Page 62 of Trapping His Darling

I swung around to glare at the soldier who’d spoken.Yes.Tiffany could be there, about to be sold. That was a real possibility. She was a beautiful, exotic foreigner, and would command a lot of money.

“Let’s go,” I ordered quietly.

With my father out of commission, I was thePakhan.

They would bow to me.

Or they would die.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Viktor

One week.

Mymilyyhad been gone a week.

And the world around me was in bloody chaos. Literally.

I listened to Roger with half an ear. He said I was becoming ‘a problem’, or so was ‘the rumor’.

Apparently, the other crime families were ‘unhappy’ with me burning down every establishment I’d visited over the week, in my quest to find out what happened to my wife. And the trail of bodies I had left behind in my wake was becoming harder for the authorities to ignore. Money could cover up a lot, but this was ‘ridiculous’, I was told.

Too many air quotes for my taste. “If the international syndicates in the area have something to say, they can bring it to mepersonally.Otherwise, remind their leaders that they’re nothing more than visitors inmycountry,and they are only living here in peace because the Bratva permits it.”

I was not ridiculous. Nor was I a problem. I was rage incarnate. I was Death on a pale horse. And the world would feel my fury until someone told me what happened to my wife.

I ignored Roger as he trailed behind me and complained like a little bitch.

“Viktor, it’s too much. There are bodies piled in the basement. Bodies littering the hallways. Bodies strewn across the property. We are attracting vultures.” My godfather rushed to step in front of me, thus halting my steps. “Not to mention the god-awful smell.”

“I already granted you a favor. I did not use the bomb I wanted to use.” I stepped around him and continued

“But—”

“Goddammit!” I heard my father roar from his office. “What the Fu— Viktor! Roger! Both of you! Get in here!”

Apparently, my father was out of his room.

Roger went straight to my father’s office. I lingered in the doorway and watched where the once formidablePakhanstood beside the desk, unsteady on his feet.

“What is it, Father? Why are you out of your room? You should be in bed? You don’t look well.”

“There is not a single staff member left in this house to care for me!” he snarled. “They have all run away! I haven’t had a decent meal in a week! What the fuck is happening? Why does my home smell like a rotting battlefield.” He swatted his hand. “There are fucking flies everywhere.”

I sighed. “Perhaps if you wouldn’t have killed my mother, you’d have a loving wife to cook and care for you.”

He narrowed his gaze, grumbled to himself, then collapsed into his chair. “I didn’t kill her, if you recall. Your brother did. Because you were too much of a pussy to do it yourself.”

I strolled into the office, stood before the desk, and reached into my pocket. I pulled out a collection of severed fingers andthrew them on the desktop. Out of my other pocket, I pulled out a detached nose, a tongue, and a pair of plucked eyes. They joined the sliced fingers on the desk.

“Say something like that again,” I warned quietly. I was not that little boy anymore, and I sure as hell was not in the mood.

My father looked ready to try me, but Roger stepped in. “You were too ill to bother with something so trivial, but Viktor has lost his wife. He has… not taken it well.”

“Trivial?” I echoed.

“Apologies. What I meant was that this was not a Bratva matter,” he corrected.

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