Page 13 of Silenced

A long cut around her wrist looks sore, but I doubt it will need stitches.

Both her palms have matching lacerations as if she tried to defend herself against a knife—those might take longer to heal. As for her fingers, the right pointer looks as if it requires a splint, and her left thumb has a deep cut down its center.

Each slice into her skin makes my blood boil with the need to deliver justice to Harvey fucking Rundel.

Seating myself in one of the bucket seats, I reach for my cell phone and check my messages, finding that Grigoriy, our doctor, will be waiting when we land in Miami in two hours.

When I show Dmitri the screen, he grunts. “She’s not our responsibility.”

I arch a brow as I pound my chest with the flat of my hand—mine.

The truth throbs through my fucking soul.

She.

Is.

Mine.

“How can she be yours?” he whisper-hisses, surreptitiously glancing between Igor up front, who’s watching Marku, and Cassiopeia who is draped across the sofa opposite me.

Not once has she left my line of sight since I first looked at her.

She’s angled so that if she vomits, gravity will help her until I can intervene. She’s already got some in her hair and droplets of it coat her skin, but I don’t care.

The man who demands his mistresses be showered and waiting in bed for his arrival doesn’t give a damn about her less-than-clean scent.

If anything, I’m just glad she got the drugs out of her system.

I finger the bottle we found on a nightstand in my hand, rattling the pills remaining in there.

Rohypnol.

If Rundel survives the night, he won’t survive the year.

As I make that vow to myself, and after returning the bottle to my pocket, I sign to Dmitri, “Do I answer to you?”

His Adam’s apple bobs. “No, but you just got us into shit with the Albanians. I have to be able to justify this to Pavel.”

My lips twitch.

Justify.

More like he’s a nosy little shit.

“As if Pavel will care.”

I don’t answer to him either.

“Only because he got shot last month,” Dmitri retorts. Then, his mouth twists into a sulky pout that might have worked when he was fourteen but stopped when his voice broke. “He’s the only one who can talk any sense into you when you get like this.”

I grunt at those home truths and send Maria, the wife of my Obschak, a message. Not because Dmitri’s right, but because I should check in.

Me: Is Pavel well enough for a phone call?

Maria: No.

As always, Maria is short and not so sweet.

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