Page 44 of Ruthless Sinner

So that’s what I attacked.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked him pleasantly as the hours ticked by.

Misha wasn’t the type to impatiently pace. He just sat back and played solitaire. “A stripper at Cozy Bunny. But if you think that you’ll be able to seduce me into letting you go…” He waggled a finger at me and then turned over another card. “You’re mistaken. You wouldn’t be the first person to offer me sex, or even to become my permanent bed warmer, if I spared them.”

I snorted. “Wow, you really should do your research more. Y’know they said in the file on you that you could stand to be taken down a peg and I guess they were right.”

Misha looked up at me slowly. “The file?” he repeated.

I tilted my head at him and smiled, wiggling my fingers. “Hi, dumbass. I’m Special Agent Kennedy Lancaster of the FBI.”

Misha exploded, as I’d expected him to.

See, no mafia guy was going to let a cop of any kind leave his care alive. That wasn’t how it worked. At first, Misha hoped that he could get information out of me about my Russo operation, but I didn’t let anything slip. I was doing this so that I wouldn’t betray Marco, and that meant to the Russians as well as to my own people.

Instead, I goaded him. I knew how he’d take it. The idea of this fed, not just any fed but awoman, talking back to him like this? Being so high and mighty, talking down to him like he was nothing? Picking at all the ways that he wasn’t properly professional, all the ways that he’d fucked up?

Yeah, he couldn’t possibly handle that.

I knew more about him than many at the bureau, since the mafia was my division and I needed to be prepped for my undercover work, so I was aware of the sort of jobs he’d done and his position in the family. It was far too easy to needle him about that.

“Word has it, you weren’t sent here because you could keep a couple of lazy spoiled brats in line,” I spit at him. “Word is that you were sent here because you weren’t good enough, weren’ttoughenough, for Russia. Americans are weak, spoiled, you’re tough tothem, but the ones back in Russia know the truth—”

That was when he hit me.

Excellent.

I spat out blood, my ears ringing and my jaw aching. “My boss was right. You’re just a thug underneath it all.”

The hits kept coming.

I cried, a little. Or rather I should say that some tears fell. I didn’t cry. But when you’re getting your ass kicked, and you’re in pain, tears tend to happen. It’s just a biological response. I didn’t try to fight it. I just needed to keep him angry enough to kill mefast.

Maybe if my parents had still been alive, I wouldn’t have done this. Maybe if I’d had any close friends left, if I hadn’t lost all of them as taking care of my mom swallowed my whole life, I wouldn’t have done this. But I had no one. No one in my life besides Marco. And this—this was all I could do for him. I couldn’t be with him. But I could die for him.

I spat out more blood, one of my eyes swollen shut, my head pounding, bruises everywhere. The ropes cut into my wrists and ankles as I jolted around from being hit. My ribs ached.

Misha walked over to the table where he’d been playing solitaire and picked up his gun, cocking it. “I hate to go back on my word,” he said, walking back over to me. “But I’m sure Marco will understand when I tell him. A snake like you could not be permitted to live.”

“Honor among thieves?” I chuckled, my lips barely able to form the words. They’d split some time ago, and my jaw had been hit, and so forming words was a study in pain.

Misha raised his gun. “More than your kind have.”

I closed my eyes, strangely at peace with all of this.

A shot rang out.

There were some who theorized that the moment of death felt like nothing. That one second you were alive and feeling pain, the next—just, all of it gone.

At first, I thought that’s what had happened, but then I realized I still felt things. My body still hurt. I just—hadn’t been shot?

I opened my good eye.

Misha had a bullet right through the center of his head. He swayed on the spot, like his body was taking a moment to catch up to the idea that he was dead—and then he fell with a sick, heavy thud.

My breathing started to come in fast and shaky. What was this? What was going on?

“Kennedy?” I heard Marco in the distance.

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