Chapter Three
The funeral had wrecked me, but my conversation with Tomas had done far worse damage over the past week. Everyone was looking to me for answers. Answers I didn’t have. There was so much to do on a daily basis that I barely had time to think about plotting revenge. Right now, I was just trying to keep the snakes at bay.
Pakhan.
I was the motherfucking Pakhan of one of the most powerful Bratvas in the United States, but it all felt too fantastical. Too fake. As if it would come crashing down at any moment. The bastard never told me he had made me his heir.
Fucker probably thought he’d live forever.
News flash, he didn’t.
Now I was expected to seek revenge on his behalf. Not that I had an aversion to seeking justice for his death. I’d planned on it long before the nuclear bomb dropped on my head. Exhaling harshly, I quietly stalked down the lower passages that snaked below McDonough’s, toward where Seamus had set up an operational center for finding Bailey.
“The old witch herself,” my father muttered darkly as I walked into the room. He was staring at a picture of an older woman talking with Kiernan. Immediately, I recognized her as one of the women who worked for Elias. “Quite the social climber, that one. What did she say to you when you were talking?”
“She knew who I was,” my brother Kiernan divulged. “She was asking about Bailey’s sale price. I thought she worked for Lina.”
“She does.” I spoke up from behind them. The three men turned around, surprised to see me standing in the doorway, peering over their shoulders. Being invisible had given me some pretty neat ninja skills over the years. “So does Bailey’s ex-fiancé, Drew.”
“And you know this because…” Kiernan let the question hang in the air. I smiled at him, the gesture not quite reaching my eyes. “Well, we know Drew works for Christian. His logo is on the side of the containers he was using to ship his cargo.”
“All right, that was a gimme,” Seamus laughed, lightening the mood. I chuckled, but after the day I’d had, it came out sounding more wounded than I would have liked. Jesus, they had been working down here for the last two weeks trying to find her, and where was I? Trying to control an empire I had no business leading.
I ran my gaze over the board. Shit, maybe they would have found her sooner if I’d been here helping.
“That woman.” I pointed at the picture of a woman I recognized. “And that one.” I pointed back to the tall woman my father had called an old witch. “Are the ones Elias placed in charge of strip clubs and brothels.”
“How progressive of him,” Kiernan drawled.
I chuckled darkly. “Elias believed that he’d have less trouble with a woman in charge than a man,” I elaborated. “Said that men think with their dicks, but a woman thinks with her bank account.”
My father laughed. “I’m putting that on a T-shirt,” he snorted, and I couldn’t help the laugh that followed. We spent another hour going back and forth on why Lina would take Bailey in the first place. Kiernan and Seamus believed that Bailey had been set up long before she’d caught them in the alley.
Elias had a history with the two women that went back further than any of us had anticipated, and I dreaded the moment my brothers had to tell Bailey the truth about her mother. In a way, it would have been a relief for her, but there was a darkness to that truth that would taint her forever.
It didn’t matter. We were her family now, and that was all that mattered.
Once we all decided on a course of action, we planned into the wee hours of the morning. Sometime in the middle of the night, I brought in Vas and Maxim to assist in our coordinated attack. My men and I would hit Drew at Bailey’s old penthouse while the twins and my father took out the brothel where we’d learned Bailey was being kept.
Lina was smarter than her coconspirator. Sarah Eriksen was as dumb as a box of rocks. She’d led us straight to Bailey with her car GPS system backlog. My father told me he took those out of every vehicle he and his men used. They were easy to hack and easy to subpoena in a court of law.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured to my brothers as we left the confines of the room to head upstairs for a few hours of sleep before the raid.
“For what?” Kiernan asked, perplexed.
“I should have been here with you sooner,” I admitted sadly. “Bailey is important to you, and maybe, if I had helped sooner, she would be back here already.”
Seamus, the hugging hippie that he was, wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me tight to his side. “You,” he emphasized, “have nothing to apologize for. We know your pain and how hard it is to lose someone you love. The gala was one big fuckup after another. It’s our fault we didn’t do better research on the attendees or on Lina. Our guts told us not to take her down there, but we ignored them. Plus, I don’t think we could have stopped her from going even if we tried.”
Kiernan snorted. “She probably would have climbed out the window and gone, anyway,” he pointed out, eyes dancing with amusement. “Bailey wanted to save her friend. There was no stopping her once she put her mind to it. No matter how much we tried to dissuade her.” He nudged my shoulder and winked obscenely.
