Page 11 of Sapphire Tears

“That’s all I ask,” he says. “Just don’t write me off yet.”

I free my hands from his. I don’t really know how to respond except with a jerk of my head.

“I brought you something else,” he says suddenly, digging into his jacket pocket and pulling out a can of soda. “You love these, don’t you?”

For a second, my chest tightens with something like the beginnings of a smile. Then he rotates the can in his hand, and I see what it is.

Diet Coke. Not lemon soda, but a Diet Coke.

“Thanks,” I whisper, taking it from him with a forced smile.

I wish I could explain all the ways that hurts me.

4

KOLYA

When we get to the warehouse, I park the car across the entrance and jump out.

My men open the doors to let me through. I’ve already got my gun out by the time I reach the empty second floor where Vikentiy Kulikov, one of the last survivors of Ravil’s inner circle, is being held.

He’s been zip-tied to a chair, duct tape plastered over his mouth. Barely-clotted blood leaks from several fresh wounds along his arms and chest, but he’s conscious, more or less. He bobs his head in my general direction when I enter the room, though his eyes are dim, barely there. Clouded with the veil of defeat, of pain, of the knowledge that he doesn’t have much longer left.

Minutes. Maybe less.

And all of them will hurt.

“And then there was one,” I murmur, glaring down at him.

He holds my gaze for a moment before he drops his chin to his chest, too weary and beaten to do much else. I lean forward and grab him by his greasy mop of hair. Then I take hold of a corner of the bloodstained duct tape and rip it off from his lips.

“My cousin had four lieutenants,” I say as he sputters and groans. “Four men he trusted above all else. Three are dead, all killed by my hand. Which leaves just you.”

“So kill me like the others and be done with it,” he wheezes.

“I’ll be glad to—once you give me what I want.”

“You already have everything,” he says, glowering weakly at me. “Ravil is dead. His Bratva is in shambles. You’re rounding up his men like cattle. What more do you want?”

I squat down in front of him. “I want my woman.”

Kulikov shakes his head. “My orders were not to take the girl. And even if they were, that became moot after you killed Ravil.”

“She’s been missing for five days.”

“Maybe she ran away,” he suggests uncaringly. “Maybe she’s dead. I don’t fucking know. All I know is that I didn’t have shit to do with shit.”

His words ring with truth, but I don’t want to accept them.

What does it say about a don who can’t protect his own family? First, my brother, and now, June. I should feel guilty. But I’m not made for that.

So I choose anger instead.

“You must know something.”

He laughs darkly before it dissolves into a dead man’s cough. “Maybe one of Ravil’s other guys killed the bitch once they realized you’d done the boss in,” he offers. “I’d stop looking for the girl and start looking for her corpse.”

I smash my fist into his face so violently that he careens back onto the crimson-crusted concrete, chair and all. His head smacks the concrete floor hard enough to break something, and his eyes pinwheel wildly in their sockets.

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