Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 85224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
I pull over to the side of the road and give him my full attention. We are an hour from home. I just want to get back to the house. To figure out this mess. To ask Talia who sent her the photos again.
I’m clinging to that, because it’s all I can do to continue down this path I have set out for myself. She has betrayed me. I could not have been so wrong about that. That is the only acceptable thing for me to believe.
But then Nikolai turns to me, and his face is pale. Worried. He’s holding up his phone, and Viktor is already on the line, through a video chat.
I’m not prepared for what he is about to say, so I delay the inevitable. My mind is turning, my hands clenched at my sides.
“I will come to speak with you this evening,” I tell Viktor. “To explain my actions. And to retrieve Talia.”
“Lyoshenka.”
His face is full of emotion. Something that Viktor rarely ever shows. But it’s there now. And it’s triggering the emotion inside of me too. Something I do not like. Something I try to avoid at all costs.
He isn’t angry. And he should be angry with me. He knows I have gone against his orders. Killing Arman was an unsanctioned act. He should be discussing his punishment with me. Instead, he is showing clear pity for me.
“What is it?”
My stomach drops out and I die inside before I even read his words.
“Talia is dead.”
The basement floor is coated in blood.
Corpses, stacked in the corner.
My hands, itching for more.
For all out war.
But Viktor is beside me, talking of nonsense. Telling me to keep a rational head.
“Those trucks were delivered from your house,” I remind him. “Someone has betrayed us.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “But you have killed the men responsible for delivering them. Now we must wait. Be patient.”
“I have no patience left,” is my reply. “My wife is dead. My unborn son, dead. Franco, dead. And you ask me for patience?”
“We will right these wrongs,” he assures me. “In time. When we have discovered the traitor. There will be no mercy for him, Lyoshenka. None. But you must be patient.”
“I have waited too long already,” I answer. “There isn’t even a body for me to bury…”
The words die off, and I take a breath. I cannot think about that right now. Think about my Solnyshko that way. In my mind, she is still up on the third floor. Where I left her. Where she is beautiful and perfect and mine, even when I break her heart. When I destroy her as I always knew I would.
There is only one way for me to go on. The only way that I know. And it’s written in blood.
I turn to Nikolai, who is watching the conversation, but remains carefully quiet.
“What of Dmitri’s men? The trainers?” I ask him.
He does not look to Viktor for permission to speak. He simply nods. “I have their location.”
I move towards the door, gesturing for him to follow. Viktor tries to halt me with a hand on my shoulder.
“Lyoshenka, you must stop this.”
“I will,” I assure him. “When I have killed them all.”
A hand on my arm shakes me from my blackness, and when I blink up, Magda is there. My head is pounding, and I feel the urge to retch from the amount of liquor inside of my system.
I want her to go away. I want everything to fucking go away.
“Alyoshka,” she says. “You need to eat something. It has been two days.”
No. It has been a month. A month since I died. Since everything just… stopped. I have spilled more blood in this time than in my entire career as a Vor. And I will continue to do so.
To honor her memory in the only way I can.
“Nikolai is here to see you,” Magda tells me.
“Send him away.”
“Too late.” He steps into view. “And I have something I believe you will want to see.”
My eyes move to the disk in his hand. And it is the only thing that fires a spark inside of me. Vengeance. It is the only thing that keeps me living from one day to the next. The kill. The destruction. The war I have waged on the animals who touched her. Who ever even thought of hurting her.
Magda leaves us to our privacy and I rouse the computer from its slumber, bringing up screen after screen on the wall. They are all filled with images of her. Of us.
I have replayed that video of her last day a thousand times over. The walk down the stairs. The way she paused and cried and Magda comforted her for the pain I had inflicted.
I never even said goodbye to her.
I allowed my anger to consume me. To consume her too.