Vasik sits back, his mouth curdling at the corners. He thinks he’s being brave. He thinks he’s being atough negotiator. The fucking idiot. “I’ve heard things about you, Volkov,” he says,his voice gaining a desperate, bravado-fueled edge. “The great Razvan. The Wrath. Men piss themselves when they hear your name.” He tilts his head, a sneer tugging at his lip. “And yet here you are saying no to money. Saying no to expansion. What, are you afraid of women?”
I keep my hands flat on the desk. My fingers don’t twitch. If I let them move, I will reach across this desk and tear his tongue out through his throat.This stupid, arrogant, walking corpse.I say nothing. I just watch him dig his own grave with every syllable.
By the door, Lyosha has gone quiet. Not the quiet of a guard, but the quiet of a storm front five minutes before the tornado hits. He’s waiting for the signal to turn this office into a slaughterhouse.
“The most feared man in Russia,” Vasik continues, warming to his own suicide note, “won’t touch the most profitable business on the market.” He leans forward again, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial, disgusting whisper. “Tell me something. After all these years of being so very frightening, does everything still work? You know what I mean. Do you still have a functioning dick or have the bitches?—”
I feel the heat rising in my neck, a dark, pulsing roar. I could kill him a thousand different ways before he finishes that sentence. I could have Dmitri skin him. I could let Lyosha break every bone in his hands. I could let Mike, well, Mike would just end him.
I stand up.
I’m across the desk before his next breath can leave his lungs. I catch him by the collar with both hands, fistfuls of silk and sweat, and I yank him out of his seat. He’s heavy, a dead weightof useless meat, but I don’t care. I drag him into the center of the room.
The first hit lands on the bridge of his nose.Crack.It’s a beautiful, clean sound. The kind of sound that settles the static in my brain. Blood erupts instantly, a hot, dark spray that paints his mouth and chin before soaking into that pathetic, expensive jacket. He makes a sound, a high, thin wheeze. It’s the sound of a man who has spent his life ordering violence but has never actually felt the cold, hard reality of a knuckle meeting bone. He has no framework for this. No defense.
I hit him again.
This time it’s the orbital bone. I feel the socket give, a sickening, wet crunch against my knuckle. He goes sideways, his legs tangling in his own expensive pants, and I go down with him. I’m on him before he hits the carpet, my knee driven into his sternum, pinning his lungs flat.
I work methodically. Jaw. Ribs.Snap.That’s the third rib. He screams, a wet, bubbly sound, and tries to curl into a fetal ball. I don’t let him. I grab his hair and pull his head back, exposing the target. My fist splits his lip on the next one.
Blood is everywhere now. It’s on my knuckles, hot and tacky. It’s splattered across my white shirt. It’s soaking into the Persian rug in dark, spreading blossoms. Vasik has stopped trying to form words. He’s just making sounds, ragged gurgles that remind me of a dying engine. I hit him until the gurgling slows to a whimper.
I straighten up. My knuckles are throbbing, a dull, satisfied ache. I stand over the ruined heap of him and breathe.
Say another word, you piece of filth,I think, looking down at the red mask where his face used to be.
He doesn’t say a word. He just leaks into my carpet.
I step back, the adrenaline beginning to cool into a hard, sharp clarity. I look at Lyosha. “Get him out.”
Lyosha doesn’t hesitate. He moves with the coiled energy of a dog finally let off its chain. He grabs Vasik by the collar, no more care than he’d give a bag of trash, and drags him toward the door.
Vasik’s heels leave two dark, glistening streaks through the blood on the floor. Dmitri watches the trail with the mild, detached interest of a man watching rain hit a windowpane.
Mike walks up and hands me a clean white cloth for my knuckles.
I take it, wiping the gore from my skin. I’m straightening my cuffs, adjusting the links until they are perfectly symmetrical, when the knock comes at the door.
One of the gate guards. Young, newer, and currently wearing the expression of a man who has done the math on his timing and found it deeply unfortunate. His eyes dart to the blood on the carpet then back to his boots.
“Sir.” He swallows hard. “There’s a woman at the gate.”
“Send her away.”
I turn back toward my desk.
“Sir, she says?—”
“I said send her away.” I don’t look up. Not now. Not today. Not when I have blood on my hands and Vasik’s teeth marks on my patience. “I don’t care what she says. Send. Her. Away.”
“Sir.” The guard’s voice does something. A small fracture in it. “She gave her name, sir. She said to tell you specifically.” A pause. “It’s Lena Sokolova.”
Everything stops.
The room. The air. The blood moving through my body.
It’s as if the earth has suddenly ceased its rotation.