Page 64 of Vow of Silence

“What?” Nastasya frowns, moving her focus between the man and me. “Why would he know?”

I shove the gun against the guy’s head. He opens his mouth to speak, yet he stalls when a staggered groan comes from our right.Fucking, Jerry.

“Baby,” the naked woman hollers, moving across the floor on hands and knees to reach him.

I extend one leg, catching her shoulder with my boot and pushing her backward.Nuh-uh.My weapon shifts to train on Jerry’s pallid face.

“Christ, Dane!” He scowls at the guy under Stas’s control. “What are you doing?”

“She’s fucking insane,” the man—Dane—replies, never once taking his attention off my girl. “They want to know who paid us.”

“What the fuck?” Despite the Glock pointed at his forehead, Jerry shifts to sit against the wall. He flicks his gaze toward me and then closes his eyes briefly, rubbing one hand over his face. “You aren’t serious. You’ve come here to blow us to bits to askthat?”

I don’t like the insinuation that we’re dumb one fucking bit.

“Why is that such a surprise?” Stas hollers.

Jerry lets his head drop back against the plasterboard with a dull thud. He chuckles behind closed lips before eliciting a loud groan. “I told you we shouldn’t trust him, Dane.”

“You also said you needed the money,wise guy, and now I’m the one with fucking knives in me!”

“You lovebirds want to know who paid us to kill you, princess?” Jerry smiles before moving his smug grin to where I stand. “Then you better pay his uncle a visit.” His gaze narrows on me. “Ask that fucker when we can expect the balance while you’re there.”

I blow a perfect hole through his arrogant eye.

Fucker doesn’t deserve another second of my goddamn time, let alone another dime from our family.

I shift my attention to Stas and nod once.Finish it.

TWENTY-FIVE

Nastasya

Ididn’t want to kill her. Sure, the woman said a few not-so-pleasant things to us, but it wasn’t her fault those jackasses chose to be in her house today. Or maybe it was? She could have been the one to invite them over for some weird drugged-up fuck-fest. But she wasn’t there when Caroline died.

Their crimes weren’t hers.

All the same, it seemed wrong to allow Benito to be the one to pull the trigger when she sat there naked as the day she was born and vulnerable. I can’t explain why, but it felt right that another woman should do it. Respectful.

You did good.

The device sits on the Defender’s floor for me to read. I glance up from where I clean my hands at the back of the vehicle—still shaking a solid fifteen minutes after we left the house—and meet his concerned stare. I didn’t bother to question why Benito had a plastic clip box full of medical equipment, including alcohol swabs; it seemed obvious after what we had done.

“What happens to their bodies now?”

He reaches across and brings the phone to his side of the vehicle, using his index finger to tap out a new sentence at impossible speed. I suppose when texting is the only way you can talk, you get pretty good at it.

The city cleans them up. Labeled overdoses. Cremated before anyone can ask questions.

I drop a huff out my nose and return to scrubbing at the blood in my cuticle. “How much do you pay the cops?” The spot of red refuses to shift. “Must make a decent dent in the quarterly earnings.”

Benito shakes his head and then turns to sit on the back of the vehicle. He reaches for my hand and sets it on his thigh, trapping my touch in place while he hunts for what he needs. I watch as he clicks open another compartment in the fishing tackle-style box and removes a sharp manicure tool. He uses the blade-like end with care and precision to scrape away the dead skin that refuses to yield its evidence.

“You think of everything, don’t you?” I whisper the words, in awe of the man he’s become.

He replies with a simple rumble in the back of his throat.

“When did you first kill someone?”

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