Ruthless Sin (Ruthless #3)

Prologue

NICO

MOSCOW. THREE YEARS AGO.

My wrists are zip-tied to the chair.

Concrete beneath my boots, rough and freezing through the leather.

Above me, a single bulb sways on a frayed wire, throwing shadows that don’t hold still.

Every breath grinds my ribs. The wet shirt clings to my chest, soaked from three knife wounds.

The fourth cut sits lower, four inches beneath my left ribcage.

Hot. Deep. That one is going to kill me if I don’t move.

Six feet across from me, another chair. A woman.

Yelena.

Her hands zip-tied to the armrests. Hair loose. Blood at her temple from where the guard hit her on the way in. Her chin is up.

Breathing.

Still breathing.

Still alive. Keep her there.

The door opens and Alexei Morozov walks in like he owns the air in the room. Cigarette between two fingers. Suit jacket gone, sleeves rolled to his elbows, no hurry in any part of him. He crosses toward her without looking at me.

“Last chance, dorogaya.” Darling. “Tell me which family sent him. Tell me who else knows.”

She doesn’t look at him.

She looks at me.

“No one sent him,” she says. Steady as a wall. “He came alone.”

“Liar.”

He backhands her.

Her head snaps left. Blood at the corner of her mouth now, spreading into what was already there.

I pull against the restraints until the chair scrapes the floor and my shoulders tear and the cuts along my chest open wider and I hear myself make a sound I don’t recognize.

Move. Do something. Anything.

I can’t.

Alexei turns to me.

“Canadian.” He smiles, and his eyes don’t. “You’re very quiet. Tell me. What did she promise you? Money? Routes? Or did you fuck her first and then make the deal?”

I don’t answer.

His smile drops.

“No?”

He walks to Yelena’s chair. Puts the cigarette out on the armrest, six inches from her hand.

She doesn’t flinch.

Christ. She’s not flinching.

“I will ask you one more time, Yelena. Who sent him.”

“I told you.”

He grabs her wrist and twists it slow, like he has all night, until something gives and she makes a sound, small, bitten off fast, before she locks it down.

“Stop.” The word’s out before I can pull it back.

Alexei looks at me. Interested now.

“Ah. He does speak.”

He releases her wrist. Walks toward me and crouches three feet away so we’re level. His cigarette smoke reaches me before he does.

“Tell me your real name.”

“Martin Leclerc.”

“Your real name.”

“That’s my name.”

He studies me. Five seconds. Ten. His face does nothing.

I taste blood. The wound in my side is getting warmer.

Stay awake.

That’s Dante’s voice, or close enough to be his.

Behind Alexei’s shoulder, Yelena’s eyes find mine. She gives me nothing. No plea, no terror. Just that steady, terrible calm.

Alexei walks back to her.

“I don’t believe you,” he says, and pulls a knife from his belt.

He touches the blade to her collarbone. Deliberate. Patient. The cut he makes is shallow, a thin red line drawn across her skin. Not about damage yet. About time.

“Don’t.” I pull until the chair legs scrape the floor. My ribs grind. “She’s telling you the truth. I came alone. I’m a buyer. That’s it.”

“A buyer.” He presses down again, her shoulder this time. “For what, exactly?”

I don’t answer.

“Logistics,” he says. “Shipping routes. That’s what you told my men, yes.” Another cut, her forearm, same shallow patience. “But buyers don’t make side deals with the Pakhan‘s daughter. Buyers don’t meet in safehouses at three in the morning.”

Yelena doesn’t make a sound, but I do — low and involuntary, the sound a man makes before he breaks.

“I approached her.”

“With what?” He cuts again. “What did you offer Dmitri’s daughter that she would betray me?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

He cuts again.

Yelena’s breathing changes. Still controlled. Barely.

I want to look away. I don’t let myself.

My hands are shaking. I hate that they’re shaking. I can’t make them stop. The shirt at my side is soaked through in a way it wasn’t twenty minutes ago, warmth spreading into my waistband, and I keep talking.

“Stop,” I say. “Fucking stop. I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

“Then tell me who you work for.”

The cover holds. The cover has to hold. If it breaks, everyone who matters to me becomes a name he can use.

“No one.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “I’m independent. I buy shipping contracts. That’s all.”

“Shipping.” He tilts his head. “And Dmitri’s daughter just decided to trust a Canadian businessman with Bratva intelligence?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Tell me your real name.”

