Elijah frowns, this detail new to him.
“Those legs loved to spread for Lev. Hmmmm, yes, I always wondered how you two got on. If I could have, I would have felt sorry for you, but. . .” He lingers, implying it’d be very hard for him to feel sorry for Yelena. “Some bitches just bring misery upon themselves.”
The hair on the back of my neck rises when Yelena softly smiles.
“You are still upset about Kyiv then?”
Foreign words rattle down the phoneline. Swear words, if I had to guess.
An amused huff leaves Yelena. “Do you still walk with a limp?”
The Spider’s silence is a stark contrast to his shit talking. And it goes on. One beat, two. Yelena doesn’t move, her arms crossed as she hovers over the phone, bored again.
The man’s voice is deeper, gruffer when he speaks up again. “You escalate a war that you have no part in.”
Yelena glances at Isolde. “I am fond of women who destroy unworthy men.”
“You’re a cunt, Yelena. Always were. Always will be. If you think you can worm your way into this affair simply because you assume this to be an opportune time to try us again, you are mistaken, bitch.”
“Us?” Yelena laughs. “You are a dying breed, Christian. Anton is dead. It is just you.
“Come and meet with me,” she demands.
Christian huffs.
“Your chaos has touched my city. I tire of it. Come and put this to rest.”
“I will kill the girl.”
Tyler holds me steady.
“You will meet with us,” Yelena states.
“And if I?—”
“You know Tristan Trevino, no?” she asks, meeting my eye. “The Ghost, they call him.”
“A bitch of a bodyguard if I ever heard of one.”
She smiles. “I have told him about Mazen.”
She has not told me about Mazen. But based on the tense silence ringing down the line, he is of great importance.
“What the fuck do you know about Mazen?” Christian growls.
She tsks. “You did not know he was here?” After a beat of silence, she continues. “I suppose it is no matter. Trevino is very worried about his woman. He will do what is necessary.”
Me and this Mazen guy are being used as bait. And Christian knows it too.
“That’s the play then?”
“And you will take it,” Yelena says, “not because Wilf was your favorite brother, but because even after all of these years you still love his wife, Magsie, more than anything in this entire world. It must kill you. . .”
Yelena takes no notice of the room anymore. Isolde has been inching up to the desk, but the look on Yelena’s face is akin to someone deep in their memories and thoughts. She could map out a family tree of the Karamazovs. There’s no doubt in my mind she could list out who and where they are.
We shouldn’t be afraid of the Spider. We should be afraid of Yelena Zimin.
“Do you really want to risk Magsie’s oldest son when you couldn’t save her other.”
