Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
I shake my head. “Not necessary.”
“You sure? As you know, Elina makes the best pirozhki in America.”
“I’m not here to eat, Aleks,” I growl.
His smile slips. “Of course.”
I pull my gun from my breast pocket and rest it on the table between us, and he immediately pales.
“Why did you do it?” I ask calmly.
He straightens in his chair and swallows thickly. He’s gone a sickly shade of grey. “What do you mean, Pakhan?”
“I think you know exactly what I am talking about, Aleks. Your night at Soulless.” Still, he pretends to look confused, so I prompt him. “The club in Lincoln Park.”
I can see in his eyes he knows precisely what I am talking about. The fear is fucking with him now. He’s wondering if he should come clean or continue the lie.
He decides to go with a half-truth.
“You know about the girl?” he asks.
“Everybody knows about the girl, Aleks. She’s all over the fucking news. Every news station has her face splashed across their channel. The Chicago Sea Angel, they’re calling her. Found beat up and dumped in the harbor.”
I think back to the CCTV footage and the murder. How Aleks had gotten rough with an escort in the VIP section of the club. How he had choked the life out of her and then dumped her in the harbor, naked and very dead. How someone now thinks they can use that footage to goddamn blackmail me.
Fury prickles at the nape of my neck.
“The girl was a mistake. I realize that now.” Aleks shifts nervously in his chair. “But she liked it that way. She was a whore who wanted it rough. Said she liked the pain. I didn’t think she would fucking die on me.”
I don’t believe him. I saw the look on his face as he was killing her. Saw the delight on his face as he watched the life drain from her eyes. He found pleasure in her fear, and the small part of me that is still human wants to wrap my hands around his throat and choke the life out of him for what he did to her. The media says she was barely five feet tall. A tiny thing. Young. Her whole life ahead of her to live. And he took it from her without conscience.
But that’s not why I am here.
“I’m not talking about the girl,” I say with an edge to my voice.
He goes very still. Because he knows the girl is the least of his worries. He’s wondering if I know what else he did that night. Who he was with. What they planned together. His eyes flick to the gun on the table in front of me, and a small part of me wants him to go for the Ruger he keeps in his breast pocket just so I can put an end to this situation with a bullet between his eyes.
He tries to smile, but it’s full of fear. “I don’t understand.”
I pick up the gun and point it at him. “Tell me you don’t understand one more fucking time, and I will shoot you.”
He throws his hands up. “Okay, okay. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know why you met with Don Draconi.”
“I didn’t—”
I stand up so quickly my chair falls backward. “Lie to me again, mudak. I fucking dare you.”
“Alright!” he yells. He knows I have him cornered. “Yes, I met with him. But it’s not what you think.”
“It’s never what I think. Why did you meet with the don of our biggest rival?”
“He wanted to talk.”
“And?” I demand impatiently.
Fear is rampant on his face. By now, he’s figured it out. That I know about his little plan to sell my secrets to the fucking Draconi, our biggest rivals in the Midwest and on the East Coast, in order to line his pockets. After viewing the CCTV footage, I looked deeper into what Aleks has been up to since then, and it wasn’t hard to find out what I needed to know. After all, I am Lev Zarkov. I have eyes and ears all over this country. And I have the very best people who gather and collate any information I need into a nice tidy package for me so I know exactly what is going on.
So I know this mudak has been leaking information to the Draconi. Information that has put me and my bratva in danger. Information that has cost me millions of dollars in lost revenue. Information that is going to take Aleks’ last breath from him.
“You sold me out to the Draconi.”
Aleks’ hands begin to shake.
But then his demeanor changes because he knows it’s too late. I guess the old fuck figures he might as well go out with a bang.
“Your father would see my death as a dishonor,” he says with disgust.