49. Arsen
49
ARSEN
I shouldn’t have let her in.
The second I heard her soft voice through the wood, I should’ve hunkered down and waited for her to leave.
But all I heard was Dominik’s voice in my ear. You don’t run from a fight. Laila believes in you.
Now, she’s standing in front of my desk, studying the evidence of exactly where I’ve been the last few days. My desk is strewn with work, but it’s the toothbrush, razorblade, and stacks of dirty clothes that are tough to explain.
Laila tucks a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, her wide, blue eyes looking everywhere except at me. “Polina would have a fit if she could see this room.”
“She knows not to mess with my space.”
“I think everyone has gotten that message loud and clear, actually.”
I look back to my paperwork, trying to ignore the draw I feel to stand up, walk around this desk, and fold her against my chest.
It’s the first time I’ve seen Laila since the hospital. The first time I’ve let myself be close enough to catch more than a passing whiff of her perfume in a hallway.
For all the damage Dominik’s fists did, being this close to Laila is enough to start chipping at my walls.
“Wow,” she breathes. I look up and she’s holding the scale model of the distillery. “I didn’t expect it to be so beautiful.”
Few people did. When I first started the project, people assumed I’d slap something together in a few months so I could start funneling money through it. But I always wanted Pobeda to be more.
“I wanted it to be perfect. It’s been years in the making, and we’re finally close to the finish line.”
“No wonder you’ve been so busy.” Somewhere deep in the house, an infant wails. Laila turns towards the door like she’s ready to abandon this conversation, but she stops herself. “My mom is with Nina. She’s got a set of lungs on her. Can you always hear her crying?”
I definitely feel it that time: the quiet rebuke. Do you hide away here and listen to your baby cry? Why won’t you come out?
I ignore the unspoken questions in favor of asking one of my own. “How is the baby doing?”
“Her name is Nina,” Laila corrects gently. “And she’s perfect. That’s what the doctor said at her first checkup.”
Which you missed.
Again, she doesn’t say the words, but the accusation is there all the same.
“I’ve had a lot of work to get through.”
“Business comes first, of course.”
The words feel like scalding water poured on my head. “If the business flourishes, so does this family.”
“What family?” Before I can say anything, she shrugs. “It’s alright. I went to all of the prenatal appointments alone, too. Why should anything be different now that she’s here?”
I’m used to physical blows—the kind of fighting that left me and Dominik both bloody and beaten. But Laila’s fighting is dirtier by far. If I wasn’t busy nursing the wounds her words leave, I might applaud.
“I’m— Look, I didn’t come here to give you a hard time. I came to talk about Charles.” She sighs. “He called me yesterday.”
I jerk to my feet, lips curling over my teeth. “What did he say?”
She blinks, surprised I still want to defend her. As if it’s a shock that I even care. “More of the same threats he’s always throwing my way—but you did offer to take care of him for me once and…” She exhales deeply. “I don’t have the energy to deal with him on my own anymore.”
Judging from the dark circles under her eyes and her gaunt cheeks, she’s not lying. Her body is practically skin and bone, wrapped in pretty clothes that can’t quite hide just how much weight she’s lost in such a short period of time.
“I’ll fix it,” I assure her. “Today.”
She gives me a thin smile. “I just thought I’d mention it. Just in case. No pressure.”
“I will take care of this, Laila.” I’ll take care of you. I swore I would. “That’s a promise.”
She studies my face like we’re long-forgotten acquaintances. Like she might see a flash of something familiar. But then her eyes glaze over and she turns towards the door. “I have to get back to Nina.”
“Laila…” I breathe as her hand meets the bronzed handle.
She looks over her shoulder with tired eyes, and I don’t even know what I’m going to say until it’s tumbling out of my mouth.
“If you need extra hands with Nina, I can help.”
When she looks at me again, there’s recognition there. A light I haven’t seen in too long. “Yeah?”
“Absolutely.” I nod. “Just say the word. I know of a company with night nurses and nannies?—”
Her sudden frown stops me in my tracks. For the first time since she walked in here, she looks truly angry.
“Thanks, but no thanks.” Her words are clipped, razor sharp. “I can take care of my own child.”
And on that cutting note, she’s gone.
Charles yanks against the ropes tying him to the rusting chain-link fence.
“Careful,” I warn him from where I’m standing against the opposite wall. “It’ll be hard to watch the show if you’re eating pavement. That fence looks like it could tumble down at any moment.”
Charles must agree because, after a cursory inspection of the fence, he stops fighting. “What are you going to do to me? Where are we?”
“The middle of nowhere.” I hold my hands out to encompass the empty lot and deserted warehouses around us. “I expect there to be a lot of screaming, so I wanted our privacy.”
Years ago, I found Jasper strung out in this warehouse. He was supposed to be on duty for me, but he’d disappeared. Days later, he was barely conscious on a piss-stained mat in this dump. Even all these years later, the air still reeks of bad choices.
Today’s events are unlikely to change that.
“But what are you gonna do to me?” Charles sniffles, watching Dominik and Gedeon pace back and forth in front of him like he expects them to lunge out and take him by the jugular.
Gedeon pump-fakes towards Charles, grinning when the man cowers into the chain link. “Easy, pal. I’m not going to hurt you.” He slaps Charles’s cheek lightly and saunters off, hands stuffed in his pockets.
