I’ll burn your world, Arthur,I think.I’ll dismantle your life piece by piece, and I’ll use your own daughter as the hammer.
I step back into the room.
"Boss."
I look down. Alexei is still tied to the chair.
He’s whimpering. His left hand is a ruin.
Lev is standing in the corner, two of our cleaners behind him. They are dressed in white plastic suits, ready to erase the evidence of my work.
"He’s still conscious," Lev notes.
"He stays conscious," I say, my voice flat. "The pain is the message. If he passes out, wake him up."
I walk over to the small steel sink in the corner. I turn on the tap and the water rushes out, icy cold. I examine my hands. A smear of Alexei’s blood, bright red against the crisp white cuff of my shirt.
I scrub it. The water turns pink, swirling down the drain.
I watch the blood vanish, and I feel nothing.
No guilt. No thrill.
This is just work. It’s the necessary maintenance of an empire.
To be the Bratva’s Enforcer is to be a garbage man. I take out the trash so the organization does not rot.
I dry my hands.
I was not born a butcher,I think, watching my reflection in the mirror above the sink.
I was made one.
My hand drifts to my neck. The scar is there, hidden beneath the collar of my shirt.
It starts to itch. It always itches when I spill blood.
It’s a reminder.
Twenty years ago, I wasn't a monster.
I was a Prince.
My father, Viktor Morozov, was thePakhan—the King of the Bratva. We commanded respect from Moscow to New York. We lived in a palace protected by a private army.
I was supposed to go to university in London. I wanted to learn the business of shipping in a boardroom, wearing a suit that didn't hide scars.
I was supposed to inherit a clean empire.
And I remember her.
It comes back to me in a flash.
A garden party at my father’s estate, months before the end.
Arthur Blackwood was there, laughing, drinking my father’s wine. He shook my father’s hand, a smile hiding the dagger.
They were supposed to be brothers. That is what my father called him.'My English brother.'
