Page 80 of Ivory Oath

Raoul and Anatoly are waiting for me in my office. Raoul is a dark shadow in the corner. His face is drawn and his hands are folded together tightly between his legs. His direct opposite in every way, Anatoly, has tossed himself over my couch, legs loosely crossed and his arms thrown wide.

“I almost thought you forgot about us. I was about to bang down your bedroom door and make Viviana share.”

Anatoly thinks I was with her and I don’t correct him. It’s better than the truth.

The first time I’ve seen her in days and I snapped at her like an asshole. She wanted to make me dinner and take care of me, but all I wanted to do was wash the blood off my clothes before she could see it.

I wanted to wash this entire fucking night off, if I could.

I drag a hand through my damp hair. “I’m here now. Do we want to talk about what the fuck happened tonight?”

Anatoly’s face falls. He’s good at putting on a front, but tonight sucked as much for him as it did for the rest of us. There’s a limit to how much death and bloodshed he can handle.

None of us want to talk about it, but we can’t afford not to.

“They saw us coming,” Raoul grumbles finally.

“They didn’t just see us coming; they prepared for it,” Anatoly counters. “We’ve had eyes on that warehouse for months. I could have told you every single motherfucker inside by name on any night of the week. But tonight, there were three times as many people as I’ve ever seen.”

“I should have pulled back. We weren’t ready.”

If tonight’s failure was anyone else’s fault, I’d be the first to point the finger. As pakhan, it’s my job to make sure we’re as strong as we can be. If someone is fucking up, they need to hear it and they need to fix it.

Tonight, the fuck-up is me.

“Bullshit.” Anatoly jumps to his feet and paces. Anxiety ripples off of his tall frame. “We all went in there willingly. You didn’t force anyone through that door.”

“I didn’t have to. You all trust me to make the right choice. Tonight, men who trusted me died. That’s my fault.”

Christos’s men were ready the second we got through the door. It was a barrage of gunfire and blood. I can still smell it.

But my concentration was in tatters. Men were falling at my feet, and all I could see was Viviana and Dante. Usually, a fight hones my senses. Tonight, my head went somewhere else.

To a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Viviana’s soft breathing in my ear.

“You’re such a fucking martyr,” Anatoly snarls, snapping me back. “It was my bad intel.”

“And mine,” Raoul adds somberly. “I had no idea that many men were inside. Christos moved them in secretly. I have men looking for tunnels right now, but?—”

Anatoly snorts. “Tunnels under a fucking warehouse? They use that place to store stolen laptops they sell online and rent it out to shoot shitty pornos. You really think they’re organized enough to tunnel underground like moles?”

“They were organized enough to get the jump on us,” Raoul fires back. He’s not used to being outmaneuvered and he isn’t taking it well. “I’m going to look into every possibility until I know how they knew we were coming and what we can change.”

“We need to divide Christos and Agostino.” I take a long drink. The two of them could go back and forth like this for hours, but I already know what needs to be done. “I should have killed Viviana’s father as soon as I knew he’d handed her to Trofim. I didn’t and now, he’s teamed up with the Greeks against us. That’s my fault, too.”

Anatoly rolls his eyes, but doesn’t try to defend me this time. As much as he wants to, he can’t.

“We’re stronger than each of them separately. Together, they’re a bit more of a problem.”

“If you’re suggesting we take one of them out, that was the entire point of tonight.” Anatoly drops down on the edge of the couch, his elbows resting on his bouncing knees. “Even when shit hit the fan, I was looking for Christos. I didn’t bring my hunting knife to not rip his insides out.”

“Taking out Christos tonight would have been a bonus, but it wasn’t the mission. We were there to take out one of his strongholds and weaken him financially. Now,” I say carefully, “I’m suggesting we set our sights on one of the figureheads. Christos or Agostino, take your pick.”

Anatoly’s eyebrow arches and he grins. My brother is a golden retriever ninety percent of the time, but at the first mention of bloodshed, he turns into a shark. “Why choose? I say we go for both.”

Raoul shakes his head. “We can’t split up. If we go in with half the men and get surrounded the way we did tonight, even fewer of us will make it out.”

Liev wasn’t even twenty-five. He was one of the first soldiers cut down once we got inside. If he didn’t die from the initial wound, he probably wishes he did. I don’t assume Christos was in a merciful mood when it came to dealing with captives.

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