Page 5 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

The tip of the blade presses against the hollow of Jagger’s throat, not enough to break the skin, but enough to promise I could. “Where is Thomas’s daughter Sandrine?”

I can give a shit about the money at this point.

Jagger shakes his head. “He made me swear to never tell where she was. She’s hidden.”

“Hidden where?” I roar. When Jagger says nothing, I bark at Drago, “Go through those files. Now.”

My enforcer crosses the room to that file cabinet of sins and secrets, wrenching a drawer open with the sharp screech of metal. He searches files and pulls out something.

“I got Thomas’s will here,” he says, putting a folder on Jagger’s desk. “Instructions for funds and… Fuck, Kirill. It’s all here.”

“You had your chance, Jagger.” I raise the knife.

“Thomas warned me about you.” He jerks his chin upward in a last attempt at bravery. “Said you were a monster who raped his daughter and kept her against her will in that penthouse of yours.”

I freeze at that particularly damning accusation. De la Vega told those lies to earn sympathy for himself and to justify keeping her from me after she went missing. I did no such thing. I loved Sandrine, and she loved me.

“You need to look at this, Kirill.” Drago points to a printout in the folder.

I look down and scan an amendment to Thomas De la Vega’s will. His instructions are jumbled and chaotic. All I can make out are words underlined:

Sell the paintings.

Provide for Sandrine.

Maintain discretion.

Provide. The word grates on my nerves again, but I push past it, my focus narrowing to the only thing that matters.

“Where is she?” I slash Jagger’s arm. “I’m only going to ask you one more time.”

“I don’t know,” Jagger admits, his voice trembling.

“You were warned about me, were you?” I slash the other arm. “You know who I am. Heir to the Bratva. I would have paid twice what you got for that painting.”

I never should have paid ten million dollars at all, but Ares fucking Zervas showed up at the auction to threaten me and stayed to drive up the bid to be a dick. But he had no idea I was there to buy one of Sandrine’s paintings.

He has her. Somewhere.

It was just a hunch this scumbag would know. Now it’s clear he’s just selling her paintings and keeping the money. For that, he deserves to die.

I drop the knife and beat Jagger with my fists. His head snaps back, the chair tipping and crashing to the floor with him still bound to it. I follow, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and hauling him up.

“And I’m not a rapist,” I growl into his bloodied face. “I’m a murderer.”

I drive my fist into his ribs. Each impact reverberates up my arm, grounding me in its physicality.

“Kirill.” Drago’s voice cuts through my rage haze. “He’s dead.”

Looking down at the crumpled figure in my grasp, I curse, my chest rising and falling. He isn’t moving. A thin line of blood trails from the corner of his mouth.

I shove the man away, letting his body drop onto the dusty wooden floor with a dull, final thud.

“Fuck.” The word tears out of me, laced with frustration at being here again.

The sight of Jagger pulls me back in time to another interrogation. Another man bloody and broken in my warehouse after hours of demanding answers and getting nowhere. Then the only lead I had to find Sandrine ended up wrapped around a tree before I got the truth.

“We have De la Vega’s papers,” Drago says, already moving back to the desk, gathering all the files. “We’ll find her.”