Page 86 of The Masked King

“Fitting that it ends here where it all started, huh?” Malevsky grips my upper arm tightly as if frightened I might test the rotting floorboards and leave the house in an even worse condition than it already is.

My wrists are bound behind my back, and I’ve no doubt that I’ll be surrounded by armed guards while they wait for Enzo to be my hero and ride up on a gray horse like Prince Philip in Sleeping Beauty. But on the positive side, I’m wearing running tights and a hoodie, and I feel more like myself than I have since I walked into DI Goss’s office and accepted the role within his new team, even with my swollen jaw and black eye.

I’ve no idea if Enzo knows where I am or that I agreed to the Bratva’s deal to deliver Gio into their hands. He’ll hate me forever. But this was the only way, and the best I can hope for is that the Sabatellis beat the ruthless Russian bastards and understand why I did it.

Forewarned is forearmed. That’s how the saying goes.

If the Sabatellis lose…

I can’t think about that now. If I let that thought in and allow it to grow legs, I’ll be tempting fate, and Enzo is going to need all the help he can get.

“Why did you not rebuild the house?” I ask. It seems such a waste to leave it like this, abandoned and unloved.

“Why do you think?”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to snap, “If I knew the answer, I wouldn’t have asked, asshole.” But I can serve Enzo and Gio better by keeping Malevsky sweet instead of rattling his cage. So, I stay silent.

“We rebuild it, we lose the memory of what your lover did to our family.”

He’d make a great case study for revenge theory; I can almost see him salivating at the thought of killing Enzo here.

Then a nauseating image of him setting Enzo alight like a scarecrow on top of a bonfire fills my mind, and the imaginary stench of burning flesh is making it difficult to breathe.

I bend double, gasping air as bile rises up from my throat and splashes the sneakers I’m wearing. I cough and splutter, tears streaming down my face while I wait for it to pass. Malevsky doesn’t release my arm.

He waits for me to get a grip and says, “Keep moving.”

I have no choice but to follow him through the house, our footsteps producing clouds of sooty dust around our legs as we walk.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

The doors are charred but mostly solid. I don’t know if Malevsky once lived here with his extended family, or if this has become his macabre haunting ground since the devastating fire that ravaged the house, but he seems to know his way around. I peer through open doorways, trying to focus on items, like landmarks, to remember the way back, but it’s impossible to distinguish individual objects when they’re all covered in ash, and he’s moving too fast.

Then, we stop in a room where the remains of a grand piano stand in one corner, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases hold onto the piles of ash that were once stories of endless possibilities and imaginary worlds.

“You will wait here.” Malevsky releases his grip, and I rub my arm to erase the feel of his fingers on me.

“Why?”

It’s a genuine question, and anger simmers inside my chest when he rolls his eyes.

“This is where the fire began.” He sweeps an arm around the room, and I follow it with my eyes.

The stench of smoke is the same here as in the rest of the house, but the floorboards are gaping in some places, revealing glimpses of the darkness from below. I shiver with the cold air blowing through the holes and scan the rest of the room trying to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. Parts of the ceiling in this room have also collapsed, and I’m surprised it’s still supporting the rooms above. The walls are almost completely black.

The fire was remorseless, and I try not to think about the family sleeping upstairs while these rooms were being destroyed by flames.

But I can’t erase from my mind the video footage of Enzo walking away from the destruction he set in motion. I can think more clearly now though, and something about it doesn’t sit right with me.

“How did you get the video footage of Enzo leaving the house?” I ask.

“So, what are you now, a firefighter?”

I’ve touched a nerve. “I’m a cop.”

His lip curl into the familiar snarl that still makes my stomach knot. “What does it matter how I got it?” He comes closer, penning me in with the rotten carcass of a couch behind my legs. “Answer me this: what lengths would you go to if it were your family?”