“Yeah, probably. How’s Mia?”
“She fell asleep about an hour ago.”
“Oh, good…she must be comfortable around you, then.”
“Vanessa called me on the drive home, and Mia heard everything. Probably realized there’s nothing more unthreatening than a guy who’s pussy-whipped.”
“Did you just call yourself pussy-whipped?” I asked with an eyebrow raised.
“So?” he countered. “You think you aren’t? You called me in the middle of the night to find a burned corpse and help set fire to your house.”
He had me by the balls.
“That’s what I thought. Let me know what happens with Egor.” He hung up.
An hour later, the black Escalade pulled up into my driveway. Undoubtedly, there were four armed men with him. I didn’t have a chance, but I brought my loaded gun anyway. I stuffed it into the back of my jeans, and I walked outside to greet my guests.
Or my enemies.
Egor got out of the car first. I assumed it was him because he was the only one in a suit, navy blue with a black tie. He was not quite six feet tall. With typically Russian looks, he approached me as he buttoned the front of his jacket. He had blond hair and blue eyes, and he was a man in his early forties. He stared at me coldly, not issuing a greeting.
“Egor.” I stood with my hands in my pockets, unflinching in his presence.
He continued to watch me.
“Do your dogs follow you everywhere? Or is it just the two of us?” I headed back to the house, turning my back on him as a sign of strength. I was either stupid or arrogant. There was no way to know which one.
Egor followed me, his armed men remaining outside.
I stepped inside and took the stairs, aware of him behind me. I didn’t make small talk as I guided him to the bedroom where she’d stayed. I stepped inside first then moved to the side, the smell of smoke still heavy in the air. It was almost impossible to breathe.
Egor stepped into the room then slid his hands down the front of his jacket, as if he was afraid of the effect of the smoke on the fine material of his clothes. His biggest obsession was dead, but he cared more about his expensive suit.
It was disgusting.
He examined the room, the signs of smoke and ash everywhere. The bed had burned into dust, along with the nightstand. Some of the wall had been burned away, exposing the insulation. There were signs of the fire extinguisher we’d used when we controlled the burn. He stopped over her body, which was on the floor. Half of her hair had been burned off, and her previous features had been wiped away by the flames. He kneeled down to examine her further.
I made sure that the corpse matched everything on Mia’s body, from the scars on her back to the noticeable freckle on her hip. Griffin helped me with the cosmetics, mutilating the corpse further before it was fully prepared.
Egor pulled on white gloves before he turned the girl over, looking for all the scars she had accumulated in his captivity. He examined her back, her right wrist, and searched for the large freckle on her hip.
He found them all.
He stood up again and pulled off his gloves, tossing them on the ground beside her. “My men will take care of the body. I’ll put her at the bottom of the ocean where she belongs.”
I hid the relief on my face.
“You received the money, right?”
He pulled out his phone and checked the account. “You’re fifty million short.”
“That’s what I paid for her at the Underground. I’m not eating that cost.” Griffin said I needed to keep being an asshole. That was exactly what I was going to do. If I wasn’t guilty, I shouldn’t act like it.
He gave me a cold stare before he put his phone away. “Fine.”
I maintained my stoic expression, but a parade was marching in my heart.
“We’ll wrap her up and leave.” He came toward me but didn’t extend his hand. “I hope you enjoyed her while you could.”
“Only when she didn’t behave.” Pretending I’d never slept with her would be unrealistic. Admitting I’d been with her wouldn’t give me motivation to plan this whole charade, but lying about it would be worse.
“I will miss her,” he said with a sigh. “But knowing she’d rather die than come back to me is a reward in itself. I loved torturing that woman…but I’ll find someone else to torture instead.”
His words made me sick to my stomach, made me want to hurl all over his fine suit. If Mia wasn’t the victim, it would just be someone else. I had to remind myself there was nothing I could do about it. There were other men just like Egor all over the world. Even if I did kill him, someone else would take his place. But it didn’t stop me from wanting to murder him, from wanting to punish him for what he did to Mia. He ripped a family apart…just for his own amusement. It took all my strength to speak the words out loud. “I’m sure you will.”