Chapter 30 #2
“You are not family, Rayna. Family doesn’t do what you did. Don’t try to appeal to that side of me, because you’re just going to piss me off.” I grabbed her, holding her still as I placed the tip of the dagger over her other eye.
“Wait! Wait! Please don’t,” she begged, crying.
I loved it when they cried.
“Why did you betray us?”
When she didn’t answer, I started from her hairline, dragging the dagger down her forehead towards her eye, her skin splitting open. She screamed, flailed, twisted, trying everything to get herself away from the pain.
As the blade sliced through her eyebrow she screamed, “Because my dad told me too!”
I stopped, a mere millimetre away from taking her sight completely. I glanced over my shoulder at my father. His whole focus was on Rayna, his body tight with tension and anger.
Rayna continued, her words coming out in a rush. “He told me to hand her over, okay? I had nothing to do with it. It was all him. Him and his stupid plan.”
“What plan?”
“How the fuck should I know? You think he includes me in his plans? He doesn’t tell me shit,” she spat, groaning in pain.
There was a small part of me that believed that.
Dominik was very much a singular person. Whatever this ‘plan’ was, I doubted he involved her in the fundamentals of it, even though she was his daughter. Rayna was so desperate for his approval, she’d do anything for him without question.
Still…she knew something . I was sure of it. Call it an inkling, or intuition, or just your average gut feeling. Whatever it was, it was screaming at me that she knew more than she was letting on.
“He told you something though, didn’t he, Rayna?” I asked, lowering my voice.
She averted her gaze, hissing at the pain from the small movement.
Just like I thought.
I sighed, shaking my head in disappointment. “Honestly, Rayna, I would have thought you’d know better than this.”
A sneer streaked across her face at the tone of my words. My voice was laced with reprimand, the same kind I’d heard Dominik use on her time and time again—which was exactly why she hated it.
“You might not have been actively involved in the Bratva, but you know how we deal with people who betray the family. Now, I’m willing to be lenient with you. I swear on my mother’s grave, I won’t hurt you anymore—and I won’t kill you— if you tell me what you know.”
She eyed me suspiciously, trying to figure out if she could believe me. If she could trust me.
In the end, she decided she could. She knew that when it came to my mother, I didn’t fuck around.
“Look, I don’t know much, okay? I swear. Just that he had some sort of deal with Nero. The guy wanted your sister. He wanted to use her to get Dimitri to back out of the fight between the Outfit and La Cosa Nostra. My dad offered to help him.”
“In exchange for?” I highly doubted Dominik would do a damn thing unless he was getting something in return.
She glanced nervously behind me, no doubt looking at my father, who I’m sure was letting his anger show.
I clicked my fingers an inch away from her face and her eyes darted back to me. “Don’t look at him. Look at me. What did Dominik want from Nero?”
“Once Nero was done with Illayana, he was to give her to my dad so he could use her to force Dimitri into giving up control of the Bratva.”
Nik scoffed, joining in for the first time. “That never would have worked.”
Rayna arched an eyebrow condescendingly.
“Are you sure about that? Parents aren’t meant to have them, but they all have favourites.
I should know. My brother was my dad’s favourite, and he died in the womb.
Hadn’t even been born yet. Did that stop my dad from loving him more?
No. If he could trade my life for the life of his dead unborn son, he would have.
Illayana is Dimitri’s favourite, and we all know why.
It’s because she looks the most like your mother.
He would have done whatever he needed to do to get her back safely. ”
Silence fell over the room.
She was right. If Dominik had succeeded in his plan to use Illayana as leverage, it would have worked. There was nothing— nothing —my father wouldn’t do to save her life, because Rayna was right. She was the favourite.
My brothers and I, we all knew it. We didn’t care. Father loved us all. He just had a real soft spot for Illayana. We all did, really. She was the baby of the family. The youngest always got babied, regardless of how old they were.
I was actually quite surprised, even a little impressed. I never would have thought he’d be able to come up with something so…well…devious. Smart.
I glanced over my shoulder, locking eyes with my father. Anger radiated from every inch of him, his eyes burning with the need for vengeance. To hurt. To kill.
I recognised the look. I saw it in the mirror every day.
I expected him to take over, but he just inclined his head at Rayna again, his own silent way of telling me to deal with it.
I’d find out what that was about later.
