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That isn't news to me. Alexei Nyanik made his fortune by loaning money to low-life criminals he knows will never be able to pay it back. When it comes time to collect the bill, men and women both will do whatever they have to in order for him to spare them their miserable lives. He collects the women he favors as playthings and uses the worthy men as assassins. At one point, he was my father’s biggest adversary. I could see him loaning money to my father just so that he could own him, but there’s no world in which I can see my father swallowing his pride to ask Nyanik for help in the first place.
Nyanik is on my list, but I have to rule out all of the pathetic bottom feeders under him first.
"That tongue of yours has proven useful after all." I roll my shoulders, flexing the blade in my hand as I consider it a long moment before returning it to the table that I collected it from. I slip my phone out of my pocket and hit my first speed dial.
Jovich answers immediately.
"No!" Anton yells, thrashing as best he can. He strains against the rope that binds him to no avail, but that doesn't stop him from trying to break free. He whips around like an animal in a cage fighting for its life. "I told you what I know! Let them go!"
I face him with a coolly practiced apathy. "Our friend will take the first flight back to Serbia. If he's lucky, maybe he'll make it back in time."
I leave it at that, letting Anton use his imagination to figure out what sort of atrocities I’m capable of when crossed. He’s despicable, so naturally, his mind goes to a dark place. I can see the panic light in his eyes, his entire body tense.
"Consider it done." Jovich says just before I hang up on him.
With no further use for him, I leave Anton tied up and waiting on Jovich to come free him.
"Bastard!" His screams follow me through the warehouse. I don’t bother gagging him again—Jovich will be here before he can scream himself hoarse. And no one is around to hear him anyway. "You said you'd not harm them if I told you what I know!"
"I said I wouldn't harm them." I agree. "I never made any promises of my men."
I’m at the door by the time I turn back to take him in. He looks so small and weak against the vastly empty warehouse. Some men have nothing to lose, and they'd die simply to spite me. Most of them are just overblown bullies. Once I find their weakness, I just have to apply the perfect amount of pressure. Then they'll crumble and break. Whether or not I’m successful in breaking a man depends entirely on how much time I’m willing to commit to them. Learning their vulnerabilities, getting in their head, chipping away at their façade to find the chink in their armor. Everyone has a weakness, whether it be love or money or power. Researching my victims isn't usually something I rush, but I’m grateful that Anton was so easy. I have far better things to do.
"Go to them." I tell him without finding his eyes. "If they're still alive when you make it home, take it as your one and only warning shot. If they aren't..." I shrug. "Come find me and settle your debt."
A string of profanity that slips back and forth between Russian and English follows me out the door as Anton screams and growls and barks baseless threats. I let the door close, cordoning off his rage as I step into the cool cover of night. The faint sound of waves crashing in the distance soothes my soul. The tide is coming in. I allow myself a minute to breathe it in and then swipe the screen of my phone open again.
On the other end, Michael sounds bored when he answers. I hear papers rustling as if he’s flipping through a newspaper. I can practically picture him, sitting in his car thumbing through the Serbian Scribe, bored out of his mind. "What's up?"
"Jovich will have Anton on the red eye within the hour. How are the girls?"
"Sleeping. Safe."
I sigh quietly enough so that he can't hear me on the other end of the line. "Good. Keep them that way."
"Will do." Michael promises.
I disconnect the call and stuff the phone into my pocket. Anton wasn’t hard to crack, but I've been gone for longer than I wanted. The thought of Rhea and Claire in the house without me isn't appealing. Jovich won't leave until I return home, and I know he wouldn't let anything happen under his watch, but it doesn't mean that I’m comfortable with the situation. At the end of the day, there’s no one I trust as much as myself. For years, I've had to make the hard decisions. I've had to be the one to do things that I wanted no part in. And in spite of the loyalty they offer, the men who work for me are only bound to me by the cash that I pay them.
I’m not keen on violence, but that doesn't mean I’m opposed to it. All is fair in war, particularly when you’ve been attacked first. But Anton is prideful; he would likely have died before revealing anything if it was only himself that he had to worry about. That’s why, when my father died, I sent Michael to keep an eye on Anton’s family.
I'd never greenlight violence against a child, much less murder. But Anton doesn't know that I have come as far as I have because I've worked tirelessly to create an illusion that I don't care about anything. It’s an illusion that I was starting to believe; It’s why I kept Rhea at a distance for so long.
Shit.
Rhea.
Sunrise is tugging at the darkness on the horizon, which means I have to hurry back to the house and change before my sister or her enchanting friend can catch me sneaking in wearing last night's blood-spattered clothes. I slide into the passenger seat, and Dimitri passes me a towel that I use to wipe the excess blood off my knuckles. It doesn't all belong to Anton. Some of the blood came from my own skin splitting as I pummeled him mercilessly.
"Do you need me to come back and clean up?" Dimitri asks without looking at me. I know what he really means.
Do you need me to dispose of a body?
"No." I stare out the window at the receding form of the warehouse as he puts the car in reverse. "Jovich will handle it."
The warehouse has been in my family as long as the house has, though most people would never know it. My family owns nearly half of the land that the country was built on, including that old building. It was once a textile company—or so the sign used to say. The company declared bankruptcy after a fire that insurance wouldn’t cover, and it’s been abandoned since. Only the workers ever even knew it was there, and by now, they must all be dead… of old age or curiosity.
Plenty of sordid things have happened in those dirty walls, and the things I've done have been the least of it. Sometimes people die. Dimitri has taken it as his job to clean up the aftermath. He’s a problem solver, whether it’s dismantling their car so that it’s never traced to any of my properties or scrubbing the evidence. He has a knack for making an entire person disappear... not just physically, but their entire cyber footprint.
