Page 2 of Crowned

And now? I have a suspicion about those photos. A dark, nasty suspicion.

My gaze sweeps across the crowd, filled with malevolence, until it comes to rest on Konstantin. MyPakhanis staring at me.

“What?” I ask.

Konstantin gives a mirthless laugh and shakes his head slowly. “The day before the pageant begun, I felt sorry for you.”

I don’t reply. I was in a dark place the day before the pageant, consumed with blood-soaked revenge fantasies. The same fantasies I’d been having every day since I stood in the master bedroom at Ivan Kalashnik’s home and realized Lilia’s things were gone.

Konstantin rubs a hand over his jaw. “I thought to myself, Elyah just needs to get his mind off things. How stupid he is, getting hung up on a woman.” His eyes glitter with malice. “But she is not merely a woman, this Lilia Aranova. You tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen. She is a fucking viper.”

My jaw clenches. Everything I’ve said to Konstantin about Lilia being a treacherous bitch was based on a lie, and yet the things she said and did during the time we held her prisoner proves that he is right. “If she is snake, then we are the ones who made her bare her fangs.”

Konstantin puts his head on one side, regarding me. “You still want her, don’t you?”

I feel like I’m being torn in two directions. I want Lilia Aranova, and myPakhanwants her dead. “I will know what I want after tonight.”

Konstantin laughs, a short, humorless sound. His eyes are haunted, and his temper is stretched as tight as a bowstring. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Elyah. That woman could slit your mother’s throat right in front of you and you would fall at her feet.”

Kirill returns, three glasses held between his cupped hands. He passes them out and slides into the booth, muttering, “Vashe zdorov’ye.”

Konstantin gazes dispassionately at his drink. A warm glass, room temperature vodka and ice. A disgusting way to serve vodka. “Is it Russian?”

Kirill slams his drink down, his eyes sparking. “In this shithole? Of course it’s not fucking Russian.”

“Kirill,” I mutter, kicking him under the table. He’s been just as moody, just as bad-tempered as Konstantin since the pageant fell apart. He snarls, he snaps, he picks fights. My body is covered in bruises from our sparring matches. I’m bigger and stronger but Kirill is fucking fast, and his rage that Lilia slipped through our fingers has him pulling no punches.

I take a swig of vodka. The three of us are a fucking mess. When we locked Lilia inside her cage, I believed that I would finally be cured of the obsession that plagued me for two years. Instead, Lilia Aranova has infected all three of us, and we think of nothing else but her.

Konstantin fishes the ice cubes and a sad piece of lemon out of his drink and tosses them onto the carpet. It’s so dark that no one notices or cares. Then he knocks back the cheap vodka and grimaces. “Disgusting. I hate this fucking country.”

I remember how little I thought of American food and drink when I first arrived. I craved the flavors of my motherland, but I had to make do with beer, bourbon, and fried chicken. Unless I was around at Ivan Kalashnik’s house, drinking proper, ice-cold Russian vodka, and eatingborscht,pirozhki,andsolyanka, the beef and sausage stew that was mybabushka’sspecialty. Lilia’s was even more delicious. Everything tasted better when Lilia made it.

“You want Number Eleven?” Kirill snarls at Konstantin. “Then shut up and drink your shitty vodka.”

Any otherPakhanwould backhand one of his men for talking to him that way, but Konstantin’s never expected us to behave like his underlings. He owes us his life and he treats us like equals. Besides, he knows he’s being a bad-tempered shit.

My hackles rise as they always do when Kirill or Konstantin refer to Lilia as Number Eleven, but I throw back my vodka and swallow it down, along with the angry words I want to say. I have to focus.

And I’m glad that I do because someone walks through the door into the bar, and recognition slams through me. I almost jump to my feet right then, every nerve screaming at me to grab him and slaughter him right here among a hundred witnesses. I have one chance at this, and I can’t fuck it up, for Lilia’s sake.

I make myself take a deep breath.

And then I turn to Kirill and jerk my chin at the new arrival.

The dark-haired man turns to look and smiles a slow, malicious smile. He gets to his feet and disappears into the half-inebriated crowd.

Konstantin doesn’t turn to look, but he’s suddenly radiating interest and attention. Slowly, gazing at the heavy rings on his fingers, he cracks one knuckle after the next. Violence. He craves it as much as I do.

The man we’re all here for makes his way toward the bar. I stand up and collect our empty glasses as if I’m going to take them back and get us another round. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the shorter, mousy-haired man with a gold chain around his neck suddenly freeze, and all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I take my time, pretending that I’m in relaxed conversation with Konstantin. It takes all my willpower not to reach out and grab him by the throat.

My mark turns on his heel and walks quickly toward the exit. Before he can get there, Kirill steps into his path carrying three more glasses of vodka. They collide, and Kirill snarls in annoyance as vodka spills over his hand. “Watch where you are going,korotyshka.”Runt.

The shorter man tries to sidestep him while Kirill deliberately gets in the way, moving left and right, laughing nastily each time he “accidentally” cuts him off.

“Vasily?”

He freezes at the sound of my voice. The music and voices in the bar are loud, and he pretends not to hear me, trying twice as hard to get around Kirill, but Kirill doesn’t let him.

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