Page 72 of Virgin Sacrifice

But would he?

I didn’t plead my case. There were no pretty words that would charm a master manipulator like Nixon Blackwell. Nothing I could offer him other than truths I was unwilling to give. I simply stood there in silence and let him come to whatever conclusion he may. His decision would determine my actions.

I had no doubt that Aaron, and maybe even Autumn, was looking for me by now. Panicked whispers calling out my name began to fill in the silence surrounding us, but it was nothing but static to me.

It was hard to say how long we stood there. It could have been a minute, it could have been an hour.

But eventually, suddenly, and without warning, Nixon simply turned and stomped away.

I was surprised to find that, as difficult as it had been to breathe with him there, his absence felt as though all the oxygen had been suddenly sucked out of the room.

Or maybe it was just the rush of having survived the Blackwells once again.

Chapter thirty-three

Everest

London

“Something, something, cornflake curl . . .” I crooned loudly, my fingers banging away on the invisible black and white keys that only I could see.

Singer-songwriter. Piano virtuoso. Feminist icon. Master of her craft. Terpsichore reborn.

In my head I was right there with Tori, sweating it out under the bright lights of the stage.

Or at least I was until the gurgling scream of a man with more blood in his mouth than teeth rudely interrupted my moment of melodic transcendence.

With a heavy sigh and a crack of my neck, I swung back around atop the wheeled stool I sat on to face my heckler. Slash victim.

Pieter Sidorov, aged fifty-three years, was born in Kolomenskoye, a small town outside of Moscow in Russia. He emigrated to the United Kingdom thirty years ago where he built a sizable fortune in supply chain management, importing and exporting goods. Unfortunately for him, it was through this line of work that he managed to make some significant enemies. The kind who had hired the Blackwell family to end his life violently and painfully, thus bringing me to his doorstep.

Everything happens for a reason, am I right?

The large, hirsute man lay on top of the glass dining room table where I currently had him trussed up like a turkey. He continued to struggle, not that it would do him any good.

I mean, sure, yeah, maybe he could escape, but he was going to find it damn hard to walk without his kneecaps.

I hummed along as Tori continued to jam out in the background, looking over my tools of the trade and waggling my fingers in the air as I tried to make up my mind.

Rusty grapefruit spoon to the eye or disembowelment with a sharpened ice cream scoop?

The killer-for-hire market had exploded over the last decade. With practically everything online these days, almost any idiot could figure out how to get away with murder if they knew the right places to search for information. And how to properly clear their browsing history, I supposed.

More and more boutique and mom-and-pop shops cropped up. You had your trained professionals—the ex-military bros and the former spies. Then there were honey trappers who used their charms to lure their victims to their untimely ends. And of course, there were always ambitious local crews looking to make a name for themselves. My personal favorite were the cute little old couples who decided to get into the game late in life because they had nothing else left to lose. True love did exist!

One of Lucian’s better decisions had been to treat the family business like just that, a business. Instead of the needless infighting and underground wars of the past, the Blackwell empire now functioned with ruthless corporate efficiency, buying out any potential competition and subsuming their businesses. The bottom dwellers and middle-management-type players were free to operate independently, so long as they paid their due when we came calling, just like any other criminal organization.

All of which was to say that, since Lucian had decided to acquire some sizable assets in Europe, I didn’t get to travel abroad as much as I used to. And while usually I would be delighted, nay, thrilled, for the opportunity to splash some blood around merry old England, I was on edge about having to abandon my latest passion project back home to take care of Sidorov.

But when our clients pay for the best, they expect the best . . . And that was me.

“What is it they say, Petey? ‘It ain’t bragging if it’s true . . .’” I said over my shoulder before finally settling on the ice cream scoop.

Pieter began to thrash even harder against his restraints as I turned my attention back to his soon-to-be pale, bloated corpse.

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,” I sang merrily as I set to work, using a bread knife to cut into the outer layers of muscle and adipose tissue I would need to get through before we got to scooping out all the sweet organy goodness on the inside.

“When you think about it, we really only spent a tiny fraction of our existence alive, and then we’re dead for eternity. So, if anything, death is our natural state and life is the perverse anomaly,” I explained as Petey continued to scream.

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