Oh gross.
“I think I threw up in my mouth a little.”
The twins laughed merrily, and I found myself joining in. God, it felt good to laugh and let go. I hadn’t done that since Matthias was shot. Family had a way of healing you, no matter how deep into the darkness you sank.
* * *
The building had been easy enough to clear out with our fire department contact, who slipped door to door, warning everyone of a possible hazardous leak. Each floor held two penthouse-style condos, and the one across from Bailey was thankfully vacant.
Looking down, I double-checked the safety on my Smith amp; Wesson Mamp;P, making sure it was off, before giving Vas the go-ahead. There were only four of us. We didn’t need an entire contingent of men for two measly people who were a threat less than zero.
Maxim was posted in front of the door, his gun aimed at the lock, waiting. Vas counted down quietly from three. The man had barely reached one when Maxim shot out the door and Leon kicked it in. The three men created a barrier around me, with Vas taking point at the head of their little V-shaped safety net.
It was frustrating going from being the protected and constantly guarded wife of a mafia boss to being the protected and guarded mafia boss. It was like nothing had changed besides my nameplate.
Oh, I should get one of those.
Wood breaking, followed by a shrill scream, rent the air.
“What the fuck?” That was Drew, Bailey’s ex-fiancé. I recognized his voice from the schmoozing he’d done at the gala when he found out my last name was Ward. Matthias had me revert to my maiden name, which was easy enough, since I had never officially changed my last name when I was forced to marry him.
No papers or ID.
Mark was working on that for me just to make things easier. I doubted they would be real, but that didn’t matter. As long as I had something, that was what I needed.
“Oh, I could have lived without seeing this,” I grumbled, scrunching my nose up at the two naked bodies before me. We’d interrupted sexy time. Gag.
None of the men looked happy about it, either.
“Okay, let’s get this over with so I can stop having to look at the Amityville horror show before me.”
The girl, Brittany, I believed was her name, sniffed the air like she was miffed I had insinuated she was ugly.
I didn’t want to insinuate anything. So, I straight out told her.
Vas and my men laughed. She didn’t. Neither did Drew, who looked like he was about to wet the bedsheets.
Tilting my head, I brought my gaze to him as I studied him. He wasn’t anything special. Average height. Average size. He reminded me more of an underdeveloped college freshman than a man. Then again, I could say that about anyone if I compared them to the hulking muscle standing around me.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” It might have sounded demanding and strong if his voice didn’t waver like a little bitch.
“I want you to tell me about the money you’ve been shipping from the Middle East for Christian Ward.” Might as well cut to the chase.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, bitch.”
A low growl permeated the room, and Drew’s eyes widened as my men took a collective threatening step toward him, their lips raised in a snarl. They didn’t like him insulting their new boss.
“Do you know who I am?”
Taking his eyes off the surrounding men, he sneered. “I’ve heard about you,” he spat. “Christian Ward’s little whore.”
I smiled at him, my eyes lighting up as I let out a small giggle.
Then I aimed my gun and pulled the trigger.
The girl behind him screamed, jumping back as Drew howled in pain, clawing at his exploded kneecap.
The two men behind me shared a quick glance, their eyebrows raised in surprise.
That’s right, men. There’s a new Ava Dashkov in town. And she’s the fastest draw in the west.
I really needed to get out of my head more.
Once his screams had died down, I stepped forward, gun aimed at his other kneecap.
“My name is Avaleigh Dashkov,” I informed him calmly. His eyes widened at my last name, no doubt understanding the power behind it. The violence. “I’m the new boss in town, and when I ask you a question, I expect you to answer. So, let’s try again, shall we? Tell me about the money you’ve been shipping from the Middle East for Christian.”
Without hesitating, he curled his lips up in disgust, shot me a hostile scowl, and hissed, “Fuck you.”
He screamed.
The girl screamed.
There went the other kneecap.
“I could do this all day, Drew,” I told him, shrugging a shoulder. “You either tell me what you want me to know, or the next bullet hits those family jewels.”
Crickets.
“Okay then…” I aimed my gun, finger resting on the trigger when he cried out for me to stop.
“Wait. Wait.” He covered his limp noodle dick with his hands. Not that he needed two hands to cover the little gherkin. “Look,” he swallowed hard against the fear and pain, tears streaming down his face. “We spoof the ship port numbers, all right? But I don’t have anything to do with that. My company just provides the muscle and the containers. That’s it.”
