Page 25 of Venus

“Ouch.” ‘Cause interrogation and nice never went together in the same sentence.

“Da. I hit her couple of times. Was ready to cut her.” She held up a hand, displaying those fucking daggers she had for nails. “Rycks intervened, claimed her in front of club to prevent torture I was getting ready to dish out, and got everything out of her. What impressed me most about Lyric was how she responded to everything.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“She took everything I dished out, was prepared to take even more, and she didn’t protest or beg or even tell us about her child because she believed doing so would put little Bella’s life in danger. She kept silent. I hit her face. Twice. And for first time in my life it felt like I was doing exact wrong thing. I didn’t know it at time, but when I found out…”

“So you feel like you owe her.”

“I do. I protected her afterward. When Rycks went to get Bella and bring her home. I protected them both. In process we found out real mole was one of Bane’s club girls.”

“Well, Lyric is Rycks’ old lady now, so I’m assuming everything worked out.”

“Da. Still didn’t make me feel better. So I started looking out for both Lyric and Bella. Then I found out Celeste was granddaughter of Mama and Pops. Daughter of their only son. That made her my family too, so she and her daughter, Holly, had to be protected. Holly was vulnerable because she had a childhood cancer, but is in remission now. Her oncologist is Blade from Bane. So, you see? Domino effect, and now I have people I need to protect in more clubs than I can keep up with.” She sounded disgruntled, but one look at her face showed the affection she felt for every person she’d mentioned. “Since I’m around everyone everywhere now, I have more people I care about than I ever have in my entire life. Exhausting, trying to do it all.”

“But you do.”

She shrugged. “As much as I can.”

“Giovanni thinks he needs to call in all hands on this one. I think I said he’s meeting us at Bane. He says he’s calling in everyone else, even Black Reign.”

“Which means, he suspects Victor is either in or around Palm Beach area.”

“Likely.”

“He tell you anything more?”

“Only for us to get there. No doubt he’ll be there long before we will.”

Venus snorted. “Right. Pesky helicopter.”

“So the question we need to discuss is simple. Where do you want to go from here?”

“What do you mean?” She braced herself with her arms on my chest, looking up at me questioningly.

“Do you want to go to Bane like Giovanni told us? Or do you want to go someplace else? What doyouwant to do?”

She gave me a startled look. “I didn’t realize that was option.”

“‘Course it is. I happen to think we need to play this according to your instincts. You know Victor better than anyone, even Giovanni. So what do you want to do?”

She looked down, resting her chin on her hands. “I don’t know. Since I haven’t been able to kill Victor in all these years, my judgment might not be best with regard to him.”

“It is. How long have you actively been trying to find and kill him?”

She frowned. “Since we brought Katya to States.”

“So a few years, but not the whole decade.”

“At first, I was just glad to be away. I was more concerned with how I was going to get to Katya and bring her home than I was with killing Victor. He moved her around a lot before settling her back in his mansion. Probably because he knew I’d be looking for her. I’d never leave my sister behind if I could, but I had second sister to protect as well.” She sniffled. “Should have listened to Millie back then. We should have gone back for her and Mama.”

“I assume you’re meaning your mother? Not Mama and Pops.”

“Da. Everything went to shit when we escaped. Mama refused to leave and Katya was only five. Risk was too great to have more than Victor’s goons after us because he would absolutely call it kidnapping and bring to bear full force of FSB. I was still young and not too ashamed to admit, now, I was terrified of them coming after us. I thought I knew best, you know, because I had all that training from FSB. Truth was, I knew if they came after us, Millie would die. Almost did anyway with only Victor’s goons after us.”

“But you didn’t. Then you made it to America.”

“FSB had plans for me to infiltrate Argent Tech. They wanted better weapons and thought I could get schematics for whatever they wanted. Since I was on my own, I thought perhaps Argent was good way to keep eye on FSB infiltration of company. I was straightforward with Alexi Petrov when I interviewed with him.”

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