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“Stamina,” she echoed coyly.

“You’ll get your pants wet,” he warned, thinking of how much water was pooled in the back areas of the salon.

“I’m planning on it.” The mischievous glint turned to a lusty haze of need. Far be it from him to refuse the woman he intended to marry a goddamn thing.

Kostya grasped her hand and tugged her in the right direction. They had taken four steps before Billie said, “What the hell is wrong with Tiara?”

“What? Is she here finally?” Holly stopped and spun around to see what Billie meant. “She didn’t answer my texts or calls.”

“Mine either.”

When Tiara appeared, his irritation with Billie’s ill-timed interruption faded. Face streaked with tears, Tiara sobbed hysterically. Her nose was swollen and pink, and her dark eyes were bloodshot. Her rumpledTEXANSshirt and torn leggings spoke volumes about the type of morning she had had.

“Tiara!” Holly dropped his hand and rushed across the broken glass and water. “Oh, my God! What’s wrong?”

Tiara gripped onto Holly and sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“What? What is it?”

Kostya moved closer, wondering if Tiara was about to reveal she had inadvertently helped the vandals in some way. What came out of her mouth next rocked him to the core.

“I fucked up,” Tiara wept. “I fucked up real, real bad—and now Nisha and Ten are going to die.”

Chapter Nineteen

Whenhethoughtbackto the night his life changed forever, Ten always pictured Danny’s young face first. He had been a kid back then, not quite at that gangly, awkward puberty stage. Danny still had a bit of chubbiness to him, all soft and innocent and not yet fucked over by life.

That would soon change.

Back then, Danny had been adjusting to life with Artyom. His mother had died, and his father had fucked off back to Russia, probably to drink or snort himself to death. Artyom had stepped up to be the father his nephew needed. Not that the kid appreciated that sacrifice. He fought Artyom at every turn, ignoring curfews, sneaking out with his shithead friends, and failing his classes.

He had realized too late to stop that it was Artyom’s nephew crying on the sidewalk and had circled back to see if the kid needed a ride. The sight of Danny crying worried him. No boy that age cried like that unless something truly fucked up had just happened.

It was the little brother of a friend. He had gone missing on the way to school. Danny and the older brother were supposed to walk the younger boy to the bus stop. They had ditched him a block from the bench to chase after some girls who were too old for them. The little boy never made it to school, and Danny was drowning in the guilt of it.

The disappearance of another young boy had riled up Ten’s suspicions. There seemed to be a young boy missing every five or six weeks, always the same kind of kid from the same kind of home. Single, overworked mom or grandmother. Poor. Alone. At risk.

Ten kept quiet and out of the rumors that spread along the underworld circuit, but he hadn’t been able to miss the gossip about the peculiar tastes that Fat Tony Guerrero and Adrian Umansky were purported to enjoy. After Kiki Acevedo’s arrest, the streets had been on fire with wild tales. Suddenly, everyone knew what a vicious freak he was and everyone knew he had been a serial killer.

It was annoying to hear people say shit like that. When he’d ask them why they hadn’t gone to the cops and saved some lives, they got really quiet. All that bluster and bravado disappeared. They were all liars.

But there was something strange about that trio. It was a gut feeling he’d had the few times he’d been around the three of them, usually offloading cargo or picking up cash. Some men had bad energy around them. It was like an invisible field of discomfort that made the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

After that night, after he had discovered things he could never unsee, Ten would learn to trust that prickling sensation, that slow churn of his guts, as a warning. In prison, he would read a book by Gavin de Becker,The Gift of Fear, and he would finally understand why he had felt that way.

But, at that moment, when he had picked up Danny to take him to Artyom, he hadn’t known. He couldn’t have even imagined.

It was after eleven that night when Kostya tracked down the little boy. Ten never asked how Kostya had found the location of that shit-hole house. He hadn’t wanted to know. He had only wanted to wash the vile stink of it off him and forget about the whole thing.

Ten had never been to that stretch of boggy, heavily forested area between Mont Belvieu and Dayton. There was no reason for anyone to go out there which was probably why Tony and Adrian had bought that piece of property. Barely an acre carved off the side of a much larger tract. Perfectly isolated the way a pair of child molesting psychos would want.

Hidden behind trees, there was a ramshackle house. The wind had been blowing that night, and it looked as if the house was breathing with every gust. There had been a strange smell in the air, one he didn’t recognize but Kostya had. It was the smell of charred flesh, that greasy, foul stink of death.

After, a long time after, Ten would follow Kostya and that scent to a burn pit located at the back part of the property. The bones they uncovered there would help investigators close a number of missing persons cases, all of them young boys. The sight of that pit would haunt Ten until the day he died. It was a horrific reminder of cruelty and inhumanity.

The door had been unlocked. Ten had been shocked by that. What sort of idiots didn’t lock the door of their murder house? Were they truly so arrogant? Did they think no one would ever dare to come inside?

Not that a locked door would have stopped Artyom. He had stormed into that house like a bull, raging and furious. Artyom had always been slow to anger and never one to resort to violence. Not that night. No, Ten had seen a side of the three-fingered captain he never wanted to witness again.

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