“Why?”
“The Valentinis provided him with whores.” My nod was unapologetic. “You weren’t his only provider. His perversions were many and his final gift to her—an illness. It has made her… volatile.”
“He didn’t get an STI from our girls. We insist they use protection and we don’t let them work if they’re sick.”
He shrugged. “A man like that has many sources that feed his addiction.”
“She paid for the kill…,” I remarked, sensing this was the final piece to the puzzle that was Brackton’s murder—one that had evaded us all. “…because the STI was the final straw?”
Taube snorted. “She didn’t pay shit. I did itpro bonoonce I knew who was behind the request. When I saw it on the ledger, I contacted Stasia and told her I was offended she didn’t come to me first. She might be a nutcase, but she’s a product of her environment and Brackton was grade A cuntwaffle.”
“Aunt must have been desperate to put it on the ledger,” Sofia whispered.
“With that twatface for a husband and dicknozzle Graham for a son, damn straight she was.” Taube soothed, “Things will be better for her soon, Sony. You’ll see.”
Kitty shook her head. “This is nuts.”
“Our world often is,” Sofia commented with a sorrowful smile.
“How did you know it was Anastasia behind the listing?”
Taube shrugged at my question. “Everyone else who wanted him dead had people to do it for them.”
“So you just reached out and asked if she wanted to murder her husband?!”
“Of course.” A gleam appeared in her eyes. “I’ll do yours for youpro bonotoo, Kitty, if you want.”
Her snort had me pouting. “I like him?—”
“You do now. Talk to me in twenty years and remind me I offered you a discount.”
“Hey! You said you’d do it for free!”
“I amhere, you know?”
When she patted my forearm, I heaved a put-upon sigh. “You want your mother out of the institution, Ilya?”
“I want thembothout of Shady Pines. I can’t move against Graham Jr. Not in this country. She isn’t even listed on my birth certificate so my rights are few.Youcan move against my sibling.” He angled his head to the side. “A favor from me might not seem too impressive now, but it will be soon.”
“Why? What’s happeningsoon?”
“Any sense my uncle had burned away when he lost Sofia. He’s a chronic insomniac and, my second favor… I wish to use your compounds to torment him. As he has made Sofia suffer throughout her childhood. As he has tormented my mother.
“I want him to crave death. Taube told me about C-L-O and I wish to use this to exterminate him from this world. Will you help me do this? Will you earn the loyalty of the next Krestniy Otets?”
“Yes, Ilya’s very ambitious,” Taube joked, but the other man ignored her, just kept his gaze fixed on me.
I pursed my lips, hesitant to involve myself in this situation without conferring with my brother and sister, but Kitty slipped her hand into mine.
“It sounds like a worthy cause to me,” she rasped.
Though the look I shot her was definitely stunned, I shielded it from the rest of the table’s occupants.
Her head tipped forward in the slightest of nods.
I didn’t need her permission. If anything, I needed my siblings’ but…
Fuck, I knew how she abhorred the drugs I’d made. Even as their composition and pharmacologic effects fascinated her. That I had her acceptance in this meant more to me than she could ever know.
