Page 56 of Mercy in Betrayal

I walk to the two steps that lead to the front door. Its cracked glass remains, but the blinds have been drawn, a CLOSED sign hanging in the center. Its white has faded to yellow with time.

This can’t be the right address.

Time with Ivan isn’t something any of the Five Families are routinely granted, but for me, he made an exception. Nobody wants to make Ivan angry.

To the left of the building, another one sits in ruins, scaffolding left to climb its rotting bricks. The sound of plastic scraping against asphalt draws my attention to a group of boys skateboarding in its mostly clean lot, and my gaze scans over them sharply before returning to the door in front of me.

I knock on the window and wait. It could be a setup. I have my weapon with me and take my hands out of my pockets as a shadow passes the window; the blind is lifted at the left-hand corner before it’s dropped. The door opens, revealing a large Russian man who takes up most of the doorway. He takes me in from the tip of my toes to my face, stopping when he meets my eyes.

“I’m here to see Ivan.” I open my jacket and show the gun in my waistband. It’s not to threaten him but a show of honesty and an opportunity for him to take it, which he does. He opens the door fully and bends his huge frame, removing the gun from my waistband, but he still doesn’t give me entry. “Ivan is busy.” His Russian accent is thick.

“Yeah, well, I have a meeting,” I say, trying to control my irritation at being left standing on the sidewalk.

“Let him in.” Ivan’s voice reaches me from somewhere in the house, and the bodyguard stands back. I hate having my back to him as I step into the entryway. Once the door closes behind us, the space darkens.

“He can talk to me while I work.” Ivan’s voice comes from ahead, and I’m more comfortable when the bodyguard passes by me to lead the way. The hallway is clear and bare. Even the skirting boards have been ripped from the walls.

The door that I’m led to is slightly ajar, and the bodyguard tips it open further with his foot and juts his head toward what is a kitchen.

Well, it once was a kitchen; now it’s a butcher shop. The smell hits me hard, and when the door closes behind me, the room shrinks. A large metal table in the center has a half-cut-up body on it. Small tables around it hold parts of the man's body.

Ivan has a small hand saw and is working on the man’s arm. The apron he wears is coated in blood. The smell has me removing a handkerchief from my pocket and holding it against my mouth.

“Do you have a weak stomach, Scarpetta?” Ivan has stopped sawing and grins at me. Blood drips slowly from the table onto the brown tile floors beneath our feet. Equipment is laid out on the counter, all instruments to help dissect the unfortunate specimen laid out before the Russian.

I remove the rag from my face to speak. “Not really. I just…I don’t involve myself in this part of the process.” I have men for that. It seems barbaric for a don to be doing this.

But then…Ivan is a different breed.

Ivan continues sawing the man’s arm. “Why not? In our line of work, most of us will end up like this. It is the reality of our position in the world, and I feel that I make better decisions when I am constantly reminded of the stakes of failure.” Ivan finally detaches the arm and swipes the blood that has splashed up onto his hand and arm onto his apron before he places the saw on a white sheet on the countertop. Blood soaks into the material quickly.

“That’s wise, I suppose. What did this guy do to you?” What could warrant not just a kill but a dismemberment? Or perhaps it was simply Ivan’s way of getting rid of a body.

“He pissed me off.” His serious expression should tell me I’ve heard enough. It should remind me that I’m here for a meeting, and a meeting only, but the curious side of me wants to know exactly what he did.

I clear my throat to try and get the taste of blood off my tongue. It’s in the air, and no matter what, that metallic smell is still strong, along with the scent of decomposing flesh.

“I can see that. In what way?”

Ivan picks up the arm like it’s a piece of meat, which it is—but this is human meat. He uses the arm to point at me, his gaze tightening and his head tilting.

“You’ve never asked me about my business before. What has changed?”

“No one in the Cosa Nostra knows exactly what you do. Seeing this…would you have trusted me if I didn’t ask?” He called the meeting here for a reason. He wanted me to watch him cut up a man. Ivan Romanov wants me to understand him. To fear him.

“It seems you are also wise.” Ivan gives a grunt of laughter before he throws the arm on another table; the bang of the flesh against the metal table has my gut tightening.

He points at the rest of the body. The man’s face is unrecognizable, so I have no idea who he was. It’s clear they tortured and beat him for a long time. His eyes are swollen closed; his nose is at the wrong angle. His jaw has been split, and his mouth is slightly agape. I don’t think his tongue is in his head.

“This man told me that I was not good enough to have his sister.”

I clear my throat again, and Ivan smirks. He knows the effect the smell is having on me. I make a mental note to stop doing that. “I thought you were engaged to Viviana Valachi.” That’s what everyone had been saying, and this wasn’t Vivi’s brother—that much I could tell.

“I am, but that does not mean I am not good enough for this man’s sister.”

I study his face; his features are hard; his gaze gleams with awareness, and the fact that Ivan butchers his victims doesn’t really surprise me. The Russian has a reputation for brutality. What does surprise me is that, after all these years, Ivan thinks he can lie to me. He isn’t being entirely truthful, and to show my own standing as a Don, I call him out on his lie.

“What did he really do, Romanov?”

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