Page 18 of Lord of the Underworld

I threw him on the hood of the jeep, my hand fisted in his collar.

"Touchy?" he wheezed. "Loosen the grip, eh, brat? Mother's going to be furious if she has to plan a funeral and a wedding in the same week."

"You're not needed here." I caught the flash of disappointment in his eyes and an unfamiliar sense of guilt needled me.

"Don't be the shitty brother that nobody likes," he said. Raising a brow, he looks at me sternly. It was impressive for a man flattened on my hood and losing oxygen by the second.

With a sigh, I pulled him off the jeep.

***

"According to the patrol schedule you intercepted," Stepan says, "his last soldier returns to the guard's quarters at midnight before making his next round at two." He chuckles softly. "The stupid bastard hasn't changed his rotation in four months."

I run the diamond stone over my blade again. Damascus steel, African Ironwood handle, and over a hundred and fifty years old. My grandfather presented it to me when I took over the ghost gun operation. I'd prefer my cleaver, but this isn't the operation for it. The stone runs at a precise fifteen-degree angle against the very edge bevel. This blade is a heavy one, sharp enough to cut through muscle and bone. Checking my watch, I sheathe my blade.

"Two minutes," I murmur.

"Cut the feed and loop it," Stepan says, finally fucking quietly enough.

"Three and a half minutes."

"To scale the building," he nods. "Then, survey the location while you're having fun."

I grip his shoulder. "Well done, brat."

There's a brief flare of pride in his eyes. "Don't get all soft on me until the job's done."

Yefim Vasiliev, Sovietnik for the Vasiliev Bratva, lives in a ludicrously flashy penthouse in central Moscow, just outside the business district. The security is good, but only if they know what to look for. A zipline from the next building takes less than fifteen seconds.

Disrupting the penthouse locking system, forty-five seconds. Stepan cheerfully gives me the finger as he moves back to watch the building's exterior as I slip inside.

Yefim is doing exactly what I expected. Watching porn. Jerking off into my bride's panties. His eyes are closed, head back, arm moving furiously when I step up behind him, driving my elbow into his neck as he collapses on the floor, still gripping the TV remote and the underwear. I slap him back awake when I've shoved the ruined scrap of lace and silk down his throat.

His bloodshot eyes fly open as he chokes on the cloth wedged in his esophagus. He's not a bad fighter, he's learned all the dirty tricks to take out an opponent, but it won't be enough. His frantic gaze goes to my knife and he struggles wildly until I rest a knee on his chest, compressing his ribs against his lungs.

"Which hand?"

"Wha- what?" It's a gargle more than a word.

I backhand him, sending a tooth loose. "Which hand stole the underwear?"

Yefim raises his right hand, his dominant one in an appeal for mercy. Spinning my knife between my fingers, I slam his arm down on the floor and pull up his hand, slicing between his thumb and forefinger, down to the wrist. A strangled scream erupts from his clogged throat, gore spurting from the cut before I stop the flow with quick-clot powder. My blade travels down between each finger until they're all splayed obscenely, attached only by skin.

"You looked at her pillow before you smelled it."

Half-delirious and in agony, he doesn't understand until I take out his left eye and slice off his nose. Stepping back, I wipe his blood off my knife onto his shirt. He's rolling back and forth, like a bloated insect, trapped on its back.

"You touched your foul, tiny dick while holding her underwear." I say, barely over a whisper.

This time, his brain clears just enough to understand before I kick his knees open and there's one final, satisfying sweep of my blade and there's a shriveled lump of bloody flesh on the floor. It looks like a toadstool. I throw the last of the quick-clot over his groin and take a picture.

Oksana may want to look at it someday.

"You'll live," I whisper, crouching next to him as he vomits up the desecrated underwear. "Just long enough to know what life is like as a freak." I tap my blade against his empty eye socket. "I'll be back."

After meeting Stepan at the edge of the building, he shakes his head with a wry smile. "I'm glad we're on the same side, Vadim."

I try to smile, but it makes him flinch before he catches himself. "Same side, brat. Always." I promise.