Page 2 of Scorned Beauty
The first man who appeared to be playing solitaire was Grigori Petrov, a man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair. He had pale blue eyes and ashen-hued skin. The combination almost looked unnatural. Sickly. He was wearing a tailored gray suit and a white dress shirt with an open collar. Gold chains hung around his neck. He epitomized the Russian brigadier. I had not met the bratva’s pakhan yet, nor the other brigadiers.
The dangerous man beside him was his cousin, Nikolai Petrov: “Kolya the killer.” Jet-black hair, angular features. I could see the blue of his irises from where I stood, ten feet away. It didn’t bode well that he was here. That meant someone was dead, and he had to take care of the mess.
See, I never did body disposal. Although I knew the mechanics on how to do it, I didn’t have the stomach to dismember a human being and dispose of their remains expediently. When Grigori asked me one time if that was a service I provided, I unequivocally said no and I didn’t care if he shot Billy or me right then and there. I would never open that door. When would it end? I definitely didn’t want to end up like Kolya, who looked like the grim reaper with the way he was garbed in all black.
“You know, I could get rid of him for you,” Grigori said, a smirk forming at the corner of his mouth.
“What?”
“Your worthless brother,” he replied.
If he was worthless, why keep him? But I knew the answer to that. My stomach turned.
“What do I clean?” I asked.
“Changing the subject?” Grigori’s amused tone held a hint of a Russian accent.
“There’s no subject to change. I came here to sanitize the scene.” With each of Billy’s succeeding screw-ups, I wondered if they were hoping I had reached my breaking point and I’d say yes to having my brother whacked. But that would mean I would forever owe them. Well, fuck that.
I nodded to the spray of blood in the room. “Looks like someone was a sore loser.”
Grigori gave a low chuckle and stood, walking over to meet me. “See, I like you, Sloane. You’re smart.” He reached out a hand and pulled a red curl from under my hat. “You keep hiding your looks under drab clothes, but we could make you real money with the bonus of getting rid of Billy.”
His eyes roamed over my body, setting off a sensation of marching ants over my skin. Was he bluffing? I never doubted he knew I was downplaying my looks. But I’d been hoping every time I did a job, I’d become more like background clutter to him. I didn’t know how long my value as a cleaner would outweigh my value to his nefarious plans for me. Billy had mentioned before how hard it was to find a natural redhead for one of Grigori's favorite clients and repeatedly told me to lie low. At least my brother wasn’t thinking of pimping me out.
I was not a virgin. Hopefully, I was way above the ideal age requirement of their sex-trafficking business. Another rumor was the sex parties they organized in Europe.
I believed my defiance was what was fueling his interest in me, so I frequently reined in my feistiness. I lowered my eyes and stared at his shoes. “Please don’t hurt Billy.” The less I said, the better. My husky voice was another inconvenience in this job. I’d been propositioned more than once to work the sex hotlines. That was another reason I didn’t do small talk when I was on the job with these guys.
“You deserve a better life.” Grigori sighed. “Go on, then. Clean this shit up.”
He and Kolya left me under the watchful eye of Anton. Depending on the job, I had to surrender the rags and vacuum bag to my minder for burning later. They didn’t want any traceable DNA like hair follicles or particles of flesh and skin. My own special mix of cleaning agent was used to lift the stains left by blood. Its effectivity was thorough enough not to be revived by luminol. Most crime families had their own cleaners for mass casualty incidents where I didn’t go in to do the initial cleanup. I was the in-between. For smaller jobs like this with only one or two bodies, I did both initial and main cleanup. Kolya, I was sure, was going to double-check my work later.
I worked briskly and efficiently. I wasn’t an expert in blood spatter forensics, but I could tell this might have involved one or two people. Three at the most. The penthouse had wooden floors, and a carpet was already rolled up in one corner with a map of blood that could only have come from arterial bleeding. The wall near the table, which I figured was ground zero, had a blood spatter that might have come from a knife swipe.
It took me three hours to comb through the area and I had to use a UV light to make sure.
“Smells like bleach,” Anton muttered when I turned over the trash bags for him to dispose of. It was a cocktail of sodium peroxide and other chemicals but I never elaborated.
“Remind Kolya to open the windows,” I said.
“Tell him yourself.”
My throat closed up, and it wasn’t from the cleaning chemicals I inhaled but knowing I had to face the bratva’s enforcer who had returned with Grigori.
They weren’t looking at me but at the room.
I resisted the urge to fidget. The crawling-ants sensation returned and I silently cursed Billy for getting me into his fuckups. I was going to have a serious talk with him this weekend.
Grigori didn’t seem concerned with my work and deferred to Kolya for final inspection. What took three minutes felt like ten, but Kolya muttered his findings in Russian to Grigori, who fixed his stare on me.
The corners of his mouth twitched. The asshole knew how uncomfortable I was, especially after he propositioned me earlier.
“Everything is satisfactory, I hope?” I asked, anxious to get this over with.
“Yes. You may go.”
I gave them a brief nod and pushed my cart into the awaiting elevators. The pounding of my heart escalated and I realized I might be having a delayed panic attack. It always happened whenever I encountered Grigori. My reaction to the Russians differed immensely from the Italians. They seemed more brutal. Cold. I wondered if it was because of their harsh Gulag origins.
