He doesn’t sound heartbroken. Far from it. If anything, he seems pleased his father’s rule was ended by my blade. Still, I shake my head, denying his claims.
“Alexei broke the rules first. He came onto my turf to kill my man and take my woman. I was well within my rights to kill him. He knew the rules; he knew the consequences of playing outside of them, so he knew his penalty would be his life. Just as you do.”
Maxsim smiles a seedy grin. It barely conceals the panic igniting in his eyes. I can smell his fear, taste it on my tongue. He came in heavy because he thought I’d back down without a fight. He vastly underestimated me.
“It wasn’t the first mistake my father made—”
“But it can be your last.”
My heart drums into my ribcage as I struggle to keep a rational head. I don’t negotiate. I conquer. I maim. I kill as I was taught. Talking never entered the equation, but I’m willing to try anything if it stops fear from overtaking Justine’s usually impenetrable smell. The scent I was intoxicated by last week is barely recognizable as terror engulfs her.
“Tell your men to leave. I’ll let them walk out of here alive. Then we will settle this like men.”
Maxsim laughs as if his life isn’t hanging on by a thread. “You’llletthem walk? Newsflash, Nikolai. You’re no longer running the show.” His wide eyes stray to the hall he’s in the process of exiting. “He is.”
I expect his goon to bring a bludgeoned Rico onto the playing field, so you can imagine my shock when the eyes match the ones I’m expecting, just several decades younger.
A man as wide as Rico has Eli pinned to his chest. A gun is pinching his temple, and the dark material of his pajamas is incapable of hiding his fear. He shouldn’t be ashamed about his response. Alexei pissed his pants when I ended his life, and he was the mafia boss of over a thousand men. But if it makes him feel any better, Maxsim is about to follow his legacy. I’ll make him bleed from every orifice, ensuring the viciousness of his death deters men in our industry from a takeover bid for years to come.
His father got off easy. Maxsim won’t be so lucky.
The flare of my nostrils doubles when Maxsim quotes, “In the wake of my death, I, Anatoly Popov, founder of the underworld association known as the Popov entity, request all my residuary estates, including any corpus that may fall after my death, be divided into one part with the sole beneficiary to be a direct descendent of my bloodline.”
He folds up a tattered piece of paper before raising his eyes to me. “Adirectdescendent. As in someone with Popov blood.” He snatches Eli from his goon’s clutch. His brutal rip sends Eli’s tiny cries bellowing around the dead quiet room. “It could have been Rico, but I knew he’d never come willingly. This little guy, on the other hand, he’s young enough to train and will soon be old enough to kill.”
The gleam in his eyes matches the evil glint Vladimir’s got when sending soldiers into a rigged battlefield. “You should have seen the way his eyes lit up when I stabbed his father in front of him. If you had a drop of Popov blood in your veins, I would have said he picked up a few traits from his uncle, but we both know that would be a lie, don’t we, Niki?”
His question stumps me for all of two seconds. There are only a handful of people who know my true lineage. One of those people’s wife is damaging my hearing with her frantic screams as she struggles to free herself from a goon stopping her from reaching her crying son. Another is staring at me without fear, even with her hair being wretched from her scalp, because she knows I’ll never let anything happen to her. And the other is most likely bleeding out in the security office I demanded he station himself at.
Besides Rico, Justine, and Roman, only one other man knows my secret: Carmichael-I’m-Going-To-Gut-Him-Alive-Fletcher.
Needing to end one fight before starting another, I say, “Anatoly’s rules were rewritten months ago. They’re no longer valid.”
When confusion washes over Maxsim’s face, a mocking grin lights up mine. “Really, Maxsim? Do you know me at all? As myahrenlikes to say, ‘modern men need modern rules.’” I take a step closer to him, confident I have him by the throat. “Anatoly may have founded the Popov entity, butIrule it. A scrap of paper won’t gain you the respect of my men. It won’t secure you the ties I founded through years of negotiations, nor will it see you taking my place. All it will award you is a price for your head and centuries of fear for your descendants as they peer over their shoulders, waiting for my inevitable revenge.”
Maxsim’s face lines with anger as he snarls, “At least I have descendants.” He glances over my shoulder before jerking up his chin. “It’s more than you’ll ever have.”
Anger. Fury. Hate so black I can barely see through the cloud bombards me when the goon clutching Justine’s hair throws his fist into her stomach. His hit is so fierce, Justine skids across the floor like a limbless ragdoll.
“No!”
Roaring like an animal, I charge for the man who’s going to die a death more painful than a thousand deaths. I see nothing but red during my sprint, colored with both anger and blood. They can stab me, shoot me, and beat me until I’m hanging as lifeless as I did on a warehouse floor years ago, but they’ll never slow me down.
My acrobatic routine matches my leap into the air to free Justine from the noose wrapped around her neck twelve months ago, except this time, I’m not aiming for her. I have my sights on the man responsible for her fetal curl six feet away from me, for the one striving to end my life without siphoning blood from my veins.
My fists land on the laughing hoodlum’s jugular, collapsing his windpipe. I stab my foot into the back of his kneecap, forcing him to topple to the ground in a heap. His drop is too simple. I want him to howl in pain, to experience half the hurt shredding me into pieces.
He does no such thing. He squeals like a child learning to ride a bike for the first time before steading himself back onto his feet. Even my unnatural twist of his neck doesn’t dampen his smile.
When Sansi swats me off him like I’m a fly, I don’t give in. I’m back up in his face in an instant, my fists raining down on him as relentlessly as the bullets flying past my head.
I want him to cry for forgiveness.
To beg for his life before I end it without mercy.
I want him to suffer.
It seems as if my wish is about to come true when Sansi howls in pain two seconds later. I want to say my fists have done the job they’re trained to do, but that would be a lie. He’s not buckling solely because of my wrath; his rib caught a bullet intended for my head.
