Page 149 of For a Price

Katerina was shoved aside in the struggle. She fell hard to the ground several feet away.

It was over.

I had the pakhan where I wanted him and no one was around to protect him. Not anyone in the bratva. Not the security guards from the Midnight Society.

It was just the two of us. I gripped his throat and glared into his eyes. Instant bitterness burned in them as he reached the same conclusion—he was a dead man.

But I didn’t kill in the moment.

That would be too easy for a man who needed tosuffer.

My men fled as SWAT officials from the city flooded the hotel. Salvatore Mancino’s men managed the same. We left the scene a bloody mess, the hotel littered with dead bodies on the floor.

The pakhan came with us. In shackles, we shoved him in the trunk of our Hummer and took him back to the base of operations.

He was thrown into the room we set aside for occasions like these. Moments where we needed to make someone pay.

He knows what’s coming when I walk into the room and it’s just the two of us.

“Zver,” he says from where he’s chained, “I wondered when you would come.”

I grin at him. “I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting.”

“You pulled off a win. Pozdravleniya?*.”

“Yes, except I’m sure you preferred for it to turn out differently.”

He shrugs. “I always knew you were the formidable one. Your father could never be you. Though I was surprised he would do what he did.”

“You underestimated him,” I say. “Just like you underestimated me.”

“No, I never underestimated you. I knew I had to get to you some other way.”

“You created distrust between me and the sovietnik.”

“Leonid was happy to help.”

“How did that work out for him?” I ask.

“About as well as it seems like it will work out for me.”

His dark humor is no surprise.

The pakhan has always been a serious man. He’s realistic and practical. He’s aware where this is heading.

I pick up a knife and turn it over in the palm of my hand.

There’re so many different ways I can make him suffer. I can keep him alive for hours, cutting him into pieces. I can beat him with my bare hands or with something like a metal baseball bat. Guns are always an option.

Fire. Poison. Siccing some animals on him to eat him alive.

But as I approach him, I already know how I will kill the pakhan.

I’ll keep things simple. Make him look into my eyes as I strip him of his power and let it truly sink in he’s lost. I’m the better man than he is. I’m the new pakhan.

My hand stretches out and wraps around his throat, showing how easily I can dominate him. His eyes widen by a millimeter, recognition flashing in them.

“You are going to die like this,” I growl, squeezing at his windpipe. “Looking me in the eyes as I watch the life seep from yours.”

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