Chapter 27
EVGENY
Iwatch the club floor on the security feed, bodies vibrating with the music in unnatural shades of black and blue. Everyone on the dance floor is lost in the moment, lost to the music, the alcohol, the drugs. The pounding bass reaches me only as a tremor through the soles of my shoes.
They’re lost in a way I wish I could be, lost enough to forget the pain I don’t believe will ever go away.
Like the pain of my burn scars, it will be with me until the day I die.
The pain of loss, of emptiness, of knowing what it is to hold someone and then lose them.
The pain of knowing I had something I didn’t deserve, and that I lost it.
The mass shifts and sways like a flock of birds before sunset, rising, falling, rolling, undulating.
I can’t help but remember the moment I met Eva on that same floor.
Even then, crumpled against the wall where she’d fallen, in the dusty, strobing lights, blood trickling down the side of her face, she’d been beautiful.
She’d taken my breath away with her halo of dark hair, with the fire in her dark, almond-shaped eyes that looked at me without fear and met my gaze without flinching. Something inside me had responded to her blazing spirit.
I should have known then that my heart wasn’t mine anymore. More than that, once I knew she was a hacker, I should have had Dmitri deal with her, teach her a lesson that would keep her away from Bratva business and out of my life for good.
Even now, I wonder why I reacted the way I did, though I already know why. I’d forced people to work for me, whether to cover a debt or because I needed what they offered. But never once had I kept someone in my house. Dmitri had asked if I was mad, and I had been.
I still was.
I’d told myself it was anger, told myself it was her punishment, told myself I needed her under lock and key until she gave me what I wanted.
Then I would be done with her. But I should have known.
I had known Eva was already under my skin, and I hadn’t been able to admit it.
It was not who I was, and so I was safe.
Except now, Eva has done far more than work her way under my skin.
In the months we’ve been together, she’s become an indelible part of me, of my life, in a way I know I will never be able to change.
In a way, it feels like she ripped my heart out and took it with her that day.
Except she left a piece of herself behind, a festering wound that will not close.
And now I feel incomplete without her. I will always feel incomplete. It’s an incontrovertible fact.
The door opens and closes, a soft snick I ignore.
Why did I think I could have a life with anyone, much less a woman like Eva? How had I, with a heart as sealed to the world as a steel door, ever begun to believe in a fairy tale as ridiculous as one in which I found a lasting love?
That was not, and never had been, my reality.
A glass of whiskey lands on the desk, neat, no garnish. Dmitri settles into the chair across from me. I’m in his chair, but he wouldn’t dare ask me to move. He knows his place.
I should have known mine.
Dmitri stays quiet, sipping his whiskey, and though I keep my gaze on the screens, I feel his stare burn the side of my neck.
“Do you have something to say?” It’s a growl I feel in the back of my throat, low and cautioning.
My second-in-command takes a deep breath, lets it out as a sigh, and shifts forward, pinning me with his gaze. “Look, Evgeny. You need to talk to Eva. Tell her the truth. I have evid—”
“No.”
Dmitri presses his lips together, annoyance flashing across his face.
His hand tightens around the crystal tumbler, his knuckles red and bloodstained.
“I’m telling you this as your friend, not your Brigadier.
You’re wallowing, and the men are noticing.
Everyone has noticed. You’re worse than before, and you’re not thinking straight. It’s time to—”
My glass hits the solid oak so hard Dmitri winces for the crystal’s sake. “Are you telling me how to run the Bratva now? Are you going to tell me how to run my life, how I should comport myself, how I should talk? Are you going to start dictating my bedtime and what I wear?”
Dmitri’s shoulders straighten, a truculent glare settling over his features, making him look even more like a dangerous animal.
“You know that’s not it. Stop being an asshole.
You don’t scare me. Look—” His expression softens in a way that sends anger bubbling through me.
He’s being patient with me. Me. “Ev, I’m worried about you.
You’ve always been a beast, but this is different.
I know you miss her. Take this chance to win her back. ”
“No.”
I can’t even let myself consider the possibility, since hope would only rise and then break my heart again. It would destroy me, and I’ve learned my lesson.
“No. I will keep her far away, as I should have from the start. I cannot afford to have that kind of distraction or connection.”
When I wasn’t thinking of Eva, I was thinking of my father and how the loss of my mother broke him.
For a few years, Ivan had run the Bratva, and it had suffered without my father’s vision and unforgiving hand.
I swore long ago that would never happen to me, for the good of the Kucherov Bratva.
