My jaw tightens and I rub my forehead.
She should have killed me. Any professional worth their salt would have put a bullet in my skull the moment I turned around. Instead, she played games. Let me see her face. Let me hear her voice. Let me survive.
Sloppy.
Arrogant.
Stupid.
I shake my head and unlock the tablet and look down at a man's face: Bogdan Cristea.
He's a fifty-two-year-old former military police officer. He was discharged for "conduct unbecoming," a polite way of saying he beat a suspect to death and got caught. Since then, he's worked as muscle-for-hire, a fixer for men who need dirty work done quietly.
Men like Cornel Lupu.
According to my sources, Bogdan was the one who staged Elena's accident. He was the one who pulled her from the wreckage, drugged her, and delivered her to Cornel like a package. He was the one who set the fire, destroyed the evidence, and walked away while my brother's world burned.
Adrian doesn't know about him.
I could tell him. Could give him this name, this face, this address, and let him do what he does best. But Adrian needs to focus on Elena. Giving him a target to hunt would be giving him permission to spiral, and I won't do that to him.
Not when I can handle it myself, and I need to. I need to be the one doing the killing for what they did to my family. Not showing up when they're already dead.
I zoom in on Bogdan's photograph. He's living in a house in Constan?a, a port city on the Black Sea, working security at a shipping warehouse. Of course he is.
But with a job comes routine, and that routine can be learned.
Right now he thinks he's safe, thinks an Ionescu doesn't know he exists.
In three days he'll learn that's not true.
I should be focused on this. Should be running scenarios, mapping escape routes, planning the disposal. Instead, my thoughts keep sliding sideways, drifting back to a rundown country house and a woman who threatened my family.
Forget about the Volkovs, or you and your brothers will be killed quicker than we have planned.
I replay the words in my head.Quicker than we have planned.Which means there is a plan. The Volkovs have something in motion, something that involves my family, and this blonde cleaner is part of it.
I should be concerned about that.
I am concerned about that.
But when I close my eyes, I don't see shadowy Russian conspiracies or Volkov hit squads descending on Bucharest. I see cold blue eyes. I see full lips forming words in that subtle accented voice.
You're not running your mouth now. What a shame.
I stand up with a grunt and walk over and pour out just a little more whiskey.
My fingers tighten around the glass.
She was fast. Faster than anyone I've faced in years. I had at least seven or eight inches on her, and she moved around me like I was nothing. One moment I had her wrist and the next, I sigh and take a sip.
A fluke.
She reacted on instinct, got lucky with the angle.
So why didn't she finish the job?
The question nags at me, and I hate that it does.
