Page 12 of Sapphire Tears

He’s as close to dead as you can get while still drawing breath. All I have to do is turn my back on him and his time will be up.

But I don’t stop there.

I’m on him like a feral fucking beast. I cave his face in. His windpipe. I punch and roar and roar and punch, and the only sounds are my breathing and his bleeding and the sickeningthumpof knuckle meeting flesh—again, and again, and again.

I only stop when the thing beneath me doesn’t look human anymore.

I exhale as I straighten up. My fists are red with Kulikov’s blood, so I wipe them on my pants, though that does little more than smear it around into warpaint. The adrenaline still surging through me wants more, but Kulikov has nothing left to give. He’s as dead as it gets.

Milana is standing by the industrial windows, watching me with concern. I feel her eyes on me.

“Don’t,” I growl without looking.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I can hear you thinking.”

She sighs and takes a hesitant half-step towards me. “I’ll continue the search, of course,” she promises. “But—”

“Don’t give me a fucking ‘but,’” I spit. “She’s alive. We’d have found her body by now if she wasn’t.”

“Ravil’s loyalists could have buried her, or thrown her into a river somewhere, or stuck her in a million other places we’ll never uncover.”

“She. Is. Alive.”

Milana sighs and then nods. “Okay. She’s alive.” She glances at the red smear that was once Vikentiy Kulikov. “He was the last lieutenant, you know.”

She’s reminding me that his death marks the death of our last substantial lead. Without him, we have nothing. Just casting around blindly in the dark.

“Ravil has more men out there,” I say. “They’ll have scattered to the winds by now, but we can track them down.”

“Kolya, you’re talking about hundreds of men, most of whom almost certainly don’t know a goddamn thing. Hell, I bet half of them have never even heard of June.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Her jaw pulses erratically. “We can’t afford to keep this search up, Kolya,” she says. “I know you’re grieving—”

I twist around, grab her by the throat, and push her up against the window. My hand is more of a threat than anything else. This is not about hurting her; it’s about reminding her.

“Who am I?” I snarl. “Who the fuck am I?”

Her eyes tremble with both fear and defiance. “You are my don.”

“Precisely. And as your don, I expect my orders to be followed.”

She grits her teeth and slaps my hand off her throat as her anger boils over. “And I will follow your orders, reckless and fruitless as they may be. But I need you to hear me. You still have a Bratva to run. You have businesses that need your attention, not to mention allies you need to appease.”

“They can wait.”

“No,” she snaps. “They won’t wait, Kolya. No man is an island. We need them.”

“I don’t need—”

“Yes,” she interrupts, “you do. You think we can run our empire with the Golubevs? Without the Skull Riders? Without the Greeks, the Albanians, the Cubans? Because if you really do think that, you’re about to find out how wrong you are. Our allies and suppliers are cutting us off one by one, Kolya. We’re bad news. We’re split down the middle and burning at the edges. They’re right to do it, too. Can’t even blame the bastards. It’s just bad business at this point.”

Her words hang over us in the dusty room like a crown of thorns.

“Jesus,” I growl, running a hand through my hair.

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