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My pulse rang within my ears then, snapping me back to the present. He had my girl in his arms, handling her roughly.
“Let her go!” I screamed at him, trying to look for a way in despite the bloody knife in his hand. A wild look filled his eyes, and I held my hands up defensively. “I’ll do whatever you say, just let Kat go.”
He chuckled with the tip of his knife pointed at me. Blood smeared around his hand as he folded the knife and slipped it into his pocket.
“You’re no longer the valuable one to me.”
His words made my brows furrow, but his rough hand was on me before I could react. He slammed me back forcefully, and the sound of my head crashing against the door was the only thing I heard before everything slipped away.
Chapter 17 - Nikolai
Pulling up to Ivan’s house, I scanned the driveway to see only his vehicle there and parked. It was just us then, ready to have some fun with the culprit that remained tied up in Ivan’s torture shed. Aleksei likely wanted nothing to do with it. His loss.
I strolled up to the house, and Ivan opened the door the moment he saw me.
“Got anything else yet?” I asked, following him through the expensive house. Ivan wasn’t shy about our family’s wealth that gleamed from every inch of the interior.
Ivan shook his head. “He was sticking with the same story. That he wasn’t ordered by the Balakins. No amount of persuasion would make him change his tune.”
Scoffing, I unbuttoned the cuffs of my linen shirt and rolled them up, prepared to lay some serious damage. “Let’s hope another wake-up call will get him in the mood to spill who called the hit.”
We had spent hours the night before roughing him up to get the guy to talk. No matter how hard we hit him or how much blood seeped from his wounds, he wouldn’t talk. So, we left him to stew overnight, letting him know we were serious. After the force we showed him, he was well aware of what else was coming.
Ivan and I moved briskly through the house until we reached the back door, pushing outside again. We strode across the lawn, reaching the shed on the far end of the property.
“If not, I guess he’ll have another thing coming,” Ivan muttered, popping the combination into the solid lock. It clicked open, and he pulled back the shed door.
The two of us stopped in our tracks the moment we found him.
Sat limply in the chair he had been tied to, the man was dead. He was slumped over to the side, allowing us to see the single, tiny bullet hole through his head. The smell already started to fill the shed.
I stepped back out, trying not to lose my breakfast from the rot that emanated from him. It wouldn’t take long for the flies to set in.
Ivan growled to himself as he fished the phone out of his pocket, already mashing at his screen. I heard Aleksei’s voice on the other end as Ivan stepped away from the shed, slamming the door shut.
“Lock the property down immediately, and I need a report of where my wife is,” Ivan barked over the phone. There was a moment of silence as Aleksei spoke, and relief flooded Ivan’s face. “Good. Tell them to keep a good eye on them. Don’t let anyone near while they’re out.”
I stood there waiting while Ivan nodded and gave more orders for Aleksei to have the guards assigned accordingly. It was a serious matter, and we couldn’t spare any expense. Finally, the call wrapped up, and Ivan tucked the cell in his pocket. He ran a hand through his hair.
“Reina and Anya are with your girls at the beach. They have their guards and Rose too. Everything is fine there.”
With a sigh of relief, I nodded and peered over at the shed that contained a man neither of us killed. “But that is a problem.”
“We need to figure out who could’ve entered the property. Obviously, it was someone who didn’t want the guy to talk, but who?” Ivan questioned, already starting in a brisk walk back to the house.
“Where are we going?” I asked, a step behind my older brother.
“We’ll pay the Balakins a visit first. Even if he refused to admit Alphonse gave the order, it’s likely them,” he said, quick about unlocking the SUV and climbing in. I slipped into the passenger side, and we peeled away.
“Why sneak onto the property just to put him down? Why not get into the house?” I wondered, gripping the handle above my head while Ivan sped across town.
“He needed to be silenced, but I guess we’ll figure out by whom soon enough.”
The confusion in the room was palpable as we sat across from Alphonse in the back room of his hotel. Trails of smoke curled up from the ashtray in front of the Balakin head from where he rested his cigarette. He looked at us strangely.
“Come again?”
Ivan gave him a questioning look, likely from how lost Alphonse seemed.
