Page 17 of Hateful Vows
Irina yelps.
“Irina!”
It takes all the strength I have to hold the huge bastard in a chokehold but I hold on, until eventually, he slumps on the floor. I pick up his gun and empty the magazine into his face for good measure.
Then I’m running. I forget my target. Forget that someone is yelling in my earpiece. Forget that my father isn’t dead yet. That I can’t claim victory. What good is it for if she’s dead anyway?
I drop to my knees when I reach her, searching for the wound.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she says, holding onto her upper right arm, but I can’t hear.
My hands and eyes roam across her body, her white clothes bloody and messy. Fucking hell! Is it her blood? I don't know. I can’t see.
Her eyes widen as she looks behind me and she raises her uninjured arm and throws a shuriken hidden inside her jacket. My father’s cries of pain echo behind me like in a fishbowl.
Irina’s hand lands on my cheek, softer than she’s ever been.
“Finish this,Lyosha. Kill him.”
I’m breathing hard, blinking fast to recover.
I kiss her palm, barely aware that I’m doing it, barely aware of her sharp intake of breath. The girl sobs on the metal table and suddenly, everything comes back in focus.
“Take care of the girl,” I tell Irina before I stand and address Mikhail in the earpiece. “We have an underaged girl down with us and Irina’s been shot. Send help immediately. Security’s back up, which means my father’s head of security will alert everyone. Put me on livestream on everyone’s phone, now.”
“On it.”
My father’s down on his knees, reaching for Denis’s gun but I kick it away.
“What are you doing? You fucking waste of space!”
I take sick satisfaction in the slow steps I take towards him while he cowers at my feet and back hand him while he’s down. A slight his ego can’t take. His adrenaline helps him get up and he launches himself at me. With a roll of my shoulder, I avoid himand turn to take hold of his injured hand, wrapping it behind his back and crunching it against his spine.
Russian curses ring in my ears but the sound doesn't reach me. I’m somewhere else. Somewhere he can’t touch me, can’t have me.
“I’m gonna take everything you’ve ever created,” I whisper in his ear. “And destroy it bit by bit. I’ve aligned myself with the Italians.”
“You motherfucker! How dare you?”
I break his wrist, then his elbow before I dislocate his shoulder and bask in the piercing screams of the man who sired me.
Irina watches, the young girl against her chest. Blood is streaking down her sickly thin legs and flowing from underneath the thin shift that covers her body. It makes me sick.
It could have been Irina. It could have been her in a cell down a basement thousands of miles from me because that motherfucker sold her to his king.
I’m the king now. And no one threatens what’s mine.
Rage like I’ve never known consumes my whole system. Even when I killed my friends, I didn’t feel this level of murderous energy flowing through my veins and taking over everything I am.
I raise my weapon and shoot my father at the back of his left knee. He comes crashing down. I shoot the other one for good measure. Time distorts, lengthening and shortening until I have no clue what time it is.
My knuckles hurt as I clench around the gun in my hand. I drop it to the floor and pick up my father’s body to link heavy chains to his arms and feet, raising him so he’s suspended but still has to bear some of his weight on his fucked up legs.
I choose a knife from the wall display.
I glance at Irina. Her jaw is set. Her eyes are so intense. She’s covered in blood, both hers and not. And she’s alive. Magnificent and vengeful. Anyone who would know her wouldn’t notice the barely there nod she gives me. The approval on her grave angular face. She’ll follow me. She might hate me, but she’ll follow me.
“Left ankle,” I say conversationally, then throw the knife with all my might until it embeds itself into my father’s ankle. I repeat the process with five more daggers and blades.
