Page 19 of Ruinous Need
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snap. Even this monosyllabic brute is rubbing me the wrong way right now.
Even though Markov’s right. I’m not known for wanting to be around other people.
Until he showed up, I was entirely a lone wolf or a black sheep. Whatever you want to call it. I was the guy who made everyone else uncomfortable at the glitzy family gatherings. Not by my behavior but by my reputation.
The stories about me stole through the room before I could enter. Whispering in everyone’s ear about blood and death and destruction and most especially, the way I enjoyed it. Needed it.
I really should’ve had that coffee. But I needed to be out of Lisette’s presence before I did something stupid.
The one thing I’m known for is being above it all. Uninvolved. Detached. That was always so easy until her.
I have to stop thinking like this is a foregone conclusion.She’s a woman. A bodily urge. Like an addiction. And people get past that every day — they set down the bottle, orthe pipe, despite their body’s urging, and they move on to better things.
That’s what I have to do with this strange craving I have to touch my cousin’s fiancée.
“This could be good for you.” Markov lets it hang in the air.
“She’s not a roommate. Or a therapist. This changes nothing.”
If it was anyone else, all I’d have to do was look at them and they’d cower away. Not Markov.
Perhaps it’s that he doesn’t know the full story. He didn’t know me when I was fifteen, he wasn’t there to see the creation of the monster he works with.
I’m fine with it. It’s easier to work with someone when they’re not constantly side-eyeing you to see whether you’ll go too far.
I refocus the binoculars. Our target today: Boris Gurov.
This one’s an easy kill. As a bonus, our intel suggests he can help with our plot to destroy the remnants of the former Pakhan and his legacy. Before he breathes his last breath, the pot-bellied rat will sing a song about where Yuri is hiding in Argentina.
From the looks of his gold button-down shirt and red face in the photo on his file, he’s not exactly a classy man. He was involved in running drugs for a low-level Bratva family some years ago. The whole thing was a disaster because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He’s come back onto the Bratva’s radar for another similarly disastrous entrepreneurial effort.
A greedy business owner who didn’t respond to the first warning.
That’s all you get, from Semyon. Especially for an idiot like this one, trying to set up a brothel across the road from our own operation.
We have the photos to prove it. Nothing about the operation was subtle. Sure, the door in the alleyway was black and markedwith a simple door number, but the women wearing skimpy dresses and too much make-up outside were a giveaway.
The man must be thick as a plank. He even tried to recruit some of the workers from our establishment to work at his, offering them a lower salary. As though they’d forfeit money to work somewhere that can’t even offer the protection of the Bratva.
“Boris!” I call out to him with a Russian greeting from across the parking garage.
He looks around, bewildered, as my voice echoes off the walls. I’m behind him before he can react, a gun at his temple.
He drops to his knees in an instant, the parking garage echoing with the sound of his sobs.
“Tell me what you know about Yuri Petrov.”
The words flow out of his lips so easily it’s almost suspicious. How, when he was looking for women to bring back to his club in Argentina, he reconnected with Yuri. He was in Buenos Aires for the day, down from his ranch in the north.
It adds up. We’ve swept through Russia, Mexico, and the Caribbean, while we track down the vermin. Further south, we haven’t bothered with yet.
He twists to me in surprise when he realizes that I’m not letting him go. This is an execution, not an interrogation. I wonder why he thought it was anything else.
Like Georgy, he thinks he has some kind of right to beg me for mercy.
“Please, Viktor, your father would have—”
I shut him up with an elbow to the windpipe. My father is the last thing I want to hear about right now.
