Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Ivan
My entire life, my grandmothers hovered.
They stayed their distance when necessary but when they wanted something…
There was absolutely no stopping them, and right now, for whatever reason, they wanted something.
I locked myself in my room most of the next day, unsure of how to proceed.
I had a deer hanging in my barn that needed to be taken care of, if something hadn’t broken into the high-tech shed overnight and helped themselves.
I stared at myself in the mirror and shook my head. My hair was curling up around my ears, and my light eyes had dark circles under them. I’d gained muscle, but somehow I made it look bad, since I’d also lost so much weight.
I pushed off of the counter with a huff.
I would have to face the music eventually, and it was always better to do it sooner rather than later.
If I waited until they came to find me, it would always be worse.
The scent of bacon cooking met my nose as soon as I opened the bedroom door.
I forced myself down each step, even though the breakfast smelled heavenly.
When was the last time I’d had a proper breakfast?
I stopped mid-step. Wait, since when did the grannies cook?
Walking into the kitchen, I found that they didn’t. They’d ordered an entire spread of everything you could think of, and it was laid out carefully on the island. Both of the grannies were sitting at the table reading a newspaper. The town had those? I scrubbed a hand down my face.
“How the hell did you get someone to bring all of that out here?”
Grandmother folded her newspaper neatly beside her half-full plate and stared at me from across the kitchen, one elegant brow lifted on her forehead. “My boy, someday you will find that with enough money, people will do anything.”
Nana grinned across from her and winked. “Anything.”
That was the last thing I needed to hear coming from them. I pressed my lips into a thin line. “Let’s get this over with.”
Nana raised a brow as Grandmother folded her hands in front of her. Nana was the first to speak, “You can try to avoid us, but we won’t leave until we have the answers we seek.”
I waved my hands in a circle. I refused to give them answers the night before, but now I knew I had no other choice. “On with it then.”
Grandmother gave me a serious face. “We would like to know your current body count.”
“And we don’t mean it sexually,” Nana interjected.
My eye twitched. “Obviously.”
“So?” They asked in unison.
“Two-hundred and one,” I was probably off a little bit, but I knew it was around there.
They tilted their heads. “Benson gets you the work?”
I shrugged. More or less. I had my own connections for the most part. It didn’t take long after the first fifty to find my people.
Grandmother jumped straight into it. “Good, we have a job for you.”
“I’m not going after my father.” Though I would have been lying to say I hadn’t been hunting him in my off-season…
Which was now. But they didn’t need to know that.
No one needed to know that I was going after him; it would make things complicated, and the last thing I wanted was for my whole family to end up on my doorstep.
They looked at each other. “We want you to go after one of his business partners.”
I could do that. I’d been doing that without pay anyway. It was considered practice.
“We will, of course, pay you handsomely for the task,” Grandmother spread her hands out in front of her as if she had the cash on hand. Knowing them… she probably did.
“Maybe I don’t want to be paid for taking out people already on my list.” It was stupid to admit that out loud, but I was curious.
I was curious about why they were here, why they wanted to hire a hit, and if they thought I was hurting for money.
They were too complex to figure out on my own.
Better yet, no one would ever figure them out.
There wasn’t a smart enough person on this earth, and if there was, they would be figured out and then I would be hired…
Nana tsked. “We don’t care about your list, we just want you to do a job.”
“Okay,” I sighed through my nose. “What do you get out of this?”
Grandmother, very delicately, cleared her throat. “I don’t see why that’s any of your business.”
“But,” Nana cut her eyes at the other woman. “We like to see the bad men punished.”
This time, I rolled my eyes. “This is hardly a punishment. If anything, it’s a mercy.”
Grandmother’s cold smile didn’t meet her eyes. “It’s a warning. We need him gone for…other purposes. It’s a game of chess, my boy. Once he is eliminated, then the others will scatter and get messy. They will get the true punishment.”
I swallowed thickly. “Okay, send all the information over, I’ll have it done.”
They both stood at the same time, ever poised. “See to it that it is finished before Alexei and Audrey get married, will you?”
I didn’t know why that mattered so much, but I nodded my agreement anyway.
“You will be there, won’t you?” Nana stared at me with unamused eyes. This wasn’t a question. If I didn’t show up, they would drag me there kicking and screaming.
I nodded again.