Moskva

Read Moskva for Free Online Page B

Book: Read Moskva for Free Online
Authors: Christa Wick
deep.
    Within days of his father's violent, unsolved death as an underling in Rodchenko's crime syndicate, the old man had swooped in to make sure the widow Nazarova's needs were being met. Even at thirteen, Mishka new Dmitrey's visit was unusual. There were other widows and mothers on the street whose husbands and sons had died doing his dirty work. Most were abandoned.
    But none looked like Kata with her pale freckled skin, yellow gold hair and sky blue eyes.
    She had a beauty that didn't belong in the slums of Moscow. Rodchenko pounced at the first opportunity and carried her away to America. Mishka had spent the rest of his childhood as unwanted baggage living under the withering gaze and iron thumb of a crime lord and his petty tyrant of a son.
    The only thing that had kept him from running away that first year and all the years that followed was Alina. Even though he now knew those years had been wasted, he still couldn't leave, still clung to the edge of the city in a roach infested flophouse with walls so thin he could put a fist through them with a simple morning stretch of his massive arms.
    Mishka maneuvered from laying on his left side facing the wall to his right side, his body too big to sleep on his back in the narrow bed. Finishing his turn, he reached to pull the thin sheet over his shoulders and caught his first whiff of danger.
    Smoke -- in a five-story tinder box with no working fire alarms and no sprinklers.
    He sat up immediately, his bare feet sliding into his work boots as he inhaled deeply. He smelled fuel. This was not somebody's hot plate left on too long, the contents turning to a hardened ash in the pan.
    This was intentional.
    Having gone to bed in jeans and a t-shirt, he raced to lace up his boots and then he slid on his jacket. He made a quick check of the pockets to ensure his wallet and an old Russian passport were in place. He shouldered the cheap backpack he had purchased at a re-sale shop to hold a few pieces of clothing. The contents didn't amount to much, but it would hurt to lose anything now that everything else had been taken from him.
    Other tenants were beginning to flee their apartments, the hall a mix of languages with voices ranging from the very old to the newly born.
    Smoke started to pour under and around the edges of his door, the room's air growing painfully thick.
    In partitioning the tenement into more units, the slum lord who owned the place had salvaged materials from other buildings. Mishka's door was metal, one of the sturdiest and the biggest reason why he had picked the room despite it being in a high traffic area because of the shared toilet and stairwell.
    He placed his palm against the door's surface. He could feel the heat, hear the crackle of flames. The accelerant fueled fumes turned his stomach sick. He hiked the collar of his shirt up over his nose and used the edge his jacket as a mitt to turn the door knob.
    Fire waited for him on the other side, but there was no window to crawl out of. Bracing for a blast of heat, he pulled on the door.
    It wouldn't budge. The knob turned freely but the door wouldn't open inward. He jerked again, abandoning the jacket to grip the knob with his hand and twist as hard as he could.
    Panic building in his chest, Mishka threw himself at the door. He heard the bounce of heavy metal chains and knew -- the fire was set for him. Rodchenko's thugs had warned him to leave the city and he had stayed. The old man was willing to burn down a five-story tenement filled with hundreds of people to carry out his threat against one man.
    Backing up as far as the tight quarters would allow, he aimed a kick at the door knob, his eyes beginning to burn and water from the smoke.
    The kick was fruitless, not even a groan of protest.
    Outside his room, people were starting to panic as tenants from the higher floors streamed into the smoke-filled hall. He imagined all eyes focused on the nearest exist -- which was half a building away from his

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