Page 25 of Beautiful Cruelty

“Unfortunately not.” I shake my head, pondering Demyon's words as I pace around Walker's lifeless body.

But then again…

A place as a public as a cathedral means that not everyone in there—from the janitors to the tour guides to the security guards to the literal thousands of tourists that walk through its doors—can be on Kirsan's payroll.

Wherever Kirsan has hidden his ledgers, it must be a place that avoids being discovered by curious eyes. Where could that be?

A possibility floats to the front of my mind and I straighten up.

"I know exactly what we’d look for."

"Oh?"

"What's the only untouchable item in an Orthodox cathedral? The one thing that no-one else has access to, except a corrupt man of the cloth hiding dirty money in the House of God?"

"It is way too close to morning for you to be speaking to me in riddles, Vadim." Demyon sighs. "Why don't you just tell me?"

"The Archbishop's bible." I say.

"I don't follow."

"Think about it. The records need to be kept in a location that people won't stumble on it by accident," I explain. "And the Archbishop's bible is the only thing that fits the bill. No one would ask him to part with it. No one would look in it. And thereare plenty of sections that never get read. It's the perfect place to hide it."

Demyon rubs his chin, trying to poke holes in my logic. After a while, he whistles.

"Well I'll be damned…"

"Now, tell me. " A bitter smile crosses my face. “When is the only time that someone other than the Archbishop gets a chance to lay their hands on it?”

“A wedding. The bride and groom," Demyon says slowly, catching on. "When the Archbishop leads them around the lectern during the Crowning."

"Exactly."

"What are you saying, Vadyusha?" He pauses, watching my reaction. "Do you intend on actually honoring the marriage contract Pyotr signed with Kirsan, and marry Sayanaa? All to steal from her father?”

"Fuck no." I let out a harsh laugh. "I didn't rip the cancer of human trafficking out of the Stravinsky Bratva just to welcome it back through marriage. Especially not to someone who enjoys hurting victims as much as her father does."

Sayanaa Kuular is every bit as evil as her father. Yet despite her best efforts at being an enthusiastic participant of her father's business to earn his love, Sayanaa herself had been sold a long time ago as part of the original agreement that brought her father into business with Pyotr in the first place:

A promise that she'd be wed to the heir of the Stravinsky Bratva.

In other words, me.

And every year that the marriage fails to materialize, she becomes just a little bit crazier and a little more obsessed at the thought of it.

"Then how else do you intend on stealing that bible if you won’t marry her? You think Kirsan would allow you to do that?”

"Every faithful Orthodox can be married in that cathedral," I say. "Kirsan can't stop us from that."

"And Sayanaa?"

"Sayanaa has her own part to play." I feel my heart racing as I talk. "You know as well as I do that she'll throw an absolute fucking fit at the most dramatic moment of the wedding. That’ll give us the distraction we’ll need.”

"So that's your plan?” Demyon whispers. “You're going to steal a bible from the most famous Russian Orthodox cathedral in Western Europe during your own wedding? On Kirsan's turf? While Sayanaa makes a scene? Do I have that right?"

“Pretty much.”

"Even for you, that's?—"

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