For the good of the Kucherov men. For my good.
“Look at what happened at the yearly meeting with the East Coast faction. They all knew I was distracted, and you know how perilous distraction can be. My life is too dangerous. Look at what happened to Jordan.”
“What happened to the kid has nothing to do with you, and you know it.”
I shake my head but don’t argue because I know I’m right, my gut is telling me Jordan’s murder was about more than just the kid’s debts or the trouble he’d found.
“Okay, fine. How is your version of ‘staying away’ from Eva any different from having her back? You have people watching over her, over her family members. You’re keeping tabs on her.”
“Only to keep her safe,” I counter. And it’s the truth. All I care about is her safety. All I can stand to care about.
Though my gaze is back on the screens, I catch Dmitri rolling his eyes in my peripheral vision. He takes another breath to argue, and I take one to shut him down for good when Dmitri’s phone rings.
“What?” he snaps, not even looking at the screen before he answers the phone. An indistinct voice on the other end offers only a handful of unintelligible words, and the call ends.
“The guy is finally talking.” Dmitri is already in motion, rising from the chair and leaving the rest of his whiskey on the desk. He gives me a final look that says he’s not done with the conversation, then heads to the door.
I follow, gaining on him quickly. Since Jordan’s murder, I’ve been relentless in my pursuit of Tsepov and his goons, even more so than when my life had been threatened. I’m ending this territory war sooner rather than later. That was my mistake, one I will not make again.
The guy in the very back room of the club, the one only Bratva members know about, is barely conscious. His head lolls, his face a mask of bruises, one eye swollen shut, blood dribbling from his mouth and down his chin.
“One of Tsepov’s men.” Dmitri jerks his chin at the man tied to a chair, arms bound tight around the low back of the chair. “Caught him coming out of the deli on Pico.”
My men step away as I crouch in front of the guy. His one good eye cracks open, bloodshot and glassy with pain.
“Are you going to tell me what I want to know?”
Defiant silence is all I get.
“You know what happens when you kill someone under my protection, don’t you?” My words are icily quiet, controlled, but the man is in far too much pain to seem to care.
“Just fucking get it over with.” His words are slurred and spoken through broken teeth and a fat lip. “I know you’re going to kill me, you fucking bastard. Just do it. I already told them everything I know.”
“That would be easy, wouldn’t it?” I purr. “Just release you from the pain? From the horror of knowing your death is imminent, yet you don’t know when?”
The man glares at me with his one working eye, and I half expect him to spit blood at me.
“But no. I’m not going to give that to you, that would be a mercy, and I’m far too angry for mercy.
” I stand and flash him a wolfish grin that makes him recoil as much as his restraints allow.
I take off my suit jacket and roll up my sleeves.
“You’ve angered the Kucherov Demon, and now you get to see what that means. ”
If Tsepov’s guy thought what he’d already received was bad, I show him how much of a monster I can be. I keep going until he pleads with me to stop, to kill him, until he can barely force out the information I seek even when he wants to tell me.
His breath wheezing in and out, I grasp his hair and pull his head up.
“Tell me what I want to know.” I spit venom into his ear, the violence like a drug in my veins, his blood an elixir bringing me back to life, back to my purpose.
“Who killed the kid? Who killed Jordan Volkov? How is Tsepov involved in all this?”
“One of your men betrayed you,” the man gasps, then groans.
“Bullshit. My men don’t betray me.”
A sound rolls through the man’s throat, an odd gurgling that turns into a wheezing half-chuckle, half-moan of pain. “Are you so sure?”
It’s a simple question, a reaction from a man nearly out of his mind with pain. But that simple question, with its amused, almost gleeful tone, echoes what Tsepov told me that day at the restaurant.
I would watch your back because you never know who’s coming for it.
With a roar, I rear back and bring my fist down onto the man’s cheek. Something gives under my hand, and the man’s head falls back. I don’t know whether he’s unconscious or dead, but I don’t care.
It takes me longer than I’d like to get myself back under control, to keep from pummeling the man until he’s unrecognizable.
“Kill him. Make it slow. Dump the body where Tsepov sees it. I want my message clear. He’s to know he’s woken the Demon, and I’m done playing nice.”
As I stalk from the room, slipping my jacket back on to cover the blood on my shirt, I know with certainty that Tsepov’s challenge wasn’t a lie to knock me off balance. Someone inside my Bratva has betrayed me. Someone tore Eva from my arms and destroyed her family.
And I will find out who.