Page 229 of Lethal Obsession

His arm flashes out, catching Novikov in the solar plexus. The breath heaves out of him, and he staggers backward, eyeing Mickey warily.

“There was a lot of competition to kill you tonight,” Mickey goes on. “We all argued about who has the better right. In fact, we argued about it so much that we almost came to blows ourselves. Shall I tell you what we decided on, Kiril?”

Kiril surges forward and grapples him, landing several solid blows that make the spectators on both the dance floor and the deck wince. “Fuck you,” he grunts as Mickey twists out of his grasp. “I don’t give a fuck what you decided. You’re still going to die.”

“Maybe.” Mickey lands another kick. “But that’s how our world works, Kiril. We all die eventually.” His head jerks back as Kiril lands a glancing blow on his eye. “The question,” he goes on, as if nothing has happened, “isn’t how we die, but how we live. And you’ve made some very bad choices, which is what led us to finally agree that the most valuable use of the short time you have left is for your death to serve as a teachable moment to others.”

He thuds a rapid sequence of blows into Kiril’s torso, leaving him winded and gasping. “Silas Thorne and his son are the others, in case you were wondering.”

“Fuck Silas Thorne,” Kiril pants, glaring into the camera. “And fuck whatever this is.”

Reaching beneath his foot, he pulls a knife from the heel of his boot, flicks it open, and slips it in between Mickey’s ribs.

“Motherfucker!” Roman looms toward the screen as if he might actually put a fist through it.

Mickey, however, doesn’t go down.

“Stay the fuck back,” he raps sharply to the men on the edge of the floor who start toward him.

They pause, looking uncertainly at each other. Kiril crouches low, grinning at Mickey as he licks his blood off the blade.

“Your friend Alexei isn’t the only one who likes a knife,” he sneers. “Your head is going to be on that floor when we’re done here, Borovsky. You’re already losing a lot of blood. The next cut will finish you altogether.”

“Maybe.” Mickey holds his stance, blood soaking his T-shirt. “But like I said: It isn’t how we die, Novikov. It’s how we fucking live.” He spins suddenly, and his hand smashes into Novikov’s face, splintering his nose and sending Kiril thudding to the floor. Mickey comes in for the knife, taking two decent cuts to the arm before twisting it out of Kiril’s grasp and sending it flying.

“I told you that you’d die here,” he says coldly. “And I meant it. But not with a knife, and not with a bullet.”

He holds up hands dripping with his own blood, and the death smile on his face is as chilling as any I’ve given.

“Just these, Kiril. And know this: it doesn’t end with your death. When we’re done here, you’re going to be put on a boat loaded with explosives and reunited with your friend Silas, on the yacht you can see on that screen. By that time, there won’t be much left of Silas either, because that’s the deal we made—our Cardeñas friends get to cut the head off the snake, and I get to fuck up its body. But it won’t matter if there’s much left of him, or you, by then. Because when that boat goes boom, Kiril, it’s going to blow you both into so many fucking pieces that there’ll be nothing left to feed the gators.”

Kiril’s eyes swim temporarily into focus. “People will come for you,” he rasps. “You will die for this.”

“Perhaps.” Mickey’s smile is cold as death. “Or perhaps I’ll be ready for them, too. Now.” He hauls Kiril to his feet. The man’s head lolls on his thickset neck, his eyes rolling back in his head as blood runs down his face. “Let’s dance.”

Roman stares at the screen, almost as pale as Thorne. “Christ,” he mutters, passing a rather unsteady hand over his face as he watches Mickey methodically take Kiril apart, one devastating blow after another.

I turn to Tyler Thorne’s terrified onscreen face. “I said we were facing a choice,” I say calmly. “Now it’s time to make it. We’re happy for you to succeed your father at Meridian, Tyler. To carry on wearing that Cartographer’s Club pin you’re so proud of and having prayer breakfasts with your daddy’s friends. But even though you’ll work with them, and do everything your buddies at Sentinel and Zenith tell you to do, our friend Lance Ryder is going to be supervising you—and making sure that you’re reporting every development to our friend Mickey.” I nod at the screen, where a blood-soaked Mickey is delivering his own brand of death with grim intent.

“On the upside,” I say, shrugging, “you do get to live. What do you say, Tyler?”

He licks his lips, staring nervously at his father’s face onscreen. “Dad?” he says plaintively.

“Take the deal, Tyler.” Thorne’s voice is harsh. “Just take the fucking deal. Reid and Calloway will—”

“—never hear a word about this,” I cut him off. “Ever. If they do, Tyler, I’m afraid our deal will be considered at an end. Lance Ryder will be watching your every move, and believe me when I say that after years of being one of the toughest paparazzi in the business, he knows how to watch fucking closely. Do I make myself clear?”

Tyler gulps, and then he nods.

I put my hand to my ear. “I can’t hear you.”

“I agree,” he says, his voice barely audible. “I just want this to be over.”

“Oh, this isn’t over.” Rico Lucchese speaks up coldly from behind Silas. “It’s a long way from fucking over, boy. Your daddy has a very long, nasty death in front of him. One you’re going to watch every minute of—just in case watching Kiril Novikov get taken apart barehanded by Mickey Stevanovsky wasn’t enough to disabuse you of any future ideas about taking revenge.” He nods at the screen, where Mickey, blood dripping from his face, is standing over Kiril Novikov’s broken, lifeless body.

I stand up. “Well, that’s me done,” I say into the camera. “Have fun,” I add to the men on the deck. “I’m going to watch the rest of the show from my front lawn with a drink in my hand.”

“Wait,” Tyler says, as Roman, Dimitry, and I reach the stairs.