Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Xeniya Morozova
Iheld my breath as Mirko Kuznetsov was dragged into the room with a hood over his face.
He was the first of the five men Severin had selected to interrogate that I was actually actively haunting. The others’ time would come—eventually.
Haunting was definitely the right word for what I did.
To my victims, I was a vengeful spirit back from the dead, tormenting them until they joined me in the grave. They weren’t far off.
I had sat through four previous interrogations where the men didn’t have anything useful to say. Severin was hunting the ghost, not his rat. And they obviously weren’t the same person.
I had given him a list of names, and Dimitri had given him another list—I still wasn’t convinced the Morozovs weren’t the rats themselves—and Severin chose five names that overlapped for an aggressive conversation.
When I joined them for said conversations, Nika had gotten into an argument with Severin that went a little bit like this:
“If we believe this ghost is a woman, do you think it’s very smart to invite a woman you barely know to be part of this?” Nika muttered, glaring over her shoulder at me. I examined my nails and pretended not to listen.
“She was already involved the moment the ghost attacked at our engagement party,” Severin whispered back.
“That doesn’t mean you have to invite her into this.”
“I think you’re being a bit paranoid. Keira is an Irish mafia princess who lives in London. She hasn’t been hunting our men for the last however many years.”
“I don’t trust her, Severin,” Nika half-whispered, half-hissed. “There is something off about her.”
Nika wasn’t wrong. They had invited the wolf into the henhouse, and I loved eating chicken.
Not really, actually; I much preferred a steak. But semantics.
I leaned against the brick wall of Severin’s tortured den, eating an apple.
Everyone else was front and center, about to ask all the boring questions. Now the real show was going to be in how he chose to answer.
Severin pulled off Mirko’s hood, and when he didn’t notice me, I let out my breath.
“Hello, Mirko,” Severin said. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“No, sir,” he said, his voice already shaking.
Mirko had always been a very pathetic man even when he raped me.
Nika laughed harshly. “Doubtful.”
“Truly. Sir, I have no idea.” Mirko’s teeth chattered.
“Why don’t you start by telling me why your logs are missing information and why you leave your post certain Thursdays of the month?”
Mirko’s eyes widened. He might have thought he was here for a different reason.
He was a very shady man with many endeavors the Pakhan would not approve of.
But Mirko didn’t answer. His lips fell into a hard line, and he clenched his jaw so tightly that I could hear the grinding of his teeth from where I stood.
“Why don’t you tell me about the threatening notes?”
Mirko’s eyes widened even further, and Severin let out an audible acknowledgment that he had finally caught one. He’d used the same line on all the previous men, and none of them seemed to know what he was talking about.
“I’m waiting, Mirko.” Severin’s voice was hard and filled with disgust. “We can do this the easy way, or I can start taking your fingers.”
If it were possible, Mirko’s eyes grew even larger. “Fine, I’ll tell you. What do you want to know?”
“Tell us about the notes.”
“It’s not just notes.” Mirko’s voice trembled. “It’s her.”
Severin hummed. “Her?”
“The spirit. She appears in front of me and gives me her notes… and body parts. She always brings body parts. I had one tested once, and it came from one of the dock workers who had gone missing.” His words were fast and blurred together.
“He also received notes before she got him. I know she’s going to take me, too, one day. ”
Fear was branded into his voice, and he looked as if he might pee his pants.
A smile climbed on my lips. I loved watching their fear.
“Why is she after you?” Severin asked softly, as if coaxing out a scared deer.
“Because we destroyed her.”
“How?” Ilya asked as Nika asked, “Who is we?”
Mirko’s face blanched.
I tried to stifle a scoff. They knew who “we” were. They weren’t clueless. They just didn’t want to admit that the ghost was targeting them for their Order crimes.
“Who is we?” Severin repeated.
“I can’t tell you. They’ll kill me.”
“Who will kill you?”
“I can’t.” Mirko sobbed. Apparently, he was as afraid of the Order as he was of me.
Severin sighed. “Fine, tell us about the girl.”
Mirko’s fingernails dug into the wooden armrest of the chair. “She is a spirit. She’s dead.”
Well, that wasn’t ideal. Hopefully, they didn’t believe that.
“That’s impossible,” Ilya said.
“It’s not,” Mirko whined. “She died and came back from the grave to haunt us. She appears as an apparition, with white hair like a banshee’s. She is evil. She is death.”
No one in the room seemed to know how to respond to that. It did sound absolutely batshit crazy. Which, in fairness, I did love making my victims question their own sanity.
Severin let out a long, suffering sigh, clearly not believing any of the words Mirko said. “Tell us more about your gifts. How often does she visit you? What is it like?”
Mirko got quiet for a long time. He shook violently, and his eyes were clouded with terror. But eventually, he said, “She comes to me every third Thursday, as I did.”
“Like you did?”
But Mirko never answered that question; he just rocked back and forth and stared vacantly into the distance, as if remembering his torment.
After a long while, Severin spoke again. “Where does she come?”
“The docks.” Mirko’s voice was weak and dripping with terror.
Severin continued to ask questions, but Mirko was too far gone. He barely heard anything anyone said. He was trapped inside his memories.
It was beautiful to watch.
“Fine, then you’re going to help us find the ghost and trap her.” Severin slid his hands into his pockets. “Next time she comes to visit you, we’re going to be waiting for her.”
He went over more details with his team, planning how he would lure his vigilante into his trap. I listened to it all. It was very helpful to hold all the pieces on the board. Usually, Severin was several moves ahead of his opponent, but not this time.
This time he was broadcasting his entire plan to his enemy, and he didn’t even know it.
Perfect.
Severin’s trap was set. Now I just had to decide whether to let him catch me.