Victor’s Lethal Desire (The Ionescu Romanian Mafia #3)

1. Victor

VICTOR

The whiskey burns, but not as much as the knife wound. It's a dull, persistent ache that's yet to go away.

The stitches were removed today, but shifting in my leather chair still sends that sharp, radiating pain through my side.

I keep my face neutral, however, my breathing controlled, and I don't spill a drop from my glass.

I've become an expert at hiding this during the past two weeks.

Part of me can't believe it's been that long since that Romanian piece of shit Cornel bled out in his chair, but with every breath I'm reminded of that blonde Russian woman who decided it was a good idea to slide a knife between my ribs.

I take another sip of my drink, letting it settle on my tongue for a moment before swallowing.

The drive to the hospital in Cluj that night is still a blur of a blood-soaked car and tunnel vision.

I remember the Dacia's headlights cutting through the darkness of the rural area on my way back.

I remember my hands slipping on the steering wheel, leaving red smears, and I remember thinking, Just get to Cluj. Just get to Cluj.

I didn't make it.

I woke up in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm and a doctor telling me that I'd lost enough blood to kill most men.

When I asked how I got here, he told me about Gheorghe, a seventy-three-year-old farmer who found my car wrapped around a tree, with me inside unconscious, bleeding out into the footwell.

He somehow pulled me into his car and drove me to the hospital, where he stayed in the waiting room for six hours, praying to a god I stopped believing in when I was twelve that I'd make it.

The doctor made it abundantly clear that without Gheorghe's help in bringing me in, I would have died.

I didn't need convincing that he saved my life, and in my world, debts like that don't go unpaid.

The moment I was discharged, I sent him a wire transfer for five million dollars. Anonymous, of course, but I made sure he knew it was because of his good nature.

My contacts at the bank who brought him in told me he and his wife cried for an hour when they saw the number. They thought it was some kind of mistake. It wasn't.

I finish my drink and I set it down. I tap on the tablet on my lap and it glows. 10:32 p.m. Getting late.

My study is dark save for a single lamp and the ambient light from outside. I prefer it this way. Shadows hide the small tells, the micro-expressions, the involuntary twitches that could give a man away.

Not that anyone's here to see them.

Lucian has been consumed with the transition.

Our father's "heart attack" was announced, and he stepped into the role of don as easily as I expected him to.

The funeral was three days after I got back from the hospital, and I stood in the front row in a black suit, my face a mask of appropriate grief, my ribs screaming beneath the bandages.

No one noticed.

Adrian was too focused on Elena. Matei was counting the seconds until he and Jordan could run back to the expansion in LA, and Lucian, he looked at me once during the service, and I met his gaze without flinching.

"Focus on the family," I told him, and that's what he's done.

I told them about Cornel's death, of course. Explained that someone had beaten me to it, that the rat was already dead in his chair when I arrived. I described the execution and suggested the Volkovs were cleaning house.

I left out the part about the blonde.

Left out the way she moved like smoke, the way her perfume mixed with the copper smell of blood, the way her lips brushed my ear when she…

I stop that thought cold.

Amateur.

That's what she was. An amateur who got lucky.

My jaw tightens and I rub my forehead.

She should have killed me. Any professional worth their salt would have put a bullet in my skull the moment I turned around. Instead, she played games. Let me see her face. Let me hear her voice. Let me survive.

Sloppy.

Arrogant.

Stupid.

I shake my head and unlock the tablet and look down at a man's face: Bogdan Cristea.

He's a fifty-two-year-old former military police officer. He was discharged for "conduct unbecoming," a polite way of saying he beat a suspect to death and got caught. Since then, he's worked as muscle-for-hire, a fixer for men who need dirty work done quietly.

Men like Cornel Lupu.

According to my sources, Bogdan was the one who staged Elena's accident. He was the one who pulled her from the wreckage, drugged her, and delivered her to Cornel like a package. He was the one who set the fire, destroyed the evidence, and walked away while my brother's world burned.

Adrian doesn't know about him.

I could tell him. Could give him this name, this face, this address, and let him do what he does best. But Adrian needs to focus on Elena. Giving him a target to hunt would be giving him permission to spiral, and I won't do that to him.

Not when I can handle it myself, and I need to. I need to be the one doing the killing for what they did to my family. Not showing up when they're already dead.

I zoom in on Bogdan's photograph. He's living in a house in Constan?a, a port city on the Black Sea, working security at a shipping warehouse. Of course he is.

But with a job comes routine, and that routine can be learned.

Right now he thinks he's safe, thinks an Ionescu doesn't know he exists.

In three days he'll learn that's not true.

I should be focused on this. Should be running scenarios, mapping escape routes, planning the disposal. Instead, my thoughts keep sliding sideways, drifting back to a rundown country house and a woman who threatened my family.

Forget about the Volkovs, or you and your brothers will be killed quicker than we have planned.

I replay the words in my head. Quicker than we have planned. Which means there is a plan. The Volkovs have something in motion, something that involves my family, and this blonde cleaner is part of it.

I should be concerned about that.

I am concerned about that.

But when I close my eyes, I don't see shadowy Russian conspiracies or Volkov hit squads descending on Bucharest. I see cold blue eyes. I see full lips forming words in that subtle accented voice.

You're not running your mouth now. What a shame.

I stand up with a grunt and walk over and pour out just a little more whiskey.

My fingers tighten around the glass.

She was fast. Faster than anyone I've faced in years. I had at least seven or eight inches on her, and she moved around me like I was nothing. One moment I had her wrist and the next, I sigh and take a sip.

A fluke.

She reacted on instinct, got lucky with the angle.

So why didn't she finish the job?

The question nags at me, and I hate that it does.

Why didn't she kill me? Why let me live? Does it mean something?

I drain my drink and set the glass down. This line of thinking is unproductive.

She threatened my family and thinks a single stab wound and a cryptic warning are enough to make us back down.

She's a Volkov asset, which means she's an enemy, which means I have to find her.

She caught me off guard once. It won't happen again.

Next time we meet, she'll understand exactly who she's dealing with.

She'll see that her little knife trick was a one-time mistake, a lucky shot that she will not get to repeat.

And I'm going to make sure she regrets not finishing what she started.

But now, I need to focus, because I have a mission to do first.

I cough and my side aches, a shooting pain. I close my eyes and force myself to breathe through it slowly.

Three days. Bogdan first for what he did to Elena, to Adrian, to my unborn niece or nephew.

Then the Russian.

And when I find her, she's going to regret not finishing the job.