Chapter 27 #2
“Took you long enough to ask,” he rasped, his voice rough with pain but sharpened by mockery. “I was starting to think everything they whisper about you—Morozov’s Shadow—was exaggerated.”
The last thread of restraint snapped. My hand moved before I consciously decided to act, pressing hard against the bandaged wound at his throat.
Dmitry choked, a broken sound tearing from him as his body jerked violently against the restraints.
Blood seeped through the gauze beneath my palm, darkening it as his breathing hitched and stuttered.
“Sergei, stop!” Leo grabbed my arm, his grip firm, urgent as he tried to pull me back. “You’re reopening the wound, and he’ll bleed out—”
“Then maybe you should let him know how important it is for him to answer my questions,” I said, my voice flat.
I didn’t look at Leo. I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to do what needed to be done. My attention stayed fixed on Dmitry, on the panic blooming in his eyes as reality set in. He was restrained. Injured. And entirely at my mercy.
“Talk,” I ordered, increasing the pressure.
For a moment, I thought he might break. His chest heaved, his hands flexing uselessly against the restraints, his body straining as instinct fought against pain.
Then he smiled. It was weak, blood smearing at the corner of his mouth, but the defiance in it burned bright.
“Or what?” His voice was barely more than a rasp. “You’ll kill me? Go ahead and finish what I already started.”
I pressed harder.
The scream that tore from him this time was raw, unfiltered, echoing off the walls as his body arched as far as the restraints allowed. Blood soaked through the bandage more quickly now, warm beneath my hand, the pulse of it matching the steady, controlled rhythm of my own breathing.
“Sergei!”
Leo’s voice broke through, edged with panic. He stepped in front of me, his hands braced against my chest as he tried to push me back.
“You’re killing him!” he said, his voice tight, urgent. “You need him alive if you want answers. This isn’t how you do it.”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job, Leo.”
He shoved at my chest again, but I didn’t budge, didn’t ease the pressure on Dmitry’s wound. Our eyes locked. There was anger in his coupled with disbelief. Like he didn’t recognize the man standing in front of him.
“This isn’t you,” he said, more quietly now. “Whatever Morozov said to you—whatever you think you have to prove—this isn’t you, Sergei. You’re sweet and considerate.”
In that moment, infatuation gave way to clarity. Leo didn’t know the real me. He only saw the man who was in love with him. The man who practically begged him shamelessly to sleep with him and made sure he was never hungry.
How could he truly care about me if he didn’t know me?
“Move,” I told him, though it pained me to speak to him so roughly.
“No. If you’re going to kill him, you’ll have to go through me.”
I always knew he was stubborn, and I would have smiled and backed down if we were in bed, but this moment wasn’t about us. This was business—my job. He needed to accept that. If he couldn’t, there was no future for us.
I placed my hands on his shoulders and moved him aside. Not roughly. Not violently. I could never be those things with him, but it was with enough force that he stumbled back a step, his balance breaking, a reminder to him that he couldn’t stop me if I chose not to be stopped.
“Dezi,” I called, my voice carrying across the warehouse.
Footsteps approached almost immediately, until Dezi materialized in front of me. “Yeah? I heard screaming. I’ll be pissed if you killed him without me.”
I nodded toward Leo. “Get him out of here.”
“What?” Leo snapped, turning sharply toward Dezi. “No—absolutely not. I’m the doctor, and he’s my patient. I’m not leaving—”
Dezi grabbed his arm before he could finish, already pulling him back.
“Come on, Doc,” he said, his tone almost amused, like this was just another day for him. “Trust me, if you want to keep the romance alive, you don’t want to see this part.”
“I’m not leaving!” Leo struggled against him, his voice rising, anger spilling through. “Sergei, stop this! You’re better than this! You don’t have to do whatever Morozov tells you. I know you can be a good person.”
I didn’t turn, neither did I respond, because if I did, I might hesitate, but hesitation wasn’t something I could afford right now.
I’d been slacking off the job, distracted by romance, but there was more to my world than Leo.
People were depending on me, and they were no less important because I loved—for the first time in my life I loved.
Dezi paused at the door, glancing back over his shoulder with a grin. “Make him scream loud enough. I wanna hear it from outside.”
Silence settled in the room, though I could hear the muted sound of Leo still arguing.
I leaned in closer to Dmitry, my hand pressing firmly against his throat again, my voice dropping low.
“Now talk. You’ll spare Arkady a lot of trouble if you do.”
Dmitry’s chest rose and fell in uneven bursts, his breathing ragged, wet with blood.
For a moment, all I saw was pain etched across his face, then he started laughing again.
The sound that came from him was broken and breathless, his body shaking against the restraints as something unhinged flickered behind his eyes.
“Fuck you. You’ll get nothing out of me, so go ahead and kill me already.”
“You think I won’t do it?”
“No, you won’t,” he rasped. “You think you can use me as leverage to get to my father, but you’re wrong.”
My grip tightened instinctively, irritation flaring sharply. The blood pressure monitor spiked, but still he laughed.
“You’re right. I can get more out of you alive than dead.”
“You stupid Morozov bitch!” he bit out, tears running down his pale face.
I frowned, something in his tone catching my attention, and not just the insult.
“He doesn’t care,” Dmitry went on, his grin widening despite the blood on his lips. “I’m the bastard son he doesn’t want to acknowledge, so kill me and you’ll be doing him a favor.”
“Whether he acknowledges you or not is moot,” I said. “He might not want you, but he’ll have no choice but to react if he doesn’t want his namesake humiliated by us.”
“I’m not nearly as valuable as you think I am,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.
He sounded hollow and young. Only twenty-two from the information on his ID.
I knew enough about parents who didn’t give a shit about you and the kind of monster they bred.
Monsters like me. Monsters like the little shit bleeding out in front of me.
“I want to know how your father is distributing drugs on my turf.”
“Your doctor doesn’t look like he is fond of your methods,” he said weakly. “I can see you care about him. If you don’t kill me, he’ll be the first one I target when I’m free.”
A red haze flashed before my vision, and I spread my fingers to grip his neck, shoving down to cut off his breathing. His legs thrashed and his body rocked against the bed as instinct drove him to try to break my hold. His face turned blue, and he gasped, the sound of a dying man desperate for air.
Next to the bed, the monitors set off an alarm, beeping an angry buzzing sound that must have been a death knell to him. I could have given him a chance to tell me the truth, but the minute he said Leo’s name, his existence and everything I wanted to know from him became secondary.
Dmitry flatlined, his body giving up resistance as he lay still, my hand wrapped around his throat. I’d killed him. I had no answers for Maxim, but I’d eliminated the threat to Leo even though there was a slim chance that he could ever harm him.
Footsteps pounded on the concrete floor, and Leo came to a sudden stop a few feet away from me. He looked at the corpse he’d worked so hard to keep alive before looking at me. Our eyes held, and his were full of disbelief and tears. He looked devastated.
“You killed him.”
I ignored him and nodded to Dezi, who had come up behind Leo. “Cut his head off and send it to Arkady as a message. They want to play games, they can connect the dots to find the missing pieces of his son’s body.”