Page 150 of For a Price

His hands come up to mine as if in hopes he’ll pry them away, but he it’s futile. He’s a dead man and he knows it.

The air leaves him with every passing second. His lungs try to function anyway, his sputters coming the harder I squeeze. The muscles in his throat tighten and contract against the palm of my hand. The rest of his body goes into panic mode, jerking like it recognizes what’s happening.

It doesn’t understand why it’s being deprived. His brain is being shortchanged of the oxygen it needs to survive.

But the light remains in his eyes to his dying breath.

His gaze stuck on my face, I grin down at him and then decide to go for a final surprise. Added suffering for what he’s done. The knife I’d grabbed gets plunged into his chest. Blood seeps immediately as his heart’s punctured with a gory wet sound.

I twist it in deeper and watch as his mouth drops in shocked pain.

He has no air left to express himself. No means of communicating what he’s feeling.

Squeezing his throat tighter, I say, “Vashe vremya proshlo. Naslazhdaytes’ adom?*.”

He finally gives into death a few seconds later, slumping in the chair we’ve strapped him down in. I pluck the knife from deep inside his chest and hold it up, admiring each syrupy drop of blood.

This will go in my office as a trophy. The knife I used to slice up the heart of the fucking pakhan as I took control of his empire.

“I want him pulverized into nothing,” I tell Oleg when he returns to the room. “Turn him into dust. Make him disappear. There’s no greater punishment for someone so arrogant.”

* Pozdravleniya -Congratulations

* Vashe vremya proshlo. Naslazhdaytes’ adom -your time is up. Enjoy hell.

CHAPTER 45

Katerina

After the insanitythat was the fight at the Winchester, I take the longest, hottest shower known to man.

Washing away the bad. Thebloodthat stained my hands and other parts of me too, however invisible.

I didn’t kill the pakhan myself, but I damn sure played a part in his downfall. I ran him through with the pocketknife I’d been carrying. I gave Roman the opening he needed to take him down.

It’s what I wanted. But on the other side, I feel conflicted.

I’ve never been a violent person. I’ve never hurt anyone, much less stabbed a person.

I was seeking revenge for Rosita, for Roman, formyself.

Yet Rosita’s still gone. I still have the terrible memories of everything that’s happened. Is it really justice if the pain remains?

I’m under the hot spray of water when I break down into tears. A deep sob racks through me and makes my face drop into my hands. Time becomes unglued as I stand like this for who knows how long, sobbing among the clouds of steam and against the static backdrop of running water.

Eventually I wilt like a flower, no longer able to stand.

I lower myself to the side of the tub, using the ledge like a seat. I’m both shaking from the chill inside my lungs and heated up from the shower’s cascade.

Fitting since everything else in my life feels like a contradiction right now.

If the past couple months have taught me anything, it’s that life is unpredictable. Life never makes any sense, and I have to simply figure out how to keep going. Things I had already learned from living on the streets from the time I was a stray.

But everything that’s gone down with Roman and the bratva have magnified these lessons by one thousand.

On the streets, I had learned to survive. I reached some place where I was able to block out any trauma from losing my family, going through the foster system, and then winding up all alone as a stray. Maybe it was because I never had enough time to sit and consider all the details. I was always on the go. Always on the move.

It wasn’t until captivity with Roman that I had time for these old wounds to reopen. That new ones formed, like what happened at the marketplace or with Rosita and Lucero. Possibly most terrifying of all, is the unknown that feels like it’s closing in on me.

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