“You know, when a face is nothing but mush, it’s usually a pretty good indicator that he’s dead,” Stella says lightly.
I’m not laughing. Not even close.
“Are you okay?” I ask, getting up to my feet, lifting her shirt just enough to see the fresh bruise blooming across her stomach. My hand finds her cheek, realizing that fucker’s slap was hardenough to split her lip. “He got off light.” I curse under my breath.
“I’m fine.” She swats my hand away. “Now is not the time for you to go soft on me.”
Shit. Maybe I am going soft. At least when it comes to her. I know she can handle herself. Fuck. I saw it with my own eyes. Yet, seeing her in any kind of pain is doing my head in.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she says, dragging my focus off her bruised lip and back to those jeweled eyes. She tips her head toward the double doors, and only then do I remember why we’re even here tonight.
Fury and unadulterated rage awaken the monster in me as I storm toward Sergei’s makeshift sanctuary and kick the doors open. The idiot fires his gun at us, bullets grazing the doorframe. I grab Stella and pull her behind the wall, shielding her with my body as plaster explodes all around us.
We still our breaths, listening to the familiar metallic click of an empty chamber. I release Stella and quickly step into the room, snatching the gun from Sergei’s trembling hand and cracking it across the side of his skull. He crumples to his knees instantly.
“You really should work on your hospitality,” Stella drawls, hopping onto the edge of the bed and crossing her legs as if settling in to watch a movie.
Sergei doesn’t even look at her. His eyes are locked on me. Because he knows. He knows these are the last minutes he has on this earth.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he babbles in Russian. “I was just following orders. A soldier cannot disobey thePakhan. You know this. Please, Kirill, don’t kill me. You can’t kill me. I did nothing wrong. Vasily ordered me to find her. He ordered me, Kirill. I had to follow his orders. I had to.”
My pulse pounds in my ears. Vasily’s name ghosting through this room does something dark to me. This man—this coward—delivered my sister to her death. And here he is, talking to me about… orders?!
“I’ve got my orders too,” I tell him quietly. Coldly. “Orders frommy Pakhan. Orders to kill you, Sergei. And kill you slowly. Those are my fucking orders.”
Sergei clasps his hands in prayer and starts to cry, releasing pathetic, choking sobs. However, his pleas bounce off me like rain on steel. Because now that I’m looking into his eyes… now that he’s finally here, kneeling at my feet… all I see is my sister. All I see is Katya, on her knees, begging him to save her.
Every emotion I’ve kept buried claws its way to the surface—rage, grief, loss. The hollow ache and emptiness that my brothers and I had to endure with Katya’s death. The way we all thanked God himself that our grandmother had lost her sight years earlier, so she wouldn’t have to suffer seeing what those bastards did to my poor sister’s body.
No. Sergei must suffer. He deserves to die slow—bleeding, screaming, begging me to end his pain.
Still, his men were loud. Too loud. Sirens will be heard any minute. So I don’t have the luxury of time—another thing this piece of shit stole from me and my brothers.
I grab Sergei by the hair, yank his head back, and pull Stella’s knife from my belt. His eyes widen a second before I ram the blade up under his jaw—hard—splitting bone and soft palate. His whole body jerks as I hold him like that just to watch the light of life in his eyes begin to fade. Then, with a sharp twist, I drag the blade forward and carve a straight line up the roof of his mouth until steel bursts out through the top of his skull—fast, precise, and gruesome. He twitches once, then falls to the floor like a puppet with cut strings. Ironic really. He lived as Vasily’s puppet and died like one, too.
I wipe the blade on his shirt and turn to an attentive Stella. “I’m done here.” I extend my hand to her. She jumps off the bed and takes it without complaint, letting me pull her toward the door. However, we only take a few steps before she pulls us to a halt. The distant wail of sirens fast approaching the hotel is a telltale sign that tonight’s adventures are far from over.
“Come. I have an idea.” She darts toward Sergei’s bathroom, leading me by the hand. “Take off your clothes.”
“What?Now?”
“Oh, just do it,” she orders in annoyance, already stripping out of her bloody top and pants. My mouth goes dry when she’s down to black lingerie—blood, curves, and chaos wrapped in lace.
When she sees I’ve not yet moved an inch to undress myself, she starts for me.
“As much as I’d love nothing more than to fuck you over Sergei’s corpse,” I mutter, “the cops will be here any second.”
“Stop messing around and help me,” she snaps, yanking my long-sleeve over my head, but freezes when her gaze lands on my tattoos.
It’s not the intricate stars on my shoulders that hold Stella’s attention. It’s the spiderweb crawling upward across my chest toward my neck, the black ink licking over my skin like flames that holds her gaze. Her eyes track every line as if committing it to memory. She only snaps out of it when I start unbuckling my belt.
“Good. Take all of it off and then wash the blood off your face and run your hair under the water,” she continues with her list of demands.
I watch Stella scrub her face and hands clean of blood, then douse her hair dripping wet under the faucet. To say I’m confused is putting it mildly. But I do as she says, watching her reflection in the mirror as she bolts to Sergei’s bed and yanks apillowcase free. She runs back to the bathroom, wraps herself in a complimentary white hotel robe, and then proceeds to shove all our bloody clothes inside it. She primes it into an oval shape and then stuffs it under her hotel robe, making her look at least nine months pregnant.
“Hurry,” she urges, tossing me another robe.
I take her lead and throw it on and follow her out of the penthouse.