I turned back to face Rayna. “What does Dominik have planned now?”
“What makes you think he has something else planned?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Rayna. We both know how tenacious Dominik is. Getting to Illayana in New York surrounded by La Cosa Nostra would be next to impossible for someone like him with limited resources. So he would have come up with another way to get what he wants. What. Is. It?”
“I don’t know,” she whined in pain. Whether it was from the cuts still bleeding down her face, or the pressure being suspended in the air like that put on her wrists, I wasn’t sure.
As long as she was in pain, I was happy.
“I swear, I don’t know what he has planned next. I don’t.”
“What were you doing at the café?”
She hesitated for the briefest moment. “Meeting a friend.”
A friend? Right. I called bullshit.
“I’m sorry, I should have been more clear with you about what happens if you lie to me.” I moved back to the table, putting down the curved dagger and picking up another weapon.
“I’m not—” her words died off in her throat when she got a look at what was now in my hands.
The pliers.
“For every lie you tell me, I take a tooth.”
She whimpered, trying to get away from me as I made my way back to her. “A-Aleksandr—”
“Choose your next words very carefully, Rayna,” I warned, darkness dripping from my voice.
“Okay, okay,” she breathed out, licking her lips. “I go there once a week to meet someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
I gripped her face, shoving the pliers into her mouth and clasping one of her central incisors, the teeth at the very front.
“No, I really have no idea who he is!” she mumbled around the pliers, tears bursting from her eyes.
I pulled the pliers out, giving her a chance to talk.
“My-my dad just told me to meet the guy there. I don’t know his name.
I don’t know a thing about him, apart from his horrible sense of personal hygiene.
I just meet him at the café, take the bag of cash he gives me and leave. That’s it.”
“What do you do with the cash?”
“I get a text with a location shortly after and I drop it off there.”
“Where’s your phone?” She didn’t have it on her when I kidnapped her. I know, I checked.
“In my handbag back at the café. I wasn’t anticipating getting jumped,” she said angrily.
That’s unfortunate.
“Who picks up the money?”
“I don’t know. I’m gone by the time they get there.”
Goddamn it. Dominik was being extra vigilant in covering his tracks. So far, all her answers seemed genuine. I was pretty good at being able to tell if someone was lying to me, and my instincts weren’t screaming ‘lie’. So I was inclined to believe her.
Whoever this guy was, he was paying Dominik for something. The question was, what? Dominik had the same connections we did. Was it guns? Or maybe protection?
There was still this nagging feeling in my gut telling me Rayna was holding something back.
“You might not know who he is, but you have an idea, don’t you?”
She eyed the pliers in my hand, picking her words carefully. “I saw him get on the back of a motorcycle once. He wasn’t wearing a cut, so I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But today when he pulled up at the café, I saw there were a bunch of other bikers riding with him.”
“What MC were they a part of?”
“I didn’t get a good enough look at their patches.”
Her information was both helpful and useless all at the same time. Dominik was clearly in league with an MC. But there were dozens of different MCs in this corner of Vegas alone. Finding out which one it was would take time.
I was inclined to think it was The Dirty Vultures. They could have easily turned to Dominik when my father refused to work with them.
I moved onto the last question. One I was fairly sure I knew the answer to already. “Where is Dominik?”
Rayna scoffed. “Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t seen him since Illayana’s wedding. He calls me when he wants me to do something for him. Always from a different number.”
And like the good little bitch she was, she always did it without question.
I looked back at my father. He gave me the briefest nod before turning on his heels and leaving the room.
“Okay,” I said, putting down the pliers. “Then I guess we’re done here.”
“D-done?” she stuttered. “What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means?” I smirked.
“You bastard!” she screeched, flailing wildly. “You swore you wouldn’t kill me if I told you what I know! You swore!”
“Yes, I did, and I’m a man of my word Rayna. So don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you.”
She breathed out a huge sigh of relief, her entire body slumping as if all the energy left her at once.
“Your life isn’t mine to take.”
Her head snapped up, her brows lowered in confusion.
Behind me the door opened, the click-clack of high heels hitting the concrete floor echoing throughout the room.
“Fuck,” Rayna choked, her eyes widening in fear. Liquid splattered on the ground between her legs, the stench of urine reaching my nose, and I laughed.
Yeah, my sister had that effect on people.
I turned, a smile spreading across my face as Illayana walked in.