PSL: taken

[abyssum_invocat]

The call came at two-thirty-nine in the afternoon, just as Sinthia was sitting back at her desk at work from a meeting with a client of the auction house. She set down a locked strongbox, in which there were several million dollars' worth of jewels, and her phone rang. Thinking nothing of it given it was the extension for her desk, she balanced it between her shoulder and her cheek as she answered.

The minute she heard a Russian accent, before the words had even registered to her, she sat straighter, face closing off as if someone had shuttered a window. The conversation didn't take long.

"You should have stayed out of what you did not belong in," the voice on the other end said, cold and harsh. "We will enjoy making you miss your daughters. And your bitch." In the background she could hear car engines, dishes clinking, and the surf: not a difficult guess to make it to Brighton Beach and Little Odessa. What she couldn't hear was any baby cry, or Solo's voice; those absences worried her until Sinthia pushed them away as the line went dead and she hung up the phone.

Quickly but carefully, she locked the strongbox in her desk drawer, rose to get her jacket and her keys, and on the way out dialed Illya's phone number, getting in the car already. She met with no resistance about leaving, which wasn't unexpected if she'd have been able to see the look on her own face, icy as permafrost.

"Get back to the apartment. They've taken Solo and the girls. We're getting them back."

Comments

[itwontmatch]

It had started out such a beautiful fall day. Solo had decided that it would do he and the girls both good to get out for a while on a jog through the park. After lunch, he'd dressed Mischa and Margot in warm clothes, after all, he'd be the one doing the sweating, and strapped them in their side by side jogging stroller.

The girls laughed, loving to go fast, as he jogged down the path. He pushed them passed the playground where other nannies and mommies were with their children, illiciting more than a few whistles. He had been to the park with the girls often enough that he knew a few of the other parents. He waved at Maricella and Linda, and laughed again, overhearing them say he was the 'fittest Daddy in the park.'

He was halfway round the loop on the path he usually jogged. It went past the reservoir into a rather secluded area where they had to cross a street. There usually wasn't any traffic through there, so it was a relatively safe area. He barely glanced at the white van that was parked there as he strode past.

As he drew even with it, the side door of the van slid open and a pair of men jumped out of it. He didn't even have time to react, when they tackled him. The last thing he saw before they tasered Solo was the stroller still rolling down the path.

[red_peril]

Illya's fashion consulting job only had one client scheduled that day. So he would finish early. He could go home and spend some time with Solo and the girls, and of course, Avi, before Sinthia came home.

He was on his way back to the apartment when his cell phone rang in his pocket. Illya smiled when he recognized Sinthia's number. "Hello, darling..." he had been about to say something clever when she interrupted him. "They've taken Solo and the girls..." His heart stopped when he heard that. Illya didn't have to ask who 'they' were. He knew. This was the call he had been waiting for so long. But he had... They all had gotten comfortable and lazy over time.

As soon as her call disconnected, Illya was running. His long strides eating up the distance. It couldn't be fast enough. The job had been just over a couple of miles from their apartment and he had walked. He could make that easily in less than ten minutes.

[abyssum_invocat]

Sinthia sacrificed a moment once in her car to take a deep, rib-expanding breath as she kicked the engine into gear and screamed up the roads to her home: she cared not at all for traffic violations and didn't lose any speed in getting up the stairs to the door at a dead run, impressive in heels.

"Brighton Beach, they're in Little Odessa," she called out, knowing Illya was home and wasting no time in getting to the pistol safe in her closet. As she loaded and chambered a round, Sinthia put her phone on speaker on the kitchen counter, speaking in flawless Russian.

"Konstantin. Ivanov is marked. My contract, my kill. Keep your soldiers out of my way or I send your prince back in pieces. Stars first."

[red_peril]

Illya arrived at the apartment a few minutes ahead of Sinthia. His mind was racing faster than his feet as he bounded up the apartment stairs to their place. He didn't stop to even to pet Avi's head. Intelligent dog that he was, he knew something was terribly wrong and slunk back to his bed where he curled up, watching Illya nervously. He was not used to the thundercloud angry look on his human's face.

Illya went directly to the closet and pulled out his case from the back. They had been planning to get a larger gun safe now that the girls were toddling, though neither of them would have got through the combination locks on it. Laying it on the bed, he paused for half a second before opening it. He had thought he was done with that life, but it had intruded into their idyllic lives in the rudest of ways. His fingers flashed through the combination, he knew it so well, he did not have to look.

