Chapter 40
Damien
"Now, Joseph. Run through all the details again."
I watch our Irish cop mole start to stammer.
"They found Senator Ashville's body. Washed up near the dock. Some woman out for her morning run spotted it and called the cops."
My fists clench involuntarily and I have to bite the inside of my cheek. Someone screwed up. Someone didn't follow protocol, and now we have this mess on our hands.
"I assume they took him to the morgue for autopsy," Vasili says.
"Yeah. I mean, it's not like you need to be a genius to figure out what happened to him," Joseph replies.
No, you don't need to be a genius to figure out that corpse was tortured. If the missing skin from his right hand wasn't enough, the absence of his dick and the fact he'd swallowed it—Vasili's handiwork, I should add—made things pretty damn clear.
"They're gonna come here asking questions," the cop tells us, swallowing hard.
"And why would they do that?" I ask, certain he's about to have a stroke.
Why the hell does everyone react like this when I talk to them?
Maybe because you're spinning two knives between your fingers while grinning like a maniac, the voice in my head reminds me.
That grin widens but not because of the idiot in front of me or the situation we're in. It's because of her. My little sun. My wife.
She finally gave in, and my heart squeezes in my chest when I remember how she looked at me when I told her I loved her. Like the concept was unimaginable. Like no one had ever done it before me.
And even though I'm selfish, I'm glad I'm the first and only.
"The senator mentioned to a colleague that he'd gotten into Red Poppy," the guy replies, sweat beading on his forehead.
Fuck.
One of the club's golden rules is discretion. I can't stop every idiot who wants to brag about securing entry to the club, but this brings complications. From Vasili's expression, I know he's thinking the same thing.
"You can go," I tell Joseph, watching relief flood his face. "But I want to know everything that moves in that precinct, clear?"
He nods frantically, like a broken bobblehead, then practically runs out the door.
With one of my favorite blades still in hand, I head toward my friend, who's lost in thought.
"Call Richard," I tell him.
He nods curtly and leaves the office to make the call.
Richard Winthorpe is the best lawyer in this country and, to my delight, the most corrupt.
The man has lost one case in his life. Since then, he's sunk his teeth into every case that's crossed his path. Often they don’t even make it to trial because he ensures evidence, witnesses, and justice bend his way.
Any legal problem we've had that couldn't be resolved with a favor from some senator or politician, we've gone to him. For the right amount of money, the problem disappears.
My phone rings in my pocket, and I answer instantly when I see the caller's name.
"Yeah, old man," I say to Sarin.
"Damien, there's someone outside the house, and the guards aren't answering."
My blood freezes at his words. Because I already know they're dead. And from his voice, he knows it too.
How the hell did she find him?
His house location is known to only a few Council members, which means someone talked, and talked wrong.
You're weak, you always have been, you always will be, and that's why everyone you care about will end up at the tip of my blade.
"Sarin," I say through gritted teeth, ignoring her voice in my mind. "Pick up that gun and put a hole in them."
"Don't let that rage consume you, Damien. And when you have her in front of you, cut off a piece of skin for me."
The call disconnects.
I don't know when I left the office. When I grabbed Vasili and two other soldiers and threw them in a car. I don't know when we arrived at Sarin's house.
I see a trail of blood right at the gate, and when I punch in the code, it takes me only seconds to find the bodies of two of his soldiers in a shrub. Shot at close range, occipital bone, to be precise.
A red wave crashes over my mind. I know I should push it aside and let reason dictate.
After all, those were his last words to me.
Not to let fury consume me. But when I walk into his house and see him propped against the living room wall, stare vacant, a hole over his heart, I no longer have smell, hearing, or sight.
Somehow, I know Vasili is calling out to me. I know he's trying to reach me. I know I have witnesses to this episode, but I can't find it in myself to care.
This man got me out of Warsaw. This man is the one who threw me a lifeline when I thought my life would amount to nothing but doing my mother’s dirty work. This man made sure to teach me how to play my cards to keep Berna safe. This man was my father. And I failed him. I let them get to him.
Because she knows where to sink the blade.
She's always known. But maybe most of all, she knew how to strip away my humanity with her own hands.
When she'd press pieces of her victims' skin onto my body.
When she made me watch everything that happened to Berna because of her hunger for power.
When right now she's stolen the last weeks I had left with the man in front of me.
Fingers pinch me, and only when I manage to push through the smoke in my head do I see what I've done.
The chairs in the room are smashed against the walls, Sarin's history books and autobiographies are torn or in the still-burning fireplace, and Vasili has blood at his mouth and nose.
He knows not to intervene when I have a moment. He knows to stay away, but of course he can't help trying to save me. To reach me.
I have blood on my fingers, and the skin on my palms is scraped raw from the brutality with which I tore at books and furniture.
"Call the cleanup crew," I say hoarsely to Vasili.
"Damien, I'm sorry," he tells me quietly, and I know that he means it.
He, like me, is grateful. If Sarin hadn't gotten us out of Poland, I don't think we'd still be alive.
"I want you to promise me that when I have her in front of me, you'll do everything in your power to keep me from killing her too quickly, Vasili. I want to be lucid. I want to have reason. To know exactly where I'm sinking each blade."
He doesn't promise me that, because it's not up to him. And that's maybe one of my greatest fears. That I'll let that red smoke consume me in that moment.
I approach Sarin's body, drop to my knees, and close his eyes.
"Should've moved you to a more secure location, old man."
He still has the gun clenched in his hand, and I know he fought as best he could. Though you can see on his face that the illness had robbed him of all his strength.
My only consolation is that he died fighting, not begging for mercy, not hiding.
With my hand still over his eyes, I drop my head and allow the tears burning my eyes to fall.
Just a few seconds where I permit myself to say goodbye to the one who saved me all those years ago, who saw beyond the blade I always carried.
Who saw I had the potential to be a leader when everyone laughed.
Who put his name on the line for a kid with so much rage and fire in him.
"I'll make sure to whisper your name when I sink the knives into her skin. I swear it."