Chapter 54 Ransome
RANSOME
I grab Tristan by the shirt and pound him hard enough into the cold concrete that his eyes rattle in his skull.
If he were anyone else—if he was staying alive on rage and cocaine—that jolt probably would have given him a concussion. But no such luck with him. Tristan just smiles and shoves me off.
I jump to my feet and so does he. Then we both step back.
He wipes the blood off his chin with the back of his wrist. “You got a lot of nerve showing up before I was ready for you.”
“I thought you were born ready.”
I can feel the blood dripping from my own brow, but I leave it.
I’m not allowed to let my guard down at all.
Tristan is probably the most unpredictable man I’ve ever met.
He’s also the most unfeeling. His only soft spot is his own greed, which isn’t exactly something I can take from him and tie to an interrogation chair.
“I don’t understand why you keep assuming to know me, Rozanov. We aren’t the same. We don’t even want the same things.”
“You’re right.” As much as I hate the words, they’re not untrue. We couldn’t possibly be more different. And we definitely don’t want or value the same things. “I guess what I want to know is why? Why are you willing to risk everything you have?”
“To gain everything I don’t have,” he says with his signature smirk.
“You do realize your family would have eventually been cut in on the El Paso deal if the truce had continued, right?”
Granted, it would have been a last resort with me as pakhan. But I know my father. That was where he was headed.
“Fuck my family,” he says. “I don’t give a shit about any of them either. Not the ones who are alive anyways.”
“What about Jenica?”
“Jenica is… leverage.” He keeps staring ahead, but doesn’t quite meet my eyes as he says that. “Sure, she’s the closest thing I have to someone who understands me, but worst-case scenario, I’m loyal to no one.”
We aren’t duking it out, but we are turning in a slow circle. I think we both feel the need for movement, but neither of us are making any sudden moves. Not yet.
“What about Dmitry?” I ask. “He’s your uncle.”
“Dmitry is a fat, senile waste of space. These old men are losing their edge. You know that as well as I do. He may have taken me in when my own father died, but he didn’t have a choice.”
“Bratva is founded on family,” I argue. “Loyalty.”
“And look how fucking far that’s gotten us. Two families at war for generations all because neither family has ever had the guts to end all the truces and make one man pakhan,” he spits out. “That’s the way it should be. One pakhan. And it was never meant to be you.”
There is no smile. No snake-like smirk. Just pure, unadulterated hate.
I know what he’s talking about. I know who he’s talking about. Hate surges through my own veins too as he goes on.
“Nik had twice as much potential as you did,” he says, forcing my memory back to the no-trespassing zone that is my brother. “That’s why I lured him into the car scene.”
“We both loved cars.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t have any guts.” He sneers.
“No moxie. But Nicklaus, he had potential. And drive. And you know what’s funny?
I actually thought that he and I could be friends.
Team up. Take over. Two future pakhani with way more capacity than Dmitry or Anton.
” His expression sours. “But then he got cocky.”
“He was better than you,” I snarl. “On every level.”
“Maybe,” Tristan actually admits with a shrug. “Which is why I challenged him to a race.”
“His last race.”
Tristan’s lips crawl into a leer. “His last race. You know, contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t an accident.”
“I know it wasn’t.” My jaw works. “Question is, how do you?”
“That’s easy.” He smirks. “I pulled his breaks before the race started.”
My blood turns to ice. My stomach twists.
I knew.
Somehow, inside, I always knew it was him.
And now that I have him standing in front of me, admitting to being the source of the single most painful memory I have, I waste no time reaching for my gun.
There’s a million ways I’d love for Tristan to die. Screaming, begging, leaking blood from every orifice. But more than I want to torture him for hours, days, years on end, I just want him dead.
I want this fucking nightmare to be over.
But my gun isn’t there.
I reach around my body, patting myself down, though I’m not really sure why. I never put it anywhere else.
And that’s when it hits me. It must have come loose while we were wrestling around on the floor. And it must hit Tristan too, because we both see it, abandoned on the floor, closer to him than it is to me.
And before I can make another move, I hear Tristan’s gun click.
I blink and my eyes drag up to him, seeing exactly what I am expecting. The barrel of a Ruger .357 pointed directly between my eyes.
I don’t question whether or not Tristan is a good shot.
“This is déjà-vu,” he sniggers.
“What is?”
“You have the same look in your eyes as Nik did. The last time I saw him. The last time he was alive.”
I swallow hard. Normally I wouldn’t let him talk to me this way. I wouldn’t let anyone talk to me this way. But right now I am at a disadvantage. The gun has me frozen in place. And his words are just as paralyzing, if I am being honest.
Because I wasn’t there where Nik died. Maverick told me Nik was with Tristan and they were going to race. I hated the racing. I hated Tristan. So I drove to the bay area as fast as I could. But when I got there, it was too late. I saw the mangled car first, laying on its top, on fire.
Then I saw Nik. It was too late.
“He knew he was dying.” Tristan’s words slice into my thoughts. “Might have been saved… but I let him go. And now it’s your turn.”
I bolt towards him. Loaded gun or not, I don’t care.
A shot rings out.
I stop. It feels like the wind has been knocked clean out of me. But it’s just shock.
Tristan cries out moments later and my brain scrambles to figure out what the hell is going on.
“You sick fuck.”
Mav.
He walks up behind me, his gun still on Tristan, who is cursing and writhing on the floor while bleeding from his thigh.
I give him a nod. “Thanks for the assist.”
“It wasn’t for you.” Maverick smiles, sharp and sad at the same time. “It was payback.” He spares a glance at Tristan, who is writhing on the floor, trying to breathe through the pain. “For trying to kill me. And for Nik.”
I walk over and grab my gun off the floor, coming down quickly off of the adrenaline. I pull it back and turn to Tristan, closing the space between us until I am standing right over him.
If I give it time, he’ll bleed out. That bullet hit an artery for sure. But I’m not giving him the luxury of a slow bleed out. Not after everything he’s taken from me.
“Pasmotri na menya, Chadovich.”
Look at me.
His eyes flash up to mine. It’s a look I’ve seen many times before. I have killed many men in my life. More than I can count. More than I ever wanted to. But that was different. They were collateral. Their deaths were gag orders. Leverage. This one is revenge.
And he knows it.
The look in Tristan’s eyes isn’t just that of fear. It’s defeat.
For the first time, I am going to enjoy killing someone.
I pull the trigger and plant a bullet right in the middle of Tristan’s forehead. Only one.
He doesn’t deserve anything more.
“Where is Amara?” I ask Maverick as we bolt out of the warehouse.
“With Baron. Her and her friend were outside when we pulled up.”
“Alright.” I pick up the pace. “Let’s go.”
“Ransome!” Maverick calls out. His tone is urgent enough to make me turn back. “She’s in labor.”