale slowly before he dropped it to the ground and stepped on it.
“Let’s go,” he said coldly. “Before she ends up in the back of a truck headed to some s*x ring.”
He walked forward without waiting for a response.
Ethan stayed behind for half a second, watching him go.
Viktor Koshnov; his best friend, boss, and the most practical man he had ever known was walking straight into war over a missing writer.
Ethan frowned, before he muttered under his breath. “How good is her book? I might need to read it at this point.”
- Writer
