Here and Now

  HERE AND NOW

  The Full Circle Trilogy

  Book Three

  BLAKE HAUGEN

  Copyright © 2014 by Blake Haugen. All rights reserved.

  Although an intriguing romance, this story is erotic in nature and should only be read by individuals over the age of eighteen. Cease reading if you are under the age of eighteen, if you are under the age of majority where you reside, or if sexually explicit material is prohibited in the area in which you are reading this e-book.

  Warning: This novella includes explicit sex, light bondage, graphic violence, Dominant/submissive sexual intercourse, course language, and adult situations. Readers who find this subject matter objectionable should read no further.

  This book is a fictional work. Characters, character names, locations, and incidents contained in this work are fictional creations of the author’s imagination and are not presented to be real. Any resemblance to persons, places, locations or organizations is completely coincidental.

  Cover Image: Blake Haugen Covers

  A note on Russian names for readers: Russians often call people they are close to (family and friends) by the diminutive of their first name. You might think of it as a nickname. For example, Jim and Jimmie are diminutives of the name James; Chuck and Charlie are diminutives of the name Charles. Several diminutives are found in this story; Marusya is the diminutive of Mariya, Vanya for Ivan, and Vasya for Vasily.

  Sometimes, when Russians address or announce one another, they use the first name and the patronymic name – a derivative of your father’s name that kind of serves as your middle and last name before your family name. The character Vanya would be addressed as Ivan Kirillovich and the character Lina would be addressed as Akilina Kirillovna as they are both the children of Kirill.

  Sometimes, if someone is a close family friend, they are oftentimes referred to by their patronymic name only. For instance, the character Vasily is often referred to as Viktorovich.

  If you find it distracting or confusing, all featured Russian words and phrases can be plugged into a good online translator. However, translation of the Russian phrases in the story is not necessary, and in no way enhances or lessens the plot’s direction or interpretation.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Vanya followed his girlfriend to the granite tiled shower stall of his en suite bathroom. He’d just given her an ultimatum: tell him what she was hiding or he’d end their relationship. It was a lie, of course. He couldn’t tell if Persephone knew that or not, but he felt it was the only way to show her he meant business. They’d worked too hard to throw everything away at this point. This past year, he’d done everything he could to show her that he was ready to commit. He knew she loved him, but he couldn’t ignore her unwillingness to open up.

  Rather than let him prepare a bath, as was their ritual, Persephone started a steamy shower. She stood clear of the water for a few seconds until it heated. Her demeanor was defensive. Vanya hated the way her arms wrapped around her torso protectively.

  “So, it’s a list,” Persephone began.

  “Of what?” Vanya asked.

  “Not much stuff. Basically, it’s a small list of collected or stolen intelligence from governments and NGOs,” she replied. Vanya could hear the hesitation in her voice. It was clear she knew what question he would ask next. Vanya went ahead and asked it aloud anyway.

  “And just where is this list?” he sighed.

  Persephone removed one of her arms from around her body and tapped her temple with her index finger. Vanya’s jaw clenched and he turned around to adjust the temperature of the water. He’d known his suspicions were going to be confirmed, but his present frustration told him he’d been hoping to hear something else. He took a deep breath before turning around to face Persephone and pulling her to him. He was mad and he knew she was already nervous about revealing this to him; he didn’t want to spook her. Water beat down his back and he began to gently wash her body with a soapy washcloth.

  “Tell me how,” he requested quietly. “Tell me everything.”

  Persephone breathed in slowly and Vanya urged her to begin with a soft kiss on her neck. He felt the shudder under her skin subside as he ran his hands along her hips. She leaned into him and spoke at last.

  “Most of the stuff I understand; some of it, I don’t. My parents must have been field analysts in addition to their normal jobs – I’m not sure what the hell they were into. The night my parents died – my junior year – I was supposed to be out of town on the honors biology field trip. Emma was going to skip and I wanted to prove that I wasn’t a complete goody-two-shoes, so I pressured her into letting me come along. We got there and it was awful. She wanted to go off with these two college boys. I mean, they were friends of our friends and were seniors when we were sophomores, but I didn’t know them well, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to a second location with them. I thought she wouldn’t go if I didn’t, but she did anyway. So fucking stupid; thank God nothing happened.

  “Anyway, once she left there was no one at the gathering of miscreant teens that I knew that well, so I decided to go home. My parents were supposed to be out of town and I wasn’t worried about anyone thinking we were missing. In fact, now that I think about it, they were out of town. I’d dropped them off at the airport the previous day. They said they were going to do a weekend in Santa Fe since I would be gone, too.

  “Our house was in the country just outside the city, like fifteen minutes or so. There were never a lot of cars out that way at that time of night, so I was weirded out when I saw two SUVs parked outside the house from a long way off. I was scared and turned off my headlights.

  “You see, from the county road there’s a smaller private road that leads back to the house. Where those two roads meet my dad put in this cattle grid that depresses when a car drives over it. It just stays about six inches above ground level and the door bell rings at the house when a car passes it. He’d rigged it so that it took two minutes to get back up to its normal height after a car had driven over it. A ways down there’s a bull gate that you have to open and close manually and god forbid that that gate was ever left open. My ass was grass it if it ever was. It was one of my parents’ strictest rules.

