“Where are you going?” She frowns as I move toward the door.
“I’ll be right back.”
When I return a few moments later, with Josh cradled in my arms, she looks relieved as I lay him beside her.
“Just for tonight,” I tell her. “Until you feel comfortable here.”
Kat kisses his forehead and watches as I remove my shoes and coat, and then lay down on the outside of the bed, still in my shirt and jeans.
“Do you think this is a good idea?” She worries her lip between her teeth. “If he wakes up and sees us all sleeping together—”
“Then he will start to understand that we are a family.” I lean over and kiss her lips. “Now go to sleep, sweetheart. Tomorrow is a new day.”
22
Lev
After a long-winded talk and many assurances to Kat that she would be safe at the house with Pasha, I find myself back at Delirium, awaiting Vasily’s arrival. Already, Andrei is studying me, a smirk playing across his lips like he knows something I don’t. If I could, I would wipe that smirk clean from his face with a rusty knife.
“Levka.” Vasily slams the door behind him as he enters the private room upstairs. The same room where I first brought Kat into my life.
“Uncle.” I greet him with a nod.
He sits down across the table from me, his gaze meeting mine. Neither of us speaks as we size each other up. I know better than to be too eager with information. And now that I’m aware he’s been going behind my back to find his own answers, I must maintain my poker face. A part of me still hopes he will come clean and admit it. That he will prove he isn’t the man I’m beginning to think he is.
“Any word on the girl?” He shatters my hopes with a single sentence.
“I tracked her for a few weeks, but she seems to be ahead of us.”
He scratches at the stubble on his chin, cocking his head to the side. “What made you believe she was in Florida?”
“She has a connection there,” I say. “A friend.”
He considers my statement, which he knows is a lie, but I wait for him to call me on it.
“And the drive?”
“Still nothing.” I stare into the dark abyss of his eyes, wondering if my own blood could really be responsible for my mother’s death. His own sister. But even as I question it, I don’t doubt that he would kill Kat without a second thought. Vasily is only loyal to one thing, and that is his own selfish desires. He may be a Vor, but he won’t hesitate to forsake his beloved brethren if it saves his own skin. Of that, I have no doubt.
“You have disappointed me,” he says without emotion. “I expected this to be taken care of long ago. It has gone on too long, and I can’t afford to spare you any longer. I need you back to work.”
My jaw grinds together as I consider what he has planned. But all I can do is simply nod. It’s what he expects of me. What he has always expected of me.
“What do you need me to do?” I ask.
“You can start by helping Andrei with some cleanup this afternoon.”
My stomach churns as I nod. “Done.”
Vasily dismisses us, and I follow Andrei out onto the street. But when he heads for his car, I shake my head.
“Let’s take mine.”
He hesitates for a moment before getting inside. Typically, I wouldn’t want my car near anything we might be about to encounter, but right now, it’s imperative I have it available at all times. On the off chance that Kat does call me with an emergency, I can dump this moron on a street corner and get to her fast.
Andrei fiddles with my stereo and tries to light up a cigarette while I start the engine, which I quickly pluck out of his hand and toss out the window.
“What the fuck?” he grumbles.
“Not in my car. Where are we going?”
“My place,” he says.
Fucking great. I spend the entirety of the twenty-minute drive to his house wondering what kind of mess he’s left for me this time. Whatever it is, it can’t be good.
My theory is regretfully proven correct when he leads me into his bedroom, and I find a woman still handcuffed to his bedframe. Her face is beaten so badly she’s unidentifiable, and there’s blood spatter clear up to the ceiling. The body is already starting to smell, and it’s obvious this happened some time ago.
“Fucking Christ.” I turn to him with so much repressed rage, it takes all of my willpower not to cave his skull in right now. “What the fuck did you do, Andrei?”
“Things got out of control.” He shrugs. “Nothing I can do about it now.”
I grind my jaw and pace the length of his bedroom. Fuck this shit. Andrei is so goddamned out of control, Vasily has to see it. He has to know there’s no coming back from this. Every time I turn around, he’s destroying something else. Or someone else. The only logical conclusion is to put him down like a rabid dog.
It’s a certainty I feel deep in my gut as I take in the scene before me. I don’t know who she is, but that’s irrelevant. This woman didn’t deserve this. And I’m sure she has a family out there somewhere. People who will wonder what happened to her. Now I have to make her disappear, and they will never find peace in their lives.
“How do you want to do this?” Andrei asks.
He’s too fucking dumb to come up something on his own, and as usual, it’s left up to me. But this time, I couldn’t care less about cleaning this up properly. Bringing some heat down on Vasily can only help me. Any distraction will work in my favor until I can get my shit sorted out. It’s a risk, but right now, it’s one I’m willing to take.
“Go grab the bleach and some gloves,” I tell him.
Andrei disappears into the kitchen, and while he’s doing that, I snap a good fifteen pictures of the scene. Enough that there are identifiers of his bedroom. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s another insurance policy.
When he returns, I strip off my jacket and get to work. Andrei uncuffs her and rolls her up in the bedding while I hold back the urge to vomit all over his bedroom. When he’s done that, I point at the gloves and the bleach and tell him to get to work. He can’t clean for shit, but that’s exactly why it needs to be him.
“What are you going to do with her?” he asks as I start dragging the rolled-up bedding out of his bedroom.
“We’re going to plant a garden. Brighten up the place a little.”
“In the backyard?” He frowns.
“She’s not fucking going anywhere in my car.” I glare at him. “You should have thought of that before you did this.”
He doesn’t say a word, and it’s settled. Vasily never asks what I do with the bodies. He just asks if it’s taken care of. Unless Andrei decides to open his fat trap, there’s a good chance he’ll never know about this sloppily executed job. At least, not until I need him to.
Once I have the body in the kitchen, I open the garage and start digging through the piles of shit Andrei has accumulated over the years. I don’t know why he’s even bothered to keep half of it. There are at least a dozen boxes full of junk that I have to kick out of the way to get to the shovel. And it’s just my fucking luck that one of them rips at the side, scattering the contents all over the concrete floor.