7. Kirill
CHAPTER SEVEN
KIRILL
I t wasn’t that I disliked Yaroslav.
I didn’t like how impulsive he could be, especially when we both knew he’d inevitably take a beating for it, and I didn’t like how quick I always was to stick my own neck out for him and his stupid, hairbrained ideas. After, I always hid the bruises from him well. Wiped my face clean of all emotion, ignored every place on my body that felt scraped raw, and never let Yaroslav Volkov see how deeply he’d buried himself under my skin.
So, no, I didn’t dislike him.
But I hated him all the same.
I hated him for dragging me into his world, where I couldn’t ever seem to scrub the dried blood clean from under my fingernails, and where I’d learned firsthand what it was like to see the light fade from another man’s eyes. I hated that Yaroslav somehow stayed so inherently good when I already felt the constant lure of being bad instead.
It was easier to not give a shit about anything than it was to lie awake in bed each night feeling guilty and ashamed over what I was becoming .
“Now, Kirill.”
The order came at me in Russian, as almost everything did these days. I flexed my fingers around the length of rope, made sure the ends were wrapped securely around my knuckles, and applied renewed pressure to the traitor’s throat. Immediately, he started thrashing.
“Tighter.”
I jerked a questioning glance toward Artem.
“Tighter,” he repeated firmly, so I obeyed like the good little foot soldier I was. It didn’t matter that the man in the chair had about thirty years on me or that I was barely half his weight. I’d been taught where to lay the rope across the enemy’s neck and how to angle my stance so that every escape attempt only made the situation worse.
This situation couldn’t get any worse.
Artem strolled closer. Thick-shouldered and brutish, he was Petr’s most loyal spy. Or he was now, anyway, since the title previously belonged to the bloke currently zip-tied to the chair.
“Did you think that Volkov wouldn’t hear the rumors?” Artem drew to a stop less than an arm’s width away. This close, it was impossible to miss how his brown eyes gleamed as he stared down at Pavel Sergerov. “You’ve gotten sloppy, Sovietnik.”
With an angry curse, Volkov’s councilor threw himself against the binds, nearly tipping the chair forward onto its two front legs. Thrown off-balance, I dug my heels in and leaned back, using the same brutal technique Sergerov himself had taught me.
It felt wrong.
Wrong, like I was betraying him.
I looked to Artem, stupidly hoping that he might call me off like one of Volkov’s dogs that were always kept chained and ready. Artem didn’t call me off, though. He didn’t even meet my gaze. He was too busy swinging a leg over Sergerov’s knees so that he could straddle the older man’s lap.
The blade he produced from his waistband shone under the bright lights. As he pressed the tip to Sergerov’s chin, I felt my stomach churn uneasily.
“It’s theft, what you did.” His voice was low, his cadence smooth. The blade danced upward, past the hollow of his cheek to the jut of his browbone. “Stealing product. Working with the Zharkov brothers. Undermining this family each and every fucking time you draw air into your lying, scheming lungs.”
The air left my own lungs as it hit me what Artem planned to do.
It wouldn’t be any worse than what I’d already been forced to witness over the last two years. Petr Volkov was a man feared by all despite the fact that he rarely lifted a finger to do the dirty work himself. He didn’t have to, not these days. His reputation was the stuff of nightmares, and if I’d learned anything, it was that the only way to survive was to build a wall so tall around my heart that not a single shred of light crept through.
So, while I didn’t balk at much these days, I knew Sergerov. He was the closest thing I had to a father. The closest thing I had to a friend , besides Yaroslav, and I hadn’t realized until this very moment how impossible it was to feel nothing when the only person who’d been remotely kind to me was about to be permanently eradicated.
My hands started to tremble.
And then the worst thing possible happened—Artem noticed.
His gaze sharpened like a predator’s, and even though his nostrils didn’t exactly flare like a wild animal’s tracking the scent of its prey, the shift in his expression had the same effect. My blood went cold and my grip on the rope slackened, giving Sergerov enough leeway to jerk his face away from the knife.
Angrily, Artem slashed his arm in a wide arc.
If it had been anyone else, there would have been a scream, but this was Pavel Sergerov, the same man who’d been shot in the leg last year and dug the bullet out himself, the same man who didn’t even bat an eye when his boss, the pakhan , suggested that he barter his own nephew’s life in a deal to appease the Camorra. Nothing fazed him. Nothing . So, it wasn’t much of a surprise that having his face sliced in two would only make him grunt.
The surprise came when Artem pushed back onto his feet.
“ Itide syuda .”
At the command, the tiny hairs on my nape stood on end. I didn’t speak. I didn’t say anything. My chest rose and fell, quicker and quicker.
“Kirill.” There was a new hardness in his tone. It said that I’d be insane to disobey him a second time. “Come here.”
There must have been lead in my feet, they felt so heavy. With the rope dangling from one hand, I moved around Sergerov. The tangy scent of blood already permeated the air. It made the swirling unease in my stomach even worse.
“Stand here,” Artem directed, except that he placed a hand on my shoulder, where it seemed to burn through the fabric of my pullover, and put me exactly where he wanted me, facing Sergerov head-on. “Now look at him.”
I couldn’t see anything but him—the rope burn around his neck, the straining tension in his shoulders. His shirt gaped in multiple places where the dogs had bitten him when he’d tried to jump a chain-link fence.
Warm fingers suddenly bit into the back of my neck. “I said, look at him .”
The first sight of his already craggy face made me feel sick. The blade had cut through the top layers of skin; red shone through. With blood, yes, but the meat of muscle, the white pearl of exposed bone. I swayed on my feet even as Artem held me upright.
