“Get the fuck back here!” Blasts through the night sky, revealing a cherry red Griff and a somewhat manic-looking Fredrick.
Assholes can’t even play with their food correctly. My point is further made as I watch Jackson and Mikah join in the hunt.
I instantly recognize one of the victims trying to escape, and my face scrunches up in confusion.
What is he doing here?
Dr. Winston Parks—the Chemist. All around, vile waste of human meat sack. He’s directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people when he released his neurotoxins into the reservoir of a small rural community.
That incident landed him one of the most influential positions within Serge Volkov’s Bratva. He’s not someone you want to enter the chat when Serge wants to punish you.
Winston Parks is a madman—a brilliant madman, but a madman just the same. His penchant for poison nearly rivals Izzy’s.
“I wonder what you did to piss off the powers that be that they offered you up to these sick fucks?” I mutter into the void, wishing it would answer me back.
I’m so focused on the exchange that I almost fall out of the tree when the first shot is fired.
“Stupid bastard,” Fredrick shouts, firing another round at whoever he’s chasing. “Didn’t I tell you not to run until I said fucking go?”
The person’s body topples to the ground, jerking as half his face scatters into the dead of night.
Underwhelmed, I refocus on Mikah, bypassing Griff and Jackson as they continue to chase Winston.
“Where did you think you were going?” Mikah seethes, gripping the throat of a woman I don’t recognize, and I kick myself for not reading their files more closely.
She’s a curvy, mid-sized blonde with barely any clothing left on. Her shirt’s been ripped down the middle, exposing what was once a white bra, but now is caked in blood and muck.
My chest tightens, and a small sliver of sympathy snakes its way up to my heart. I know what’s in store for her tonight. She’s going to be brutalized in ways that will make her pray for death.
“Bet you never thought you’d end up in our hands, did you, Sonja?”
Recognition slaps me across the face, triggering a memory, and all sympathy for this woman vanishes. This bitch is definitely not a girl’s girl. She may just be worse than these animals.
Sonja Solovyova—the Madam.
These guys suck at names. Like, how unoriginal can you be?The Chemist—the Madam.
Negative five stars for creativity.
Sonja begs, slipping in and out of Russian, for her life. But fuck her life.
“How many women and children begged you for their lives, hmmm?” Mikah’s question drips with condescension. “How many pretty little girls and boys did you offer up before having spa days and lattes?”
“Pozhaluysta,”she hiccups. “Please, Mikah. I-I-I have money or girls.” Sonja pauses, and I watch as the gears in her brain try to figure out which bargaining lever to pull in order to escape with her life.
Fucking skin peddler.
“Not so tough now, are you?” Mikah mocks, tightening his hold around her neck. “I’ve been waiting over a decade to get my hands on you.”
Sonja’s hands fly up, nails clawing at his skin in desperation as her face goes at least five shades of red in under a second.
Don’t kill the bitch yet. That’s too easy.
“Is this how you offered up my siblings—myTalia?”
Shock. It’s the only emotion I can identify in this moment.
“Were you begging like this when you were in the clutches of the crooked governor and his buddies at that party twelve years ago?” Mikah doesn’t let up, shaking her before he launches her in the air and across the grass.
