Chapter 30
Louhi
The smell of gunpowder is as heady as a drug, and I fill my lungs to the brim with it as I lead Jace and Sean to Viktor’s subterranean gun range. He has an outdoor range elsewhere on the property, but it’s monkeys outside, and I don’t want to risk my manicure with gloves. That’d be idiotic.
“If we’re going to stay here any longer, I could really use a map,” Jace mumbles.
I hope we don’t. That’s part of why I suggested a little ammunition party. I spent the last two hours about to crawl out of my skin. Now that Sean is feeling a bit more himself, my mind is whirring with all the possible options of where my brother might be. The lack of answers has left me…twitchy.
There’s only one solution when I feel like this: violence.
Since I don’t have anyone to kill right now, I’ll settle for the next best thing.
Actually, the third best thing because the second-best option would be sex and the cut above my clit is motherfucking sore.
The bandage Sean placed over it isn’t doing much to help, but I’m not going to ask Viktor’s nurse for any ointment since I hope it scars.
I like the idea of carrying proof of Sean’s depravity.
I storm into the room with the finesse of a rhinoceros inside a tearoom, going straight for the display of handguns mounted on the back wall.
“A closed door typically indicates that one is seeking privacy, Louhi.”
“What’s yours is mine,” I quip, squeezing his shoulder affectionately as I slip past him and approach the station next to him.
“That adage is generally reserved for married couples.”
“Weird way to propose,” I tell him as I shove the clip into the grip with an audible click. “I’ll have to consider it. You aren’t the only one in the picture anymore, Vik.”
I lean back to peer around Viktor’s form and aim an exaggerated wink in Sean’s direction. His stern expression and crossed arms indicate that he does not appreciate my humor. His loss.
Viktor snorts. “If I proposed, I’d be down on one knee in the middle of a tulip field with the sun setting in the distance. Not in my underground gun range.”
I know the tulip field he’s talking about.
They’re at the back of the property, concealed by thick forest on four sides.
His grandmother planted them, and he’s been ensuring they thrived since she died nearly twenty years ago.
Those tulips are some of the only things Viktor Novikov truly cares about.
I snort as I aim the Glock at the paper target. “A gun range sounds better.” Not that I’d ever want to get married. I pull the trigger until I empty the clip.
By the time I’m reloading my third clip, the tension is melting from my shoulders, and my blood pressure feels normal.
I sense, rather than see, Jace approaching the station on my other side.
Sean’s arms slide around my middle, and I giggle.
It feels rather like I’m a fire hydrant, and he’s the big, scary dog pissing all over me.
“It’s good to see that you’re…feeling better, Digs.” Viktor’s haughty smirk reveals everything he doesn’t say.
I narrow my eyes and snatch a bullet from the pail in front of me. I throw it. It hits my target in the shoulder before clattering to the concrete floor. “You said you wouldn’t watch the damn tape.”
He laughs openly and holds up his hands in surrender. “I lied, alright? If it helps, I watched your porno on three-time speed and on low volume. I turned it off when he picked up the whip. I have to say, I’m…impressed.”
Jace groans. “Try being forced to stand outside the door while they—”
Sean pins his best friend with a look that would make flowers wither. Jace laughs but doesn’t finish his sentence.
I raise the Glock again, slam a new clip into the grip, and aim. By the time I empty all my rounds into the shredded target, the jittery, antsy feeling has all but dissolved.
“So, I had somebody check out your brother’s flat,” Viktor announces as he begins cleaning his .44 Magnum. “His place was vacant. There was…nothing. He’s gone, but all his belongings were there as though he’d just stepped out for milk.”
And just like that, the fiery frustration returns, accompanied by despair, and a twinge of disappointment that makes my throat burn. I cocoon myself in the safety of my anger, though. “How long have you been sitting on that information?”
He shrugs. “I sent a man to Mercer’s Peterborough safe house, too. Empty.”
My eyebrows slash low over my eyes, and my fingers twitch to reach for my handgun. Ice replaces blood as it sluices through my veins, chilling me from the inside out. I’ve never told Viktor where Mercer’s safe house was located.
“How did you know about that place?” What else does he know?
He leans a hip against the counter and arches an eyebrow like that was an asinine question. “Louhi, I can learn anything I want to know. Have you forgotten the position I hold?”
I was the one who ultimately secured him that position, so no, I hadn’t forgotten. I never forget a kill, especially not that one. I cross my arms over my chest and purse my lips belligerently.
I’m about to start pressing when Viktor speaks again.
“The empty places beg the question: what happened to Mercer? As I see it, there’re three options here: he’s dead, he’s a dick.
” Mercer loves me, so I eliminate the second option.
As much as I hate to admit it, the dead thing holds more weight.
“Or he’s being held somewhere, probably enduring the same fate you and your friends inflicted on his sister.
” He jerks his head in Sean’s and Jace’s direction, who are now standing next to each other.
Guilt flashes across Sean’s face, and I consider flinging my foot out and landing a kick to Viktor’s shin. No sooner has the thought appeared, it dissipates like a cloud being burst as a startling clang rings out.