Blaze nodded. “Oh, yeah. The Malefactor used to talk about it all the time. Carpet company. Bleach.”
Sarah continued, “And then you have the bodies taken out with the building’s trash. Yep, just like your father.Not original at all.”
Mary Varvara Bell glared at Sarah, her knuckles whitening where she held her pen.
Sarah shrugged, popping off, “Because that’s how my grandfather got people tofearhim and stayed in power for as long as he did. He put the fear of execution into them, of beingwhacked,because he liked the Italian word for it. He ruled with an iron fist, with terror, just like Vladimir Lvov.”
Skull Trim, whose name was evidently Daniil, said, “We don’t need to talk about Vladimir Lvov. He has nothing to do with these people.”
“I agree. We’re done talking,” Bell said. “But I don’t want these traitors to sully my carpet. Drive them to Rockland County or New Jersey. It is hunting season in the summer, right? No one will look into a few more gunshots in the woods.”
The mercenaries wrestled the six of them to their feet and started dragging them out when Blaze yelled over his shoulder, “Classic Evil Overlord mistake!”
“I’m getting tired of your comments,” Bell said without looking up.
“Yet another classic Evil Overlord mistake,” Blaze said. “I mean, it could’ve been worse. You could’ve set up a needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg machine and then walked away to complete your fiendish plan while we escaped.”
Mary Varvara Bell sighed. “I’ve already rejected your application. You’re not going to work for my organization.”
“As an officer and leader in the US military forces, it pains me to see mistakes made. You’re going to rely on your henchmen—”
She raised an eyebrow. “Henchmen?”
“—to drag us out into the woods and murder us. I guess that’s actually a classic Snow White’s Evil Stepmother mistake. Even a preteen girl can get away from an unsupervised murder.”
Her grim amusement turned to anger. “Logan, go with them and make sure it’s done properly.”
That was one, but Blaze needed thembothin the lobby.
“Can you trust Logan?” he asked.
Her dismissive wave and return to the papers on her desk worried Blaze. “He is my nephew.”
“Logan knows Vladimir Lvov better than you do. When we were at Le Rosey together, he spent every summer in the Russian dachas with his bratva friends’ parents.”
She didn’t look up. “Yes, that’s how I got to know Logan, too.”
“But he didn’t spend much time withyou.Logan was always chasing bigger and better things. He didn’t sit atyourfeet to learn how to run White Russian Holdings. He learned from the master, your father, and Vladimir Lvov.” Blaze didn’t want Logan to end up on the wrong end of the gun, just in prison. “Can you really trust Logan to execute his friends, the guys he was trying to place within your organization as trusted allies?”
Angry tremors fluctuating in Logan’s body finally erupted as he stepped forward and laid his hands on Mary Varvara Bell’s desk. “Are you really listening to the people you are about to kill?”
“He makes good points. If his points were any better, you and he would switch places, but they aren’t.” She set the pen down and stood, smoothing her white pantsuit. “Yet again, I have to do everything myself. We’llbothgo and make sure the job is done properly.”
Yes.
31
TRISTAN “TWIST” KING
Mary Varvara Bell’s office was equipped with a private elevator to the parking garage.
I’d already hacked that by tapping a link on my smartwatch that activated an app on my phone after Blaze and Sarah had been brought up from the garage.
When the Koch Group mercenaries force-marched my two best friends and all of our wives toward the garage elevator, a moment of nerves hit my stomach that perhaps they’d overridden my hack, but then Daniil finger-stabbed the call button about a dozen times before they gave up.
Never count the nerd out.
We always get the job done.