“You expect me to believe that?” I chuckled mirthlessly.
“It’s true, I swear,” he pleaded, a desperate, feral look in his eyes.
“How did you get into business with Christian?” That was a fairly simple question. Should have started with that one, he might still have both kneecaps if that were the case.
Not as fun, though.
“His father did dealings with my father,” he panted, sweat dripping down his forehead. His eyes were beginning to flutter slightly as the blood loss set in. “I started working with Elias a few years ago when I first started up. He had a man that funded my entire operation.”
Now that piqued my interest.
“What man?”
“I don’t know,” he grimaced. “Some older guy with a cane. Odd accent. Not quite foreign but not quite American either.”
“Name.” I demanded harshly.
“I don’t know!” he wailed.
“Okay.” I shrugged as I processed what other information he might have. Nothing came to mind. I pulled the trigger without a second thought, Drew’s head exploding over the weeping Brittany, who was kneeling behind him. “Then I guess you’re of no further use to me.”
I lowered my weapon, letting it settle at my side. Brittany wept, her bottled blond hair a rat’s nest, her makeup sliding down her face like a clown who’d been out in the heat. I expected to feel a pinch of remorse at having just killed a man, but it wasn’t there. Rather, there was this widespread apathy that settled beneath my skin and calmed the churning fire.
“You fucking whore!” The weeping hag finally spoke, breaking out of the fear she’d imprisoned herself in.
“I’d be careful who you call a whore,” I taunted. “Who sleeps with their best friend’s fiancé?”
Brittany scoffed. “Please.” Her lips turned up in an ugly sneer, her face twisting darkly. “She never had him. We’d had this planned for years with that bitch, Sarah. Sell her and split the profit. Of course that stupid slut had to go and—”
Well, that was enough of that. The words of the viper had begun to bore me, and now she was dead silent. Literally. Her blood and brain matter joined that of the snake of a man she’d had between her dirty thighs.
A match made in hell. Now they would rot there.
“Well, that wasn’t part of the plan.” Leon sighed, holstering his gun. “Now there are two bodies to clean up.”
“Why are you complaining?” Vas quipped as he too holstered his weapon. “It’s not like you’re the one cleaning it up.”
“True.”
“Still,” Maksim hedged. He was the only one, besides me, who hadn’t put his gun away. “We don’t normally kill women.”
“Eh,” Vas shrugged. “Can’t say she didn’t have it coming.”
“But…” Maksim pushed. His shoulders were stiff, jaw clenched tightly enough that I could see the muscles in his throat tightening. He didn’t like what I’d done.
“She wasn’t an innocent, Maksim,” I reminded him sternly. “Do you really believe that if we had let her live, she would have just hidden? No, she would have talked to anyone who would listen. She wasn’t some pawn or coerced. That viper was an active, willing participant to kidnapping and selling a girl she duped into being her best friend.”
Maksim huffed as he stowed his weapon before he crossed his arms against his chest.
“You aren’t judge, jury, and executioner, Ava,” he growled. I lifted my head to meet his thunderous gaze. Had he so patiently told this to Matthias, too? Been this forward? I knew they were close, and I had no intention of ruling like Elias did. Through fear. And now, in the comfort of our circle, he could vent his frustrations, but something about it was off. It felt more like he was blustering. Blowing hot air.
“Listen to me, Maksim,” I warned him, stepping into his space, my eyes never leaving his. “I don’t expect you to agree with all of my decisions. I’d be worried if you did. But let’s get one thing straight. I am the judge, jury, and executioner here, make no mistake of that. Now, I understand we don’t go around killing women and children, and I plan to 100 percent uphold that.
“Unless you come after my family. And then all bets are off. Feel free to air your concerns or file a grievance, but anyone who maliciously and purposefully raises a hand against me or mine will suffer the consequences regardless of gender. Understood?”
The three men smirked, eyes shining as they looked down at me.
“Understood,” they all confirmed, laughter in their voices.
Fuckers had been testing me.
“Same go for your sister?” Vas asked after a moment.
I let my gaze slide to his. The warmth of his hazel eyes did nothing to heat the frigidness in my own.
“My sister was murdered the night of my wedding. I don’t have another one.” I told him as I turned on my heel and strode out the door, almost missing Leon’s whisper.
“This is why we should have told her.”
What did he mean by that?