In less than five minutes, he had changed into the tactical gear and was ready to go when his phone rang again. He recognized the number. And he answered knowing whose voice he would hear. Not Ivan, who was sitting in jail, but his brother Victor's gravelly voice, "Izmennik." Traitor. Illya's fingers started twitching and his heart froze. The voice continued in Russian, "Ivan has died in that American prison. His death is on you. For that, you will die hearing your daughters screaming."

He did not waste words making counter threats, but disconnected the call. The sound of the restaurant in Little Odessa was as familiar as his own breathing, but they would not be holding Solo and the girls there. He heard Sinthia come in and emerged from the back room just as she called Konstantin. "I know exactly where."

[abyssum_invocat]

"We get there fast, and anyone that stops us dies," she said flatly, tucking her backup pistol into her waist holster, the other slung into her shoulder harness with extra clips and a knife in her boot.

"I'm not losing our daughters if we have to kill every Vor in the states." She too had changed hurriedly into her 'work clothes', the all black she wore on assassination jobs. Sinthia stopped only long enough to lay her hand on Illya's arm. "Once those bastards are down, they're mine."

[red_peril]

They made a terrifying pair. All dressed in black tactical gear. He had left the sniper rifle in it's case. This action would be close contact. Illya carried several guns and rounds to reload, as well as a variety of knives. There would be plenty of action for both of them.

"Da," he nodded at her statement and covered her hand with his own. His accent thickened, not caring to speak proper English in his state. The Russian was holding on to his anger, like his therapist had taught him. When they got to Victor, then, he would set his rage loose.

"I got call too. Ivan is dead, his brother Victor blames me. If they have harmed our girls..." He shook his head. "Doesn't matter, they have harmed them. They probably killed Solo." Their lives would never be the same after this, even if they got their girls back relatively unharmed. Illya looked in her eyes, "We will kill them all. Let's go."

[itwontmatch]

Solo wasn't dead yet. He awoke and almost panicked. He couldn't see where he was. They had put a bag over his head. His fingers were tingling; the circulation had been cut off by whatever they had used to tie them. His legs were also bound to something that felt like a stiff wooden chair. He'd been there a while. There were voices in the room around him and he could tell that they were speaking Russian, but not much else.

His breath quickened when he realized the last time he had seen the girls, their stroller had been rolling loose down the path with Mischa and Margot trapped inside it. For a moment he lost it and struggled against his bonds. He heard heavy footsteps approaching and he was blinded as the bag was snatched from his head. Then a blow rocked his head back hard and made his head swim. The taste of blood flooded his mouth. A pair of ear-splitting screams alerted him to the fact that his daughters were in the room and they were alive. They had also just watched him get punched in the face.

"Pedik," the man who hit him growled. Solo didn't know that word, but he guessed it was something derogatory. Solo spat a mouthful of blood on the floor.

"Shh, shh," An old man was trying to calm the girls by shushing them and rocking the stroller. They quieted a little, but were still very upset. Solo looked up and got some relief knowing the girls were at least physically unharmed. The old man looked at him coldly, as if he were examining a bug under glass. His voice was raspy and cold, "I find your name amusingly ironic," the old man said, though he didn't sound particularly amused. Solo looked up. The old man was finely dressed in comparison to the thugs standing around the room. "I wonder if you know whether your mother had a premonition."
One of the men laughed at this but his laughter faded under the glare of the old man.

"You must be Ivanov," Solo panted.

"So, that traitor told you about Ivan." The old man's eyes were grey, as was the hair that remained on his balding pate. "He was my younger brother." The man looked to be ninety. And from the sallow color of his skin, Solo could tell that he imbibed plenty of vodka the yellow tinge of his teeth indicated that he had been a heavy smoker but he didn't smell of it. The old man may have quit smoking, but his liver was still failing. Probably cancer. The past tense made Solo's heart sink.

"So, this is about revenge," Solo said glancing at his girls. "And we're the bait in a trap."

This time the old man laughed, "You are smarter than you look. And here I thought you were just a pretty face."

[abyssum_invocat]

Sinthia didn't speak much on the way to the place, for the first time since she'd met either Illya or Solo actively trying to put herself back in the frame of mind of an asset: she couldn't afford second thoughts or worries while they cut down the men prepared to kill them both to defend a dead man's honor, ironic as the thought was.

"Where is Victor?" she asked bluntly, not bothering to explain their situation or the reason behind wanting to see the head of the family to the first soldier she saw. "Wrong answer," Sinthia hissed, leaving him with a bullet in each knee and his dominant shoulder when he chose not to be forthcoming, and instead reached for his weapon. "This time I shoot you between the eyes," she said lightly.

