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“Shut up!” Jericho said, the barrel of his AK-47 started to waver.
“She’s not even Russian!” Anton continued to laugh. “She’s not even white. Look at her…”
My hand touched the dagger on my hip. Just a touch. A small caress of steel.
“You want to bring her in?” Anton asked, as if that was the most ridiculous thing in the world. “Where is she even from? A whore house in Thailand? Is that where she was found?”
“Shut up!” Jericho growled, stepping forward until the barrel of his gun was a mere inch from Anton’s chest.
“You wouldn’t even be able to kill me. Because we’re family, right? Brother?” Anton said the word derisively. Jericho scowled, his finger on the trigger, tightening but not quite able to pull.
I stepped toward them, my rifle slung behind me. My finger touched a blade on my belt. The plain one that replaced my gift to Rose.
Anton was laughing, empowered the longer Jericho refused to kill him.
“You risked your life for that bit of far east trash?” Anton continued, laughing. “She’ll never be accepted into thevory. The bratva will only have one use for her and that will be on her back and—“
His voice was silenced. My blade pierced his trachea. My hand on his nape pushed him further into the blade, but I made sure not to sever the carotid. He didn’t deserve a quick death. I slid the blade out of his delicate flesh, and the man fell to his knees. He gurgled and spit, trying to get air.
Then he collapsed to his side.
“Will you put your brother out of his misery?” I asked Jericho. “He was your brother, after all.”
Anton twitched and gagged. His hands tried to reach for his throat. Maybe to close the wound. Maybe to open his throat in a sad attempt to breathe again.
Jericho’s eyes were cold. Unreadable.
“He was only my brother by biology.” Jericho finally said under his breath, staring down at Anton as he struggled for air until he twitched, his body shaking. His skin turned blue. We watched in rapt fascination as he expired, painfully and slowly. “My family is the one I choose.”
Jericho’s eyes looked at Rose, the vicious woman that had walked out of a horror film.
Rose seemed to feel our scrutiny and turned to us. She was pale, swaying on her feet.
“I think I did too much,” she said in a whisper, before her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she collapsed.
Chapter 43
Rose
“Isitover?”Iwhispered into the darkness. My eyes wouldn’t open. I could feel my fingers twitching, the beeping of machines. I was in a hospital, or at least a clinic, for the second time in as many weeks.
“Rosie!” a familiar, male voice yelled. I opened my eyes to see a handsome, black-haired older man sitting in the chair beside me. He had a cane in his hand. There was that familiar scent of diesel and WD-40. I wouldn’t have recognized it had it not been for that scent. His beard was gone, and the smooth cheeks were unsettling.
“LeBlanc?”
“Rosie, sweetheart.” He said, relief in his voice. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
He reached out and stroked my hair.
“You still have no idea how to braid your own hair, do you?” He said, pulling my hair from the ties and letting it loose.
“Jericho doesn’t braid hair.” I chuckled, smiling through a tear of relief. “Are you okay? You were in a coma the last time I saw you.”
“I know. Jessica told me.” He said with a shrug. “Very accommodating woman, that one.”
That was code. He had fucked her. I shook my head and chuckled at him.
