Page 72 of Savage Heart

“How ‘bout we have dinner…then we’ll talk about whatever put that look on your face.”

Her gaze flicking to Erika, who was so absorbed in her show she hadn’t heard her dad come home. She didn’t want to talk about Amelia’s bullshit with Erika in the room, so she’d wait.

Nodding, she said, “Alright, you two, let’s eat.”

She just hoped she could stomach the pasta…and the conversation she’d have afterward.

Panting, rage blistering through his blood, Danil Oblek stared down at the mess of flesh and gore that was once a prostitute. Trixie. It cost $25 to get her into his car…but it cost her life once they reached the pay-by-the-hour motel just off the strip, where he’d gotten the text from Boris.

Blyad!

Leonid was on his way to Vegas—for asurprisevisit! The man hadn’t even had the fucking decency to call and inform his own brigadier that he was coming. He only knew because his spy in Leonid’s house had texted to warn him. That meant Leonid never intended for Danil to know. It was a motherfucking ambush, is what it was. He was coming to try and catch Danil with his pants down, giving him a reason to rip away his territory.

It just meant that Danil had to act fast; bring his plans forward bymonths. Once again, blistering rage scorched his inside, boiling his blood, darkening what was left of his soul.

Wiping his hands on his slacks, he kicked the still warm body out of the way, pulled his cell from the suit coat dangling over the back of the chair, and made a call.

“Boss,” a voice answered. He sounded bored. Good. That meant he’d be up to the task he was about to get handed.

“I want the doctor. Do what you have to do without hurting her, but I want her yesterday!” He didn’t need to wait to hear Sonny’s response, he knew the man would be champing at the bit to do this piece of dirty work. The man lived for blood and terror almost as much as Danil did.

Smirking, his thoughts churning about Leonid’s visit, Dr. Elizabeth Simpson, the dog MC, and how he had little time to “convince” them to take out the Pahkan of the Medev Bratva. He hummed, realizing the Leonid had made one thing easier; he’d brought himself right into the line of fire. He was safe in Chicago, sitting on his throne of gold, cocaine, and bones, but he’d made himself vulnerable, leaving his fortifications, and Danil would take advantage of it.

Knowing there were no cameras at a place like the Sunnyside Motel—which the locals called theSeedyside Motel—with its twenty-year-old, deep green shag carpets, it’s stained, threadbare sheets, and it’s flimsy doorknob locks, Danil simply walked out the door of room 15, leaving behind the evidence of his evening with the delightful Trixie. He doubted housekeeping would even be around for the next few days. If ever.

Heading toward his car, he slid into the backseat, nodded at Ivan in the driver’s seat, and leaned back against the patent-leather seat.

“Home?” Ivan asked, his gaze in the rearview mirror taking in the blood on Dani’s clothes.

“Da,” Danil responded. “Then Brillianty.” It would be a late night, making sure the books were all in order—at least the ones he’d been cooking for five years. The real books, theones showing Danil’s side businesses outside the bratva, those he kept hidden in a safe in the floor beneath his desk chair. Those books catalogued every deal, every money exchange, every name of every ally he’d been carefully cultivating for his takeover. Originally, he’d planned to use the money laundered through Lyle Pace’s VIP medical facility to fund a few weapon’s purchases, weapons he’d use to end Leonid’s reign, and the lives of Leonid’s cronies and supporters. He’d wipe the slate clean with blood, then he’d use the money remaining to buy his own cronies. But the fucker Lyle Pace ran off with the money Danil had intended to use to buy those fucking weapons from the Italians, making Danil lose face among the Families in Vegas. So not only did the good doctor steal five million dollars, but he’d also stolen Danil’s reputation, one he’d been steadily building for five years.

And Danil had made him pain dearly for it. For long, agonizing days.

After a twenty-minute stop at his house to shower and change, Danil headed to Brillianty.

In the back office, his focus on the paperwork on his desk, the corner of a picture hidden beneath a stack of documents caught his eye. Leaning forward, he snagged it, and held it up.

It was a picture of Dr. Elizabeth Simpson…but from when she was simply Elizabeth Simpson, orphan, ward of the state of Nevada foster system. In the picture she was standing in front of a sign for a local community center. Wearing cutoff jeans and a plain blue t-shirt, she was young. Untouched. The epitome of vulnerable but desperate to hide it. She was perhaps thirteen or fourteen, her face flawless except for the smattering of light brown freckles on her cheeks. Her blonde hair was in a messy braid over the right shoulder, and her face was a study in defiance.

It was her eyes, though, that arrested his attention as it had the first time he’d seen the picture.

After he’d first approached Lyle Pace with the lucrative business proposition to launder money through his clinic, Lyle told him all about Elizabeth, how she’d be against any criminal activity, and that she’d be a tough nut to crack. Danil had laughed, thinking he could handle a little, uptight, self-righteous doctor. Then…he’d gotten the file he’d had Oleg compile on Dr. Pace’s business partner and former lover.

And he’d been enraptured by the picture of young, orphan Elizabeth, glaring belligerently, defiantly, beautifully furious at the camera. In that moment, something inside of him cracked, bleeding emotions he’d never felt before into the depths of his being. For the first time in his life…heneededsomething. All else that came before her, he’d wanted, then taken, never knowing the true agony and devastation ofneed. Until her. Until he looked into her deep blue eyes, sparking with rage and innocence—a truly magnificent, utterly stunning combination of purity and dark passion.

HeneededDr. Elizabeth Simpson like he needed a knife in his hand, like he needed air in his lungs, blood in his veins—he was fucking ravening for her, and there was no amount of dead hookers and bloodletting that would appease his desperation for her.

And hewouldhave her. Because once he forced the bastard Savage Raiders to kill Leonid, he’d take Liz for himself, and he’d fuck her in the pool of blood next to Trouble’s dead body.

After another two hours of cleaning up any potential messes Leonid might use against him, he got the text he’d been waiting for with bated breath.

Sonny: Tomorrow afternoon. I’ll make sure she’s there. I’ll text the time.

A grin unlike any that came before it, split his face, and he knew that if anyone were to see him then, they’d scurry away in fear.

You’re mine, Elizabeth, and tomorrow afternoon, I’m claiming you.

Just as that thought filtered through his brain, his office door opened, and Leonid Medev, Pahkan of the Medev Bratva, slunk through the door, his stooped frame, protruding belly, thinning hair, and pasty skin making him look like a creature from Siberian legends. A creature that slithered from the shadows, devouring children, and feasting on the dead.

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