My back hits the wall before I even notice Dimitri moving, his fingers twisting in my black shirt. When his dark eyes glow, I see it. The savagery of the Bratva.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
Boris says a few words in Russian, flicking ash on the ground. “Careful,” he chides, using English for my benefit. “Look at his fucking face. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Beneath the brim of his flat cap, Dimitri’s brow furrows.
I thought the brutality of killing a guy with her hands had fucked with Isolde’s mind, and that’s where her tears were coming from.
I push Dimitri off me. “What the fuck is a Spider?”
“What the fuck is a Spider?” Dimitri tugs at his cap. “Your girl took out a Spider, and you don’t fucking know?”
“No.” Someone needs to start explaining.
“Then how do you know it was a Spider?” Dimitri asks.
“Because Hadrian and Isolde said it was.”
Dimitri’s head swivels toward Boris.
He takes a deep drag of the cigar, smoke curling from his lips before he shrugs.
“Fucking Hallow. That. Fucking. Fuck!” Dimitri paces. He tugs at his hat so hard I think the fabric might split. “What the fuck are they doing that they know about the Spider.”
“Is the Spider not a triggerman?” I ask.
Dimitri laughs. “A triggerman. Oh, sure. Yeah, a fucking triggerman.”
I look to Boris for help.
He flicks more ash to the ground. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met a Spider.”
What the fuck does that mean?
“A Spider. . .” Dimitri scratches his goatee. “The Spider is amyth. Or perhaps a ghost story. Or maybe he is just a triggerman. I wouldn’t know.”
“Someone sent him to kill Isolde,” I point out. He was definitely a triggerman.
Dimitri nods. “Yeah. And in the 1970s, you remember that guy stirring up trouble in Libya? A Spider also killed him.”
Boris shrugs. “Supposedly.”
“Slovakia’s president in 1999,” Dimitri says. “Killed by a Spider.”
Boris shrugs again. “Rumored.”
“That rich dude who died unexpectedly on his yacht last summer. Spider!”
Boris nods. “That one is most likely true.”
Luis said the man looked to be in his late forties to early fifties. “That’s a long time to be active.”
Dimitri closes his eyes, taking a deep breath like I’ve just pointed out the stupidest thing.
Boris inhales tobacco. “The Spider is not just one man.”
Understanding dawns. “A network.”
