27. Silas
Amalia left an hour ago, and I find myself in the boxing ring with Andreas.
“Fuck, Si. Forbidden romance suits you, brother.”
“Fuck you.” My fist connects with his face, making him laugh.
“The tension! The yearning! I vote for Amalia to just stay glued to you twenty-four seven.”
I vote that too.
I don’t like her going home each night, but asking her to stay might scare her off.
Why isn’t it scaring me?
My best friend knocks the air out of my lungs with a right hook that I should have seen coming, and I take two steps back, hitting the ropes.
He follows up immediately, not giving me the chance to recover, landing two more blows to my ribs before I manage to get my arms up.
I duck under the next swing, drive my shoulder into his chest and push him back to center, and we circle each other for a moment, both breathing hard.
His phone starts ringing, and when he checks what’s going on, his face pales.
I take my gloves off and take a few steps toward him.
“Everything all right?”
His eyes lift from the screen and he swallows.
“He’s in Ciudad de México.”
He doesn’t need to tell me who. That fucking snake.
What the hell is he doing here? We’ve been tracking him throughout all of Europe. The States. But Mexico?
“Where is he?” I ask, but I’m already looking at the screen. Las Palomas Nightclub.
And just like that, every thought in my head rearranges itself around a single point: Amalia.
The rational part of me knows he has no reason to even be aware she exists, but rational has nothing to do with the cold thing sliding down my spine.
I grab my phone from my bag before I can talk myself out of it.
Me: Tell me you’re home.
The three dots appear almost instantly, and some of the pressure in my chest eases before she’s even answered.
Amalia: Home, alive, and losing a knife fight with my sorting homework. Bubble sort behaved. Quicksort has decided to sort my will to live instead.
A breath that’s almost a laugh escapes me, despite everything. She’s fine. Buried in code, fighting algorithms, completely unaware that the most dangerous man I know just landed in her city.
I intend to keep it that way.
The club where that bastard stopped is on the outskirts of the city.
Two bouncers stand at the entrance, checking IDs like this is any ordinary night.
“Are you sure you want to do this here?” Andreas asks me. “It’s packed, Si. And in a crowd, things can go sideways fast.”
He’s right, but three years ago we decided not to approach Aleksandr in a crowd and he slipped right through the traffic cameras.
I’m not making that same mistake twice, and my silence gives my best friend his answer.
We get out of the car and walk toward the building, the bass already rattling the ground beneath our feet.
One of the bouncers clocks the guns under our jackets, but a thick stack of dollars is enough to make him find something more interesting to look at in the line behind us.
Inside, the music bleeds into sweat and cologne, bodies moving against each other in the dark, and a quick scan of the room tells me the monster who killed my brother is nowhere in sight.
“Let’s split up,” I tell Andreas, and before he can protest, I’m already moving.
I work through the dance floor first then move to the VIP lounges.
In the first, an old man has his hands all over a brunette who looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. In the second, a group of kids are putting something up their noses. But when my eyes land on the third lounge — bingo.
There, on a black leather sofa, sits Aleksandr Rastovski, with his loyal dog standing behind him, watching the crowd.
I don’t make it three steps before his bodyguard’s eyes lock onto mine, and maybe it’s something in my expression that promises violence and retribution, but the man’s entire body goes rigid. He leans in close to his boss and whispers something, and then Aleksandr’s eyes find me.
He rises slowly, fastening two buttons on his jacket, and with a lazy smile, he turns his back and walks away.
Damn it.
I call Andreas, who picks up on the first ring.
“They made me. They’re heading for the east exit.”
“I’m coming now, Silas. Don’t —” But before he can finish, I’ve already hung up.
My hand moves to my gun, but the last thing I want is to cause a scene with this many people around me. I’m no saint, but I’d rather not have civilian casualties if I can avoid it.
I keep my eyes on Aleksandr’s jacket, and when less than twenty yards separate him from the exit, his bodyguard turns and grabs a girl who’s just stepped out of the bathroom.
The gun presses to her temple, pulling a scream out of her that gets swallowed whole by the music from the main floor.
“Alek, keep moving!” the idiot calls out. “I’ll be right behind you.”
His boss tucks his hands into his pockets and takes a step toward me, studying the fact that I’ve gone still.
“Who are you?”
An image of Dean in my arms, bleeding out far too fast, flashes across my vision, and I have to force myself to swallow down the bile rising in my throat.
“Silas Vaughn. Dean Vaughn’s brother.”
One second. But I catch the exact moment the name registers, and something moves through his eyes before he shakes it off and laughs. Something that looks far too much like fear.
The bastard laughs as he turns away.
“He should have taken my offer, my friend. A smaller amount, sure, but your brother thought he was owed more. Pride is an expensive thing to die for.”
I could draw my gun and shoot him, but I know his right hand will empty every bullet he has into the woman trembling and crying in his grip.
Someone in the hallway notices us, and when they see the girl with a gun to her head, they start screaming, setting off a chain reaction through the entire club.
Then two shots hit the wall beside Aleksandr’s soldier, and the man, caught off guard, turns just in time to see Andreas launching himself at him, knocking the gun loose.
The girl runs.
My best friend shouts at me while he wrestles the idiot who was shielding that snake to the ground.
“Go, Silas!”
I take off after Aleksandr, bursting through the back exit into the alley just in time to see him climbing into a waiting car.
My gun is in my hand in two seconds and I open fire. I could swear one bullet caught his shoulder, but I can’t be sure from this angle.
The car tears away, my shots chasing it through the rear window, the tires, the trunk.
Police sirens wail in the distance, and I hear footsteps behind me.
“Si, someone called the cops. We need to go!”
My gun clicks empty and I slam it against the ground.
He got away. Again.
“What about his soldier?” But when I turn, I see Andreas with one hand pressed to his abdomen, blood running freely between his fingers.
“Andreas?”
“I got blood on my John Lobb shoes, Si.” He’s trying to sound amused, but his eyes are glassy.
I don’t wait. I grab him and move toward the car.
“Stay with me, man.”
“You owe me a new pair of shoes,” he mutters, eyes half closed.
“I swear to God, Andreas, if you don’t open your eyes, I’m burning your entire shoe collection.”
That earns a low growl from him, and in my head I’m already counting the minutes to the private clinic where I know someone who will treat him without asking questions.
“If anything happens to those shoes, I’m wiping your P&L statements for the entire last year,” he mumbles, and without meaning to, some of the weight in my chest lifts as I shake my head.