Without wasting a second, I stride back to Slavik’s body and turn it over.
The last bullet is stuck into his skull. “Maks,” I call. “Get this out, now.”
Maksim’s face looks a little queasy. “You want me to dig around Slavik’s brain?”
“Unless you’ve got a better option for retrieving the bullet.”
I can tell his scruples are bothering him. Out of all my men, Maksim has always been the most honorable. But right now, I don’t need honor. I need to get shit done, and I need it yesterday.
Muttering curses in Russian, Maksim slips on a pair of gloves and gets to work.
As he picks our dead comrade’s brain—literally—I take a turn around the room, looking for anything Zhenya might have missed.
On Slavik’s desk, I find it.
“Did the mail come while you were here?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Zhenya frowns. “Slavik was carrying it. We went up together. Why?”
“Did he open it?”
“No. We had business to get to. He left it all there.”
I sift through Slavik’s mail. Work, work, cable spam—there.
The second I see the envelope, I know.
It’shishandwriting. I could never mistake it for anyone else’s, not as long as I live.
Because the hand that wrote this is the same one that doomed my family.
Got you, bastard.
I empty out the envelope. A rain of orange pips falls to the ground—six in total.
Then a note.
“I’ve got it,” Maksim says, holding up the bloodstained bullet. “There’s something etched on it. It says?—”
“Four.”
He blinks. “How’d you know?”
“Because I know who did this. And what he’s going to do next.”
My blood is boiling. I crumple the note in my fist like it’s trash, fighting the urge to rip it to shreds.
“One down, five to go.”
“He didn’t fucking miss,” I growl. “He shot wide on purpose. He’s toying with us.”
Desya sent this to Slavik long before today. He was planning this—knew he was going to kill him before he even set foot at Brad’s inauguration gala, before he got his hands on Mia. This, all of this, was planned God knows when.
And he wants me to know it. Wants me to know exactly how many steps ahead he is.
“What does it mean?” Maksim asks, reading the note over my shoulder.
“It means war.”