[red_peril]

They didn't need to speak, as they were of one mind in this. He had never seen Sinthia work before. At least, not in this capacity. It surprised him how quickly he was able to get back into the old mindset.

Instead of going to the restaurant, Illya had guided their path to his other business. The office of Victor's construction company. They had been met with armed men. Which they had worked their way through. The small office they stood in was full of bodies of men they had already questioned. There were only two left. One Sinthia had just kneecapped and the one Illya was holding by the throat.

"Go ahead, suka. Kill me. Do you think I am more afraid of death than I am of Victor?" the man whimpered.

"This is waste of time," Illya grumbled, shooting the man that Sinthia had been questioning between the eyes with his silenced Makarov. The prisoner slumped in his chair. He felt the man he held by the neck tremble. He turned icy blue eyes on the man. "Would you like to live?" The man nodded vigorously. Illya kicked the dead body of the other man off the chair and sat the next man on it. "Then I suggest you answer her question."

[abyssum_invocat]

Sinthia turned just enough for the man to see her tattoo, pulling her hair off her neck. "Do you know what this means?" she asked, and saw him soil himself as he nodded.

So he knew, then, and was smart enough to know she could give him a world of hurt. "Where are they?" she asked, putting the gun back in her shoulder holster. She wouldn't shoot this one, she'd make him wish she had though. With the knife from her boot she cut open his shirt, exposing the captain's stars over his shoulders and pressing the flat of the blade to the tattoo. "I'd answer if you want to keep these."

[red_peril]

"Forgive me, pakhan!" The man started babbling prayers in Russian.

"Start making sense, or I will lose my patience," Illya grumbled.

"D..do you know the warehouses Ivanov owns? The ones near the Brooklyn Navy Yard?" The man asked looking quickly between them.

"Da," Illya answered. "He has several. Which one are they in?" He knew which ever one it was, Victor would be waiting for them with a small army. Not that it mattered.

"It is the one on Imlay street," he stuttered.

"I know where this is," Illya said. The city had been trying to get Victor to sell the abandoned warehouse there to developers to make it into condominiums. Until they found out it was sitting on a toxic waste clean up nightmare.

[abyssum_invocat]

"Good boy," she murmured, leaning close enough to mockingly pet the man's hair as she would an animal: in a quiet voice she whispered to him that he would still die for calling her lover a bitch, waiting only long enough to see his pupils widen before slashing upwards against his thigh, severing the femoral artery. It would take less than ninety seconds to bleed out from a wound like that.

[red_peril]

Illya holstered his side arm as Sinthia spoke to him. He didn't care to watch the man die. He walked out dispassionately without looking back. He waited for Sinthia by the car.

He was already planning out the route in his head. Victor's men would be watching for them. Illya was already thinking of their next steps, the layout of the warehouse, the best way to approach it without being seen. Getting the girls out safely would not be easy.

[abyssum_invocat]

Sinthia strode out coolly, as if she hadn't just murdered several men personally: she looked like some kind of beautifully terrifying monster with blood splashed onto her face and her hair, knife wiped off against her black jeans before it went back into her boot while she got in the car.

"I don't care what you do to Victor, but I want his body when you're done," she said. "I want his stars nailed to my office door." She wanted that revenge no matter what the outcome with the girls and Solo was, but if any of them were harmed, Sinthia would be going after someone much higher up in the Vor v Zakone. "If he's hurt our girls I will murder everyone he loves."

[red_peril]

Illya nodded and got into the car, "I will cut them off personally while he is still breathing." If the girls were hurt, Illya would not hold himself back. He would destroy everything Victor owned.

The warehouse was only a few minutes away. While Sinthia drove, he told her about the layout of the warehouse. It had once been part of the Naval yard, but had been sold off to Victor. Initially, boats had been stored there. There was a large back door that opened onto a boat dock. It also had a loading dock for trucks on the Imlay street side. Most of the interior was large open space, a small section near the boat dock area had been made into offices."They will be waiting for us. We will not be able to surprise them."

[abyssum_invocat]

Sinthia listened, nodding when she could as she drove.

"We can surprise them," she interrupted, already thinking tactically. "Don't enter on the Imlay Street side, and I can go in before you. I can't hold it very long, but I can hold intangibility long enough for you to come in behind me. We can do the same coming in from Imlay Street, but it will require more rounds from us both."

