Page 48 of Little Blue

I hate that I miss him.

I hate that it took only days to need him.

I need to get out of here before he steals my heart like he stole my body.

Twenty-One

Ilya

I haven’t had a week so disturbing since I took over for my father, and his competitors decided to try their hand at dismantling the organization that was under new rule. The last nine days have been bloodshed.

I’d returned to America to deal with one of my trusted employees, a man who’d stood loyal to my father, skimming from my businesses. The dishonor. The lack of loyalty. The balls.

He’d had a lesson to learn, and I’d had every intention of making an example of him, considering some of my men seem to have made the mistake in thinking I’ve gone soft. That because the men were mine, I won’t dismember them like I would any other man who threatened my business.

What I hadn’t been expecting, was an all-out war zone when I stepped off the plane in L.A.

A war that took me to New York and then later to Florida before coming back to L.A.

I’d been intending to make an example of Laurent, but when I’d landed, he’d already been dead. Assassinated, along with three others I’d held in high regard. Clearly, the man who’d called the assassinations hadn’t known I’d been coming to make an example of Laurent, and that he was no longer one of my most trusted men.

What the assassinations had been intended to do, was call me out. How do I know this?

The three attempts on my life are fucking indicative.

A car bombing where I nearly lost Misha and did lose a driver. He’d had three kids and a wife. A good man with clean hands, despite the man he drove around. I’ve seen to it his wife, a stay-at-home mother, will never have to work. I stood at his funeral as they lay him and my other men to rest.

Then there’d been the bullet that had grazed my shoulder as I entered one of my clubs.

Then the bomb that went off in my shipping yard in New York and had the authorities responding. If I hadn’t had connections within the Police force, the costly event would have been far more costly. As it was, the news spun a story about an explosive substance that had been unsafely transported to my shipping yard, weaving a tragic tale of accidental death as another four men were lost, three more critically injured and currently in hospital.

“Do we have eyes on Popov?” I slide into the car beside Misha. A prickle of anxiety has my heartrate quickening.

I’ve faced death more times than I can count. I’ve never been afraid of it. Never worried about those I would leave behind, to never see again. Never worried about the purgatory that awaited me in the darkness. Now, though, with the thought of my death comes a flash of light blue eyes fringed in sadness. Of creamy skin and pink lips, I’ve yet to taste.

Fuck it, ready or not, I’m taking her mouth for my own the second I see her.

“Yes. He hasn’t left Moscow.”

“He’s a coward.” My eyes slide to the window as the car begins to roll. The car had been scanned. Still, I wait for the bomb.

It doesn’t come.

I release a slow, steady exhale. “He hasn’t left Moscow, but we know he’s responsible. At least for the bullet that grazed you.”

I grunt, because this is true. We’d caught the gunman. I’d tortured him for days before he’d finally cracked. After confirming my suspicions that Ivan Popov had hired him to kill me, he’d also squealed about the whispers of a takeover—of a rat. These whispers weren’t whispered directly to him, but he’d heard them all the same. Ivan wanted my business and my life. He would stop at nothing to get it.

The trouble is, unlike me, Popov doesn’t see to his business personally. He has lackeys for that.

Like I said, he’s a coward.

I consider. Blue eyes flash in my mind, the scent of cookies invades the breath I inhale as though she’s sitting here with me.

This war must end.

I need to call out Ivan Popov. Cutting off the head is the only way to stop the chaos.

“Popov’s youngest son is currently on a yacht, sailing the Keys, yes?”

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