29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
V iktor
One week.
My milyy had been gone a week.
And the world around me was in bloody chaos. Literally.
I listened to Roger with half an ear. He said I was becoming ‘a problem’, or so was ‘the rumor’.
Apparently, the other crime families were ‘unhappy’ with me burning down every establishment I’d visited over the week, in my quest to find out what happened to my wife. And the trail of bodies I had left behind in my wake was becoming harder for the authorities to ignore. Money could cover up a lot, but this was ‘ridiculous’, I was told.
Too many air quotes for my taste. “If the international syndicates in the area have something to say, they can bring it to me personally. Otherwise, remind their leaders that they’re nothing more than visitors in my country , and they are only living here in peace because the Bratva permits it.”
I was not ridiculous. Nor was I a problem. I was rage incarnate. I was Death on a pale horse. And the world would feel my fury until someone told me what happened to my wife.
I ignored Roger as he trailed behind me and complained like a little bitch.
“Viktor, it’s too much. There are bodies piled in the basement. Bodies littering the hallways. Bodies strewn across the property. We are attracting vultures.” My godfather rushed to step in front of me, thus halting my steps. “Not to mention the god-awful smell.”
“I already granted you a favor. I did not use the bomb I wanted to use.” I stepped around him and continued
“But—”
“Goddammit!” I heard my father roar from his office. “What the Fu— Viktor! Roger! Both of you! Get in here!”
Apparently, my father was out of his room.
Roger went straight to my father’s office. I lingered in the doorway and watched where the once formidable Pakhan stood beside the desk, unsteady on his feet.
“What is it, Father? Why are you out of your room? You should be in bed? You don’t look well.”
“There is not a single staff member left in this house to care for me!” he snarled. “They have all run away! I haven’t had a decent meal in a week! What the fuck is happening? Why does my home smell like a rotting battlefield.” He swatted his hand. “There are fucking flies everywhere.”
I sighed. “Perhaps if you wouldn’t have killed my mother, you’d have a loving wife to cook and care for you.”
He narrowed his gaze, grumbled to himself, then collapsed into his chair. “I didn’t kill her, if you recall. Your brother did. Because you were too much of a pussy to do it yourself.”
I strolled into the office, stood before the desk, and reached into my pocket. I pulled out a collection of severed fingers and threw them on the desktop. Out of my other pocket, I pulled out a detached nose, a tongue, and a pair of plucked eyes. They joined the sliced fingers on the desk.
“Say something like that again,” I warned quietly. I was not that little boy anymore, and I sure as hell was not in the mood.
My father looked ready to try me, but Roger stepped in. “You were too ill to bother with something so trivial, but Viktor has lost his wife. He has… not taken it well.”
“Trivial?” I echoed.
“Apologies. What I meant was that this was not a Bratva matter,” he corrected.
I sent a glare his way. “It is very much a Bratva matter. If it weren’t, you wouldn’t be complaining about the body count.”
Smirking, my father reached for a bottle of vodka and poured a shot. “Love makes a man weak,” he muttered. He downed the spirit, wincing as he swallowed hard. “And irrational.”
Before I could comment, there was a knock at the office door frame. My lead popped his head in.
“Sir, that guy you flayed alive is awake again.”
With that, I turned away from my father and marched out the door. This was the closest I had come to any information on Tiffany.
In the hallway, the shackled, nearly skinless man hung from his wrists in what had become an impromptu art gallery. Every eyeless face I had collected this week was nailed to the wall, so many in number that the human skin was beginning to look like wet, bloody wallpaper.
The whole scene made me think of Tiffany. She would have loved this. It was why I had brought in people who knew how to preserve such works of art. They were busy too.
Speaking of faces…
The man was moaning, begging to die. He still had his, so I brought out my knife and cut around the scalp.
“Please,” he begged. “Kill me.”
“Better start speaking.” I lifted the flap of scalp and began tugging. And the way he screamed.
The pleasant symphony of tears and blood and horror was interrupted by one of my soldiers vomiting in the corner.
Growling at the interruption, I spun about and pointed my knife at the man. “You there, with the weak stomach, you’re done. Pack your shit and leave. Get on the first plane to America, and go work for my pussy ass brother.”
He didn’t move, staring at me in disbelief.
“Now!” I barked.
He sped out the hall.
“Sir?” Roger came closer, moving like a specter from the shadows. “Is that wise? You have so few men left.”
“He should be grateful I’m allowing him to leave with his life. If he didn’t have two daughters in the academy to support, I wouldn’t have. However, his daughters will make good wives to reward our remaining soldiers one day.”
“I see,” Roger commented carefully.
“Anyone else feeling sick?” I asked the crowd.
My men scrambled to assure me they were not. None of them wanted to leave the country to work for my brother. Or none of them wanted to be the man I was skinning next. Whatever.
“Tell me,” I ordered. “And if I believe you, I will kill you before your face joins the others.”
“Please,” he rasped. “I heard a rumor among drunk, low-level soldiers, about an angel of death whose touch sapped the life out of men. Beautiful, dark skin,” he wheezed. “You said your wife was like that.”
“Did they say where she was seen?”
“They say… she is… a shapeshifter. Can be your chef, your maid, your cashier, your lover. She is everywhere, and nowhere.”
“She is human,” I growled. “And I fucking need to know where she is.”
The dying man, looking very much like a martyr, or a statue of St. Bartholomew, was beginning to faint again.
“No!” I snarled and tore his scalp off.
Nothing.
Enraged, I began slashing into the exposed meat of his torso. When no longer satisfying, I kicked away his unraveling intestines and punched up through the pulverized cavity.
I ripped out his heart and crushed it.
Because that was what my own felt like.
Ripped apart. Crushed. Dead.
“At least the Italians have backed off,” Roger said, as if trying to offer a bright side. “They heard about the carnage, and it has made them think twice about their immediate plan of attack.”
I looked up. My men were gone. It was just me and him.
“Roger. Why are you here?”
“Because that is my job.”
I tossed down the organ. “No. Here with us.”
“You know why. As part of the treaty, there was an exchange of seconds. Your uncle went to the Don. I came here.”
“Divided loyalties.”
“No. An oath is an oath. We are not Americans. We have honor.”
Hearing that made me chuckle… and that chuckle turned into a full belly laugh.
“Tiffany, you promised me obedience.”
“I’m taking my promise back.”
“You cannot do that. It’s dishonorable.”
“Really? You are worried about honor?”
“Yes. I’m Russian. And Bratva.”
“Well, I’m American. We don’t play by the rules.”
Then I heard her.
For a moment, I thought it was my imagination.
It was not.
“Ooooo, so pretty,” she cooed as she admired the walls of faces.
Roger ducked out quick like. I think my mother’s ghost even vanished from my brain, leaving me alone to simply stare. I didn’t move, out of fear of what I might do if I didn’t measure myself. I did not want to lose control.
“Tiffany, wife,” I said softly. “Where have you been?”
She spun and beamed at me, then rushed over and hugged me tightly. I didn’t return the embrace. I just stood there, numb.
“I felt so awful for fucking up, that I decided to clean up the mess I caused when I killed your ex-fiancée,” she explained in a rush, seemingly unconcerned with all the blood ruining her clothes.
“I need you to clarify what that means.”
Releasing me, she stepped back and smiled. “I figured I would eliminate all your enemies for you, one-by-one, and you wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore. But…” she sighed and held out her arms. “I ran out of poison.” She rolled her eyes. “Have to restock. Then I’ll head back out.”