I take my gloves off and take a few steps toward him.
“Everything all right?”
His eyes lift from the screen and he swallows.
“He’s in Ciudad de México.”
He doesn’t need to tell me who. That fucking snake.
What the hell is he doing here? We’ve been tracking him throughout all of Europe. The States. But Mexico?
“Where is he?” I ask, but I’m already looking at the screen.Las Palomas Nightclub.
And just like that, every thought in my head rearranges itself around a single point: Amalia. The rational part of me knows he has no reason to even be aware she exists, but rational has nothing to do with the cold thing sliding down my spine. I grab my phone from my bag before I can talk myself out of it.
Me: Tell me you’re home.
The three dots appear almost instantly, and some of the pressure in my chest eases before she’s even answered.
Amalia: Home, alive, and losing a knife fight with my sorting homework. Bubble sort behaved. Quicksort has decided to sort my will to live instead.
A breath that’s almost a laugh escapes me, despite everything. She’s fine. Buried in code, fighting algorithms, completely unaware that the most dangerous man I know just landed in her city.
I intend to keep it that way.
The clubwhere that bastard stopped is on the outskirts of the city.
Two bouncers stand at the entrance, checking IDs like this is any ordinary night.
“Are you sure you want to do this here?” Andreas asks me. “It’s packed, Si. And in a crowd, things can go sideways fast.”
He’s right, but three years ago we decided not to approach Aleksandr in a crowd and he slipped right through the traffic cameras.
I’m not making that same mistake twice, and my silence gives my best friend his answer.
We get out of the car and walk toward the building, the bass already rattling the ground beneath our feet.
One of the bouncers clocks the guns under our jackets, but a thick stack of dollars is enough to make him find something more interesting to look at in the line behind us.
Inside, the music bleeds into sweat and cologne, bodies moving against each other in the dark, and a quick scan of the room tells me the monster who killed my brother is nowhere in sight.
“Let’s split up,” I tell Andreas, and before he can protest, I’m already moving.
I work through the dance floor first then move to the VIP lounges.
In the first, an old man has his hands all over a brunette who looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. In the second, a group of kids are putting something up their noses. But when my eyes land on the third lounge —bingo.
There, on a black leather sofa, sits Aleksandr Rastovski, with his loyal dog standing behind him, watching the crowd.
I don’t make it three steps before his bodyguard’s eyes lock onto mine, and maybe it’s something in my expression that promises violence and retribution, but the man’s entire body goes rigid. He leans in close to his boss and whispers something, and then Aleksandr’s eyes find me.
He rises slowly, fastening two buttons on his jacket, and with a lazy smile, he turns his back and walks away.
Damn it.
I call Andreas, who picks up on the first ring.
“They made me. They’re heading for the east exit.”
