AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But now …
I hold my hand out without looking back. “Mila.”
A few soft steps, and she places the pommel of a knife in my grip. I bring the razor edge to Mikhail’s chin. Finally, his eyes widen. Fear always takes hold of a man at the end of his life. A satisfying thrill rushes through me. Maybe I don’t hate this as much as I try to convince myself I do.
“Fuck!” he roars as I glide the knife through his cheek, leaving a thin slash that weeps blood. “Fuck you, Arsen!”
Placing the edge to his other cheek, I wait for him to focus on me. Sweat droplets have beaded along his brow. His boldness has slipped away now that I’m reminding him of how it feels to be sliced apart, piece by piece. “How many brothels, Mikahil?”
“Fuck! I think there are ten, maybe twelve!”
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Calmly, I nick him just under his left eye. He screams louder. “Where are they? Exact locations.”
Over the next few minutes, Mikhail rambles out addresses. Mila records them, lingering just out of the corner of my eye. She’s drawn to his suffering. And when he has expended his usefulness, I slit his throat quickly.
It’s the only mercy I’m willing to give him.
But despite the treasure trove of information he gave, he refused to tell me where Yevgeniy was hiding. Perhaps he genuinely didn’t know. But it doesn’t matter. As I wipe my hands of Mikahil’s blood, I know that Ulyana will chide me later for this mess.
I pass the knife back to Mila. She takes it, sheathing it slowly.
“This is going to have consequences,” she says.
“We’ve killed plenty. What’s one more?” I ask bitterly.
“He was one of your own.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I say sternly. “Not in the end.”
No one who betrays me can be called anything but a traitor.
I grimace, making fists at my sides. I’m fueled by the rush that comes with killing. It mutes the regret that gnaws at me for ending the life of someone I thought would stand by me until the end. The war tests all of us.
Mila looks at me thoughtfully as I walk to a wall of wine bottles and grab a bottle. She offers me a corkscrew without prompting. I take it and open the bottle, drinking straight from it until my throat is a searing mess of fire. The heat spreads down my limbs. I felt no joy killing Mikhail. Not even relief.
It was just my duty.
Then why do I want to numb myself?
Refusing to dwell, I take another pull, then offer her the bottle. She doesn’t take it.
“You need to tell the Bratva the truth about her.”
My heart jumps. The thorny ball that saws through my insides isn’t softened by the wine. I suck down more anyway, gasping for air after I’ve had my fill. “Why? What would that achieve?”
“Once everyone knows she’s Yevgeniy’s daughter, you will stave off future defections. And men like Mikhail, who already defected, might return. You know this as well as I do.”
She’s not wrong. But as I take another pull from the bottle and eye the lifeless body of a man I once considered a friend, I know the real reason why it will do me no favors to inform the men of Galina’s true parentage. The alcohol gives me the push I need to speak the truth.
“The men who betrayed me can never be trusted again!” I growl, gesturing with the bottle. Wine drips out to join the blood. They mix, their reds impossible to tell apart.
“I’m not asking you to trust them.” Mila approaches me with shadows in her eyes. “I just want you to put them in one place. Much easier to slit the throat of a full room than to stalk men one by one.”
I lower the bottle in the middle of bringing it back to my lips. There’s a chill moving through me, hair standing up as my instincts fire, warning me that there’s danger nearby. Mila won’t attack me, but I know she’s capable of it if she wants.
“Is this personal for you?” I ask softly.
Squaring up with me, she rips her shirt aside to reveal the chained fox tattoo. “Of course it is.” The tattoo looks blacker than normal in the low lights. She hides it away again. “I haven’t forgotten, and I know you haven’t either.”
