Page 40 of Reclaimed Crown

Vadim watches the man squirm under Grigor’s weight. He raises his eyebrows and draws his mouth to the side as if he’s thinking to himself until he shakes his head. “My men wouldn’t betray me.” He turns away from the man on the ground but pauses and turns back to him. “Thanks for the truck,” he says before turning back away.

“No, no!” the man pinned down by Grigor screams.

Vadim looks at me and tips his head towards the man under Grigor’s boot. A switch inside of me flips, knowing exactly what he means. I pull my gun out, walk up to the man and fire a round into his head, sending an explosion of red shards of the man’s skull flying from the back of his head. Grigor leans down and pulls the keys out of the man’s pocket as Vadim pulls the trailer door closed and jumps to the ground.

Grigor heads to the front of the truck and turns the engine on. Another security guard with a yellow vest appears with his gun drawn, but Vadim waves to him to signal there’s no threat. He motions to the corpse on the ground. “This needs to be taken care of,” he yells to the security guard, who nods and calls an order over his radio.

Vadim walks to me as Grigor pulls the truck into the warehouse dock, backing it up to a couple of workers waiting for him. As soon as Grigor shuts the engine off, the workers get busy with unloading boxes in the trailer onto a pallet jack and wheeling it into the warehouse.

“Let’s walk through the warehouse,” Vadim says to me. I join him, thankful we don’t have to pass the stink at the entrance of the lot. We enter the warehouse and I see towers of boxes stacked high, some with the Mikhailov Bratva symbol of a crowned eagle with an arc of four stars, some without. Although trailer of the truck was crammed with weapons, that amount pales compared to what is stored in Vadim’s warehouse. This warehouse is the armory for the Mikhailov Bratva.

We cross the floor of the warehouse which is so packed our steps don’t echo. The noise of the pallet jacks and forklift trucks is muffled behind us.

Vadim turns to me. “You did well today,” he says.

I narrow my eyes at Vadim. Today is fairly typical in our line of business. I’ve gone through plenty of instances of needing to kill someone trying to defraud my crew. Any leader of a criminal organization does. Vadim knows this.

“Is this why you asked me to come?” I ask.

Vadim slows to a stop and I do the same. He turns to me, looking to the side before returning his eyes back to me.

“I said you can stay as long as necessary, and that offer is still good,” Vadim says to me. He grins at one side of his mouth. “I hear you’ve been settling some of your own business lately.”

I nod, knowing Sergey likely reported bringing Pyotr Ivanov to the cells. “I figured you’re still watching me.”

The smile on Vadim’s face fades. “Tell me,” he says, “You still haven’t left for America. What’s keeping you here?”

The first thought that comes to me is Tatyana and what she overheard in the cells.

I lean against a stack of crates and point my head towards the entrance, where I shot the man in the uniform. “What that man said… what if he’s not wrong?”

Vadim’s eyebrows raise, “You think Grigor stole the weapons?”

“No,” I say, raising my hand to stop Vadim from continuing that thought. “But someone might be working against you.”

“Someone is always working against me,” Vadim says as he turns and continues walking. I don’t follow him, deciding whether telling Vadim what Tatyana overheard is a good decision. I doubt he’ll believe the word of my prisoner.

“Someone on the inside?” I call to Vadim.

He stops and his broad shoulders rise as he lets out a sigh before turning back to me with the same cold stare he had before he threw the uniformed man off the truck.

“My men wouldn’t betray me,” Vadim says plainly. “If that’s what’s keeping you here, then I think it’s time for you to head back to America,” he says before turning back and walking off the warehouse floor.

Chapter14

TATYANA

Iwrap my hands around the iron bannister and look over Viktor’s living quarters. It’s massive. The lofted bedroom itself is larger than the entire apartment my father and I lived in, and it overlooks a floor that was once a warehouse or factory but was renovated to a living space. Below me is a dining area with two rounded chandeliers at either end of the table. A painting on the wall starts on the first floor and stops just short of the ceiling on the second floor, above the level of the bedroom I’m standing in.

Elegant as the appointments are, the idea of standing in Viktor’s bedroom bothers me. Waking up in his bed feeling wetness spread between my thighs as he held me against him through the night is even worse. He brought me here from the cells so he could torment me in other ways.

I lean over the balcony and look over the rest of the floor, moving my head from side to side, trying to peek behind the thick cement pillars scattered across the lower floor until I’m satisfied that I don’t see Viktor. Carpeting under my feet muffles my steps as I cautiously make my way down the staircase to the main floor. My feet sink into the plush fibers with each step I take as I look across the apartment. The entire length of the far wall is lined with windows overlooking the rest of the Bratva compound. It’s a bleak view, but I’ll take it over the darkness of the cell. Places like this are exactly where the Bratva loudly display their wealth. Distant places where no one is looking. They may drive a fancy sports car in public, but most people don’t recognize them or are too afraid to make eye contact because they know they’re a criminal, or a powerful businessman, or crooked politician. Whatever the case, it’s someone you don’t want to upset with rude staring.

When I reach the bottom stair I bristle at the cement floor, expecting the same skin-numbing chill of the floor in the cell I was held in, but when I step onto it, I feel warmth radiating from beneath. It’s hard to keep myself from being seduced by the luxury of a place this beautiful, but I tense my fists, remembering who lives here: the man who murdered my father and forced me to look over his corpse as he tortured me. He’s also the man who took my virginity, but right now I can’t think about such things. I can’t let my attraction to Viktor cloud my judgment. He’s a dangerous man and to be with him is to live a dangerous life.

I shuffle across the floor towards the living room area, looking up at the track lights bolted into the cavernous ceiling. I’m still worried about Viktor being here, but the whole apartment is an open living area and I think I would have heard him by now.

The front door is just past a library. It’s at least double the width of a regular door and the grain of the wood appears to be aged enough to be original. I suck my bottom lip into my mouth, assuming Viktor locked me inside just as he did in the cell.

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