  “Coming closer down the county road I saw the that the grid wasn’t depressed and the bull gate was open. That was my first warning. If we had visitors, my parents always made sure the gate was closed with a switch at the house. We also never had visitors, so I knew something was really wrong. I just parked my car on the county road and walked up to the house from the side so no one would see me approaching. I took my Mak with me. I think it was first time I’d taken it from my glove compartment since my dad had given it to me.

  “There were trees and bushes all around the house. I knew our land better than anyone else, so I snuck on the scene easily. There were two guys on the porch and two in the living room with my parents. My mom was bleeding bad from the stomach and my dad was just sitting beside her on the couch, staring down one of the dudes.

  “I thought it was a home invasion. It was, I guess. I considered just jumping in and surprising them, but they outnumbered us. I weighted all of one hundred and twenty pounds at the time. At the end of the day, they were grown ass men, and self-defense or not, they’d probably beat me if they were ballsy enough to take on my dad. I wanted to call the cops for more help, you know? But I knew I should ask my parents first; I just felt it. My ‘stranger danger’ talk wasn’t the typical one. It was never ‘call the police.’ It was ‘call us or Peter’ or ‘wait for the right moment’ or ‘wait for our instruction
s.’

  “I knew I could enter the basement from outside with my keys, so I fired a shot in the air behind the house and then darted inside. When I got to the living room, my mom was trying to get off the couch and reach her phone on the bar. She was all alone. I’d come in all ‘guns blazing,’ and my dad and the two men weren’t even there.

  “I went to go help my mom and she started crying and shouting ‘What are you doing here!?’ I told her I’d skipped the trip with Emma and then decided to come back home. She started to patronize me, saying she couldn’t believe I’d done something like that. I saw her blood at that point – I mean really saw it – and I realized the absurdity of us arguing over behavior and discipline at a time like that and I started yelling, ‘Mom, oh my god! Just give them what they want! What does it matter now? You’re fucking dying! You’re fucking bleeding out in the living room!’ She just started touching my head and my shoulder, telling me, ‘It’s okay, baby, Dad is out there. He’s going to take care of them.’

  “She could barely stand. I knew my dad was doing a pretty good job of taking some of those guys out because there was a lot of crossfire and then it got less frequent. I knew there was still a guy or two out there because the exchange was steady. I tried to help my mom to the Safe – that’s what we called our subbasement. It’s essentially a panic room. My mom said to call Peter and tell him ‘ we need help fixing the front gate’ and that he should say ‘I’ll be right out there.’ So, I called him, practically yelling it in his ear. For so many years I just thought of my dad as some ex-military militiaman gun-freak that put too much money into the security of his mid-market level home. I just couldn’t believe what was happening. I was so hysterical. It’s hard to believe I’m parents child sometimes. They were so chilly and studious and judicious and I was this hammy, exuberant kid they’d given birth to. I liked to study, but I didn’t fit in our family. I mean, can you imagine me in that kind of situation?”

  “No, I can’t,” Vanya murmured against Persephone’s hair. He now held her in his lap as he sat on the stained red cedar bench in the shower stall. She was at ease in his arms. Vanya sensed that telling her story wasn’t as difficult as Persephone had anticipated. She wasn’t as shaky as she’d been when she began, and the words were now flowing out of her.

  “Peter answered me correctly. I hung up and picked up my mom and tried to rush her to the subbasement. She was bleeding like crazy and I wanted to call 9-1-1, but she said to wait until we got into the Safe. We were almost through the living room when the firing stopped. We didn’t hear my dad call out to us. The dogs weren’t even barking, so we knew he was probably dead. We didn’t say anything and I tried to get her to hightail it down the hall and to the Safe.

  “That’s when Ryan Trask came rushing in. I heard him burst through the door. I let my mom fall to the ground so I could turn and face him. He was on me before I could even pull out my gun. I managed to break his hold – mostly because he just underestimated me. I gave him two good right hooks to the temple before he grabbed me and threw me down. I got up and ran for the kitchen, but he grabbed me and pulled me and my mom back to the living room. She was sitting on the floor propped up against the couch, trying to stay awake… or alive. I don’t really know.

  “He pushed me down on my knees in front of her and cut my ear. That’s what that little scar is from, not accidentally ripping out an earring. I don’t know what he did, but it hurt so damn bad. For the life of me, I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything worse. He kept taunting her saying ‘Tell me where it is, Cynthia. I can hurt her worse than this.’ I kept shaking my head, telling her not to say anything, that we could get through this. I kept saying, ‘They’re on their way now, Mom. We can do this. Don’t say anything,’ hoping to god I was scaring him. He was the only one of his people left. I knew he was worried about it, because his hold on me was tighter and he was shaking. He was outwardly calm while my mom promised he would be gutted like a fish. He was asking her so many questions and she said he wouldn’t get anything until I was in my car and gone. He kept going, and when my pain wasn’t enough he – he grabbed me. I couldn’t stand the feel of his hands on me. That was the worst. My mom was crying and screaming.

