The Baker And The Queen Pin

Chapter 34: Real Love

~~~Maria

As we drive to the restaurant, I think to myself how prepared am I for an altercation?  We meet up with two men in suits, here for business. The restaurant was nice and the food they prepared was divine. All the food smell of different meats hitting the air from beef stroganoff, kasha, blini, and pelmeni. I order some beef stroganoff to warm me up and I enjoy the thick noodles and the soft meat. My compliments to the chef for reminding me that Russian food can taste delicious especially since the meat was soft and well-made. 'So, what are you doing here, Yosef?' 'I'm here to show you my replacement,' he says, calmly.

He looks at me while I was comically slurping up a noodle, 'Your daughter?' he says, looking at me with a smile. 'She might be a better pillow princess than anything,' The other one blows a kiss at me, I smile as I politely raise my middle finger. It's then that he tries to assert dominance as he says, 'Listen here,' he says in his deep Russian accent. I take a deep sigh as I push my butter knife to his neck, "Do you think I'd really let you get close to me without being prepared, you pig?" For a pure moment, his eyes are shocked. Then he starts to laugh, 'And here I thought Smirnoff brought a lamb,'

I smile and say, "A lamb that wouldn't mind slitting your throat right now," 'Put your knife down please,' the other man speaks in a cool but calm tone. I look at him with a calm voice as the knife was closer to his neck, "Now, why should I?" The friend stops laughing as he realizes I'm serious. 'Because if you don't put the knife down, I'll be forced to have to kill you and your father,' "It's okay. You can kill my father. It's not like he's doing me any favors by having me here," 'You were right. She does hate you,' I take the knife from his neck as I slowly sit back down.

There was a reason why he said that and I needed to know why. "So, what do you want?" I ask ready to be done with this. 'The High Table has enemies. We have enemies across the world. Today, you're going to be neutralizing all of our enemies. This is the only way your father will get the mark off his back and be welcomed back into the High Table," I slowly turn to him and look at my father, "You were marked?" I said to him. My tone saying it all and his eyes, still stone-cold, 'Had I told you, you would have never come,' "You're damn right. Why would I walk around with a dead man?"

'We don't have time for your quarrel. Here are your targets. Have them dealt with, we expect to hear from you in the next 72 hours,' As I get ready to go, I take the envelope and read some of the targets, how many targets was this? I think to myself. For him to even be able to pull this off means that he called in favor but this is an impossible task. All of these people and we either have to make them disappear or turn them in. I look at one of the locations and I realize the first guy was close to the motel.

I realize what I have to do and I accept it. When we get ready to go, I don't even speak to him. 'Maria, this is in both our best interests,' he says to me as I walk fast to the car. I look at him and I say, "You could have gotten me killed. You could have gotten Booker killed," 'This isn't even about that,' "You insult that man and I blow your brains out," I say and he can see how serious I am in my eyes. "You're about to have me kill more people. You have me about to do things I didn't want to do in the beginning,"

'You're a killer now, Maria,' he says to me, 'Every aspect of your life is murder and bullshit, " And you're a liar. You're just helping clear the slate for me" 'I know I failed you as a father, Maria. I hope that my lineage lives on,' I don't want kids because of this son-of-a-bitch. I don't want kids because this man introduced me to men who only wanted something from me. I was deeply afraid of males because of him. This son-of-a-bitch, I upper-cut him, knocking him up against the drab flowers of the motel wall. I go and get dressed as he sits there, holding his jaw. "You're a piece-of-shit. Whatever you did to get us involved in this, I hope you have a plan to get us out of this." Killing these people won't be enough, I knew this and so did he. "You betray an organization that even I knew had no problem with killing innocent people." 'You've killed innocent people too, haven't you?' he says in a faint voice.

"I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of but these people have no problems making examples out of those innocent people, too," I think back to the fact that I killed a woman who wasn't involved, and then I said, "I guess that's is the pot calling the kettle black. We're going to fix this together, father but if I ever hear from you again, I'm going to blow your brains out, myself." As I get ready to go to sleep, I calm myself and begin to go to the bathroom. I wash the day off of me as I prepare to look at this target, Viktor Noviks. I look at the target and I prepare myself to intercept him.

As I get ready to scout on the target, I hear him follow me. We sit in the car, silently as I think about it, he hasn't hit me ever since we were in America and I ask him, "So, why haven't you hit me?" He responds, 'Why would I?' "Don't give me that, you tried it before," 'Because to be honest, I deserve it,' he says, calmly, "I deserve what you're doing. You'll get no mercy from me. After everything you've done, you're lucky I haven't gotten you shot,"

'Maria, you don't have it in you. You can't kill someone you love. You may be a lot of things but you're not going to kill me, not like I did your mother,' I stop myself from being angry, he had a point. For everything that my father was, he was still my father. Maybe it was because even after all of the things he had done he still did everything he could to make sure I was separated from his dark life.

"Let's go," I say to him, "We have things to do, Father," He stands up as he fixes his broken nose, I didn't knock his teeth out which was mostly because I hadn't been hitting him at full strength though I could have, I didn't. I didn't want to kill my already frail father. As we get ready to leave, I listened to our car pick-up speed, "We have to dispatch the target as soon as possible," 'I know,' "How deep in the hole are you?" I ask him. He takes a moment to answer, but says, 'Deep enough to need your help. Deep enough that I know something could impact your life,' "I'm glad you care," I said, sarcastically, 'I know what I've done to you, Maria and I don't claim to be a good man. I'm just trying to make sure my daughter doesn't have to clean up my mess all the time,' "I've been cleaning up your mess since I took over," I said.

'No one asked you to take over,' He shot back, "How you ruled the organization, everything was falling apart. Now everyone is controlled and handled by a few select people. Whether you want to accept it or not, I've run your entire business better than anything you've ever had," I look up at the mirror and I see the same van in a few lanes. Could they be following us?

~~~Maria One week later

I found the target but I think we were being followed. My father was infamous and the fact that we were in Moscow and they had CIA and Russian police officers after us meant two things. My father was a target or someone was a target in this inner circle, I had to find out who. I took my time and I removed my engagement ring, I place another ring in its stead and I allow myself to start jogging around the neighborhood. Those men were watching me or they were watching my father, one of the two. I was gonna find out.

I keep jogging in my leggings and a jacket. As I kept jogging, I was scouting the area and I was also discreetly allowing me and my father to split up. We changed hotels a while ago, I was just here to be a distraction. It's then that I'm finally joined, I was wondering how long it was going to take before the CIA agent began to follow my patterns. He watched me go to the coffee shop, eat a bagel, and then return back to the cheap motel. As he was watching me, I was watching him. He watched me perform multiple habits over time, I wanted to give him a false sense of security, thinking he knew all of my patterns. I knew that he had been discreetly watching me from a different car, it was only a matter of time before he exposed himself.

I gave it time, I come home and I look at my burner phone. I think about Booker's number and then I stop myself. I can't text him, I have to leave him alone, I can't drag him into this. I love him so much. I leave the phone alone and I see my motel door begin to unlock.

End of Chapter 34: Real Love