“Over? Ah, little rabbit. You have no idea.” He tapped the table twice as the laugh bubbled from him. Without another word, he turned around and walked away.
The moment he left, I pulled myself upright and tried to stand, but my knees buckled under me. I grabbed onto the table to keep from crumpling to the floor. Still fighting to breathe properly, I looked up to see Yulia watching me from the door.
She looked as though she were about to cry.
This immediately snapped me back to the present. “Yulia,” I called out.
For a few seconds she just stared at me, then she ran towards me. I got to my haunches and she burst into my arms. Her hands went around my shoulder as if she was trying to comfort me. I couldn’t understand what was going on. “Sweetie, are you all right?”
She didn’t answer, just gave an odd sobbing sound.
I leaned away from her and met her tear soaked face. “Don’t cry.” I consoled. “Why are you crying?”
Consoling her only made her cry even more. Her sobbing evoked emotions in me that I couldn’t understand, and I felt the tears trickle down my own eyes. I realized that she pitied me. For some reason, she thought I’d been wounded by her uncle. We remained like that for a long while, neither of us saying a word until eventually, she let me go and I rose to my feet.
“What’s the matter? Won’t you tell me, please?” I begged, searching her reddened, unhappy eyes.
She only shook her head and as expected, didn’t say a word.
I’d never been so confused.
Chapter 14
Yuri
April Winters distracted me.
Distracted was a euphemism for what she was doing to me. Hell, I didn’t know whether I was coming or going with this woman. I couldn’t stop fucking thinking about her. Her soft skin. That taunting red mouth. Those fuck-me eyes, those legs. God, those damn legs. And her sweet pussy. It’d taken everything I had to walk away last night. And now instead of concentrating on what was happening in front of me, I was damn well fantasizing about her.
Before me was a circle of five men ramming their boots into a cowering fool. They were close to killing him, and in that moment, I wanted to allow it.
I knew they were waiting on me. Had it been under my late father’s, or even brother’s command, they wouldn’t have needed to. They could have simply filleted him and presented their victim’s heart in a silver box. I’m not into wet work. I don’t enjoy it, and I believe it is the best way to end up behind bars. I’m not a sociopath… I’m a psychopath. But for the first time in a very long time wet work had become necessary.
A fresh burst of fury burned through me once again, I shot up from the metal chair, making it crash noisily to the floor.
It made them stop kicking the moron on the floor. He gave a low groan.
My back was to them, my hands in my pocket. “Any news from the hospital?”
“He’s in a coma… The jump broke his spine,” Ivan explained the state of the man this coward had almost sent to his grave.
I wouldn’t mind, but he was the only one with the information I needed. Fucking fool. “You’ve awoken the cops…” I muttered with irritation. I turned around and walked to the man huddled on the floor. His face was a bloodied, unrecognizable mess. “Now they’re going to keep their eyes on everything until all this blows over you fucking dog.” There didn’t seem a word brutal enough to soothe the anger I wanted to unleash on him.
I heard his dying grunts and felt nothing. He was a traitor. For a second, I saw Yulia’s face when I told her that her parents were dead. My feet itched to kick his worthless body, but I held back.
He was nothing. Nothing. I would win this war. I would exact my revenge on all who betrayed me. One by one. There would be nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It was only a matter of time. “Finish him,” I said coldly and walked away.
Exiting the container, I walked briskly across the construction yard, and was at the makeshift shooting range in no time. Just before I picked up the gun, my phone rang.
“I have Yulia’s nanny in the car, Boss,” Valdimir said in Russian. “Should I take her to the head office or…”
“I’m at the yard.” I ended the call.
I slipped a pair of earmuffs on and pulled up the command for the target. Supporting my outstretched hand, I shut one eye, and hit the target right in the brain. One by one. I shot twelve bullets into his brain before her arrival was announced. Some of that anger was still in me, but thoughts of April returned.