“I’ll handle this,” I assured him.
“I trust you.”
Time to make good on my promise, as always.
**********
I hadn’t needed to step out of the car as my men carried out the extraction, but I did anyway.
I watched the whole capture through the window of the lead vehicle. As Sergei dragged her to one of the SUVs, I stepped out.
A closer look at her struck me with recognition.
I had known she was the nurse who cared for Liza last year since Sergei gave me a file on her a few hours earlier. He had also informed me that she had been in a relationship with Vitya while she stayed in New York with Liza and Roman. Although he also mentioned that some online sources claimed they were separated, there was no real proof of it. As I went through pictures of her in the file, I couldn’t remember any interaction with her in my brother’s house.
But as her eyes lifted and met mine, I remembered. I remembered that same copper brown hair brightening her face as she silently walked past me in the hallway. I definitely remembered her holding her own against Roman as she took care of Liza. She still looked every bit the quiet but unflinching nurse.
Recognition wasn’t the only thing that hit me as she looked back at me. There was unadulterated hatred in her eyes, and even though I wasn’t the type to care about something like that, it made me wonder why.
Is it because of Vitya?
She probably thought I implicated the love of her life by ratting him out to the Russian authorities and was here to abduct her, too. Vitya must have told her I was one of the people who could bring him down. He might have painted his betrayal differently to her; they were partners, after all.
Well, none of this is personal, as far as she’s concerned.
This was between the Bratva and a soldier-turned-betrayer. I was simply doing my job as the cleanup—no more, no less. It didn’t matter if she saw me as a villain or whatever. It didn’t matter that I didn’t always like cleaning up messes likethese; it was what I was built for. To me, she was just another leak to be sealed.
It’s as simple as that.
But as we drove away from the area, I couldn’t stop seeing the look on her face in my head. It wasn’t scared and was even further from threatening, for that matter, but it haunted me nonetheless.
I dialed Sergei’s line, and he picked up on the first ring.
“Don’t harm her unless I say so,” I told him.
“Yes, boss,” he answered.
Ending the call, I decided to interrogate her myself.
Hours later, we were driving into the unpaved parking in front of the stark safehouse. Located just outside Moscow, the secluded building was one of the Lobanov locations for “processing.”
“Place her in the second guest room,” I instructed Sergei. “With guards outside.”
“Yes, boss,” Sergei replied, signaling to his men who were now unmasked.
The moonlight shone on her frowning face as Sergei’s men led her out of the car.
The second guest room had no windows; it made it easier to break people quickly. I chose it because, for some reason beyond Viktor’s instructions, I didn’t want to prolong this interrogation.
A few minutes later, I went to the guest room.
She didn’t look up to the door until I had closed it behind me.
I went to where she stood at the edge of the bed. Then she gazed up at me before I could say anything.
“Konstantin Lobanov,” she uttered, her voice sharp. “You’re the one who killed him.”
What’s she rambling about?
