Chapter 19
Artem
- present
I thought I was losing my mind completely when my father called to give me the news.
I didn’t even get the chance to tell him about the attack, because he began straight away with his new instructions.
Starting today, Ekaterina Borislova will stay either with her friend or in her own home, and I will have to provide the same level of security to keep her safe until the wedding.
Something I could have done from the beginning, but I don’t regret for a single second that she chose the option my father proposed in the beginning, the one much easier for me: keeping watch over her from inside my own home.
I realized the situation was truly serious when my father told me Ekaterina had been the one to call him and ask for this, on her own initiative.
The reason she gave had to do with the fact that there are too many men in our house and that, if the press starts circling, unpleasant rumors could arise about her integrity.
Besides, according to her, her fiance has begun asking more and more questions about where she is living, and he would not be pleased to learn that she is staying under the same roof as three other men.
All lies.
But I know she could not tell my father the real reason she wanted to leave me.
For now, my plan is to let her calm down while I try to discover who is behind the attack, so I can keep her from becoming their target too.
“What have you found so far?” I ask my brothers, as well as Dima, who joined us during the last hour.
After making sure the girls were safe in Oksana’s apartment, he doubled the security team, spreading our Birds throughout the area. Then he came to us for an urgent meeting.
For now, I am discussing this only with them. First thing tomorrow morning, we will mobilize our forces depending on what I decide.
I know what I want.
Now I have to find the solution to get it.
“The two prisoners are in the nest, but neither is saying a word,” Yar answers in his usual sober tone. “They’re professionals, and they are definitely not Italian.”
“Why you think that?”
“They’re paler,” Sasha answers, laughing, while playing with one of his knives.
“They’re pale because they lost blood,” I tell him, resisting the urge to roll my eyes.
He shrugs carelessly. “We just need to make them chirp, and then we’ll know who wins the bet.”
“What bet?”
He looks toward our older brother, and they exchange a secretive glance.
“Yaroslav says they’re Albanian. I say they’re American, and Dima thinks they’re Irish.”
I look at the latter, a little confused. “The Irish are our allies now. What do you have against them? This isn’t the first time you’ve gone after them.”
“They don’t inspire trust,” Dimitri answers in a poetic tone, with his thick, crooked accent.
I know he is hiding something, but it is not important enough for him to tell us.
“I still think some freckled redhead from Ireland broke his heart,” Sasha adds. “He hates them too much.”
“They are ugly and speak as if they have plums in their mouths and sticks up their asses,” he explains, taking a sip from his glass of vodka. “I just don’t like them.”
I shake my head. This is not the time to concern myself with Dimitri’s past loves, but to unravel the mystery affecting my relationship with the only woman I care about.
“The weapons?”
“American.”
I lift an eyebrow and then look at Sasha.
“Did you make the bet with them before or after you found that out?”
“Before, of course. That’s why both of them are sulking, because the information came in afterward.”
“It could just as easily be the Solntsevskaya Bratva, trying to make sure they remove us from the market completely, so we don’t return to Moscow,” I tell them.
But suddenly, I remember a detail that escaped me until now.
“I heard two of them speaking. The ones who put me in the car.”
I try to think carefully about their accent, which I did not pay attention to at the time.
“And?” the youngest asks with enthusiasm, convinced the bet is his.
Unfortunately, my memory is not in his favor.
“British.”
“British?” he exclaims, shocked, while the other two look at me strangely.
“The two of them were British. I cannot say the same about all of them.”
“We didn’t push the interrogation,” Yar informs me. “We wanted to wait for your orders first, and we assumed you would want to handle them personally.”
“That is exactly what I intend to do.”
Someone tried to kill me or, at the very least, abduct me. They attacked my family on my territory, stopping me from reaching the woman who has already earned a unique place in my life in time.
Of course I want to play with their blood.
“Is it just me, or does this whole attack seem personal?”
All three of them look at me strangely.
Yaroslav rises from the sofa where he had been sitting beside our brother and goes to the bar next to Dimitri. He pours himself a finger of vodka and takes a long sip, contemplating my words.
“I want some too,” Sasha complains.
“Pour it yourself,” he snaps back.
That earns him a few curses from the youngest, who gets up and shoves Yar out of his way with his shoulder.
