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“Explain how I betrayed you,” I replied steadily, “because this is all news to me.”
His face darkened and his jowls started shaking with anger. “I told you to leave no one alive at the Ivanov place. No one! There were meant to be no witnesses!”
We both looked at Michelle, who hid her face against her mother.
I stared at him. “You actually meant for me to murder a child for you? Just because she was there? She’s too young to be a witness, she can’t even speak, and you still expected me to shoot her down. Despite knowing that I never hurt kids.”
The crowd at the table shifted uncomfortably. Many eyes were on Michelle now.
“My word is law!” Vasily yelled, reddening further. “You disobeyed! And then you hid it from me!”
“Yes!” I shouted back, fingers probing the manacles they had locked me into. “Yes, because you must have lost your goddamned mind to demand such a thing! And it’s a good thing I didn’t, because she’s not just an innocent child—she ismydaughter.”
More rustling. Chairs squeaked against the marble floor. Men muttered to each other in Russian and English. And all the color drained out of Vasily’s face again.
“She is a witness. I gave you the order.”
“And if I’d gone through with it? Killed my own kid for you? You think anyone here owes you that?”
“It’s just a child. You can make another! The organization is more important—”
Hearing those words come out of his mouth sent so much rage through me that I almost rushed him, guns aimed at me or not. I fought for control, wondering when the man I had once admired had turned into this selfish goblin.
“Don’t bring my brothers into this. The organization has never been in the habit of murdering innocent kids who are nopossible threat to us. Not under you, not before you, not ever. None of us would put up with that!”
More muttering. Nods around the table. Even a brotherhood of thieves had its limits.
Vasily looked around, nervousness growing on his corpselike face. “I am still pakhan here!” he snapped.
“Then explain yourself. To all of us,” I demanded while I unfastened one of my cufflinks and bent the toggle. Their search had been sloppy, they had looked for concealed weapons, but they had either missed the vest under my shirt or didn’t care, and they had left my suitcoat on. And with Alissa tucked behind me, no one could see what I was doing.
“Explain why the Ivanovs were able to start and operate a kiddie, snuff, and torture porn studio right under your nose for so long without your noticing. Explain why you wanted a young child dead. Explain why you warned the Ivanovs that I was hitting their other house and helped them set a goddamned bomb to take me out!”
He was going from pale to purple. I wondered if he was going to keel over with all the shifts in his blood pressure. But of course, that was probably too much to hope for.
“I don’t owe you or anyone else an explanation. I rule here!” he spluttered, and I felt my rage boiling in my belly.
Mikhail, one of his lieutenants, spoke up quietly. “It seems strange that you will not explain, pakhan.Especially when you have had no problems explaining yourself in the past.”
“Most especially when a child and one of your most loyal men are both involved,” Piotr agreed, scratching his grizzled jaw. He had been with Vasily even longer than I.
Vasily’s mouth worked as his eyes darted around. “I don’t owe any of you—”
“Yes, you do,” said Sergei as he stepped inside. His voice was utterly devoid of emotion for the first time ever. “Especially since I have evidence that the Ivanovs were kidnapping kids and making porn of them with your blessing.”
Everyone turned to stare at Vasily in horror.
Chapter 19
Alissa
Ihad started out numb with terror. Desperate to find a way out of a situation I had never asked for and neither one of us deserved. And, of course, raging silently against Gregor for getting us into this mess, even unintentionally.
But he had sworn he would get us out of it. And now he had put himself bodily between us and the men with guns, and his awful, awful boss. And now, slowly, he was standing up to the bastard, and winning over the crowd.
They weren’t at all what I had expected from mobsters. They weren’t okay with Michelle and I being dragged in here. They winced and muttered with each other when child porn was brought up. And when the man who had let them into Gregor’s apartment showed up and spoke up immediately, they responded by looking between Sergei and their boss with expressions of shock.
“That’s nonsense!”
