Chapter 28 Loose Ends
Chapter twenty-eight
Loose Ends
Evelina watched from the backseat of one of their guest’s rental vehicles as a man whose name she didn’t know snatched her father’s former guard up off the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Another visiting mafia man swept up the suspicious duffel bag that had fallen at his feet, and both retraced their steps as planned.
“You’re sure about what you want to do with him?” Mikey asked from the front passenger seat.
Evelina nodded, noting absently that the motion only barely tugged at the bandage on her back.
It was awkward, but she was already getting used to it.
She also knew she had it lucky. None of their guys had died, but some had taken shots that required more urgent attention and were likely to leave scars.
And then there was the guy who’d puked all over one of the bodies after watching Dante burn another man from the inside.
She did kind of understand, but to actually do it?
She shook the thought from her head just as the comfortable silence was shattered and Pavel was shoved inside.
“You can’t just grab me off the street like this!” Pavel exclaimed, squirming in the other man’s hold. “I have connections!”
Evelina arched a brow and glanced across at Otto, who of course was glaring straight at the oblivious traitor. She sighed and said, “This is really quite the embarrassment for you, isn’t it, Pavel?”
Finally, the older man went still, only to be fully shoved into his designated seat so the two St. Louis soldiers could reclaim their own and pull the doors shut. The duffel was set on the seat beside her.
She reached over and partially unzipped it without an invitation.
“I-it’s not what it looks like!” Pavel exclaimed.
Evelina frowned at the piles of cash and rubles bound within, carelessly half-covered by a single heavy coat.
She pulled a stack of rubles out and thumbed it before lifting her gaze across the cab space, to where Pavel had been positioned.
“No? Because it looks like you broke into the safe in my father’s office while the house was burning, when I was calling for all available hands to try and save it.
It looks like you were stealing from us while our home burned down. ”
Pavel swallowed hard. “I wasn’t. I swear.”
She dropped the money back into the bag and leaned carefully against the seatback. “Then why were you running, Pavel? I gave you a job, and it did not involve running.”
He flicked his gaze to Otto and flinched away at the sight of Otto’s glare, seemingly only then remembering there were other men in the car with them. “M-Ms. Nikolaev, please understand,” he finally said, “I … was doing what I had to do.”
She arched a brow. “For whom?”
“I beg your pardon?” When she made no attempt to repeat herself, he began looking around again. “Wait, where are we going? I have a train—”
“Oh, I thought you’d like to see Grigoriy,” Evelina replied calmly.
Pavel’s eyes widened and the color drained from his face.
She crossed one leg over the other and tapped her nail on her knee. “So, you did know Grigoriy’s intention.”
Pavel pulled at his shirt collar. “I didn’t know anything,” he said defensively.
“Lying fuckwit,” Otto growled.
Pavel flinched. “Grigoriy didn’t tell me anything!
” He sucked in a breath. “But I had a good guess. Viktor was obvious. Artem wasn’t too hard to figure out, either.
Ivan … was always going to be complicated, mostly because of Pyotr.
And Grigoriy, for similar reasons, was never going to submit to either of you.
” He gulped audibly and sweat rolled down his face.
“Grigoriy accepted your father out of respect for a legacy Mikhail built with his own two hands. He isn’t the kind of man who would stand back and allow anyone with less of a record to take command over him. And less so a woman.”
Evelina rolled her eyes. “I’m so damn tired of that sexist shit.
” She propped her elbow onto the window ledge and rested her chin on her knuckles.
“So, what, with Ivan and Pyotr both dead and Grisha revealed as the enemy, you figured you had nothing left to stick around for? You didn’t like Grigoriy, is that it? ”
Pavel averted his gaze and clamped his lips shut.
“Otto.”
“No!” Pavel threw his hands up to block the swing that wasn’t coming.
“I mean, yes. Mostly. I expected Grigoriy would kill you, and that would lead to a fight between his loyalists and Artem’s.
I didn’t want to get dragged into that. And I worked hard for the clan for a long time, so I took the money I had rescued from the safe and I chose to save myself. ”
“Uh-huh.” Evelina stared at him. “Except you stole that money.”
“As I said, I was saving important—”
She shot out her foot and kicked him sharply in the shin. “I’m very done with you, Pavel. Shut up.”