“Stop that, or I’ll break this glass over your head.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Yar rolls his eyes. “I’ve told you a thousand times it was an accident. I meant to hit you in the back.”
Their arguing gives me a headache, in a moment when I wish Ekaterina were beside me and I could rest my head on her chest.
When the fuck did I become this dependent on her?
There is only one way to replace her absence.
Blood.
“It seems suspicious to me too,” Yaroslav says, turning back to me.
“Someone set a trap for us with the supposed information about Konstantin Borislov’s murder, making sure you, specifically, would be there. They didn’t try to kidnap us. They tried to kidnap you. They could have killed you, but they wanted to take you somewhere. To someone.”
He has voiced my thoughts exactly.
“I want to see the two of them,” I tell them.
“Do you think you can find out whether the theory is right or not?”
I slowly lift my gaze from the glass toward Yar, who is waiting, like the others, for my answer.
“I want to find out if one of you is going to win the bet.”
But my older brother is moving closer to me.
“Sleep for two or three hours, and then we’ll deal with them. That also gives them the chance to believe they’re getting a quiet night before we drag them awake into torture. You know it’s more effective when you rip them out of sleep straight into it, rather than when they’re already on alert.”
“Besides, you need strength,” Dima adds.
“He means we don’t want you passing out in there after all the blood you lost,” the blond clarifies, just as serious as the others.
I sigh, but they are right. In the last hour, I felt the room spin around me twice, but I ignored it. Any interrogation would be a complete failure if I dropped to the floor in front of the prisoners. And the headache reinforces my decision to listen to them and go to bed.
“You wake me,” I tell them after draining the last sip of vodka from my glass.
“We’ll let you sleep as long as you need.”
“You wake me,” I say in a decisive tone. “We can’t let those men rest too long either, or they’ll be more resistant to torture.”
“You are more important, Pakhan,” Dima says. “Then you’ll have plenty of time to play with them.”
And then an idea comes to me.
“Then, while I sleep, someone should handle them. To make them nice and tender.”
That gets their attention.
“Every half hour, throw ice water on them. Preferably while they’re asleep.”
Sasha immediately perks up, radiating enthusiasm.
“I’ll do it. Especially since cold water is good for the skin.”
“That’s exactly my idea. Their skin should be nice and pretty when we play with blades on it.”
“I love it,” he exclaims like a child being told he is going to the toy store.
Which makes all of us smile.
The room feels deserted, despite the furniture that has always been here.
The rain started about an hour ago, now striking noisily against my window, while clouds smother any light that might have come from the sky. Weather like this has always calmed me, as if it sent the voices to sleep. But tonight, my voices howl in pain, like wolves crying their grief to the moon.
The cold bed makes my skin prickle with longing, and even though sleep claims me quickly – because of the wounds that have weakened me so much – is scattered with ghostly touches from the woman I wish I had beside me now.
Even through sleep, angry voices demand I bring her back and whisper that I would feel much better if her delicate fingers were touching my cheek right now, in that gentle way of hers.
I am trapped between beautiful dreams, with warm songs whispered by blue eyes, and the reality of an empty, cold bed.
Of course, no one comes to wake me, so my eyes find the strength to fully open when the clock on the nightstand reads 9:42 am.
Fuck.
I slept too long.
But I hope my toys are ready for the fun I have been planning since last night.
Fifteen minutes later, I go downstairs, where I find my brothers in the kitchen with Polina.
“How do you feel?” the woman immediately bursts out with a mother’s concern. “I made pancakes, they’re still warm, and I can make you the omelet you like. What do you want?”
I let her finish her worried rambling, then answer. “Coffee.”
“And food?”
“A banana.”
This time, her face hardens. My brothers pretend to be busy with their phones, but I see them watching us cautiously from the corners of their eyes.
“You didn’t eat last night,” the plump woman explodes.
Her anger almost takes me by surprise, especially since it has never been directed at me before.
“You went through hell, and now you ask me for a banana? Are you a monkey, and am I a banana tree? Tell me what you want me to cook! Something warm and substantial, something to put you back on your feet, or I’ll put sleeping pills in your coffee and send you right back to bed!”
I blink only once, but the corners of my mouth slowly rise.