Page 76 of Vasily the Hammer

Ana tries to hand me a pair of briefs, but I’m moving toward Dima, unsure if I’m going to strangle him or hug him. “It was you?”

“Yeah. Wish I had the paper trail, but it was all phone calls. Kostya refused to text, which I get now because it sounds like he was trying to create a disaster. And I was already real fuckingnervous about threats on Kseniya, so as soon as I shot you up with Narcan and got you here, I moved them out of town. Sedona.”

“Kseniya’s okay?”

“Pissed but hanging in there.” He’s grinning, but I don’t know why. This is a clusterfuck that he’s right in the thick of.

But I hug him. With Kseniya and Alex accounted for, I’m feeling a hundred pounds lighter.

Except it’s not over.

And I tell myself I’m good, but my brain, the slog of chemicals that have been pumped into me, they’re taking their toll.

“Let’s do that with pants on, yeah,” Dima says when I make the hug go too long because, admittedly, neither my brain nor my legs are plugged in properly.

“Shut up. I’m in a fucking morgue.”

“Oh, chill. You’re walking out. What’s there to complain about?” But then he must realize that we are standing in the middle of the morgue, so he flags me to follow him across the hall, to a waiting room with chairs and sofas and no drawers of dead people. I get dressed in the sweatpants and tee shirt he brought me as he says, “Someone tried to kill you. I pulled some serious strings to have you brought down here so everyone would believe you died. And I’m guessing you already know who tried to kill you.”

I close my eyes. It’s impossible I got it wrong this entire time. It’s impossible I’ve been played this badly and fell for it.

I built an empire in six years. I rule over a network of blood-thirsty, power-hungry criminals. I’m admired and feared and untouchable.

I shake my head. “No, but... JD from San Antonio.”

“Who from where?”

“The biker you picked up. He told me you picked him up.” And then I killed him, no further questions.

Dima shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you except I haven’t been in Texas in months. I don’t think I’ve ever been in San Antonio.” He gives me a sly, subtle smirk. “You sure no one else has been in San Antonio recently?”

My stomach roils. No one told me they were in San Antonio.

But I also wasn’t checking flight itineraries to be sure that everyone went where they said they were going.

“Was it really heroin?”

“Yeah, they did a toxicology screen. Doc said you got lucky. Since you shot it into your skin—”

“Subcutaneously.”

“Yep, that word. It took way longer for it to overload your system. You would have died if you shot it in your vein.”

But I didn’t, because I thought it was my migraine medicine. Because that’s what Kostya said it was, and I trust Kostya with my life.

“Kostya tried to kill me.”

It feels like a bombshell. It seems like some impossible, unfathomable thing. Kostya has a great life. He’s wealthy, he’s inconspicuous. He’s unburdened by the weight of power. He’s the lucky one.

“Are you surprised?” Dima snorts. “He’s always been mad he fell out of succession.”

I’m ready to fight back, but even Ana, who barely knows Kostya, nods in agreement.

The more Dima talks, the more pieces come together. But despite Ana curling up next to me on the shitty beige sofa in the basement of the hospital across the hall from the morgue while Dima does his best to get comfortable on the chewed-gum pink melamine chair, she hangs on his every word.

She’s touching me, but she’s obsessed with Dima.

And he looks like the cat that got the canary every time she says something that’s clearly a callback to these memories that are coming back to her.

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