I stand from my chair, torn between washing her scornful words from her mouth with my tongue or my cock.Perhaps I should do both?
I settle on neither when the quickest flash of red captures my attention. The prickling of the hairs on my arms assures me we’re being watched by Satan himself. This wasn’t a test he organized, but I will be graded on it either way.
Although Vladimir would prefer for me to respond to Justine’s disrespect with violence, I use words instead. “If you were anyone else, you’d be suffering the consequences of a bitter tongue.”
She doesn’t balk at the danger in my tone. She doesn’t even cower. She merely tugs down the collar of her shirt to expose the scars I traced last night before murmuring, “You don’t think I’m already suffering, Nikolai?” Her watering eyes bounce between mine. They’re brimming with tears, but not a single one falls when she says, “Two weeks after saving me from being mauled by a dog on the Petretti compound, my brother was arrested for murder. Nothing you could do would ever pain me more than that, so rest assured, Your Highness, I’m already suffering.”
Her confession hits me like a ton of bricks, but before she spots my murderous expression, she gathers our dishes off the table and tosses them into the overflowing sink, unmoved when the porcelain cracks under the force of her throw.
Conscious I’m being watched, I ensure my face reflects unbridled anger even though my whispered words are anything but. “Your brother may be in jail,Ahren, but he is more free now than he would have ever been in the Petretti crew.”
Stealing her chance to reply, I push through the swinging door, race across the party-like atmosphere in the living room, then get up so close to Roman’s face, if he wasn’t aware of the ingredients Justine seasoned our steak with, he is now.
“She was mauled by a dog, Roman!” My whispered sneer coats his face with my spit. It’s vile and disgusting, but considering I’m on the verge of snapping someone’s neck, it is the lesser of two evils. “By a fucking dog on the Petretti compound!”
I never realized how violent words could be until now. Mine are more deadly than both my knife and my fists. They’re capable of killing, and I know the perfect person to disperse them on: Dimitri Petretti.
When my sneered words reach Roman’s ears, he moves to the boom box in the corner of the room. After dragging the volume dial to the highest setting, he locks his eyes with Viktor, who’s standing guard on the door I just rocketed through at the speed of a bullet. They don’t speak, but not even two seconds later, Viktor smashes his fist in Jay’s face, knocking him into a group of my men huddled around the couch.
And just like that, and all-in brawl commences.
With the camera in the living room shifting to take in a fight promoters would pay top dollar for, Roman yanks me to into the bathroom that’s in the far corner of the compact space. “Speak now, and do it quickly.”
Understanding his ruse, my brain switches from personal to business in under a second. “Justine said two weeks after Maddox saved her from being mauled by a dog on the Petretti compound, he was charged with murder.”
“Coincidence?”
I shake my head. “Not according to Justine. She believes it’s linked, and in all honesty, so do I. Dimitri wouldn’t have stopped her punishment unless it was for a good reason. Maddox must have offered something substantial.”
Roman sucks in a sharp breath. “Like murder?”
I work my jaw side to side before dipping my chin. Justine thinks Maddox is innocent, but she doesn’t know how far siblings go for one another when their life is placed up for negotiation. I held a knife to Vladimir’s throat after he ordered for Rico’s back to be burned with acid, and we didn’t even share the same blood.
Roman drags a hand down his tired face, as lost as me on where we go from here. “I can reach out to some contacts I have, but I don’t see it doing any good. If Maddox is serving Justine’s punishment, the Petretti’s have no reason to seek additional retribution from Justine.”
“I’m not worried about any outstanding debts, I can handle that. I want to know why Justine was punished to begin with.”
“Nikolai—”
“No, Roman,” I interrupt, refusing to hear the same excuse he always gives for the fucked-up world we live in. “I want to know.” I swish my tongue around my mouth, loosening up my words “I can’t help her if I don’t know what happened to her.”
A glint flares through Roman’s eyes. It could be pride. It could be disgust. I honestly don’t know. “Okay. I’ll see what I can find out. While I do that…” he nudges his head to my men brawling in the living room like they won’t have each other’s back the next time we go to war. “… you can sort out that mess.”
He races for the door, leaving me defenseless to a large group of drunken, rage-fueled men. With how hot my blood is with anger, unlike the weeks after my sixteenth birthday, I’m looking forward to this challenge. A dog will look down when they’ve done wrong, but a snake will always look you in the eyes, even when he is the perpetrator.
Chapter Fourteen
Three busted eye sockets, one broken nose, and several sets of bloodied knuckles later, the fight Roman started finally comes to an end. My men have always been thirsty for conflict, but their edginess today reveals they can sense a storm on the horizon as well as me.
Things were volatile when Rico was killed, but it settled within a year, and it’s been virtually clear sailing since then. Although Vladimir has dabbled in some deals I’d prefer our sanction not be associated with, if it kept his focus off me, I happily turned a blind eye. Once the rightful order is restored, and the true king is returned to his throne, I’ll work toward returning the Popov entity to the glory it once was. That operation won’t include totem auctions and underage prostitution rings.
My eyes stray to the front door of Justine’s apartment when Roman enters it. I’m not shocked by the frustrated expression on his face, however, I am apprehensive about it. He has daughters, so he’s more empathetic to women than most men in my crew, but even if he wasn’t, the expression on his face tells me I’m not going to like what he’s unearthed the past thirty minutes.
I return Justine’s upended couch to its rightful spot before joining Roman in the foyer. My strides are as uneasy as the twisting of my stomach. When I reach him, he hands me a black tablet. “There’s no sound, but you don’t need it to get an idea of the event.”
I soothe the bile scorching my throat with a quick swallow before hitting play on the video. It commences with Justine and Dimitri walking into a moderate yet heavily guarded mansion. Although no date is cited, I’m certain it was before Justine was mauled by a dog, because not only are her shoulders high, she’s wearing a spaghetti strapped top. Excluding the times I’ve pulled her hemline away from her neck, I’ve yet to see the skin she hides with long-sleeved, high neckline shirts.
“Was this footage edited?” I ask Roman when Justine’s entrance of the Petretti compound is quickly chased by her exit only minutes later.