[red_peril]

"We have plenty ammunition," he said grimly. The other possibility, was of rounds going through the flimsy walls and hitting the girls or Solo. "Perhaps we should go in from river side. Office door is on left, four feet in from door on river side. When you are intangible... You can go through solid things? Or are you invisible?"

[abyssum_invocat]

"No, not invisible, just...not solid. It takes some concentration but I can manage to hold myself intangible for a few minutes. They'll shoot at me, but it won't hit me."

It was a hell of a risk, though; that was by far the hardest ability to exert control over, and the one she used the least. "I can get into the office to see if that's where the others are. Solo and the girls."

[red_peril]

"This is idea," he said. "I will go in front door on Imlay as distraction." Illya had no doubt that he would be able to get through to the office. It would just take him a little longer. "If you can get Solo and our girls free and get them out. Do so. When they are safe, we will take care of Victor."

[abyssum_invocat]

"I want Victor dead," she said flatly. "I'm not giving him time to get away from me."

She wasn't doing it. There was no negotiation there, and she didn't bother arguing as she pulled the car to a stop half a block off of where the warehouse door was. "Give me time to get around the building to the door," Sinthia murmured. "I'll let you know when to come in, but you need to be listening for me."

It barely took a minute for them to get to where they needed to be, working seamlessly as a pair: Sinthia took a breath as she stood in front of the door, reaching out to Illya to give him the signal--a strong mental voice he likely wouldn't be able to identify but could follow--to move in, stepping through the solid metal with all her concentration focused on getting through the wall without flickering. She had to endure a hail of bullets that she wasn't keen on being hit with, and she memorized the faces of the men who turned to shoot at her: she would pay them back as soon as she could.

[red_peril]

"He will not get away." Even if he had to kill Victor with his own bare hands.

He did hear a voice clearly. Drawing his weapons, he kicked the door in. The two men waiting for him on the inside were not fast enough. He shot them both without hesitation and moved on. A ricochet pinged off a supporting column of steel and whizzed past his ear. He had made himself the target in a shooting gallery. Illya moved quickly, taking cover behind a forklift.

[itwontmatch]

After their little "chat" Victor's men had duct taped Solo's mouth shut and beat him to near unconsciousness to keep him from alerting Illya or Sinthia. The girls had quieted, but held onto each other, looking at him with wide, frightened, eyes. He didn't know how the Russians expected him to warn them when they had him securely duct taped to a chair.

Like the gangsters that held him, Solo hadn't expected to see Sinthia materialize through the wall. She had told him about her powers, but hadn't mentioned being able to move through solid matter.

He was also surprised by how fast the sick old man moved. By the time Sinthia had come through the wall, the man had one of the girls out of the stroller. Mischa. Solo struggled against the restraints, the chair rocking beneath him. Margot wailed to have her twin taken from her.

He couldn't see who was behind him, but a cruel fist in his hair pulled his head back and he felt the sharp edge of a blade against his throat. Solo stilled, breathing rapidly through his nose.

From the other part of the warehouse, they could hear gunfire. Illya must have been coming in from that way.

[abyssum_invocat]

Sinthia looked calm to the point of serene as she stepped through, eyes opening to the scene of her daughter being held by a Vor crime boss, and her partner with a blade to his throat.

She spoke softly, in impeccable Russian: "Either you let them both go, or I mail your stars to Konstantin," she murmured, and without drawing attention to it reforming into solidity, feeling her weight sink onto her feet. "Harm my daughter or my partner and I start with your balls. Slowly." She could catch Mischa if she fell, but Sinthia wasn't sure if she could both catch the toddler and prevent Solo from getting his throat slashed.

[red_peril]

Illya stayed behind the forklift only long enough to reload. He made short work of most of the men outside in the warehouse. It didn't take long for him to make his way inside the office. The door lock not being much of an impediment to a very angry, very large, Russian boot. He arrived just in time to hear Sinthia threaten to send Ivanov's stars to Konstantin.

Victor snorted, unimpressed, "Konstantin can go fuck himself. This is not Vory business. This is family." Her threat did not mean much to a man who already had a death sentence.

"Let my daughter go," Illya demanded evenly. Solo caught Illya's eye. His lover looked at him wide-eyed, but determined.

Someone had to do something to break this stalemate. Solo took that moment to throw himself backward with all the strength he could muster. The rickety chair he'd been taped to broke and he slammed backwards into the legs of the man holding the knife to his throat. He didn't care at this point if he he got hurt. Only that they saved the girls.

