Vadim
I couldn’t understand why people didn’t simply tell me what I needed to know. Torturing them was so tiresome.
More cries of pain followed as Konstantin applied the blowtorch to our uncle. I could have called on Tau for this, but it was family business.
I pulled my phone out again. Her picture on the wallpaper. The blue eyes and the nostril and that smile.
The irritation of being played for a fool made me slip it back into my pocket.
“Why do you want to know about that whore?” Sergei screeched.
Konstantin began on his nipple.
I watched it change colour before the smell of burning flesh reached me. When I glanced over Konstantin was grinning with the focused satisfaction of a man who had found his medium. He made sure the nipple was fully decimated before moving methodically to the greying chest hair.
No wonder he looked up to Tau. He would never admit it. But there were signs.
“I’ll talk,” Sergei said.
The anger had left him entirely. What remained in his voice was exhaustion and pain in roughly equal measure.
The blowtorch cut off with a whoosh.
“She was young. A stupid girl from the village. Lev didn’t treat her well and neither did the Bratva,” he said, breathing carefully between each sentence.
I imagined it couldn’t be easy to maintain focus with a roasted nipple.
“Rumours began after his birth,” he said, nodding toward me.
“What rumours?” Konstantin asked, frowning.
“Let’s just say the men were helping themselves.” Sergei’s eyes moved to my brother. “You might not even be Lev’s.”
Even hanging by his wrists, in pain, with burnt flesh, he managed the smirk.
The strike was fast and vicious—the dull thud of the metal blowtorch against his skull, no hesitation, no wind-up. Sergei’s head dropped forward and his body slumped, dead weight against the restraints.
“Wonderful,” I said, standing and straightening my jacket. “Now I have to wait for him to regain consciousness.”
Konstantin didn’t get a chance to respond.
Within seconds every phone in the room began to ring simultaneously. His. Mine. The byki by the door.
An explosion at the house.
My house.
I was already moving. Konstantin behind me.
“Someone lock up behind us,” I said over my shoulder as I crossed the room.
Tikhon and Bogdan were ready. I got into the back of the SUV before the door was fully open.
“Don’t stop,” I said. “Not for anything.”
I tried Iskra’s number while Tikhon pulled out.
Switched off. Disconnected. Gone.
The gate guard who called said she had left the house. Seconds after the explosion. Without her byki.
I tried Tau.
It rang several times.
I gripped the handle as Tikhon cut around traffic.
“Is anyone hurt?” I said when the line connected. “Is she safe?”
Silence.
Then—
“No one is hurt.” The tension left me before he finished. “And she is gone.”
Gone.
She’s gone.
“Gone where?” I asked.
But I already knew. The guard’s call. The timing. The phone switched off. The byki left behind.
“She did this?” I asked flatly.
A pause.
“Yes.”
I nodded.
More to myself than anyone.
I disconnected and stared out of the window.
I had never wanted marriage. Lev had sold my mother once she bore his sons. The Dragunovs were not built for family life—it was there in the record, if you cared to read it.
The car turned onto the tree-lined road. Dark smoke was already visible above the canopy before we reached the driveway.
We parked away from the fire engines and the police cars. I leaned forward between my two men and stared through the windscreen at what remained of my home.
The east wing open to the sky. The kitchen gone. Roughly sixty percent of the structure damaged or destroyed.
The west wing still standing above it all. Intact. Untouched. And the more I stared at it I realised that it was entirely by design.
Huh.
Of all the women fit to be part of the Bratva it could have been her.
What a crazy fucking bitch.
I chuckled.
My men stared at me.
Radovan and Tau walked toward the vehicle.
We were still coordinating the move to another property when Olya returned, bags in hand, searching for a kitchen that no longer existed.
I’d let her go.
But if our paths ever crossed again, she would meet a very different side of me.
One she would never survive.
Or escape.