The rapid gunfire brought a sudden, terrifying silence.
In slow motion, I pushed my hands against the floor as Kazimir scrambled toward me, seeing exactly what I was seeing.
A pool of blood.
* * *
While the afternoon was sunny, even warm given the time of year, Kazimir sat bundled in a heavier jacket than usual. Granted, he was seated outside, something he’d been doing a lot more since the attack. It was his way of finding some sense of peace when there wasn’t any to find.
At least that was my opinion.
I stared out the set of French doors while Grigor looked on.
“He’s been this way for days,” he said and I heard the tone of reverence.
None of us had ever seen Kazimir truly rattled. Not when learning he had a half-brother based on his father’s infidelity. Not after his father had died, the Pakhan’s death initially believed to have been a heart attack.
After being kidnapped and held in a brutal Russian prison for three years, Kazimir had treated both his escape and the hunt for the people responsible as a game.
This was… even more personal.
And while the near tragedy was a terrible thing, both his wife and sons had been spared, Golden Angel as well. Yet the moment he’d believed them dead, his entire mindset had changed. He’d come to realize he wasn’t infallible and that there could come a time in his life where he couldn’t protect his family.
“Don’t worry; our Pakhan is fine,” I told him. I’d made it a personal mission of my own to turn over every rock in the city to find the fucker responsible.
I’d had deep military level security checks performed on every single soldier who’d been made aware of a single detail of the christening. I’d had the church personally checked, swept for bugs, and every building we owned gone through with a fine-tooth comb.
But I’d found nothing.
It was as if the assailant had simply vanished after never having been in Moscow at all. The entire situation was unnerving as fuck.
Grigor huffed. “I mean no disrespect, but I think he’s lost it.”
All I needed to do was to turn my head and the lower-level soldier knew he’d crossed a line. What I knew about Kazimir allowed me only to be but so concerned. There was nothing worse than not knowing the enemy to erase from this planet. Most assassination attempts were glorified, more than one organization laying claim.
In the aftermath, it had been apparent there’d been a single gunman, the spent rounds from an assault rifle easily purchased, left as evidence. He or she couldn’t care less we knew what weapon had been used.
It was possible the person responsible was hiding, biding their time for some other glorious attempt, but it had been two weeks since the attack and there was zero new information.
The church had been searched from top to bottom at Kazimir’s insistence with no clues as to how the assailant had escaped. Every priest had been accounted for, their backgrounds checked.
I’d personally walked the streets of Moscow, ensuring our informants and other associates knew it was in their bestinterest to talk. None had, other than providing some ghost stories as possibilities. A few had mentioned a time for reckoning. In Russian folklore, there were several tales about the devil receiving his reckoning by being trapped by clever soldiers or peasants.
Given Kazimir had often been called the devil and that he’d been trapped before only to beat the sentence handed down, the stories were wild and violent.
And all fabricated but detailed enough to instill concern in any God-fearing Russians. Not that I believed Kazimir had fallen prey to such bullshit, but that didn’t mean the assassin wasn’t enjoying playing a vicious game.
I had thoughts on who was behind the attack, but so far Kazimir wasn’t interested in what I had to say. I couldn’t blame him. After how his blood brother Mikhail had betrayed him by imprisoning him and killing their father, I understood the sensitivity regarding the subject.
That didn’t mean I didn’t keep my eyes open.
At least by Kazimir calling me for a meeting, it meant he was still fully engaged in business operations. With his wife and sons safe, surrounded by trusted soldiers, I knew the situation would turn explosive soon enough.
Kazimir wasn’t the kind of man to sit behind locked doors for long. He was eager and ready to destroy all those involved.
After taking a deep breath, I headed outside, moving slowly to where he was seated. He knew instantly when I’d arrived, shifting in his seat while fiddling with the label on his beer bottle. “Did you ever play the game of rock, paper, scissors?”
The question was so out of left field I had no idea how to answer. “Maybe once or twice. Why?”
