Page 21 of Born into Mayhem
I dodge another ill-timed stab from Greg, and instead of just shoving him aside, I use my leg to trip him, sending him to the floor. As soon as he’s down, I kick him in the stomach. When he’s huddled up in pain, gasping for air, I take his knife and toss it aside, leaving him unarmed and vulnerable.
“Good,” Sasha says. “Now finish him.”
I straddle Greg, pinning him to the ground. Even though he’s too weak to do much, he still struggles, and when he surprises me by jerking a hand free, I punch him in the jaw, gritting my teeth against the pain that floods my hand, knowing it’ll soon pass. My dad taught me how to throw a proper punch before I could even ride a bike, and Dario’s always insisted I hit the bag a few times without gloves to ensure my hands are tough enough to handle a raw punch.
“Beautiful,” Sasha murmurs from beside me.
With Greg fully subdued, I look to my older brother for help. His eyes linger on the man beneath me for a few seconds before his light blue eyes meet mine. They’re not the kind I’m used to. There’s a coldness to them, a detachment that he doesn’t often let me see. My brother’s still in there, but that’s not the side of him that’s in charge right now.
“Stab him, Mia,” he says. His tone is calm, like he’s telling me about his plans for the weekend instead of instructing me to take a man’s life. When I hesitate, he says, “Or slit his throat, whichever you prefer.”
Both of my hands are wrapped around the knife handle as I raise it up, preparing to slam it into Greg’s chest. His eyes are wide with fear, staring up at me and screaming around the broken jaw I just gave him.
“Sasha,” I start to say, about to confess that there’s no way I can go through with this, but a beeping alarm goes off, cutting my confession off before I can make it.
“Fuck,” Sasha mutters, looking at his phone’s screen. He holds it out to me, and when I see our dad and Uncle Vitaly getting out of a carright next to Sasha’s motorcycle, I turn my frightened eyes to my brother.
“What do we do?” I ask.
Not bothering with words, Sasha puts his hands on top of mine and plunges the knife into Greg’s chest. His hands lock mine around the hilt, and I feel the blade puncture bone and muscle and the surprised gasp from Greg is short-lived when Sasha twists the blade, doing enough damage to ensure a quick death.
Too stunned to do anything, I let my brother pull me up. He half drags, half leads me to the corner where there’s a shelf filled with tools that I’m guessing he uses for things that I’m not so sure I have the stomach for right now.
“Mia,” he says, pushing me down so I’m scrunched up in the dark corner, hidden by the large shelf. When I don’t answer, he gives my cheek a hard enough pat to get my attention. Once my eyes are on his, he says, “Don’t make a sound, okay?”
I nod as he quickly takes a look at the cut on my arm. I’d completely forgotten about it, but now that he’s put my focus there, I realize it’s still bleeding and hurts like an absolute bitch.
“I’ll send someone here to get you as soon as I can. Just stay hidden and don’t say a word.” He gives me a grin, not even slightly bothered by the fact that he’s still covered in Greg’s blood. “Dad won’t like this.”
“No shit,” I mutter, making him laugh before he stands up and quickly walks away when he hears the door open.
“Damn,” I hear our Uncle Vitaly say when he steps into the room and sees Greg on the floor. “You’ve been having some fun tonight.”
From where I’m huddled, I have a clear view of them from between the shelves if I tip my head up just a little bit. I see our dad look from Sasha to the dead man on the floor. For one horrible moment, I’m scared that he’s recognized the knife as mine, but he just looks at Sasha and says, “You don’t usually kill them like this. Did something go wrong?”
“No,” Sasha says, reaching down and pulling the blade out of Greg’s lifeless chest, getting rid of the obvious evidence as our unclewalks to the fridge on the opposite side of the room. “Just thought it would be fun to let him run around for a bit.”
Sasha’s a master at lying, but he doesn’t often use that particular skill on family. I know he’s doing it to cover my ass, and I feel a twinge of guilt about it as he slides the blade of my knife into his back pocket. It’s too long to really fit, but it’s enough to get the damning evidence out of eyesight.
“Okay, who took the last ice cream sandwich?” Uncle Vitaly hollers. His head is still buried in the freezer as he rummages around. “It was Danil, wasn’t it? I bet he did it on purpose, too. He knows how much I love those.”
Our dad tries his best to ignore his brother, but when he hollers from inside the freezer, “Can we stop by Get the Scoop on the way back?”, our dad groans and shares a look with Sasha. He mouths the wordsJesus Christ, and I nearly bust out laughing when Uncle Vitaly yells, “I heard that!”
“How can you possibly hear that?” Our dad laughs and says, “He’s like a fucking bat. A sugar-addicted, nosey-as-hell bat.”
“I definitely heard that, you fucker,” Uncle Vitaly mutters before emerging victorious from the freezer—a grin on his face and a squished ice cream sandwich in hand. “Hah! Found one in the back.”
“You sure showed us,” our dad says.
“Damn straight I did.” Uncle Vitaly walks over. Standing over Greg, he peels back the wrapper and takes a big bite. After a few seconds of chewing, he asks, “So what’d he tell you?”
“Nothing we didn’t already know,” Sasha says. “He was just a jackass who got caught trying to roofie some college girl. Pasha noticed him hanging around the bar, and then dragged him into the back when he saw him slip the pill into her drink. Don’t worry, though, Greg assured me he wasn’t going to hurt her.”
“Right,” our dad says. “He just wanted to drug her and then drive her home to make sure she got there safely.”
“Definitely not suspicious at all,” Uncle Vitaly says around a mouthful of ice cream. “This is the second time we’ve had somebastard trying to drug women at our club. It’s starting to really piss me off.”
“Pasha and Isaak are on high alert, and we can assign some other men if we need to,” our dad says. Looking down at Greg again, he nods towards Sasha. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. I’ll have someone come out to get this asshole later.”