  “Something in me clicked and I realized what his questions were about. I told him I’d give him one thing if he’d just stop. He agreed and I gave him this Parisian address. After a few minutes he confirmed it in an earpiece, and I remember being so relieved when he let go of me. I was moving forward to go to my mom, and Trask just grabbed me back and threw me to the side. He shot my mom and she was just gone. Like, completely gone. It was so weird. She just wasn’t there anymore; she was just a body.

  “I flipped out then. I bolted for this vase, busted it across his head, took a shard, slashed it across his neck and jammed it into his knee cap. I put my gun on him and I told him I didn’t have it in me to kill him, but Peter would arrive before whomever he was talking to on that line did, and he would definitely kill him. He didn’t have a lot of time and he knew it. He’d stumbled up to his feet by that time and I played a gamble. I told him he knew I was too valuable to kill now and I shot him in the leg. I said, ‘Now, you don’t have a lot of time and you’re bleeding. Let’s hope I didn’t hit an artery.’ And then he pathetically hobbled out of the house through the kitchen. That was the last time I saw him before the wedding.

  “Peter showed up ninety seconds later or something. I remember it being quick and wishing he had gotten there sooner. He asked how many intruders there were and where they were. I told him Trask went through the kitchen and he told me to go to the Safe and stay there until he got back, and then he ran out back. He came back a little under an hour later and told me I shouldn’t have been there that weekend and that he knew it was hard, but I had to go to back to wherever I was supposed to be and pretend like nothing had happened. I didn’t say anything, and he led me back upstairs. My mom’s body was gone and some guys in plain clothes were rolling up the rug she’d bled on.

  “Peter said I could say that my parents were driving when they came upon our shot up dogs. He thought one of the dogs might survive, and it would answer any questions about bloodstains until we could get the upholstery redone. He made me drive out to the field trip myself, permission forms and all. He was like, ‘I’m so sorry, Perry, I am, but you can’t say anything to anyone yet, not even Emma. We need things to look normal.’ Heh, not that Emma and I were talking that much those days anyway. It’s funny; through the whole ordeal and even now, I’ve never ratted her out to Peter about that weekend. I guess he probably knows.

  “He was at the school parking lot when we got back from the field trip. He asked Emma to wait in the car while he and the principal took me inside the school to her office. The principal told me that after picking up our wounded dogs and dropping them off at the vet that my parents got in an accident. She said I’d be staying with the Bensons until other arrangements could be made. I remember just nodding. I didn’t for three or four days or something. It was weird.

  “A few days later, the Benson house was uncharacteristically empty for a few hours. It was just Peter, Benny Velasquez, and me. We decided I would stay with the Bensons until graduation. Velasquez was a guy from the department that knew Peter and my mom. He took my statement, but I lied about knowing what all Trask was after – Peter let me lie, too. He convinced Benny I could stay along with the Bensons rather than go into protective custody, since we didn’t know what to expect from Trask. Peter said I could finish school, finish learning how to protect myself, and learn how to lead a normal adult life. There was counseling and stuff, but of course, I was never really honest and I never really bounced back from that. So, here I am, trying to lead a normal adult life.”

  Vanya clung to her. The word “shit” fell from his lips a few times, and he was at a loss as to what else he could possibly say, or even what to feel. He was hurt for Persephone; hurt that she’d endured pain. On the other had, he was upset that she’d kept it fr
om him. He would have –

  What would he have done? Vanya wouldn’t have been privy to his father’s interest before Lina’s wedding even if Persephone had told him the whole truth. Besides, it wasn’t exactly good practice to share international intelligence with your boyfriend. No, he wasn’t that upset with her.

  Trask, however, he wanted to kill. The bastard had not only dared to hit, but also violated a girl. That girl was now his woman. Somehow, the man would have to pay. Vanya stated as much and was surprised to hear Persephone’s dissenting opinion.

  “No,” she rebutted, “if you take him out, he might be replaced with someone that I can’t even identify. Somebody even worse. A known enemy is easier to subdue than an unknown one. I don’t even know if he’s after anything I have. Don’t you think we’ve thought of that before?”

  “We? As in you and Peter? Is that why he came to town last week? Because you thought the attack in Madrid was about this?”

  “Yeah, we were… assessing the situation. Thinking about what to do from here on out.”

  Panic struck Vanya’s heart. He hadn’t anticipated this. How could he get rid of Trask without ruining whatever his father was working on?

  “Well, we’ll figure this out. I know Madrid wasn’t my dad. I checked and there’s no way. I’ll keep you close and I’ll get more security. Max can move close to campus. No one will touch a hair on your head. You can stay with me when we get back to school.”

  “Vanya, no. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “What?” He pulled away to give her an incredulous glare.

  “Peter is working on it. You don’t have to do anything. Just keep me away from your father. I’m severing all contact with him from this point on.”