Page 109 of Like An Animal
Ignoring Dimitri completely, I walk over to Massimo, taking in how pale he is, and my chest tightens.
I’ll make sure they pay for this, Max. You have my word.
Xavi stands by my side and I think his mind may be going the same direction. Massimo gave us over two decades of loyalty and friendship, and he gave his life protecting Bronwyn.
He earned way more than we can give him.
“Where is he?” The stiff voice calls from outside of the kitchen before Nikolai Aronin walks in, rage across his face. He glances at Massimo’s body before he charges for me. Grabbing onto the collar of my shirt, he shoves me back against the wall. “What the fuck happened? What did you do, Borza?”
I guess whoever called him about what happened did not explain that it was the other Mr. Borza that’s responsible for this. I don’t blame him. We’re all hurting. Massimo was important to me, Xavi, and Nikolai, but I don’t think I could ever truly understand his pain unless I went through the same thing.
“Stop, Mr. Aronin! This wasn’t Jeremy’s doing. We just got back. When Max warned us that something was going on, we turned around. We weren’t even in the state.” Xavi grabs Nikolai’s arm and peels his fingers off of me.
Nikolai’s expression softens a little but not enough to say he’s relaxed.
“What the fuck happened?” he demands and I walk right over to Dimitri before ripping the tape from his mouth. He throws his head back, screaming from the way the tape tears through the top layer of skin.
“You tell him,” I growl, anger filling every pore in my body.
“You can’t do this to me–” Dimitri tries to go the high and mighty route, but I’m not fooled. I wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze until his eyes bug out.
Leaning into his ear, I let out all of my pent up rage in a single burst. “Fucking tell him what you did!” I release his throat and punch him hard in the stomach as he struggles to catch his breath. I shove two fingers in his open mouth and drag down his jaw as far as I can, growling into the side of his face. “Tell him you double-crossed your family, how you had my wife kidnapped and how you let his son be killed protecting Bronwyn. Own up to what you did!”
I release his mouth and he spits onto the ground. “I did what I had to do. I did what anyone else would. He wasn’t supposed to be there, but she decided she needed some protection. If you want to blame someone, blame your whore, syn.”
I spit in his miserable fucking face before Nikolai’s hand lands on my shoulder, gently pulling me back.
I look up at him, seeing the cold, calculating stare in his eyes no one ever wants to see.
“Are you responsible for my son’s death, Dimitri?” he asks, his voice level.
“No! Even if I was, you couldn’t do anything about it. Don’t forget that I am the bratva. You can’t touch me without starting a war.”
“Wrong again, asshole.” Xavi steps up. “Maybe you weren’t paying attention, but you lost the respect of all your foot soldiers for what you did. All the others are waiting to be tortured and killed. You may have the title right now, but based on the way they reacted to Jeremy’s orders, he’s the new bratva and you’re nothing but a rat who got the new bratva’s wife captured by sex traffickers and got another family’s heir killed. You’re a dead man. You didn’t pull the trigger, but you stood by and didnothing until he was already gone. You are just as guilty as this Isaac fucker.”
He’s not wrong at all.
Grabbing Dimitri by the hair on the back of his head, I pull it back as far as I can make it go before speaking, “And, there are no second chances where my fucking wife is concerned. There are just as few chances when it comes to my friends and you fucked with two of them. Bad call. Also, Bronwyn may be a whore but she’s only a whore for me, asshole.” Then, I punch him right in the nose, letting the blood run down his face.
“Where’s the duct tape?” I ask and Xavi grabs it off the table, next to Massimo’s feet.
“What are you doing?” Nikolai asks.
“We’ll deal with him and the others when we get back.”
“Back?!” Nikolai explodes as he grabs my wrist, making me look at him. “We take care of themnow.”
“No. If you want the one who pulled the trigger and to be involved, you will wait. I have my priorities and they’re the ones Max would want me to have. My wife, the woman Max gave his life to protect, is in danger and every moment I’m not there is a moment where she is being tortured,” I explain before Xavi pipes in.
“And the only reason she was captured was because she was trying to save his life. She gave him a few extra moments before he was killed. We told her to stay hidden, but she was so concerned with what would happen to Max that she didn’t listen. She sacrificed herself trying to protect him. As his father, that should mean something to you.”
Nikolai’s gaze shifts between me and Xavi before he questions, “Who is this girl that would be that important?”
Xavi takes the duct tape from my hands and puts a fresh piece over Dimitri’s mouth.
“Bronwyn Borza, previously known as Bronwyn Durst.”
Nikolai’s eyes flash with recognition before his gaze moves to Massimo’s body. A million emotions race across his face before he concedes. “Max loved that girl like a sister. He used to talk about her all the time. She meant everything to him…Fine, but I’m coming with you. I’ll have my contact at the funeral home come to collect his body.”
