Page 62 of Lethal Saint

I kept an eye on him when we flowed into the hallway, Jonathan jogging quietly upstairs and Eli going ahead into the kitchen while I scoped out the living room. Quiet. Still and clean and abandoned, but was that what I was supposed to see?

Huh. The chandelier here was bigger than mine. I was sure Finch wouldn’t miss it.

I opened cabinets to make sure Ivanov wasn’t hiding in them, then strode down the parquet-floored hallway into the kitchen. On the threshold, I blinked at the sight of Eli shoving a tall, hook-nosed man with cropped blonde hair against the wall. His white T-shirt was already covered in blood, his nose crooked; Eli had broken it.

I’d been gone a minute, max. I was impressed.

The man spewed a string of pissed off Russian, and I gnashed my teeth in irritation that I didn't understand a word. Vasilisa spoke it in her sleep, and it drove me mad.

“You’re not Artur,” I observed, stalking across the kitchen towards him. It would be a shame to bloody the lacquered white cabinets and rose quartz counter, but I had very important, very bloody business with this bastard. “Mark, I presume.”

Older than Vasilisa by two years. Old enough to stand up to their father and get her the fuck out of there before he punched her into an early grave. Instead, he’d let it happen. And earned himself that early grave. The thought of standing by while someone, anyone, hurt Rae and Wyn made me sick. And murderous.

But lucky me, here was someone thoroughly deserving of murder.

“Where’s your brother, Mark?” I asked mildly, eyes roaming over the kitchen, checking for hiding spaces. No cupboards were large enough, and the space between the oven and the island was empty. He wasn’t here.

I inhaled a slow, calming breath when fury exploded. He wasn’t here.

A fist met flesh in a dull strike and Eli snarled, “My friend asked you a question, fucker. Where’s your brother?”

“Don’t know.” Mark laughed, his eyes flickering with both fear and rage.

I tilted my head, listening to Jonathan jog down the stairs. Only one set of footsteps.

“Nothing upstairs,” he muttered, raising an eyebrow at Mark.

“No problem,” I replied, taking out my cufflinks and slipping them into my pocket along with my wedding ring. I refused to get them covered in blood, and I was about to spill enough to turn this snow white kitchen crimson. “Mark’s going to tell us everything we need to know. Baron, get him warmed up for me.”

The happiness that raged in Eli’s dark blue eyes wasn’t normal. “With fucking pleasure, Saint.”

I crossed the room to draw the blinds, the dull smacks of fists and the crack of bones from behind me lighting my blood like a match thrown on a vat of petrol.Whoosh.One second I was in control, the next I remembered the scars and bruises on every part of my wife’s body. One second I could breathe, the next I was blind with rage and a bone-deep need to make every person who’d laid a fingertip on her scream for mercy. I’d get a kick out of denying that mercy.

“Four broken ribs in two minutes,” Eli commented. “Not bad.”

“There’s something fucked in your head,” Jonathan told him

Eli pretended to gasp. “That offends me deeply.”

I cracked my neck, rolling up the sleeves of my shirt, and turned to inspect the damage. Mark had pissed himself, his body hanging weakly between my friends’ rough hands, his face a swollen, bloody mess. They’d barely gotten started and he’d already emptied his bladder. This was going to be easy.

I approached the magnetic strip of metal above a chopping board, running my fingertips over the flat edge of a complete knife set. What a fool; he hadn’t even got a knife to defend himself against Eli? Then again, the Baron could be a swift bastard when he was on the hunt. Like Jonathan said, there was something fucked in his head, and even knowing what that wasit still surprised me what he was capable of sometimes. He was only twenty and capable of far worse than men twice his age.

“This ought to do the job,” I commented, pulling the smallest knife off the magnet. It was intended for shucking unless I was mistaken.

“What do you think, Mark?” I asked, turning so he could see the weapon I’d chosen. “The bigger ones would be effective, but our time would be over far too quickly. And for everything you’ve done, I’m going to make this last for hours. Maybe even days,” I bluffed, knowing full well I was returning to my wife in the morning.

His nostrils flared with rapid breaths, his body shaking in Eli and Jonathan’s hands.

“I haven’t done anything,” he gasped. “I swear.”

Pathetic. “That’s where you’re mistaken. You don’t recognise me. You wouldn’t just piss yourself if you did; you’d scream and plead for mercy.” I allowed a smile to curl my mouth. “I’m the Saint, Mark Ivanov. There, see, now you know what that means,” I said when he paled even further, almost as white and colourless as his hair.

I approached, and he went wild, kicking, bucking, fighting with everything he had to escape. Eli giggled, delighted. Jonathan just tightened his grip until Mark’s arm drained of blood under his huge hands; he was unsmiling, but not quite frowning either.

“You’re going to tell me where to find your brother, and your vile father,” I told Mark, “but first, you need to pay for every injury you allowed to be inflicted on my wife.”

“Your wife?” he asked, sharp with panicked laughter. “I don’t know your wife, I swear. You’ve got the—”

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