Chapter Seventeen

Jabba Beridze crawled on his hands and knees from the wreckage of his SUV. He had not crawled anywhere for anyone for decades. The side of his face was numb.

He stood and looked down the road. The red truck was gone.

He looked back at the SUV. Ivan was pulling Viktor from the front seat. Viktor screamed. His arm was twisted, bone protruding from his sleeve.

“Leave him,” Jabba said to Ivan, but Ivan paid no attention.

There was the sound of engines in the distance. His other two SUVs were nearing. One had become stuck in the snow back at the motel parking lot, blocking the other from leaving.

A fuckup. A royal fuckup.

Jabba sneered as he looked down and pulled a piece of glass from his left palm.

Nicky was struggling from the backseat of the crashed SUV.

“I said leave him.” Jabba drew his gun and shot Viktor between the eyes.

Viktor’s head jerked back and he fell to the snow as Ivan’s hands opened. Ivan looked up at Jabba and backed up a step.

The two remaining SUVs pulled to a stop beside the wreckage. Sasha climbed down from the one in front.

He glanced at Viktor, powdered with snow, and lifted his brows. “Hard to hide a body, Boss.”

“We leave for Budapest when this is over.” Jabba watched as the snow melted into the round hole in Viktor’s forehead. It had begun to tinge pink. Soon, as Viktor’s corpse cooled, the wound would ice over. “What trash we leave behind will be gathered by others.”

Sasha’s face was impassive. “The SUV is totaled. Ilya did this?”

“No. It was an American in a red truck,” Jabba said thoughtfully. “He helped both the accountant and the other one—George Rapava.”

Sasha looked at him. “Rapava? The Rapava who put your uncle in prison?”

“Yes.” Jabba tilted back his head to the falling snow and spread wide his arms, eyes closed. He inhaled, cold air searing his lungs. “It is my lucky day.”

When he opened his eyes, Sasha was silently watching him, waiting for orders.

As it should be.

Jabba nodded, moving toward Sasha’s SUV. “I drive with you, then.”

“Where to?” Sasha asked.

“To the little shit town,” Jabba said as he entered the SUV. “I will set fire to it and burn it from the earth.”