CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
DINARA
Spider’s lidsflutter open slowly, confusion clouding his features before sharpening into fear. He tries to move and realizes he can’t. I’ve got him tied to a kitchen chair with the electrical cord from his lamp, hands bound behind his back, ankles secured to the chair legs with duct tape.
The ether knocked him out for maybe ten minutes. Long enough to secure him. Long enough to pull the hood back from my face because what’s the point of hiding now?
Tonight will be his last.
“What the fuck?” he slurs, still groggy. His gaze focuses on me standing in front of him, knife in hand.
I don’t answer. I study him. Up close, he looks more pathetic than he did asleep. Bloodshot eyes, broken capillaries across his nose, several teeth missing on the left side, the rest yellowed and crooked. A man who’s been waiting to die for a long time.
Good. That makes this easier.
“My name is Dinara Potapova,” I say, circling him. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
His laugh is mocking. “No. Should it?”
I move fast, pressing the blade to his throat hard enough to draw a thin line of blood. His laugh cuts off. I lean in close enough to smell the vodka on his breath, the stale cigarettes soaked into his clothes.
“Here’s how this works,” I say quietly. “You’re not leaving this apartment alive. That’s already decided. But you can make it easy on yourself, or you can make it very, very hard. Your choice.”
I twist the knife, and a fresh ribbon of red trails down his neck. His chest hitches but he doesn’t struggle.
“You’re disgusting,” I spit. “You ruined so many lives without a shred of remorse.”
He coughs, a wet, hacking sound that shakes his whole body. When he catches his breath, he looks at me with a watery stare that holds no fear.
“I am disgusting,” he says hoarsely. “There’s a special place in hell waiting for me, that’s for sure. But if this is how it ends, so be it.”
“Hell can wait,” I say flatly. “Right now, you’re in my world. And in my world, you talk or you bleed. Your choice.”
He spits off to the side. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. Consider it unburdening my soul before I leave this life.”
His lack of fear throws me. I expected begging or bargaining for his life. Not this bleak acceptance mixed with what sounds like confession.
My hand tightens on the grip but I pull back, reassessing. Maybe pain isn’t the leverage I need here. Maybe his guilt is.
“If my name means nothing to you, what about Sonya Potapova? Or maybe you knew her as Marina Voronina?”
The drunken fog clears, replaced by sudden, sharp clarity.
“Marina Voronina? The Voronin girl from St. Petersburg?”
“That’s her. Before you and your men trafficked her to the US. Sold her like cattle at Velour.”
A bitter laugh escapes him, rough and humorless. “You’ve got it wrong, kid. Marina Voronina wasn’t trafficked. She died young.”
I grit my teeth, patience running thin. “She didn’t die. She faked her death and lived under a new identity. I should know. Marina Voronina was my mother!” I press the blade harder to his throat. “I saw the men who took her. They had the Kupola Network tattoo. They knew who she was.”
“The Voronins wouldn’t traffic their own daughter. Don’t you get it? Who do you think ran the Kupola Network?” Spider’s words are punctuated by a wet, rattling wheeze. “It wasn’t just the Baronovs. It was a partnership between two bratva families. The Voronins in Russia and the Baronovs in the US. The Voronins recruited the women and shipped them over. The Baronovs handled everything on this side. Distribution, auctions, sales.”
My grip slackens on the handle, dizziness washing over me. My mother’s family? Involved in this shit? Involved with the Baronovs?
“You’re wrong,” I spit. I pull out my phone and navigate to the photo I downloaded from the FSB files. Marina as a teen, standing next to her father, looking miserable and trapped. I hold it up so he can see. “Look at this. Look closely. This is her. And you better be absolutely certain she wasn’t one of the women you brought from Russia, because if you’re lying to me, I’m going to start removing fingers until your memory improves.”
