20. Konstantin
KONSTANTIN
"You killed my son."
It took a week for this cunt to settle on a meeting time and place and that's how he greets me?
Anger licks through my thoughts like the ignition of a flame while heat builds in my chest.
"Your son stole from me," I reply quietly with my gaze fixed on Leo, the Italian don who has been a thorn in my side ever since before my wedding to Rose. "He got what he deserved."
"Stole?!" Leo, wearing a heavy overcoat to appear taller and broader than he actually is, takes a step forward that sends a ripple of tension through his guards and my own.
We stand opposite one another in an abandoned warehouse near the docks, the only place that borders our territories without endangering civilians if this goes south.
The last thing I need is the cops interfering.
"Yes. S-t-o-l-e," I repeat much slower this time.
"My boy has never stolen a thing in his life!" Leo shouts with such fury that his face turns purple and spit flies between clenched teeth. "And you stand there with such an accusation as if it justifies you murdering him!"
"It does." I force my shoulders down a fraction.
"It is no secret that I have a zero tolerance policy for shit like that.
Zero. We briefly had a deal when I first arrived in the state, in which I clearly stated how I run things.
You watched me take the heads of my own men who thought they were wise enough to steal from me. What makes your son any different?"
"You can justify this any way you fucking want to," he snarls, and he points at me with a hand weighed down in rings. "But I will never stop, you hear me? I will not stop until I have sent your balls back to Russia in a fucking box."
"Then why did you demand a meeting?"
"I wanted to look you in the eye when you admitted to killing my boy," Leo snarls and tears shine in his eyes. "I wanted to see the look on your face when I swore to burn down your empire. And I want to see the pain in your fucking eyes when I tell you this."
Leo stalks forward again and his men move like the ripples in a pond.
"You don't have a son for me to take so I will get my blood elsewhere, you hear me? I will drain that bitch of yours until she meets the same fate as your last wife, and then I will—"
He doesn't get to the end of his sentence.
His threat against Rose is enough to settle the matter for me, so I whip my gun out from the holster hugging my ribs, and fire three shots.
One collides with Leo's shoulder, and the other two miss him by a hair's breadth as one of his guards dives at him, knocking him out of the way.
My shot is like a spark igniting gas, and the entire warehouse erupts in an explosion of gunfire and yells.
As predicted, Leo has men hiding in the rafters, and they melt out of the darkness with rifles held high and fingers on the trigger.
But I brought my own men with me and they collide with rage.
"Konstantin!" Leo roars from somewhere in the crowd. "I'll fucking kill you! Argh! I'll kill you!"
I make it behind a wooden crate that absorbs several bullets, and Ethan skids down beside me a moment later. Our eyes meet.
"We killing him?" Ethan asks breathlessly, as if the answer isn't obvious.
I nod sharply. "Cunt is not leaving here alive."
Ethan vanishes into the crowd of screaming, dying men amid the deafening cracks of gunfire to work his magic.
I turn my attention to protecting the men who are dedicated to protecting me.
My cover is quickly blown to smithereens. I scramble for more protection behind a stone pillar.
One of my men goes down with a gurgling scream while another yells loudly and charges into the chaos, never to be seen again.
Then my phone buzzes.
I don't need to read the message to know Ethan has his target.
Ducking around the pillar, I break into a spring through the crowd that's quickly fallen into a full-on brawl.
Within ten steps, Ethan comes into view with Leo on his knees and several dead Italians around him.
"Enough!" I roar through the warehouse and the fight begins to die. Italians halt when they see their leader on the ground and my men follow my order instantly.
"You bastard," Leo snarls through bloody teeth. "You motherfucking, twisted, sick bast—"
I place my gun to his forehead and shoot him dead without a flinch.
His dead body collapses backward onto the crowd and an eerie silence follows around the warehouse.
"You know what this means," Ethan says with a note of disgust. "You're going to have some very pissed off Ital—"
A single gunshot echoes through the air and Ethan jolts as if he's been punched, then a fountain of blood shoots from the juncture of his shoulder.
"Ethan!" My heart seizes in my chest and I dive for him as he crumples backward. He's barely able to lift his hand to his neck before his eyes roll back in his head. "No!"
I land on him with my hand slamming down over the wound while another single gunshot rings out, ending the life of the bastard who shot him.
"Kill them all!" I roar. "And get me a fucking ambulance!"
I lose count of the gunshots that follow as every Italian in the warehouse is rapidly executed.
There's no time to think of anything else.
Ethan's blood pulses rapidly against my palm, seeping out between my fingers and staining the ground around me.
He quivers and jolts underneath me while his lips move but no words come out.
"You are okay," I tell him as my heart thunders in my ears. "You are okay. You are okay. You are okay."
I tell him that over and over as I straddle him and use my weight to keep pressure on the wound.
I tell him that as the ambulance arrives and medical care is transferred from me to the people trained to keep him alive.
I tell him that as he's loaded into an ambulance and whisked away from me, leaving me standing in the parking lot with his blood soaked into my clothes and a knot in my gut that I did this. I wasn't careful.
I was cocky and reckless and Ethan paid the price.
"Burn the cars," I state hoarsely to whoever is nearby and listening. "Dump the bodies in the river and put the word out. I killed them."
Murmurs rise around me as people agree and get to work, but none of it really reaches me. Nothing does, except the repeated buzz from my phone in my back pocket.
I reach for it and wince as Ethan's blood smears the screen, then my blood runs cold as multiple messages rise from Calvin.
Rose was attacked.
Is this what Leo meant?