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“Sabrina did this,” he says.
“I know.”
Vlad whips his head around, lip curled in a snarl. “That filthy fucking bi?—”
I turn a look on him that shuts him up mid-shout, the words dying in his throat.
“Don’t,” I hiss. “When she comes back, you don’t want to have said anything you’ll regret.”
“Comes back?” Vlad stares at me, blinking slowly. “She destroyed our fucking lab! We should kill her for this—we’d kill anyone else.”
“She’s not anyone else,” Hakim says, from the doorway. “She built this lab in the first place.”
“And then fucking burned it down!” Vlad scoffs.
“She’s angry,” I say.
“You think?” Andrei laughs.
I shoot him a look almost as mean as the one I gave Vlad, making him duck his head and scuttle away from me like a crab.
“She took some of the equipment,” Hakim says.
Jasper side-eyes me. We can both guess what that means.
“She’s setting up her own shop?” Jasper says.
“Possibly.”
“With who?”
“Maybe Ilsa …”
“You think the Markovs are cutting us out? Poaching our chef?”
“I don’t know.”
I don’t know if Neve Markov is a part of this, or only Ilsa. It’s no secret there’s been friction between the sisters since the wedding—Ilsa might be disgruntled enough to strike out on her own.
Sabrina and Ilsa won’t get far alone. They’ll need money and assistance.
“We’re so fucked,” Andrei says, looking around the wreckage with a level of awe bordering on amusement. Sabrina has put us in a hell of a jam.
We owe drugs to Avenir Veniamin for his nightclubs, to Eban Franko for his strip clubs, to the half dozen brothels we promisedEliksir,and to our street-dealers. To the Markovs as well, though they just dropped to the bottom of my priority list.
“What are we gonna do?” Jasper murmurs.
“Can you make it yourself?” I ask Hakim. “If we get you another lab …”
“I can makeMolniya.We hadn’t finalized the recipes forEliksirandOpus.”
He means Sabrina hadn’t finalized them. I don’t know if Hakim can do it on his own.
Molniyais our bread-and-butter—it’s the one that matters most. But we still need somewhere to make it, and a new supplier for raw materials.
It’s going to cost me dearly to rebuy all this equipment. Sabrina’s doing this on purpose—putting the squeeze on me. Turning the screws to prove her point that I should have kept a larger cash reserve. She knows exactly where I’m scraped thin. She knows everything about our business.
I can’t stop staring around at the damage. This is Sabrina’s rage, directed at me. Destroying everything we built.
