Six hours later, Igor was nursing a bottle of vodka, Vlad and Sasha with him. Igor hadn’t said a word, not since they’d arrived and taken in the scene. Igor hadn’t yet begun to feel. To feel would annihilate him.
Maryruth had been assassinated. It was clear to all of them. Her wedding ring hadn’t been removed from her finger, the delicate gold chain she wore around her neck was still there.
“Olaf,” Sasha stated. “It had to have been Olaf.”
“Doubt he was acting alone,” Vlad added.
Igor drank more vodka.
His wife’s body rested in their bed. He wasn’t ready to make arrangements. Did he want a funeral? A service? He was leaning towards cremation. Her ashes could live on the mantle, and one day, when he had a rose garden on a piece of property outside the city, he’d scatter her to rest.
Morbid? Yes. He was Russian, after all.
“What should we do?” Sasha asked Igor, looking for direction.
Igor had no direction to give. He spoke through his daze. “Not sure.”
“How did someone get inside?” Sasha asked. “Charlie announces visitors. There’s security in place.”
Igor shook his head. “Not now. I don’t want to talk about this now.” Leaning his head back against the couch, he closed his eyes. “Vlad, will you give me a moment with Sasha?”
Vlad slipped silently out of the apartment.
“I killed her,” Igor admitted when they were alone, finally opening his eyes to look at his oldest friend.
“No,” Sasha said. “You didn’t.”
“My life. My enemies. Couldn’t protect her. Promised her I could. Promised I could protect them both.” His mouth twisted in a gruesome cry of anguish.
“Both?”
“She was pregnant.”
Sasha cursed in Russian. “We’ll make him pay, Igor. I swear we’ll make Olaf pay.”
Igor shook off his frozen pain, rage blooming inside him. He took it, molded it into something hard and deadly. “I want the names of everyone who helped him. All of them. I won’t stop until they’re all dead.”
“We’ll find them,” Sasha vowed. “You’re not in this alone.”
Igor didn’t reply. Alone was the only way to live. Alone, no one could hurt him. Alone, there were no crippling losses he’d have to mourn.
He picked up Maryruth’s cell phone.
“He wanted me to find her,” Igor said. “I’ll bet a million dollars, Aleksy Kowal is in league with Olaf. I was meant to be at the meeting alone because then she’d be unprotected.”
The passcode on her phone was 1111. He had teased her about it, saying she needed a stronger password. She laughed and said there was nothing to hide.
He looked through her emails and texts, but there was nothing there.
A vision of the bullet to her head flashed in his mind. He needed to look at a photo; he needed to see her as the vibrant, amazing woman who had changed him for the better. He had to remember her that way.
His jaw gaped when he saw all the photos she’d taken of him when he wasn’t looking. Some were even of him sleeping. She’d caught him unaware, open.
Igor scrolled through the pictures from just that morning. There were views from the roof, photos of the garden, and then the selfies started. He couldn’t hold in a laugh when he saw some of her more ridiculous poses.
He flipped the screen to show Sasha, who gave him a pained smile. Igor was about to turn the phone off when Sasha stopped him.
“Wait. Can I see that?”
Igor handed him the phone.
Sasha swiped through the photos, a frown marring his face. He tapped the screen, zoomed in, adjusted the brightness. He looked up at Igor. “I think I found something.”
Igor waited at the warehouse by the docks. His impatience was getting the best of him. He’d wanted to go with Sasha and Vlad, but they’d both convinced him he wasn’t in the right frame of mind for stealth. So he waited for them to bring him his prey.
He heard the low rumble of a car approaching, and knew he wouldn’t be waiting much longer. Five minutes later, Vlad and Sasha tossed the bound and gagged mouth of the Polish mafia at his feet.
Aleksy Kowal’s eyes were wide, afraid. He babbled incoherently behind his gag, no doubt attempting to apologize, to beg for his life.
Igor said nothing. He pulled out his weapon, screwed on a silencer, and then pressed it to the man’s forehead.
“You betrayed the wrong man,” he purred.
He pulled the trigger.
“Make sure he’s never found,” Igor said to Vlad, handing him his weapon.
The assassin nodded.
Igor looked at Sasha. “One more stop tonight.”
Igor flipped on the bedroom light.
The woman bolted up and attempted to scramble from the bed. Sasha stopped her.
She was dangerous—raven hair, a mouth created for sin, a body made for a man’s destruction. She knew it. And even when she found two armed men in her bedroom, she was able to fulfill the role of siren.
Igor was immune.
“What are you doing here?” she asked with a sleepy smile. “Here for a nightcap? Something more perhaps?” She looked up at Sasha. “And you brought a friend. How nice.”
Sasha squeezed the back of her neck, demanding silence.
“My wife is dead,” Igor said, looming over the bed.
Her face was a picture of sadness. “I’m sorry. What happened?”
“A calculating bitch managed to get past my doorman. What I want to know is how.”
She looked at him in confusion. “I’m sure I have no idea.”
So she wanted to play it that way, did she?
Igor pulled out Maryruth’s phone and showed Katarina the photo. “Bottom right. A bright spot in the photo.”
She pretended to study it. “What am I looking at?”
Igor scrolled to the next photo. “Same spot. Only this time, the sunlight didn’t catch the metal of your ring.”
“Why would you think it’s a ring?”
“Sasha noticed the brightness in one of the photos. I wasn’t sure it was anything. And then I remembered that I’d had a hidden camera installed on the roof. And I told no one—not even my best friend. The footage condemns you.”
Panic flashed in her green eyes.
“So,” Igor purred, loving the terror he instilled. “I’m going to ask again. How did you get past my doorman?”
She paused before answering. “I’d met him before, when you and I were… I told him I was a friend of your wife’s.”
“So if anyone asked if he’d seen anything unusual, he would’ve said no,” Sasha voiced.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Igor said, pretending to sound conversational. “What did you stand to gain? What did Olaf promise you?”
She blinked emerald eyes at him. “You.”
“Me?”
“Marriage.”
“Your father forgave me for breaking our fake engagement.”
“Da, but there were things he wouldn’t give to Olaf—not unless they were bound by marriage.”
“What things?” Igor demanded.
Kat closed her mouth and looked away.
“Answer me.”
“Slave trade,” she whispered. “My father’s in the slave trade business. Olaf wanted in.”
“What was Aleksy Kowal’s stake in all of this?”
“He had the space—the real estate. He’d keep the girls and—”
“Enough,” Igor spat. “I’ve heard enough.”
“You killed him?” she whispered.
“Da. I killed him. I kill all those who betray me.” Igor paused, letting his words sink in. “She was pregnant.”
Kat blanched. “I—”
Reaching out, Igor clasped Kat’s slender throat in his gloved hand and began to squeeze. “She was pregnant and you murdered her.”
As Kat lost the ability to breathe, her fair skin turned a blotchy red, her eyes widening in fear. At the last moment, Igor released her.
She coughed, dragging air into her lungs.
“You’re going to kill me, too,” she stated flatly.
“You don’t deserve death,” Igor stated, finally letting his wrath out of the ice cage he’d stuck it in.
He took a step closer.
“I have something worse planned for you.”
She shrank back in terror.
“There are so many men who’d love to break you.” He looked at Sasha. “Let’s find a bidder, shall we?”