“I don’t know her name. It’s that girl that cleans your house?” There’s a question in his voice.
Jesus motherfucking Christ.
No.
Taara?
Nicolai meets my eyes. He’s doing clean-up now, the body already removed, mop in hand. This room is specifically designed for easy clean-up and disposal. Normally, we’d call help to come and do with this sort of work, but we don’t want to involve more men from the brotherhood than necessary. That said, we’ll tell them all that happened so everyone’s abreast of what’s gone on.
“What is it?” Nicolai asks, mopping sweat off his brow with the back of his sleeve when the door to the room opens. Rafael enters, dragging in a furious, terrified, disheveled Taara.
Nicolai groans out loud. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” He straightens up, glaring at Taara, and I swear to God even though he’s my son and I feel about the same as he does, it’s all I can do not to deck him for looking at her like that.
“Thought we’d only have one death on our hands tonight,” he mutters, wiping his hands on a rag like he’s a mechanic who’s just finished an oil change. He shakes his head, and Taara starts crying.
“God! Oh my God!” Tears stream down her beautiful face, but she can’t wipe them away because Rafael holds her wrists by her side. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to see anything. It’s… I can’t… I’m going to—”
Then she turns to the side, bends over, and literally retches all over the floor.
Nicolai shakes his head. “Motherfucker.”
I can’t believe she came out here, that she saw this. My hands shake, and I can’t decide if I want to turn her over my knee for spying on us, or hold her to me and tell her it’s okay. That yeah, she just witnessed brutal, cold-blooded murder, but she’ll be alright. That everything will be alright. Instead, I just shake my head and jerk my chin to Rafael.
I want Rafael’s hands the fuck off of her.
“Give her to me.”
He shoves her in my direction, and I catch her before she falls, her beautiful black hair brushing my arms. I swallow hard. She’s in huge trouble, and this isn’t going to be easy.
“We can’t let her go, boss,” Rafael says. “You know how I feel about innocent lives, but she’s seen too much.”
“I agree,” Nicolai says. He’s throwing sawdust all over the floor for clean-up, and he won’t meet my eyes. “We always abide by the rules.”
Why do they think I’m not going to abide by the code of law that binds me to the brotherhood? Do they actually suspect I won’t? Then I realize I’m holding the girl to my chest, one hand on her lower back and the other cradling the base of her head, comforting her. I release her, spin her around, and cuff her wrists with my hands.
“Taara’s worked for us since she was a child,” I say. I look her up and down. She sure as fuck isn’t a child anymore.
“Doesn’t matter,” Nicolai counters. “We don’t bend the rules for fucking anyone.” Part of me is proud of his insistence on abiding by the Bratva code. He’ll make a good pakhan someday.
But this is Taara.
“I agree,” Rafael says, his eyes on me. “But I know you’re partial to the girl. You don’t have to do it. I will.”
I wish to fucking God I hadn’t trained these two so well.
Taara trembles and shakes her head. “I won’t say anything to anyone. Oh, God, I promise. I won’t! Never.” She’s sobbing freely now. “Just let me go. You don’t want more blood on your hands, do you?”
“Sweetheart, you have no idea how much blood I have on my hands,” I tell her. She doesn’t. She doesn’t have a fucking clue. “Suffice it to say, a little more won’t matter.”
I have no intention of killing her, but I want her to know how serious this is.
She only cries harder.
I give her a rough shake. “Stop that,” I order. “I don’t want you throwing up again.”
But it isn’t just that. I hate how weak I feel, watching a woman like her cry. Taara is an innocent in this.
“What the hell were you doing spying on us?” I say, shaking her between my hands until her teeth rattle, because I’m pissed that she made herself complicit in this. She’s put herself in danger… even if that dangers because of me. My men saw her. She deserves to be killed, though her crime is simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But if she told the authorities what she’d witnessed, at best, my son’s life would be ruined. His child practically fatherless. His wife little more than a single mother, raising their kids while her husband served life in prison. At worst, he’d face the death penalty.