“They aren’t going to hurt you,” I confirm. “Neither am I, actually. What you’re going to do today, Charles, is watch.”
Dominik turns to me. His bruises aren’t so bad in the dim alley light. There’s still some swelling under his eye, but his ego took the worst of it. Thankfully, we’ve never let our personal issues get in the way of what needs to be done. He arches a brow in question, and I nod.
“I’ll take these, thanks.” Dominic snatches Charles’s keys from his front pocket.
“I didn’t go near her again!” Spit flies from Charles’ mouth as he watches Dominik walk away with his car keys dangling from his fingertips.
“No, but you did call her last night. You threatened her.”
“She’s a filthy liar!” he roars. “I just wanted to talk to her mother. I’m not the villain she’s made me out to be.”
I raise a hand in warning. “I don’t plan to hurt you—but say another nasty word about my wife, and those plans can change.”
“I’m her father. Your child’s grandfather. You’d really hurt me?”
I cock my head to the side, studying him in case there’s any tiny scrap of him I find redeemable. But there’s nothing. “The night I killed my own grandfather, I slept better than I had in years. I don’t anticipate this being any different.”
His face twists with fear. “Laila may think she hates me now, but she’d never forgive you if you killed me. I’m still her father. That means something.”
“It might have,” I concede with a shrug, “ if you’d been around while she was growing up. But you were too concerned with appearances to stick around for a wife with a scarred face and a daughter with a bum hip.”
He swallows hard. “Listen, I’ll… I’ll disappear. I’ll leave them alone. I’ll?—”
“I’ve heard this all before. I’m bored.” My gaze slides to the vintage Porsche he drove here, under gunpoint, courtesy of my two right-hand men. “Nice car, by the way. Very snazzy for a man who doesn’t have two dimes to rub together.”
“It was a gift. From a friend.”
“But you don’t have friends, Charles,” I remind him. “What you have are creditors. And lots of them.”
Charles’s eyes flare as sweat drips into his panting mouth. “Twenty thousand dollars!” he blurts. “Give me twenty grand, and I’ll get out of town and stay out of trouble.”
I turn to Dominik and Gedeon. “Is he negotiating with me?”
Gedeon shakes his head. “He’s got balls; you gotta give him that.”
“Or he’s just that stupid,” Dominik suggests.
“Fifteen, then,” Charles counters. “Fifteen and I’ll be gone.”
I roll my eyes. “Dom, bring me the bat.”
Dom makes a show of pulling out a huge, bloodstained baseball bat from the trunk of my Bugatti and twirling it in his hands as he crosses the pavement.
He tosses it to me, and I snatch it out of the air. “Why, Charles, would I spend good money on a problem I can take care of for free?”
Charles whimpers. “Please… don’t hurt me.”
“Like I said, Charles, I have no intention of hurting you.” I walk past him to his vintage convertible.
Just as I predicted, he thrashes against his bindings, damn near taking the fence down with him. “No!” he screams. “Please! Don’t touch the car!”
I wait for him to run out of air—for the begging to stall into silence—before I take my first swing.
The glass in the side mirror shatters like a prop, like it’s breakaway glass and it was made for this. I smash through the windshield before taking each window in turn.
And fuck , it feels good.
Charles screams like I’m breaking his limbs. Like it’s his own body under my bat. But only once the convertible is a crushed piece of scrap metal do I put the bat down.
“Gedeon, care to do the honors?”
Charles watches in horror as Gedeon pours gasoline all over his precious—and almost certainly ill-gotten—car before I light a match and toss it onto the wreckage.
Flames explode out in every direction, white-hot and greedy. I turn back to where Charles is limp against the fence, the heat of the flames at my back.
At long last, he seems to be fresh out of words.
“If you ever come near my family again,” I growl, kneeling in front of him, “it won’t just be the car that gets burned. I’ll fry you to a husk and dump you with all the other bodies I’ve disposed of over the years.” I turn my back on him and head for the Bugatti. “Dom, loosen his restraints. Let’s give him a fighting chance of getting out of here before the car blows.”
A few minutes later, we’re driving off, plumes of smoke billowing into the air behind us.
Gedeon takes a sharp left to avoid the sirens heading in our direction. “That was quite the show you put on.”
“Charles’s ego is directly linked to his possessions,” I say. “I doubt a few broken bones would have gotten the message across as clearly.”
Dominik rolls down the window, looking back at the smoke. “Gedeon and I could’ve handled this. You didn’t need to be here.”
“This was my responsibility. I’m the one who promised Laila I would take care of her father if he showed up again.”
I promised her a lot of things, though. And they know that as well as I do. The air is thick with all the things my two right-hand men are not saying.
“I’m not like him,” I bark into the silence. “I’m not like Charles, and I want Laila to know that.”
Gedeon stays quiet, but short of stuffing his fist into his mouth, I know Dom won’t be able to stop himself.
“Laila might know that, but what will Nina think?” he asks.
I want to shove him out of the car, but the loyal bastard would just find his way back home.
“If you’re planning to throw another punch, skip my face.” I point to the fading bruise on my jaw. “I have too many meetings this week to nurse a black eye.”
Dominik looks at me like he’s considering it before he shakes his head. “I think my blow already landed.”