“Martin Leclerc.”

The blade goes to her throat.

“Your. Real. Name.”

Yelena’s eyes find mine.

No fear in them.

Resolve.

She starts humming.

Quiet, under her breath, a melody I know. I heard it weeks ago in a safehouse, late, both of us half-drunk on bad vodka. She sang it low, eyes closed. Told me about her sister afterward.

Milochka.

I used to sing this to her when she couldn’t sleep.

She’s humming it now.

In this room.

With a blade at her throat.

“What are you doing,” Alexei says.

She doesn’t stop.

“Zamolchi.” Shut up.

She hums louder.

Yelena. No. Yelena, please.

He pulls the knife back and drives it into her throat in one motion.

She stops humming.

Her breath catches, wet and small, and then comes back shallow, bubbling at her throat.

My chest pulls in on itself and won’t come back. The bulb keeps swinging. The blood at my side keeps moving. I am still in this chair. She is still in hers.

Alexei steps back. Looks at the blade. Wipes it on his pants.

“Stubborn,” he says. “Like her father.”

He walks to the door. Stops with his hand on the frame, his back to me, and lights another cigarette. The match flares orange against the wall.

“I don’t know who you are, Canadian.” He doesn’t turn around. “But I will. Tonight.” A long exhale of smoke. “And when I find out. Your people. I send them pieces of you.”

He walks out.

The door closes.

Silence.

Just my breathing and her in the chair six feet away.

Still breathing.

Barely.

Her eyes open and find mine.

Her lips move.

No sound at first.

I lean forward as far as the restraints allow. Plastic cuts deeper. The wound pulls open another inch. I don’t stop.

“Yelena.”

“Naydi yeyo.” Find her.

The words come out broken. Barely voice.

“Naydi Milochku.” Find Milochka.

“I don’t—”

“Obeshchay mne.” Promise me.

Blood running slow down her neck. Her breathing gone shallow. Seconds, maybe less.

“Ty mne eto dolzhen.” You owe me this.

“Klyanus’.”

I swear.

Her lips move again. Barely.

“Spasibo.” Thank you.

Her eyes stay open.

She’s gone.

I sit there. Can’t move. Can’t look away from her face.

The bulb swings.

Her blood spreads patient across the concrete, in no hurry.

Move.

I don’t.

Move.

The left cuff is loose. The guard who put it on was sloppy, or tired, or both. I’ve been waiting. Not while Alexei was in the room. Not while she was still alive. Now there’s nothing left to wait for.

Now.

I twist. Pull. The plastic bites through to bone. I don’t care. My hand slips through. Then the other.

I stand.

The guard is outside, on his phone, laughing about something.

My legs give out and I go down hard on one knee, the concrete hitting my ribs, the wound at my side flaring white. I grip the chair and make my legs remember what they’re for.

I cross the six feet and kneel beside her.

There’s a wooden cross at her throat, small, hand-carved, the dark wood worn smooth by years of being held. It rests in the blood now.

I touch it.

Still warm from her skin.

“Klyanus’, Yelena. Ya naydu Milochku. Ya privedu yeyo domoy.”

I swear, Yelena. I will find Milochka. I will bring her home.

I close her eyes.

Stand.

I don’t take the cross.

I open the door.

He looks up.

Reaches for his gun.

I take the knife from his belt and put it in his throat before he can make a sound. He drops. His phone clatters on the floor and a woman’s voice keeps talking on the other end, tinny and patient and very far away.

Step over him.

I walk down the hallway. Out the service door. Into the alley.

Rain. Cold.

I lean against a brick wall and breathe through my mouth and the world goes gray at the edges and I drag it back. The phone registered to Martin Leclerc goes into the storm drain. The knife goes in after it.

I walk.

I will not say her name.

Not to Dante. Not to Giada. Not to anyone who would look at me the way I can’t afford to be looked at right now.

If I say her name in that house, I don’t survive the year. And if I don’t survive the year, I can’t keep the one promise I have left.

So I walk.

Frankfurt. New Orleans. A doctor who doesn’t ask questions. I’ll find Dante in his study and tell him the deal fell through — Russian partner, cold feet, not worth the trip. I’ll walk into that house clean.

Somewhere out there is a girl who doesn’t know her sister is dead.

She doesn’t know yet.

She doesn’t know I’m coming.

I swear it over Yelena’s blood and I walk out into the rain.