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Kuzma shakes his head. “The fucking balls on that kid, calling you like that. I can’t believe it.”
“I can,” Savva says. “The entire Gustev family has no self-preservation. If they did, they’d stop messing with us.”
“That’s part of the problem. We’ve always waited for the Gustev Bratva to strike. Then we hit back and kill them. But each time, someone on our side gets hurt. First, my father. Now, Nik.” I shake my head. “No more waiting. I say it’s well past time we strike first.”
Kuzma raises his glass in agreement. “What’s your plan?”
“My only thought is that I’ll take out the entire Gustev Bratva if it means keeping my family safe. I’m not going to pull any more punches. If we can’t narrow in on a specific target, then we throw everything we have at them until they are obliterated.”
Savva leans forward, practically salivating at the idea. “A carpet bombing. I’m down.”
“As a last resort,” I remind him. “In the meantime, I want you to look deeper into who Pavel is working with. Akim had a weapons dealer, Budimir. See if he’s still around. I’d like to talk to him about coming to work for me.”
Pavel made it clear that he has nothing left to live for now that his brother and father are dead. Maybe that’s true. But if I had to guess, I’d say there are still ways I can hurt him. Cutting him off financially won’t go unnoticed.
“Are we trying to hurt him or kill him?” Kuzma asks.
I smirk. “I don’t see why we can’t do a little of both.”
Kuzma smiles and his teeth flash in the dim lights of the bar. “That is music to my fucking ears.”
The mansion is dark when I get home. It’s nearly midnight—later than I planned to stay out by a few hours. But Savva and Kuzma had a lot of ideas for how to take Pavel out.
Plus, it was nice to drink with my men and pretend for a few hours that everything was fine. It was the exact kind of thing Nik would have roped me into the second he saw me carrying Luna around the house. He has a way of knowing when I need to unwind.
Or, he had a way of knowing. Not even his doctors know if he still has that. Or anything else, for that matter.
I peek through my bedroom door and see Luna asleep in bed. Silently, I pull it closed and slip downstairs and into my office. I don’t want to wake her up. Not when she hasn’t had a full night’s sleep since I carried her out of Akim’s cell.
She wakes up multiple times per night screaming and reaching for me. Each time she jolts awake, it’s even more motivation to make sure I end Pavel as a threat before he can attack. Luna has endured enough already.
It’s why I haven’t told her about Pavel, either. Not directly, anyway.
She’s pregnant with twins—with my children. I’m not going to add even more to her plate. I’m not going to make her carry stress and responsibility that belongs to me and me alone.
I’m going to protect her from the fear of Pavel the same way I’ll protect her from Pavel himself.
At my desk, I make notes on some of the ideas Kuzma and Savva had back at the bar. Then I go over the documentation Nik compiled months ago on Akim’s weapon’s dealer, Budimir. The man was responsible for a staggering portion of the Gustev Bratva’s profits. Severing that connection was my original plan for destroying Akim. Then he kidnapped Luna and shot my siblings, giving me no choice but to murder him at the earliest possible convenience.
Since I killed Akim, Budimir has gone underground. I’m not sure if he’s trying to avoid being associated with Akim, especially while the police are sniffing around his death, or if Akim’s death was the out he’d been looking for. That’s what I need to figure out. If Budimir is still working with Pavel, severing that connection is still a valid option.
I’m trying to decipher Nikandr’s chicken scratch handwriting when Luna screams.
It’s not the usual slow build of her nightmares—whimpering into crying into screaming. It’s a full-bodied scream that echoes through the house.
I jump up and sprint for the door so fast my chair tips over behind me.
Luna is still screaming when I make it to the top of the stairs. Mariya is standing in the open doorway. “It’s a nightmare,” she says. “There’s no one in there with her. I checked.”
“Go back to bed,” I say a bit too gruffly. “I’ll take care of her.”
Luna is still screaming, so Mariya doesn’t argue for once. She goes into her room and I shut our bedroom door behind me.
Luna is tossing back and forth. The comforter is shoved down around her waist and her back is arched. I lie down on the bed and wrap my arm around her. “I’m here, Luna. It’s me.”
I wasn’t there the night Akim took her. I wasn’t there to stop her from being thrown in a cell and tormented. I wasn’t there the one fucking time she really needed me.
But I’m here for this. To fight the invisible monsters in the dark. To hold her hand while she suffers.
