Page 81 of The Pakhan’s Heir

I look back at my father who’s still squirming and swearing on the floor. “What are you going to do to him?”

“Make him pay.”

I nod and consider asking to stay and watch. After everything he’s put me through, after all the years of terrorizing me, it might be cathartic to watch him suffer.

That sentiment must be written all over my face because Alex leans into me and says, “You do not want to stick around for this part, Rabbit. Trust me.”

I believe him. I suppose if anyone knows about that, he would. “There’s a knife somewhere behind him,” I tell him. “He wanted to use it to cut the baby out of me. Make sure it finds a better purpose.”

His eyes widen slightly and his jaw clenches. He nods and says, “It will.” He kisses me on the forehead and adds, “Tell Kostya and Rikki to take you home. I’ll see you later.”

He says it flatly, less like instruction and more like a command. I’m expected to follow it without question, and frankly, I honestly can’t wait to. I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips to his. He immediately falls into the kiss, wrapping one arm around my waist.

“Go,” he whispers as our lips part.

I walk away, turning down the next hall to leave him to his work. I’m only just past the parlor when I hear my father screaming in agony.

Good. I hope it hurts. I hope everything that’s coming to Slavik Sokolov is ten times every painful thing he ever brought down on me. I hope he dies screaming.

The smells of gunpowder and fresh blood hang in the air of the living room as I enter it. Four men lie shot to death in different places. One of them only a few feet to my left, lying face down in a pool of blood, two by the door, and one hanging half on and half off the railing leading upstairs. And standing right in the middle of it all are Kostya and Rikki, and they’re both looking at me.

The sound of my father’s voice painfully cursing in Russian echoes off the walls of the hallway behind me. “He’s asked that you take me home,” is all I say to them.

They both nod and Kostya says, “Then we’d better get you home.”

30

ALEX

Killing Slavik was more than just cathartic. It was a cold justice that needed to come and a debt that I was owed. Despite the constant possible threat of the police breaking up our little party, I didn’t rush it. Every minute I spent in that hallway, I spent torturing him to death.

And with the extra knowledge that if I had been even a few minutes late, he would have made good on his threat to cut my baby out of Nona, I made sure that every crime he ever threatened was received right back to him. When I was done cutting parts off him and he was lying in a virtual sea of his own blood with rivers draining from his mouth and nose, eyes dazed as he stared up at me, he did something that surprised me. Something that I’d have never believed a Pakhan as old as he was would ever do.

He begged me for mercy. Weak and rasping, he just repeated over and over again, please, please stop, please, please, stop.

I looked down at him in disgust, then I pulled out my gun and put a bullet in each of his knees, then another in the same, bullet-riddled shoulder before silencing him forever with a bullet to the head.

And when the light drained from his eyes, I thought only one thing. That I should have dragged him out and taken him to one of my warehouses, then spent the next week figuring out ways to torture him some more.

I’m not a fool, though. Slavik was known for being slippery. If I didn’t kill him right then in the hallway, even injured, he’d have found a way to escape and continue to cause havoc.

And that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? Take him out so he never hurts me or my family again.

I’m thinking about that hard on the drive back. I’m still covered in his blood and one of my brigadiers is driving me back home. He’s dead. When the cleaning people or whoever decides to show up to his apartment after tonight find what’s left of him, then the shockwave of his death will ripple through our community. Well… through his community.

And then, someone else will be chosen. That person, depending on how loyal they were to Slavik, might decide to continue his crusade. One day soon, I might be right back where I left off tonight.

Shit. Nona had it right all along, didn’t she?

I watch the rain streak the window sideways as we speed toward Manhattan. I’ve kept Nona safe tonight. What happens tomorrow?

I’d like to think that whoever replaces Slavik will take a lesson from his actions and stay on his side of this borough, but I know better. Bratva leaders always eventually want to show their people how great they are. I imagine one day, I might be the same way.

The car slows down as we hit traffic. “Sir,” my brigadier says, “I looks like we might be stuck for a while. Want me to take Eighty-fifth up?”

“No,” I say. “There’s no rush getting home.”

It’s nearly morning by the time I walk through the door.