“Please. Have mercy.”
“This is your mercy.” Korotkii drew a gun from the small of his back, pressed the barrel to Alexi’s forehead and fired.
Elizabeth’s legs gave way. She fell to her knees, her hand clamped over her mouth to trap the scream.
Korotkii spoke softly as he put the gun to Alexi’s temple, fired twice more.
His expression never changed, held like a mask as he murdered. Then it sharpened as he looked up and toward the kitchen.
“I don’t feel good, Alex. I need to lie down, or maybe we should— Who are you?”
“Ah, fuck your mother,” he muttered, and shot Julie twice, where she stood. “Why didn’t we know he had his whore with him?”
The second man walked over to Julie, shook his head. “This is a new one. Very young.”
“She won’t be older.”
Elizabeth’s vision grayed. It was a dream. A nightmare. Because of the drinking and being sick. She’d wake up any second. Huddled in the dark, she stared at Alex. There was hardly any blood, she noted. If it was real, wouldn’t there be more blood?
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
But the terror only spiked when she saw Ilya come in.
They’d kill him, too. The man would shoot him. She had to help. She had to—
“God damn it, what have you done?”
“What I was ordered to do.”
“Your orders were to break his arms and to do it tomorrow night.”
“The orders changed. Our informant got us word. Alexi went to bed with the cops.”
“Christ. Motherfucker.”
Elizabeth watched in horror as Ilya kicked the dead Alex, once, twice, three times.
One of them, she thought. He was one of them.
Ilya stopped, pushed at his hair, then saw Julie’s body. “Ah, fuck. Was that necessary?”
“She saw us. We were told his whore left with another man.”
“It was this one’s bad luck he was looking for fresh meat. Where’s the other one?”
“Other?”
The beautiful dark eyes went to ice. “There were two. This one and another—short black hair, red dress.”
“Yegor.”
With a nod, the big man drew a knife and started up the stairs. Ilya gestured, and, following orders, Korotkii moved toward the kitchen while Ilya walked to the terrace doors.
“Liz,” he murmured. “It’s all right, Liz. I’ll take care of you.”
He slid a knife out of his boot, held it behind his back, flipped on the outside lights.
He saw her shoes, scanned the terrace, rushed to the rail.
