Page 37 of Darkest Deeds

“What have you done? What,” I swallow the anger building inside me, “what did he do to you, pchelka?”

She blinks. Then she blinks again. Slowly, she lowers her chin and stares down at herself—at her torn, blood-soaked dress. At the spilled life coating every inch of her skin. With uneven breaths, she holds out her arms. “I’m dirty.”

Rage consumes me, darkness seeping out of my soul, ready to take revenge for what had been done, but raw pain and fierce protectiveness fight it for control. “Pchelka, give me the knife.”

“No!” she screams, holding it against her chest.” I need it. He…he…”

“I know what he did, Ava. He’s gone; you don’t need it anymore.” I take a step closer and slowly hold out my hand.

She stares at the floor, her bottom lip trembling. “I kept my promise, Niko. I swear.”

We kneel in silence.

Promise.

There’s only one promise she can be referring to. One that, if true, both severs my heart completely and stitches it into a misshapen promise of my own. A promise of the darkest kind.

“Ava,” I rasp.

“He didn’t.” She stares down at her lap. “He didn’t touch me there.”

I follow her gaze down to the shredded bottom of her dress. As the knowledge hits me, I throw my head back and an inhuman sound fills the basement.

When I open my eyes, Ava is still staring at me, the knife used to murder her step-brother still cradled against her chest. One more move and we’re face to face. I take a risk, and fold my hands right above the blade. “Ava, give me the knife, and I’ll make sure nobody ever hurts you again.”

Hesitantly, she releases the knife, her eyes brimming with tears. I quickly wipe off all traces of her prints on my shirt as she lifts her pinkie finger. “Promise?”

Holding the knife by my side, I curl my pinkie around hers. “I promise.”

Mikhail pales. “Her step-brother raped her…”

I nod, unable to say the word out loud. “Yuri got a hole in his neck that went straight through to the floor as payback. She twisted the shit out of it too, severed the carotid artery and the jugular. Ava was a mess. She had bruises, and there was…” I fist my hands in my lap and stare down at them. “There was blood running down the back of her legs where he’d…” I swallow, unable to finish. “She was only sixteen, Mik.”

“You took the fall for her.”

I grit my teeth. “Not intentionally.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ava was fragile. This was never about sex for Yuri. It was a power trip. He was a Chernov by marriage and spent his life trying to prove he wasn’t part of his mother’s package deal. He was bad enough. There was no way she could’ve handled her father’s interrogation alone.”

“But something went wrong.”

My fists tighten again. “Yeah, you could say that.”

Sergei appears at the bottom of the steps, followed by a herd of his men. His eyes widen as he takes in Yuri’s lifeless body. “What the hell did you do to my step-son?” He nods to one of his guards, who checks him for a pulse. Finding none, the guard shakes his head.

Ava’s small body starts to shake uncontrollably, and I step in front of her. “Sergei, listen to me. It’s not what it looks like.”

“Not what it looks like?” he roars, his gaze trailing from Yuri to my hand. “What it looks like is that my boy is dead, and you are holding a knife dripping with his blood.”

“I didn’t do this!”

“No? Then who did?”

The last thing I want to do is implicate Ava, but she’s his daughter. Sergei’s an evil son of a bitch, but what father could punish his child for defending herself against sexual assault? If anything, he should wish he could’ve sent Yuri to hell himself.

I glance over my shoulder where Ava’s shaking has turned violent. “It’s okay. You can tell him.”

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