Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
“My father would’ve pulled the trigger by now.”
His eyes sharpen. “This wouldn’t be happening if your father were still pakhan.”
The sentiment grinds against my last nerve. I should shoot him for implying I am a weak pakhan.
But retribution for the disrespect will have to wait. I will not honor his betrayal with a quick death. I want to toy with him a little longer. Make him sweat. Make him wish he’d never betrayed me. Make him feel the regret deep into his very core.
“You know, I’m feeling generous today, so I’m going to give you a chance to live.” I pick up the chair from the floor and sit down, placing the gun on the table. He doesn’t say anything, but I see the fear in his eyes. “All you need to do is answer this next question honestly.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who is responsible for the murder of my parents?”
Almost twelve months ago, my mother and father died in a car bombing, and we haven’t found the person responsible. For months now, I’ve suspected it was an inside job. Someone in the Zarkov Bratva. Namely, my Uncle Vadim. He was supposed to ride to the restaurant with my father and mother the night they died but came down with a mysterious illness and canceled.
Which is a bit too fucking convenient for my liking.
Vadim had the most to benefit from my father’s death. He thought he would become pakhan. The boss. Unfortunately for him, my father had already made it implicitly clear that I should succeed him, and when it came to the vote of the bratva’s inner circle, all the old vory agreed, and I was named pakhan.
Much to my uncle’s anger.
Aleks shifts in his chair. He wants to earn himself a second chance to live. But he’s afraid to answer incorrectly.
“The night my mother and father died, Vadim was meant to be with them. But he canceled because he said he was unwell after spending the afternoon with you. Is that true? Was he really with you that afternoon? You have always backed up his story, but now as you face your moment of truth where your life is on the line, I want to know if there is something more to the story. Did Vadim kill my father?”
“If I tell you what you want to hear, I would be lying. If I tell you the truth, you will shoot me.”
I’m going to shoot him anyway.
“I don’t want you to tell me what it is you think I want to hear. I want the goddamn truth. Did my uncle conspire against my father and organize the hit?”
“It was pure chance that he wasn’t in that car that night. If we hadn’t overindulged at the luncheon we attended that afternoon, he would’ve been in that car with your parents, and we would’ve lost him too.”
I don’t believe him, but that’s not why I’m gonna kill him. He already earned that when he betrayed me to the Draconi.
Our eyes meet, and he knows. He’s seen his last sunrise.
“The girl.” I pick up the gun. “She was only a child, Aleks.”
He sneers. “Fuck you and that whore bitch—”
The first bullet gets him between the eyes. The second in the center of his chest. I put a third in his face for The Chicago Sea Angel. Because damn, what he did to her just isn’t right, and I won’t tolerate it in my bratva.
I swing around when I hear a gunshot behind me. Feliks has taken down Thor with a shot to the chest, killing him instantly.
“I told you not to kill him,” I say to my cousin. “He didn’t need to die. We could’ve put him back into rotation.”
“When a seven-foot Neanderthal points his gun at me, I’m going to fucking point back and shoot the fucker,” Feliks declares indignantly.
Fair enough.
The doors to the restaurant kitchen burst open, and an older woman comes running out. She sees Aleks dead in the chair where I left him and comes to an abrupt halt.
I’m ready for waterworks. For screaming. For a string of violent curses to come out of the fiery grandmother’s mouth. But I know Elina has family living it rough back home in Russia, and I know I will be able to buy her silence.
I watch her walk over to him and spit on him. “Murdering pizda.”
Feliks and I share a look, then turn back to her.
“You knew?” I ask.
“I suspected. Seemed proud of himself too.” She looks at me. “All the time I worked for him, I knew there was a very bad man inside of him. But he pays me good, and I keep out of it.”
While I talk to Elina, Feliks takes a call outside. When I’ve finished securing her silence with an attractive retirement payout, I join him in the car.