Page 141 of Blood & Snow
In the eyes of the Pakhan, she's a liability that needs permanent resolution—or she will be, just like my previous cleaner, when he finds out.
I pull up to the safehouse and park, climbing four flights of stairs to an apartment I don't want to be in without her.
I pour vodka and stand at the window, watching snow fall on a city that sleeps now.
Somewhere in that maze of lights, Nadya is gathering cleaning supplies and preparing for another night of erasing evidence.
She'll arrive at the warehouse within the hour, assess the carnage, and begin the methodical process of making those murders disappear.
Her training will kick in and by dawn she will be home sleeping it off, trying to forget I exist, all while I'm here drowning my sorrow in alcohol and thinking of ways to make it stop.
I drain the vodka and check my weapons, muscle memory guiding the ritual of cleaning and maintenance.
It's the only way I can move on and not succumb to the numbness that wants to swallow me whole.
Arkady Sokolov still breathes.
Until his body is feeding worms in frozen ground, my mission remains incomplete.
And until my mission is complete, everyone connected to me remains in danger.
My phone buzzes with a text message from Igor.
Package delivered. Work proceeding.
Nadya has arrived at the warehouse, seen the aftermath of tonight's violence, begun the process of making it disappear.
She'll work through the night, transforming carnageinto pristine concrete floors that reveal nothing of the bloodshed that happened within those walls.
By dawn, the warehouse will show no trace of the men who died there.
Their bodies will vanish into the industrial furnaces that consume Moscow's waste, reducing human remains to ash.
But their deaths won't bring me closer to the woman I can't stop loving or the life I can't allow myself to want.
Some distances can't be crossed with violence.
Some problems can't be solved with bullets and blood.
24
NADYA
The phone screen glows in the darkness of my bedroom as Xander's message comes in, waking me.
Xander 12:45 PM: Warehouse District, Sector 7, Building 23-A. Urgent.
I stare at the address for a few seconds, watching the digits blur as tears gather in my eyes.
The whole fucking world is asleep, as is my family in rooms right down the hallway, and he is still beckoning me into his world as if I am a dog on a chain.
This could be my final job for him, the last time I have to rush out in the middle of the night to scrub some poor unfortunate soul's blood from the ground.
After tonight, I could walk away completely, find legitimate work during daylight hours, return to the world of normal people with normal problems.
But first, I need to put my foot down and let him know I'm serious.
Xander's organization depends on my skills to eraseevidence, to make murder scenes disappear.
