“Only if it involves me putting a bullet in you.”
“No, this one is a bit more, shall we say, personal. Could you put my kukla on the video? I haven’t seen her since she was sunning herself this morning.”
My hands and feet went numb, and I couldn’t seem to draw a breath. Angus reached back and put a hand on my waist, keeping me behind him. He stood in the doorway to the back room, his wide back blocking my view.
“So beautiful, my little doll. I prefer it when she wears the white bikini, you know. I imagine pulling it off her with my teeth. How she’ll purr for me once she’s trained and—”
An agonizing scream, one that went on and on, curdled my blood and cut off the far more chilling sound of Dmitri’s voice. When it finally died to a quiet gurgle, I knew its owner was dead, too.
“Well, well. I rather liked the way you looped the guts around his neck like that.”
“Yeah?” Nate’s tone held murder in its timbre. “I’ll be sure to do the same to you.”
Dmitri’s slimy laugh coated the air. “I do hope you’ll wait until after I’ve enjoyed my doll. She’s so smooth and perfect. I bet her skin will scar beautifully. By the time I’m done with her, she’ll look like a whole new canvas covered with my art.”
“You aren’t touching her.” The clang of instruments being thrown down rattled through the air.
“We’ll see. Thanks for the show, Nate. I only wish I’d had popcorn to go with it.”
“The same thing will happen to the next guy you send, and the next, and the next. If you want to keep wasting your resources, go right ahead.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got plenty of cannon fodder to spare. Give my best regards to my kukla, and tell her I’m coming for her soon.”
I gripped the back of Angus’s shirt so I could stay on my feet. Something shattered in the room beyond, and I got the feeling Nate had wrecked the laptop.
“We are moving forward with our plans to hit his shipments,” Nate’s dark command whipped through the air. “Tonight.”
“The heroin?” Peter asked.
“Yes. I want all of it intercepted and dumped out at sea, right along with the Russians.”
“I want in.” Angus found his voice.
“Your father wouldn’t like that.”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“Who’s that beh—”
I peeked around Angus’s arm, keeping my eyes away from the shooter’s body. Nate was covered in blood—his shirt soaked and streaks of it on his face.
Wild and lethal, he stared me down. “You shouldn’t be here.” His irritated gaze flickered to Angus. “Why’d you bring her?”
“I didn’t. She wanted to come.” Angus shrugged.
“I came because I’m a part of this now.” I stepped from behind Angus and met Nate’s gaze. “There’s no point trying to hide what you are or what you do from me.”
Nate glowered. “You think you can handle watching me kill a man?”
I still couldn’t look down, couldn’t take in the full horror of what Nate had done to the man who’d been alive only moments before. But he’d done it to protect me, to exact vengeance for an attack on the both of us. He sent a clear message to Dmitri even though Dmitri seemed too sadistic to heed the warning.
“It’s not something that I want. I don’t want you to have to hurt anyone, but when it’s necessary…” I finally dropped my gaze to get a glimpse of the dead man, his gray entrails wrapped around his neck and his blood staining the floor. “I don’t want you to hide it from me.” It was a relief that I couldn’t see the shooter’s face.
Peter and David exchanged a look, one that was perhaps more shocked than anything else.
Nate flicked his hands, the blood spraying in small droplets, and shook his head. “I need to get cleaned up. Wait for me upstairs.”
I wanted to continue this discussion, but not in front of his men. Turning my back on the grisly scene, I trudged upstairs to his bedroom. I flopped on his bed and tried to erase the dead man’s image from my mind. I didn’t judge Nate for what he’d done. How could I? I felt safer now that the shooter was dead. But I would never feel truly safe until Dmitri was in the ground.
A shiver raced through me and punctured my heart when I recalled Dmitri’s words about watching me sunning myself by the pool. Though I would feel like a prisoner in this house, I wouldn’t go outside until I knew there were no unwanted eyes on me.
I burrowed into the navy-blue duvet as the sun streamed through the parted curtains. The bed smelled like Nate’s soap, clean and masculine. I rubbed my cheek against the smooth fabric as my thoughts continued to race.