“You could have killed me!”
“I have absolute control over my actions. Unfortunately, I signed a covenant not to kill you.”
My brows shot up as my anxiety waned a smidge. I grinned, finally tipping my face up to look at him. “Of course.” The covenant. I kept forgetting about that damn contract we signed that forced a truce between the bratva and the De Lucci crime family so the feds would leave both organizations alone.
It was the only thing preventing Kirill from breaking my neck.
He crouched in front of me. “You’ve presented me with a problem.” His icy blue eyes revealed nothing. Not even his dark hair falling over his forehead softened the sharp angles of his face.
“Viktor…”
“Is dead.”
“It was self-defense,” I argued. “It was me or him. He killed Bruce Davenport, too.”
“Oh, I know, but you’ve still given me a problem. It’s complicated to clean. We have two dead state troopers, which left me with only one choice.”
“Stage it as a traffic stop gone wrong.”
A telltale smile played on his mouth. “You’ve thought this out.”
“There’s not much to think out. It’s what happened,” I said, trying to ignore the pounding in my temples and the sandy feeling in my mouth. “Did you drug me?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Choking me wasn’t enough?”
“You had to remain unconscious while I dealt with the clusterfuck you created.” Kirill got up from his crouch and returned with a glass of water.
“Clusterfuck I created?” I winced when the increased volume of my voice sent a stab through my skull. I stared at the offered water dubiously.
“I would hardly go to the trouble of waking you up only to drug you all over again. We have time-sensitive arrangements to make.”
“Arrangements?”
He sighed heavily and held the water under the tip of my nose. “Maybe I damaged your brain. You seem to parrot everything I say.”
Asshole.
“Drink this,” he ordered, touching the rim of the glass to my mouth. “Don’t force me to pour this down your throat.”
“You’re impossible.” I grabbed the glass from him, unmindful that it sloshed over my hand, and took a tentative sip. But the relief of the liquid to my parched palate was so good, I took healthy gulps until I finished.
“Good girl. Now we talk.”
Kirill sat on the coffee table across from me. “You know the ramifications of Viktor’s death.”
“The heat is on you.”
“We can help each other.” Kirill Zahkarov was the acting pakhan of the New York bratva after his father stepped down last year. I’d met him face-to-face twice. Once during a dinner party where he mostly glared at me, and the second time was in a meeting with the feds where he was forced to play nice or risk more scrutiny on his organization.
“Why? You already staged the scene, right?”
“I can unmake it.” He held out his phone to show me a video. At first all I could make out were the backs of Viktor and his crew, but when they both fell to the ground and I got up, there was no mistaking my face on the video.
“You asshole. You stood there and would have let him shoot me.”
Kirill’s animosity sprang from my personal mission to expose the perpetrators of my friend’s murder. He’d been a corporate lawyer but got entangled in an investigation involving high-ranking officials of the government in a sex scandal. I wasn’t expecting the bratva angle, but my actions had the unexpected domino effect that took out key players of the New York bratva, landed one of their investment firms under SEC scrutiny, and sent Kirill’s best friend to prison.
