Page 77 of The Bratva’s Monster

I sigh and shake my head. “I’ll pass, thank you.”

He sets down the beer on the table and walks over to me, resting his hands on my shoulders. “This is going to be easy because we’ve got the jump on him. He’ll be surrounded by the time he even realizes he’s in danger. It will be fine.”

He makes it all sound so simple. My gut is telling me that it’s not. It just isn’t. It’s hard. It’s the hardest fucking thing ever because if it goes wrong…

I’ve been thinking about that for the last hour since the meeting convened. If they fail, Stefan will seek revenge. And who knows what that will look like.

He’s looking at me with these eyes, dark green with concern, his eyebrows knitting together. “This won’t be like how Gedeon died, Liz,” he says. “We’re in control of this. Every angle.”

I have to look away from him. I hate it when he sees through me like that. “You can’t be in control from every angle. What if they take you by surprise?”

“They won’t.”

“Rikki—”

“Stop. Alright?” He sets down his beer as frustration bubbles up. He pauses, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “If you come with me, I’ll have to watch your back and Alex’s. I don’t need the distraction. Stay here, Liz.”

He hasn’t raised his voice, but he means it. The power of it silences me with a kind of finality that nearly slams my mouth shut.

I hear someone clearing their throat behind me and the mood shifts the moment Rikki looks away from me. I look over my shoulder to see that it’s Alex in the doorway.

“It’s time,” is all he says.

Rikki finishes his beer, then follows him out. After a few seconds by myself in the kitchen, I follow them.

They’re in the basement again with Josef. I hear them as I walk down the wooden steps again, but this time, I stop closer to the top of the steps and sit down, watching.

Josef isn’t tied to a rope in the ceiling anymore. He’s sitting in a chair, his arms and legs tied down. He’s got bandages over his wounds and stitches in his sides where the jumper cables pinched his skin, but he still looks pretty significantly beat to shit.

Rikki is behind him while Alex talks to him, a phone in hand. “Come on, Josef,” he says in a lighthearted tone. “You can’t believe that you’ll make it out of here alive any other way.”

“He’ll kill me,” Josef hisses. “You can’t make me do this.”

Rikki cocks a handgun and puts it to the back of his head. “We’ll kill you,” Alex responds. He walks right up to him and leans in. “I’m going to call him and hold the phone to your ear. You will tell him exactly what we’ve told you to or we’ll make sure the last thing that ever goes through your mind is a bullet. Understand?”

Josef is shaking even though he glares up at Alex with malice. He’s afraid. And for good reason. He has no doubt that they will kill him.

Alex places the phone in front of Josef’s face to unlock it, then scrolls for a few seconds until he finds Stefan’s number. “I’m putting him on speaker,” he says. “I need you to be convincing, Josef. You don’t want your brother to hear your last words on earth, do you?”

Josef swallows hard as Alex presses a button and the phone starts trilling. It rings three times before Stefan answers. “And where have you been?” Stefan says in Russian. “You were supposed to check in this morning.”

“I know,” Josef says with a little laugh. “Sorry, I, uh, forgot. Got caught up in some trim this afternoon. You know how it is.”

“Hmm.” Stefan pauses, and my stomach tightens almost immediately. “You sound strange. You all right?”

“Me? Yeah!” Josef even smiles as he talks, in an effort to show some authenticity. “I’m great, actually. I just got you on speaker, that’s all.”

He sighs. “I told you about that shit. Take me off.”

Rikki presses the gun into Josef’s head. “I-I can’t. Dropped my phone doing that thing you asked me to do earlier and the screen’s cracked. I can’t hear a thing if it’s not on speaker.”

A hard sigh. I can almost picture Stefan rubbing his temples. “That’s the third phone this month, Josef. You’re worse than a fucking teenager.”

“It’s no big deal, man. I’ll get a new one.” He pauses, sweat rolling down his face. “Listen, you busy tomorrow morning? I got some intel you might be interested in.”

“For something like that I can make time. Meet me at home⁠—”

“Actually, if it’s okay, can we meet at that place on fifth? I kind of agreed to have coffee in the morning with somebody and…”