Pavel opened his mouth, but, blessedly, Mikey spoke over him. “We’re here.”
Evelina straightened, happily ignoring Pavel’s questions of where they were, and allowed Otto to help her from the vehicle.
Once again, Pavel was dragged out, but she continued to ignore him.
A strange flicker of something threatened inside her, just for a moment, as she gazed again up at the distillery that loomed in front of them. But it passed.
While they’d been taking stock and cleaning up after the battle, discussion had naturally turned toward what to do. She didn’t have half the resources she should and she wasn’t fully confident Artem’s limited cleaning crew could manage a job of that scale. To be fair, she also hadn’t asked.
Then Mikey had gotten the alert on Pavel, and a brilliant idea had struck her about the time she heard someone whisper the word flammable.
She was planning to up-end the Nikolaev legacy, anyway.
There was no sense in leaving any of it behind.
Not to her mind, at least. And there was still the matter of Grigoriy, who’d been hauled off somewhere to be held until more urgent matters had been handled.
She saw no sense in not dumping all her problems into one proverbial pot.
So, she’d presented her idea to her more experienced cousins, and with a little fine-tuning, the wheels were put into motion.
“Wh-why are we at the distillery?” Pavel asked.
Evelina glanced over at him. “I told you. We’re here to see Grigoriy.” Then she started forward, leading the way inside with Otto and Mikey at her back and the men from St. Louis dragging their guest behind them.
The cloying, heavy aroma of spilled and half-fermented liquor overpowered any lingering scent of gunpowder or blood, and she figured that was good. Though the alcohol stench was enough to curdle her stomach on its own.
She told herself it was a temporary necessity and made sure not to let her twisting insides show on her face.
The latter task became easier, at least, when she spotted her other guest on his ass, his face contorted in frustrated rage.
There was surely little he could do, what with his shot-out knee and the three guns leveled at his head.
“So good to see you again, Grigoriy,” Evelina called, drawing his attention as she moved aside to make room for Pavel.
“You remember my cousins from New Jersey, don’t you?
” She smiled the saccharine smile she used to always offer Pyotr in front of her father—the same one that used to get her beat later for how transparent it was.
Grigoriy’s lips curled and he spat on the floor. “You disgrace your father, doing this to his business. Ugly whore.”
Pavel muttered something in Russian, his tone filled more with horror than anger. He was dragged forward and tossed to the floor near Grigoriy’s side. No one bothered restraining him, or shooting out his knees. He was held in place with the threat of another gun hovering in line with his nose.
Evelina bounced her eyes briefly between the two, then past them to the bodies that lay spread out and slumped over in more or less the exact places where they’d fallen.
Dante stepped up to her opposite side calmly. “Everything is set up as we discussed. Is there anything more you need from these men?”
“Fuck,” Pavel cursed, desperation coloring his voice. “Your mother never should have kept those letters!”
Evelina froze, her eyes blowing wide.
She felt Otto shift. “What the fuck did you say?”
“Annetta never accepted her place,” Pavel continued, talking faster as the anger overtook him. “She didn’t raise you right for this life, and she should never have kept mementos of a life she didn’t have. None of this—none of this would be happening if you’d never learned you were related to them!”
Dante hummed low.
Evelina curled her hands into fists. There was only one way he knew about the letters.
She’d assumed Pyotr, or Grisha, was responsible for what had become of her suite while she was out of town.
But in truth, given that they’d turned around and set fire to the entire house, it didn’t make much sense that they’d bothered trashing her space.
She’d written that off as an impulse control problem—Pyotr had those. It had been the logical conclusion.
But she had been wrong.
Evelina drew a hard breath. “It was you.” She locked her glare on Pavel. “You’re the one who ransacked my private room, destroyed everything I owned, stole Mamma’s last mementos, and murdered Chek.” She had to assume he’d killed the guard because he couldn’t have done the rest quietly.
“I was hoping you’d cashed out some of Mikhail’s money,” Pavel admitted.
“Figured I’d make it look good. I knew you’d blame Pyotr without asking a single question.
” His lip curled in a sneer. “Didn’t find a dime, but imagine my surprise when I found boxes of old memories—letters with the name De Salvo, of all fucking things. ”
“Letters?” Romeo asked.