Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Severin Volkov
Keira had noticed the pictures. Her eyes dilated at the sight, yet she pretended not to notice. She didn’t strike me as the squeamish type. But then maybe she was.
Then she had dropped a bomb. You definitely have a rat.
I had her explain to me exactly what she meant.
It took nearly twenty minutes, because if I were being honest, I was absolutely useless with computers.
But from the gist of what she was saying, someone was actively deleting files from our systems, and worse still, someone had intentionally organized the system into a chaotic mess.
It could not have been my father; he wasn’t smart enough.
The only ones I knew capable of such an act were the Morozovs, and I fucking hated even admitting that. When I’d asked Keira to help me with this task, I intentionally left them out because of the small possibility that they could be the rats.
But I never believed it.
With this evidence staring me in the face, it was hard to know what to believe.
I did not want to think that my closest allies were also my biggest enemies. But what if? My father had always feared the Morozovs would one day bid for power and take over his kingdom.
What if he was right?
What if they were behind his kidnapping too?
And if this was a bid for power, would they want to take me out?
We had become nearly inseparable since Xeniya’s death. I trusted them with everything. But I wasn’t their blood. I wasn’t their family.
I sat alone at the table in the spy den, having sent Keira home for the night. I needed to address these pictures and start to find the ghost hunting us. Because after seeing these, I was now certain our ghost was hunting the Bratva.
I didn’t trust Keira enough with this information, but now, after what she found, I wasn’t certain whether I should trust Nika or Dimitri.
It was all a clusterfuck.
But keep your enemies closer, right?
If the Morozovs were the ones betraying me, I would smoke them out, and I would end them, but for now, I needed them.
So I called all three of them in, and within fifteen minutes, Nika, Ilya, and Dimitri were in the spy den.
They had temporarily moved into one of the houses on the property, despite having a massive estate of their own ten minutes away.
I spread out the pictures and taunting notes so that we could all see them.
At first, I thought the pile was only evidence of my father’s stalker and kidnapper taunting him, but after further inspection, we’d realized it was a pile of threats to at least fifteen men, all of whom had mysteriously disappeared.
Some of the messages were cryptic, and some were straight-up blunt. But all of them were horrifying, and all of them accompanied a severed body part… or at least most of them did. The messages said things like:
Now open your mouth.
Good, little whore.
Run for me, Kitten.
I am coming for you… But when, Aleksandr?
Tick, tock, tick tock, every third Thursday on the clock.
Roses are red, violets are blue, how long do you think it will take me to kill you?
Did you scream his name when you fucked him, little whore?
Open those legs for me, Oleg.
When do you think they will let you die?
Fuck me like you mean it, Aleksandr.
How does it feel now, princess?
Ten days? Do you think you can escape me, Pavel?
Spank me harder.
I know what you did.
Do you like pain, Kitten?
You have one month to live, Oleg.
You can’t hide the truth from me.
Ride me like you mean it.
“What the fuck is all of this?” Ilya said, his face blanching. He didn’t mean the gifts and the messages. He meant what they said.
“Most of them are sexual in nature.” Nika’s eyes were wide, and she played with her bottom lip in thought. “Do you think they raped her, the ghost? Is that the motive?”
“I would have thought the same thing, except I have received three similar messages, and I haven’t even touched someone since—” I did not need to say her name for us all to know who I meant.
“Then why those specific messages?” Nika asked.
I shook my head. “Most are sexual in nature, but not all. Perhaps she is hunting down their secrets and taunting them with them—showing them that she can get to them.”
“That they can’t hide from her,” Dimitri added. “She will find them and kill them.”
“So what we can confirm without a doubt is that the ghost is hunting more than just me and my father,” I said, taking a sip of whiskey. “And her pattern is to taunt before she strikes.”
“Which means she is taunting more of your men,” Nika added, picking up one of the pictures of a severed head. “And she tends to send body parts, or presumably her previous victims, to her next ones.”
“Culminating in the head?” Ilya asked.
Nika ran her finger along the image. “I wish these were digital so we could know that for sure, because if the head is the last gift, we could prepare for when she tries to take her next victim.”
“Yes, that would be helpful.” I took another sip.
“If those pictures are digital, you would probably be able to find them on one of his computers or possibly one of the previous victims’ computers.
Nika, start with this one.” I walked to a drawer, pulled out my father’s personal computer, and handed it to her.
“And Ilya, go to the victims we can identify and get theirs.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in turn.
“And Dimitri, we need to smoke out her current targets so we can monitor them, and since I doubt any of them will be forthcoming, let’s make them come out of hiding.”
“What were you thinking?” Dimitri raised an eyebrow.
“Announce to all the brigadiers, captains, and made men that we are doing a mass audit. Let them know that we will be tightening security and monitoring movements. Let them know we are looking for inconsistencies and missing money.” I ran a finger along the rim of my glass.
“Then you watch them. See who moves things, hides things, or starts acting noticeably off.”
“Sounds like a perfect plan.” Dimitri nodded.
“Let’s hope it is,” I said. “Now, if you excuse me, I am nearly late for dinner.”
They all nodded their goodbyes and walked with me out of the spy room.
Then I made my way downstairs to the dining hall to have dinner with Aurora—only family called her that. Everyone else knew her as Svetlana. Aurora was the name her mother had wanted her to have. A very non-Russian name.
Mikhail didn’t like talking about his dead wife with me because it was too painful a topic, but I had learned—with a lot of effort—that she was only part Russian.
I related to Mikhail in this way because I found it nearly impossible to talk about Xeniya with anyone.
Half the time, I felt like life wasn’t worth living without her.
At first, I stayed alive for vengeance. Her murderers weren’t all dead yet. My revenge, my rage, my inability to let any of them live fueled me. I’d once thought that when I was all done, I’d end it all and I would kill myself.
But then Aurora came into my life.
Now, I lived for her, and I never missed dinner with her when I was in town. The girl was fragile, even though she would never admit it.
Since Mikhail was also in town from Russia, he sat down to dinner with us. It was awkward because, despite his effort, he didn’t have a paternal bone in his body, and he certainly didn’t know how to talk to a child.
Probably why he left Aurora with me and why she thought of me as more of her father than him.
But at least he tried. Our father had never done that for us.