Page 145 of Fractured Ties

The man’s gaze drifted to the dog, and a slight amusement lit up his eyes. The first sign of real life Kolya had ever seen him show.

“Cute,” the man said in Russian, “but he won’t be cute for long before he’s very big, comrade.”

Kolya nodded. “That’s the idea.”

“You should leave him in the car.”

His shoulders tensed. “And how long will he have to stay there alone?”

Zhatka sighed a bit. He probably understood Kolya’s question as it stood, and the fact that it wasn’t so much a direct question for the benefit of the dog, but Kolya trying to ask for himself.

“Better you bring him in, then. At least, he’ll be with you. I will walk you down.”

Kolya nodded.

What else could he do?

The long walk through the Compound felt impossibly longer when a man didn’t know what he was walking toward. Zhatka stayed quiet the entire time, and it was only when they were outside one of the chamber’s metal doors that he finally turned to Kolya again, but only waved his hand as if to tell the man to go in first.

Kolya set Sumerki to the floor first. “Be good. Find a spot and stay. Your spot—you stay.”

The pup’s tail finally stopped wagging and his yellow eyes darted from the door to Kolya.

Fuck.

He should have made Konstantin keep him instead.

Too late now.

Kolya pushed the heavy metal door open and stepped inside the chamber. Sumerki snuck in beneath his feet, and Zhatka followed behind. Zhatka guarded the door when it shut with a bang that echoed.

How it echoed with so many men filling up the chamber would always be a mystery to Kolya after that night. And he would remember that the very most. Above the burning of his skin, and the words his father spoke to him as he forcibly removed a tattoo and a legacy Kolya had never wanted to begin with, he would remember the eyes of Boykov men who couldn’t meet his stare as he entered the room.

No, the only man who stared back was Vadim.

“Your last gift from me,” Vadim murmured, gesturing at a table beside him.

There, Kolya found Alexei tied, gagged, and gutted like a fucking pig. The dead eyes of Maya’s brother stared up at the damp, cement ceiling of the chamber while blood still dripped from the sides of the table. Wet and sticky, he bet. The man’s mouth was stretched open in a grotesque scream of death, but Kolya only felt peace realizing the one thing that might threaten Maya was now gone.

He’d have liked to be the one who did it, but this was fine too. As long as the head was cut from the snake, what did it matter about who did it?

Still warm, by the looks of it.

“I heard you had Konstantin looking for the man,” Vadim said, “and he is still a threat to her, isn’t he?”

Vadim really did know everything, Kolya realized. They may have thought they were doing things their father couldn’t possibly know, but Vadim knew fucking everything.

“You could have saved him for me, no?”

Vadim chuckled. “Well, that would have been too much of a gift. And I don’t owe you anything now. You, however, owe me, Kolya.”

Kolya nodded. “Take your payment, then.”

Vadim smiled grimly. “How ready you are, Kolya.”

It kind of felt like he’d been waiting for this moment his whole life. Wasn’t it time to finally get it over with?

The men who couldn’t even look Kolya in the eye were quick to move then when Vadim waved a hand. All of them came at Kolya—he didn’t know if that’s because they expected him to fight, and they thought all hands on deck would make him compliant or what.