Page 63 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

Yet.

Vera suspected Hannah would give in eventually.

“Who else are you going to take, him?” Hannah returned, tossing a look back at Kiril.

“Hey,” the kid muttered.

“He’ll go, too,” Vera admitted.

Hannah scrunched up her freckled face. “But like, outside, right?”

Vera laughed. “For that, probably.”

“Well, good.”

“And I did promise to send pictures to my mom, so you have to be in charge of the camera,” Vera added.

Hannah cracked a small smile. “I guess I can handle that, too.”

A low hum coming from inside Vera’s clutch stopped the three from exiting the lobby of the church. Vera pulled the phone out, taking it off temporary silence the second she woke up the screen with a click of the power button only to see a text ribbon waiting for her.

From a new phone number that she had yet to punch in a proper contact for. Although, she knew it was Vaslav’s most recent phone because he started every text message with the same thing, which usually followed an instruction of some sort. A call me or a question in the same vein. Whatever he sent, the first word never changed. Always in English, too, despite the fact he only ever said it to her in Russian.

Kitten.

Phones were just yet another thing Vaslav had too many of. Partly because he often threw them at various other things which meant a device that was supposed to last him weeks before Igor switched it out for a new burner made it through half of what it should before he destroyed it. She couldn’t count the many phone numbers Vaslav had gone through since that first Paris trip.

Kitten. Don’t you know it’s rude to leave a funeral before the final procession?—V.

That was all he’d written, and Vera couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder the second she had read his words and understood what they meant.

Vas was there.

At the funeral.

“Can we get food?” Hannah asked, oblivious to the way Vera quickly stuffed the phone into her clutch. She’d tell Hannah about the text, sure.

Later.

Maybe ...

God.

Vera didn’t know what she was doing anymore.

“Lunch at the cafe by my place?” Vera offered. “They make the fluffy cakes you like with the almonds.”

Hannah peered back through the open doors they had left behind while the rising crescendo of the hymn continued to echo. The place still gave Vera the creeps. “Anywhere, let’s just get out of here, okay?”

Kiril stepped in on the girls’ conversation, and muttered, “Agreed.”

14.

“Kiril is joining the girls for lunch,” Igor informed, his voice hushed close behind Vaslav. His head of security had remained standing behind his chair in the private balcony for the better duration of the funeral.

Vaslav had a million better things to do than attend said funeral, and the pieces of the man in the coffin below, centered in front of the altar, certainly wasn’t worth his very precious time. In fact, he hadn’t planned to be there in the first place which was part of the reason why Viktor’s body parts had shown up in garbage bags floating in the canal. He didn’t exactly need to make it clear that the death had been a result of the man’s mafiya dealings when his very discovery spelled the man’s end out perfectly clear.

However, Vaslav was also an opportunist. So when an opportunity presented itself, even if it wasn’t exactly how he would like for it to arrive, he really had no other option but to take it and run with it. Like today.