Page 25 of Surrogate for the Bratva
I bit back a disappointed sigh and nodded. “Good night, Igor.” I slipped inside my room and leaned against the door until my heart slowed down, and then I spent a good long while in the spacious shower with the waterfall spout.
Chapter Sixteen
Igor
“You think my death will have any impact on Dmitry?” Yuri laughed, his bloody smile at odds with the damage on his face. “He might mourn me for a moment or two, we have been friends for many decades after all. But this will not stop him.”
“I have no doubt about that.” I don’t need Dmitry to stop, in fact I fully expect that this will just piss him off. “Your death just means one more loss.” My hand balled into a fist, and I struck him across the face again. I lost track of how many times I’d hit him tonight. With my gun, my fists, my feet. A bat. “One less person he can trust around him.”
Yuri spat out a tooth with a laugh. “You are smarter than Dmitry gives you credit for.”
I smiled. “It is his greatest weakness, thinking he is the smartest person in the room.” And it would be the reason for his downfall. I would be the reason.
“It is almost a pity I won’t be around to see it.”
I frowned. “You want to see your boss, your friend get taken down?”
“Ah, no. Not exactly. But watching it play out would have been quite interesting. On with it, Igor. Stop dawdling.”
He was right. I’d gotten all the information from Yuri that I could at this point, except for what I really wanted to know. He was bloody and broken and close to death. “Anything else youwant to tell me, like who told you about Maria? How did you get into her house?”
“Unfortunately, it was not me who was able to take dear Maria from his world. Imagine having Ivanova blood on these hands,” he said with a reverent smile.
“Who did it then?”
Yuri shrugged as best he could with his hands bound to the bench. “No clue. As I’ve told you, I only knew she was here in Georgia and protected by you. Dmitry took care of the details himself.”
Fuck.He wasn’t willing to tell me anything other than what he’d already divulged which wasn’t a hell of a lot. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” he growled. “You better keep that pretty little plaything very close because Dmitry wants her. To possess her, to ruin her and then to cut your baby from her lifeless body.”
My blood ran cold at those words, and I pulled the gun from the holster I kept at my back and pressed it to his forehead. “Thanks for the warning.” I pulled the trigger once and put a bullet in the middle of his forehead and two more in his chest.
Yuri’s head fell forward, and his lifeless body strained against the bonds around his wrists, fighting against gravity as blood dripped and pooled on the floor.
“He was an old man,” Maxim said, appearing at my side. “He lived a long life.”
“He was probably the one who killed Boris.” There was no love lost between me and any of Voronov’s men. “He is where he belongs.”
“Hell,” Maxim groaned with a satisfied nod.
“If only such a place existed. He’s dead and no longer a problem and that is good enough for me.”
Maxim murmured a quick prayer under his breath and then rolled up his sleeves. We removed the ties at his wrists and ankles and got rid of all traces of our presence in his home, while leaving the body for Dmitry to discover.
A little over an hour later everything was perfectly settled. “Let’s get out of here.”
Maxim nodded and fell into step beside me. “Are you sure you don’t want to get a team here to clean the place?”
I shook my head. “No. Something feels off. Let’s just leave this between us.”
“Of course.” The drive home was quiet and contemplative. Yuri’s murder would be a shock to Voronov. The fool walked around with his own personal security detail as if his men were nothing more than disposable bodies. “Everyone needs to be careful and aware of the threat.”
Maxim nodded. “Without knowing why.”
“Exactly.” It felt like there might be a rat among my men, but I had no proof, just a gut feeling that rarely steered me wrong.
“You have any suspects,” Maxim asked as if he could read my mind.