[abyssum_invocat]

When Solo threw himself backwards in the chair it gave Sinthia and Illya a few precious seconds of advantage, and Sinthia decided not to waste hers. She threw out a hand to catch Mischa and with her other, drew and fired her pistol twice, once into Victor's foot and the other into the ribs, where the cavitation would almost certainly produce fatal trauma, but not immediately. The next several bullets were spent on other men, lesser threats but still threats needing to be negated. And it likely illustrated why Sinthia had been so good at being a contract assassin given her dispassionate demeanor.

The wailing child she welcomed into her arms, Sinthia's chin resting on the messy blond curls her daughter sported. "You may not know this about me," she continued as quietly as a patient schoolteacher with her finger still tense on the trigger of her gun, "But Konstantin crowned me. So when I kill you, and I will kill you for touching my children and my lover, all the things you hold dear will be mine. Don't look so relieved," Sinthia crooned, crouching so that the still-warm muzzle of her pistol pressed low to Victor's paunch of a belly, "I won't be killing you slowly. The human body can afford to lose an awful lot of pieces and blood before anything strictly necessary stops functioning."

While she would spare him a quick death, it wouldn't be painless, nor free of humiliation.

[red_peril]

When Solo and Sinthia moved, Illya did. He took out two of the other men and scooped their other daughter out of the stroller and into his arms. He turned to look at the old Vor with simmering hatred. Margot was unharmed, but still crying.

Solo had managed to get loose from the chair, and was currently using it's remains to beat the man who'd been holding him. He kicked aside the man's knife and Illya picked it up, tucking the weapon away. When his lover was done, he reached over and as gently as possible, ripped the duct tape from his mouth.

"Ow," he said and leaned his head to Illya's shoulder. Illya handed Margot over to his lover, and turned his attention back to Victor.

The old man coughed blood and spat it on the dirt floor, "How touching. You think you have won. Do you think that will stop our children from hunting you down?"

"If they want to keep breathing, yes," Illya said quietly. "Otherwise, we will kill them too. And lay them in graves alongside yours and Ivan's." He drew a wicked looking knife out of it's sheath on his thigh. "Solo, perhaps you would take the girls out to the car to wait for us."

[abyssum_invocat]

"Perhaps I should have been clearer," Sinthia said as she kissed Mischa's forehead and handed her to Solo, touching Margot's nose with a soft fingertip to reassure her, "If I so much as think your children will touch my girls, I will ultimately strangle you with their innards."

The silky threat would hit home where the Vor couldn't protect: their sons and daughters. You couldn't both utterly detest your women and protect them, and so for a precious while their children were also vulnerable. "There is no objective in this war you have started but attrition, Victor," Sinthia finished. "Maybe you think that being a woman and a mother makes me too weak to kill everyone you've ever loved or regarded as a brother or son. It doesn't."

[red_peril]

"Don't take too long," Solo took the girls and limped out to Sinthia's car. He didn't need to see what Sinthia and Illya were going to do to the old man. Even if he would have liked to see it. He was just satisfied to have the girls out of there and safe. When they did finally emerge from the warehouse, Solo noticed with some satisfaction that smoke was rising from it.

It didn't take them long to decide that it was time to move on. Solo quit his job at the hospital. As much as he loved it, he loved his family much more. After some discussion, the three of them agreed on Paris.

On the plane, Solo stretched out his long legs and opened up the French language primer he'd bought. Illya looked at this with amusement. "Vous ne parlez pas français?" Illya asked.

"I took Spanish in school," Solo told him. "sabelotodo! I've never actually been on a private plane."

[abyssum_invocat]

Since Sinthia owned her apartment outright, she simply put it in caretaker mode, and transferred everything she needed to Paris, where she would be doing the same job for another branch of the company. She watched Illya and Solo on the plane as they both stretched out, contenting herself with holding their girls; Margot was dozing on her mother's shoulder, Mischa sitting in Sinthia's lap holding onto one of the small stuffed deer Illya had helped her with ages ago.

"We should work with you on your French," she said softly, not wanting to disturb the girls. "Since we both speak it fairly well. You'll learn with Mischa and Margot."

[itwontmatch]

"That's a brilliant idea," he smiled at the thought of buying French children's books and learning how to read them with the girls. They were already learning Russian together.

[abyssum_invocat]

"You have decent skill in Romance languages already if you know Spanish, so French ought to be easy. It's not nearly as difficult as Russian."

Sinthia couldn't say she didn't feel relief as the miles between them and New York, and all the Vor there, grew. But she still missed it in a way, even if she loved Paris and could live there happily.