“Borderline personality disorder?”
I don’t know who the interrupter is, but her voice is feminine.
“I was more thinking Munchausen syndrome.”
A girly giggle shrills down the line. “No, that’s when you pretend to be sick. This is more a BPA condition. He’s fucked in the head—”
I interrupt the quarrelsome duo’s private conversation. “He’s more than fucked in the head; he’s fucked.Permanently.” I stand to my feet, my blood raging. “I’ll send payment to the account you requested by the end of the day.”
Not giving Hunter the chance to reply, I disconnect our call. I’m out of my office even quicker than that. When Matvei sees me storming past him, the expression on my face tells him everything. I’m wearing the same murderous look I had when I first brought Vaughn in for justice. Except this time, I’m going to kill the little fucker. You don’t play me and expect it not to cost you your life. I don’t give a fuck who you are. You mess with me, you’re a dead man.
“Get Zariah into lockdown. I don’t want word of this getting out.”
I’ve had enough shit to wade through the past month when word spread that I gave Vaughn a second pardon in his lifetime. I don’t issue pardons—ever, but I knew the chances of explaining things to Zariah without him were slim. Except for waking up with the worst hangover I’ve ever had, I remember nothing about the night Zariah cracked her skull.
You’d think it would have scared me into getting clean. It didn’t. It had the opposite effect. I wanted to see Zariah more than I craved air, but every attempt I made to reach her was shut down. She had become a fucking ghost, and I was supposedly the one who sent her into hiding.
I was pissed. I hated the entire fucking world, and I made sure everyone around me knew it. That’s how I became the man I am today. I swore I’d never let another woman get under my skin as my Little Mouse had, that I’d never be played for a fool again. It was working until my drug-fucked head thought I could replace the girl I dreamed about every night with one who looked similar to her.
Dominique was an obsession, but my fixation wasn’t on her. It was on the girl I couldn’t have, the one I still craved after I thought she had shunned me from her life. I told myself having Dominique would be the same, that it wasn’t Zariah I craved. It was her skin, her hair color, and her scent. I had the first two things right within a week of Dominique landing in Russia, but I could never replicate Zariah’s scent. Even buying Dominique the same perfume Zariah wore didn’t work. No matter how much I wished it were true, Dominique wasn’t Zariah, so she never smelled like her.
My long strides down the hall slow when I spot a pair of feet sticking out of a room halfway down the corridor. Unclipping my gun from my harness, I glide down one side of the corridor, keeping my shoulder as close to the wall as possible.
As suspected, the unmoving feet belong to one of the guards I placed on Vaughn’s door. Zariah may have trusted him, but I never did, so I did everything in my power to keep them apart. Zariah has only visited Vaughn’s hospital bed when I am with her, and even then, her visits are sporadic. She’ll never admit it, but I know she’s angry at him. He may have only been ten when he drugged their mother, but age doesn’t matter when you have a conscience. He knew what he was doing was wrong, he just didn’t care. I guarantee it.
I’d lean down to check if the guard has a pulse, but I don’t need to. He’s dead. Taken down by a clean mafia kill: a bullet between the eyes. I prefer exploding their brains with a shot to the eye first; because there’s no skull to break through, my bullet turns their brains turn to mush with only one shot.
My cell phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it. I can hear voices murmuring from inside Vaughn’s room. One belongs to my Little Mouse. She’s not talking, but I’ve heard her moan enough times the past month I can’t mistake even a gagged murmur.
With my gun braced high, I push open the door. It gives out a little squeak, but it’s nothing on the fury that rages through my veins when my eyes zoom in on a visual too sick to put into words. Vaughn has Zariah clutched to the front of his body. One hand is covering her mouth, and the other is holding a gun to her temple. If the make and model is anything to go by, he’s holding his sister hostage with the same gun he stole from my guard.
Nothing but rage is audible in my voice when I warn, “If she gets so much as a scratch, I will gut you where you stand.”
“You’re not in a position to issue threats—”
I cut him off with a glare. “It isn’t a threat when it’s true. That beatdown I gave you last month will seem like child’s play compared to the hell I’ll rain down on you if you don’t release her this very instant.”
When Zariah’s pupils widen after her eyes shift to the side, I follow their gaze. There’s a person dressed head to toe in black hiding in the shadows, wearing a balaclava. He is clutching two syringes full of murky liquid.
With a banshee cry, he pushes off their feet and charge for me faster than I can squeeze back my trigger. I knock the first syringe out of his hands, but I miss the second one. It jabs into my arm so forcefully, the needle snaps off. I don’t know what the fuck he hit me with, but it instantly paralyzes my arm—the one clutching my gun. It falls to the ground with a clatter, itsboink, donk, boinkscarcely heard over Zariah’s screams.
My attacker makes the mistake of watching my gun fall. It gives me plenty of time to shoot out my uninjured arm to pin him to the wall by his throat. My right leg is wobbling like it is seconds from giving out from beneath me, but my grip is fierce. He’ll be dead before I hit the ground.
Well, that would have been the case if a bullet didn’t take me down first.
Chapter 31
Zariah
When a bullet rockets through Asher’s shoulder, my throat goes dry from my mangled cry. Tears pool down my face when he falls to the floor a few seconds later. My baby brother just shot the man I love.
He killed him.
I feel the burn from his gun’s recent fire when Vaughn returns it to my temple; I smell the gunpowder in the air, but I’m too enraged to stop and calculate the consequences of my actions. He’s not here to protect me. He’s here to kill me. If Asher is dead, he did precisely that with only one bullet.
With the roar of a deranged woman, I bite down hard on Vaughn’s hand covering my mouth before stomping down my foot. When I taste blood, I throw my head back with all my might. My skull colliding with Vaughn’s nose sends shockwaves of pain jolting down my spine, but I don’t give in. I told Asher he could trust Vaughn. I gave him my word that his guilt for what had happened to our mother was enough punishment.
I was a fool.
