Page 6 of Crowned

“Go to the fucking bathroom,” I seethe.

I can’t kill him here with these white sofas and all this white carpet. Vasily protests and tries to flee for the door, but Kirill twists his arm behind his back and marches him across the suite and into the bathroom. I follow and slam the door behind us.

Vasily cries like a bitch, backing away as I close in on him. “Elyah—no—the photos. Remember the photos.”

Fuck those fucking photos. How he got those, by trickery or photoshopping, I don’t care. I don’t believe in them.

I believe in Lilia.

I brandish the broken bottle. “I am going to torture you just like I tortured Lilia. I am going to make you feel every inch of the agony I put her through. A thousand deaths are not enough for you.”

The pain I put my woman through is unspeakable. I told her she was going to die and forced her to relive the darkest days of her life. I want to excise those deeds from my soul, but I can’t, so I’ll settle for rending Vasily’s worthless flesh.

“What was I supposed to do, Elyah?” Vasily wheedles, his big, stupid puppy dog eyes making me want to rip them from his skull. “The cops found drugs on me. If I didn’t give them information about Ivan, they were going to send me to prison.”

“Then you should have gone to prison!” I roar. He stands in front of men who have done hard time and complains about a few years for drug possession in a low-security hotel? If he had done his time and kept his mouth shut, he would have returned to hisPakhana trusted man. No matter who you are or what you’ve done, you take the fall. You don’t bring your fucking friends down with you. The cops can’t touch us if we all give them the finger and turn our backs. Men like us, we are nothing without our crews and our loyalty to each other.Nothing.

I grab Vasily by the throat and shove him against the wall. “I went to prison. Kirill went to prison. We shut our mouths and we did our time like men. We did not rat on our friends to save our own skins.”

Kirill has stepped up to my side and he’s glaring at Vasily. He hates a snitch just as much as I do.

“All right, I’ll tell the truth!” Vasily screams.

I hold the broken bottle close to his face, but I wait. “What is the truth?”

Vasily takes a gulping breath. “I needed someone to seem like the informant in case someone became suspicious of me. I didn’t think anyone would hurt Lilia. Ivan loved Lilia.”

That’s a lie and Vasily knows it. If aPakhanlearned that someone sold him out, even a beloved wife, he would kill her. Ivan did not love Lilia. Ivan beat her for having a fucking miscarriage.

“Listening to this idiot snivel is making me sick,” Kirill says.

I bring the bottle closer to Vasily’s face. “I agree.”

“Just listen to me! I told the federal agent that Lilia Kalashnik wished to inform on her husband. I sent an anonymous text message to Lilia that her father needed to speak to her urgently, but he was sending one of his men. I gave them both the same date and time. Lilia got into his car, and I took some photos. I don’t think she knew she was in the car with a cop, but she seemed to realize right away that something was strange and got right out again.”

Of course she would realize something was strange. Lilia is too clever to linger where there’s danger, but it only took a few seconds, and the damage was done. I believed those fucking photos, an empty bedroom, and a lowlife piece of shit who would throw a woman under a bus to save his own skin.

Vasily must see the rage on my face, because he stammers, “It was just a few photos and I only showed them to you, Elyah. No one else.”

As if that makes any fucking difference.

I bare my teeth at him. Kirill looms over from the other side. Vasily darts looks between us and realizes he’s heading down the wrong path, thinks fast, and turns down an even worse one. “If you hurt Lilia then that’s on you, Elyah. That’s not my fault. You’re the one who believed what I said about her. If you turned on her that fast you didn’t really love her.”

The world turns a lurid shade of red. Isn’t that what I tell myself every night when I wake up in the dark? My heart is too black, too twisted, to love anyone. I’ve killed too many men. Done too many despicable things. I’m not capable of love. Only violence.

I don’t deserve to love someone as pure and good as Lilia.

I’ve heard that from myself over and over, but to hear it echoed back to me by this piece of shit makes my rage go nuclear. I pull back my arm and drive the broken bottle into Vasily’s guts. It makes a sick, wet sound, and I yank it out and thrust it back in.

Grinding and twisting the bottle while Vasily screams in pain, I growl through my teeth, “You feel that, you piece of shit? I am going to tear your guts out and shove them down your throat. When I am finished with you, I will lay your corpse at my woman’s feet so she can look into the face of the man who betrayed her.”

The fantasy is so sweet—dragging Vasily’s worthless body before Lilia and throwing it down as a tribute. Except I have no idea where in the fucking world Lilia is, and in my rage, that’s all Vasily’s fault, too.

The smaller man is beyond words. All he does is scream, and Kirill jams a face cloth into the man’s mouth so I don’t have to listen to him.

I go on stabbing as blood flows over my hand, and Vasily’s belly turns into a pulpy mess. “You are fucking nothing. You will burn in hell for what you have done.” My howl of fury ends as I thrust the jagged bottle into Vasily’s throat. He makes a gurgling sound, and his eyes are wide and staring in his gray, clammy face.

Kirill and I step back, and Vasily falls in a heap onto the tiles, blood pumping from his stomach and his throat. It takes him a full minute to die, and I stand over him holding the broken bottle and breathing hard, savoring every fucking second. I wait for triumph and vindication to wash over me. I’ve exacted revenge for my woman by killing the man who wronged her.

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