Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
“As always when Master goes undercover for us, he comes back with something. In this case, we have a name,” Czar said without preamble. “As you know, there was an attack on my family. At least the idiots tried to attack my wife and children.”
Master had been there when the assassination team had come to Czar’s home. His children were already in bed. Blythe was in the sitting room with Master, Czar, Savage and Maestro. The others had already gone home after an evening of watching movies and just hanging out with the kids as they often did. The first shot hit the window right where Blythe’s head was. Fortunately, Czar was a man who never took chances with his family, and that window was made of bulletproof glass. Nevertheless, he tackled his wife hard, taking her to the ground while the other three Torpedo Ink members rushed out into the night to find the would-be assassins.
They found evidence of one of the assassins attempting to climb up to the second story, but again, Czar had circumvented that possibility by embedding tiny nails every so many inches up the walls of his home. It was a simple enough trick, and in the brick, there were many sharp objects inserted as well. They knew where they were and how to climb fast, if need be, but anyone attempting to break in would have a difficult time.
The assassins had realized quickly that it was useless to try when they’d been discovered and were now hunted. They’d made a run for it and had already chosen a clear escape route. They’d left behind blood from various scrapes. Preacher was their scientist, and he had no problem eventually identifying, with Code’s help, one of the members of the assassination team. It was quite the shock to find out the man was in prison and had been for several years.
“A woman by the name of Helena Smirnov sent the team after my family. She originates from Russia, and she works for the man we’ve been trying to identify, the one we know runs the largest pedophile ring we’ve come across. She recruits his assassination squads for him. All those men are pulled from the Russian schools. Like us, they were trained in the schools and have various levels of skills in killing.”
Steele held up his hand. “I’m not sure I have this straight. She’s recruiting assassins? She isn’t the actual head of them?”
Czar frowned and shook his head. “Those squads are the ones referred to as ‘the Ghosts.’ They are privately contracted out to work for whoever wants to hire them and can afford them. They have ‘security companies’ in several different cities across the United States. These men are all Russian and are lethal. Helena knows them and actively goes after them to get them to work for the Ghost Security Company. In other words, for her boss in Russia.”
“So he’s aware of us now,” Reaper, one of the sergeants at arms and Czar’s top enforcer, stated. “He knows our club is after him?”
The club members looked at Master. Master detested the spotlight. He shrugged and looked to Absinthe.
“Master doesn’t really know the answer to that. Helena ran two teams of assassins that were strictly under her control. They had nothing to do with her boss. It appears on the surface as if she didn’t tell her boss about Czar and Torpedo Ink. She continually referred to him as Viktor Prakenskii. Those two teams were recruited for her own use. Master eliminated one of those teams in prison. We know Helena found out about Viktor when she was frequenting the De Sade club in San Francisco. She tried to hypnotize various members of Torpedo Ink to get information about Czar, but no one was susceptible enough to give it to her.”
Lana, one of the two women who had managed to survive the school, shifted in her seat uncomfortably. “She planted a suggestion in me, Absinthe. I made Seychelle’s life pretty miserable for a while. If it hadn’t been for Seychelle, we wouldn’t have even known that Czar and his family were targeted. She’s the one who managed to remove the suggestion.”
“You didn’t give her any information,” Absinthe pointed out.
“Still.” Lana looked ashamed. She flashed a quick glance at Savage.
Seychelle was his woman, the love of his life. Everyone knew it. Seychelle wasn’t that enamored with the club. She didn’t trust the members yet, and no one could blame her. She always came through for them when they needed her, but they’d treated her like an outsider even when they were using her skills. Making up for that poor beginning was going to take time. When they were at war with a hidden enemy, time wasn’t always a gift they had.
“We have no idea why this woman wants my family and me dead. She had opportunities to kill other members of Torpedo Ink, and she didn’t take them,” Czar said. “Clearly, this is a personal vendetta. I don’t remember her. The man Master interrogated said Helena wasn’t her original name, but he didn’t know what that was. She does have a second team that’s under her sole command. Along with that, we must expect that she could hire, or even simply command, any of the Ghost teams she recruited for her boss.”