Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91149 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91149 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“What of Manuel?” he asks. “Have you found the answers you seek?”
“Yes.” I kick the dirt beneath my shoe. This is the part he will not like. “I was correct. He beat and tortured and killed my mother, and Sergei gave him the honor of doing so.”
Viktor shakes his head in visible disgust. “And still you ask to spare his daughter’s life? Where is the justice in that? What about your mother? Will she have died in vain so that you may please your dick?”
“No,” I force out. “I would ask for your blessing to kill Manuel myself, as well as any of the men in his employ who touched her.”
“And your father,” Viktor adds.
“And my father,” I agree somberly.
Viktor tosses the butt of his cigarette on the ground and stubs it out with his shoe. “It would be a reasonable request, if it weren’t for one small matter, Kol’ka.”
“What is it?”
“Nonna called to report that some of Manuel’s men broke into the house while you were away.”
That isn’t possible. That doesn’t even make sense. I glance at the house, but Viktor goes on.
“They took the Valentini girl, and they destroyed your security system. It’s what I came here to tell you.”
I abandon Viktor for the stairs, determined to see it for myself, but the pakhan isn’t finished delivering bad news.
“Before you think about storming into Manuel’s compound, you should know that the feds got him. Everything is cordoned off. You won’t get in there, and you won’t get near him. She is gone, Nika.”
Manuel adjusts the phone closer to his mouth, breathing heavy into the other line. “Do you know where my daughter is?”
What a fucking joke. He is a vile cunt of a man, and if there wasn’t inches of glass between us, I would jam this phone through his skull until his brains decorated the floor.
He wants to play stupid, so I’ll humor him for now.
“You tell me, Manuel.”
He closes his eyes and sighs. “I can’t believe she would do this to me. It’s you. You have turned her against me.”
I silently pick apart his words, attempting to find logic in them. But I know that it can’t be right. He can’t be implying what I think he is.
“A fucking rat. My own daughter.” His mood swings from violent to hysterical in the span of two seconds.
“Are you trying to tell me that Tanaka flipped?”
He levels me with vacant eyes. “It’s fucking Gianni. My own man. I trusted him, and he was a goddamned fed. He’s been playing me all along. They both have.”
My fingers turn white around the receiver as Manuel comes unraveled on the other side of the barrier. He’s losing his mind, but there is still some substance to what he’s telling me. I just don’t want to believe it.
I tap on the glass. “Pull yourself together. I need to know where she is, Manuel. Who took her?”
“Fucking Gianni,” he roars. “It has to be him.”
I shake my head. It can’t be right. He’s out of his mind. He’s delusional.
“You’re next,” he says. “She will flip on you too.”
“That won’t happen.” Tanaka wouldn’t turn on me. Or maybe it’s only what I want to believe.
“You know what you have to do,” Manuel tells me. “I can’t pay the debt. The feds took everything, so you have to take it from her. I just beg of you, be merciful.”
I smile at him through gritted teeth. “As merciful as you were to my mother? You remember her, don’t you?”
He blinks, unsettled, and I can see the gears turning in his mind. He is trying piece together which one she was, but I’m content to remind him.
“Irina Lemeza.”
The color drains from his face, and his palm comes to rest on the glass, sticky and desperate. “No.”
“Yes, Manuel.” I lean toward him. “You know the Russians are fond of an eye for an eye. I know you worry about your daughter, but there’s no need. She won’t be the one to pay the debt. I think for once in your life, it’s time to do the honorable thing, don’t you?”
“Nikolai is here to see you,” Magda says.
Alexei is slumped against his desk, drunk again. And though I have spent the past four weeks helping him slaughter every man he deemed remotely responsible for his wife’s death, it has done nothing to ease his pain.
It has, however, come as a welcome distraction while I seek out Nakya.
“Send him away,” Alexei murmurs.
“Too late.” I step into his office so that he can see me. “I have something I believe you will want to see.”
His eyes move to the drive in my hand, and for the first time in weeks, there is a spark of life inside him. He takes my offering and rouses the computer from sleep, bringing up countless images of his wife on the wall-to-wall monitors.