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Somehow, he got in the door without being a member.
This all started with his interest in my altercation with Seth.
He admitted to looking for my parents.
He knows my name, but not my face.
Paranoia won’t allow him to drink anything he can’t open himself.
His anger flared when I alluded to being a stripper.
My bruise set him off.
He’s an escaped convict.
It all sounds too familiar. Too routine. His mannerisms and triggers are more orthodox than odd. I should be afraid of him, but I’m not. It’s as if I recognized him before I sat down.
Shit, if he had dark hair and a scowl, I’d swear he was my…
My heart plunges into my stomach. “What kind of prison were you in?” He arches an eyebrow, so I clear my throat, trying to maintain an even tone. “Federal?”
Please say yes.
His blue eyes snap toward me. “Why do you ask?”
I offer a coy shrug. “Bad boys turn me on.”
“Is that right? Then what does it do for you to know it was a Colombian shithole? A holding tank for execution? I was not there to save someone, lisichka. I was there to end them—with as much pain as humanly possible.” He leans across the table, and like a magnet, I follow. “Does that change your mind?”
“No,” I whisper.
“Even if the man was innocent?”
He’s baiting me again. But this is one test I know I’ll pass. Gritting my teeth, I hold his stare. “There’s no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.”
He pulls back, his posture stiffening. He didn’t expect that. “Then it should please you to know this one would have broken your morality scale. However, you are wrong about innocence. There are those who exude nothing but light, and at this mudak’s hand, the Magdalena River ran red with their blood.” The words are spat with such hatred that I flinch.
The Magdalena River.
My heart catapults back into my chest and slams against my ribcage. I’ve heard that story my entire life. The Colombian in question was an arms dealer with a lucrative human trafficking side business. The sick son of a bitch bought and sold young girls to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Multiple people wanted him dead, therefore multiple guns came for him.
One of them was Mik.
Another was my father.
That’s the moment all the mismatched puzzle pieces snap into place and I see the whole blood-soaked picture. The man sitting across from me is the friend whose life my father saved in a Colombian prison. The same friend who then helped him save my mother from my piece of shit grandfather.
Mikhail Drozdov. One of only two men in the world to gain Niko Gaheris’s trust.
The threads of his cloak have unraveled, but it’s too late to deviate from the role I’ve chosen to play.
“So,” I ask, blinking up at him, “what are you, some kind of dark angel?”
“No, lisichka. I am no angel. I am death.”
Lisichka. Little fox. I don’t think it’s meant as a compliment.
“Are you here to hurt the Gaheris family?” My breath hitches, my role no longer clearly defined. I’ve drifted away from an overly friendly waitress and exposed the heart of a daughter.
