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I pulled my car around the back of the old building and cut the engine. I grabbed two guns, a GLOCK and a Beretta, and tucked one in the waistband of my pants and the other in the front. I adjusted my jacket and climbed out, already having three knives strapped to my body, hidden yet easily accessible.
I didn’t trust any of these fuckers.
As soon as I stepped in the warehouse, I felt eyes on me and found Dmitry leaning against one of the rusted walls to the sides. The shadows hugged him like an old friend, welcoming him back to the fray.
Tendrils of smoke curled around him, the end of his cigarette lighting up in the darkness, a flare of brilliant orange as he inhaled. He exhaled, those tendrils turning into a thick cloud in front of his face before dissipating.
Although I only saw Dmitry, I knew his brother was close. They were never far from each other. At only a year apart in age, they acted more like twins than siblings, knowing what the other thought, what the other felt, how they’d react. It was fucking eerie.
“Your brother can crawl out of whatever dark hole he’s occupying anytime now.” I kept my voice low, but I knew it was loud enough Nikolai would hear. I made my way toward Dmitry, watching for any subtle changes in his posture, listening to the sounds around me to gauge where his brother was.
The Petrov brothers were young, in their early twenties, yet I knew they’d experienced much of the same depravity of the underworld as I had. It had hardened them, made them lack any normal empathetic, human feelings toward others. It had pulled that light that could’ve grown in them completely away until there was no chance they’d ever grasp it.
That's how I’d been, how I’d felt. I had always assumed I’d die in a dark hole where I’d forever be alone, the dirt covering me up so I’d never have the chance to crawl myself out of it.
I thought of Lina back in my apartment. Moy svet. My light. She made that light attainable, reachable. Real. And that’s why I’d do anything—everything—I could to ensure my world didn’t touch her.
I could hear Nikolai’s low laugh somewhere close by, echoing off the rusty, debilitated walls, but I kept my focus on Dmitry. When I was a few steps from him, I watched him inhale again, that smoke circling him, clouding his visage. Yet his eyes positively glowed as he stared at me.
He leaned against the wall with one leg crossed over the other, one hand tucked into his pants pocket. He flipped the ash from his cigarette, took one more hit, then flicked it away before pushing off the wall and coming to stand before me. His lips peeled off his teeth, all straight, white, and flashing in the darkness.
“My father has been talking nonstop about the scene you caused the other day.” He let those words hang in the air between us. And so did I. “I swear he’s got a constant fucking hard-on because of it. It's been a long time since I’ve seen him so excited about something.”
I had no doubt Leonid was obsessing about the fact that I’d expressed so much emotion, especially over a woman. That’s why she was at my penthouse, because I knew the fucker wouldn’t give up until he figured out a way to take her, to use her so I would do what he wanted. And that was joining his army in the Bratva and just becoming another soldier, another one of his pawns.
He was twisted enough to hurt her to force my hand. And I wanted her too much that I’d do anything to keep her safe.
I heard one set of footsteps behind me. I knew it was Nikolai. He was even less of a threat to me than his brother and his father, although only because I was more skilled, more deadly and dangerous. I saw him in my peripheral as he made his way around me and stood beside Dmitry.
“I don’t know whether to be offended or to up my game over the fact that you didn’t even flinch in my presence,” Nikolai said, and I looked in his direction.
“Probably safe to assume both.”
Nikolai sneered in my direction but kept his mouth shut.
Both the Petrov boys were large assholes, as tall and as muscular as me. With matching dark hair and eyes, they looked more likely to grace a fashion magazine or be on the big screen than slithering around in the dark, killing and maiming in the name of the Russian mafia.
If their father was the gun, they were the bullets.
“Your father needs to find a hobby if my life is so consuming to him.” I addressed Dmitry in reference to what he’d said about Leonid. I looked back at Dmitry and saw something flicker in his eyes, a hard calculation. But it was gone as soon as I’d seen it, washed away with a sharklike grin.
