Page 174 of Ivory Ashes

Pyotr falls sideways onto the damp pavement, blood pooling around him. Usually, I’d stand here and enjoy the sight of him bleeding out in abject agony. But he’s screaming so much that I’m worried about drawing too much attention.

“Ultimately, I don’t care why you betrayed me,” I tell him, even though I’m not sure he’s in much of a listening mood. “The only thing that matters is that it’s the last thing you’ll ever do.”

He lifts his bloody face just as I pull the trigger.

The light in his dark eyes fades and he crumples into the alley like the pile of wasted potential he is.

In a lot of ways, I’d count this as a mercy. Pyotr’s pain lasted five minutes when it should have lasted years.

Lucky for him, I have somewhere to be.

65

MIKHAIL

As soon as Alyona and Anzhelina died, I had the house destroyed. I could have repaired the bullet holes and replaced the bloody carpets, but I never would have walked the halls of that house without seeing their bodies. Without smelling gunpowder in the air. The house had to be razed into nonexistence.

But while the building was reduced to rubble and carted away, the property itself remained in Novikov control. For the same reason I couldn’t live in the house, I didn’t keep up with what happened to the land. It’s not like I wanted to go for picnics on the ground where my family had been slaughtered. My idea of a relaxing afternoon wasn’t strolling alone around the lawn where I once imagined my daughter growing up.

While I was busy blocking that nightmare from my memory, my father decided to make good use of my tragedy.

And apparently, he has a sick sense of irony.

The wrought-iron gates are rusted, the hinges barely clinging to the rest of the fence. It doesn’t look like anyone has touched them since I tore down the driveway and left this place in my rearview almost ten years ago. I’m sure that’s what my father wanted people to think, anyway.

Raoul is already inside the gates. I can see him and a few other men pacing around a concrete dome rising out of the ground. As I get closer, I see the metal door set into the concrete.

It’s a cellar.

“It was all Anatoly,” Raoul tells me as soon as I get out of the car. “After you left the hospital, he looked at the history of the tracker from his car. He could see everywhere Pyotr had been. The idiot left the mansion and drove straight here. He didn’t make any stops or try to evade detection at all.”

“I’m not surprised. We’re talking about a man who thought Iakov was going to let him lead the Bratva.”

Raoul’s eyebrows rise. “You’re kidding.”

“We’ll laugh about it later.” Actually, I doubt I’ll be laughing about any of this any time soon. “Right now, I want to get inside.”

“Since I’m guessing Viv and Dante weren’t with Pyotr when you found him, they have to be down there. I just don’t know who else is down there,” Raoul admits. “I wanted to wait for you to?—”

“I’ll go in.” I check my gun. There are only two shots left, but it’s more than enough for what I have planned for my father. I don’t want to waste my time on torture. I just want him dead.

Raoul looks nervous, but he doesn’t try to stop me. He knows better.

My men lift the hatch and I step down into the darkness.

A steep, narrow stairway leads down into a maze of hallways lit only by yellow emergency lights lining the corners of the low ceilings. Clearly, whoever built the hatch utilized the preexisting basement. The space is sprawling, but it’s broken down into a web of tiny rooms with metal doors.

Cells, I realize as I clear empty room after empty room. They’re prison cells.

I shove aside thoughts of what my father had planned for this place. Was he going to trap everyone who wasn’t loyal to him down here? Would I have found myself in one of these cells one day?

The hypothetical doesn’t matter. What matters is that my wife and son are in these rooms, buried in the ground beneath where I already lost one family.

I won’t lose another.

I shove aside the possibility that I’m too late. I have to assume there is time and that, this time, I’ll save them.

But as I turn the last corner and find a dead-end, I don’t have to work to clear my mind. Every thought in my head except for one disappears as I see a small, shivering figure curled up in the hallway.

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