Sergerov tried to speak.
Except that he couldn’t because his lips were mangled and ruined, and my ears were ringing so loudly that even if he’d managed to get the words out, I wouldn’t have heard his mumble anyway.
“This,” Artem spat, “is what we do to traitors.”
I hated being touched, but I’d fall to the ground if it weren’t for the weight of his heavy hand. My heart raced and the air around me practically vibrated with hate—had I hated anyone like this before? Not Yaroslav, who I sometimes resented, but only because I felt the undeniable, confusing rush to keep him safe from even himself. Not even Petr, who I sometimes dreamt of killing before I remembered that without him, I’d probably be in a gutter somewhere, wasting away from starvation and who knows what else.
I didn’t understand a hate as fierce as this where I felt it deep in my bones like a poison.
But Artem did.
He seemed to treasure it almost, like a seed planted fresh in the dirt, and I knew deep in my gut that if I didn’t nurture that hate, if I didn’t water it and do my best to keep it fed, Artem would hate me, too .
“Take this.”
I felt myself look down. There was still blood on the blade. It wept from the steel. When I didn’t immediately follow through, Artem said again, “Take the knife, Kirill.”
I took it.
My fingers felt numb as I turned it over in my hand, wishing that I hadn’t already committed its weight to memory.
Artem snatched the rope from my other hand, stalked around me to stand behind Sergerov, and eyed me over the top of Pavel’s head. “Put it to his heart.”
There was a storm in my ears, wild and utterly ruthless. I felt the aftermath sweep over the length of my body. It left me cold. Mentally absent. I licked my dry lips, trying to find the words to apologize because what else was there to say to a man who was about to die?
I’m sorry that it’s you or me.
I’m sorry that you wasted time on me when I’ll be the one to kill you.
I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry ? —
I pressed the sharp tip of the blade to Sergerov’s heart. Beneath it, his chest hardly moved. Even now, with his face transformed into a beast’s, he gave nothing away.
I wondered how far removed from life you had to be to end up this way.
Then again, maybe he was like the stones found in a riverbed, weathered down by time, growing smaller and smaller until whatever they were before ceased to be. Nothing more than a pebble caught in the rush of the stream.
“Now kill him.”
I hadn’t killed anyone with my own two hands yet. Somehow, I’d managed to avoid it while operating as Sergerov’s shadow.
“Kirill. Now, kill him .”
Icy sweat dripped down my nape. I forced myself to look Sergerov in the eye—the one that wasn’t closed and swelling. Not sure what I thought I’d find there—maybe a sliver of pity or at least seething rage, but again, there was nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I shoved the blade forward, desperate to see any hint of emotion, but?—
“Are you fucking worthless?” Artem snapped. “Harder, Kirill. Fucking throw your weight into it.”
Killing someone shouldn’t have been this difficult. Sergerov, Artem, the others—they all made it look so easy. That wasn’t the case here. I was sweating, panting. My palms slid clumsily over the handle of the blade. I thought of Yaroslav doing this at only ten years old. Sergerov gave a shaky whimper, and I didn’t know what it said about me that I chased that sound—because with it came the end of this nightmare.
I leaned my weight in.
I stabbed the knife in deep.
A whistling rattle left his lips, like a slowly deflating balloon. He never begged me to change my mind. He didn’t even have the fucking decency to look away. I had the feeling that if he’d had the use of his hands, he would have helped me finish the job—because I was taking too long, somehow making a dirty deed less honorable.
Was there any honor in dying in a decrepit warehouse?
Sergerov died without a sound, but inside my soul, there was a terrible, deafening scream .
Before I could even back away, Artem was there, plucking the blade out of my hand and wiping the steel clean on the leg of his jeans. The black material hid the blood well. With a sense of foreboding, I looked down at myself, at the gray pullover I’d thrown on, not knowing what Artem had needed me for when he’d told me to show up here a few hours ago. Blood was splattered across the fabric.
Then I made the mistake of looking down at my feet.
The floor was glossy, a sea of violent red.
I was bent over a second later, wrenching my shoulders away from Sergerov as I unloaded the contents of my stomach with a gasp.
Over the sound of my retching, Artem said, “You’ll be heading back to London tomorrow.”
Tomorrow?
Still queasy, I lurched upright. “Wait. I thought?—”
Artem’s hard gaze bored into me. “You thought what?”
A month. I was supposed to be here in Moscow for a month, which meant that I had three weeks left. More than that, actually. I’d only been here for four days. What changed? How did it go from getting Yaroslav settled in at school to?—
“Oh.”
Artem somehow managed to give the impression of rolling his eyes without actually doing it. “Yes,” he said, “oh. You’re just catching on?”
So, this trip had nothing to do with Yaroslav. Instead, it had everything to do with Sergerov, with killing Sergerov, and for some reason, Volkov thought it money well spent to send me all the way to Russia to make sure the job got done.
I felt sick .
Artem clapped a bloody hand on my shoulder. “This is what happens to traitors, Kirill. Remember that.”
Two years.
I’d spent two years under the thumb of the Russian Bratva, learning their language and adapting their customs, only to be forced to commit murder, all so I’d be reminded that while I might have been the councilor’s shadow, I was no better than every other foot soldier they took under their wing—a faceless killer who only held value for as long as he remained loyal to the pakhan . Betraying that oath guaranteed you a fate like Sergerov’s.
Dead in a decrepit warehouse.
No friends, no family.
“Do you understand?” Artem squeezed my shoulder.
You aren’t special, went unspoken.
You are replaceable like all the others.
I didn’t need to look at Sergerov to know my answer. “Yes, I understand.”