Page 90 of Goodnight, Sinners

“I… I don’t know what you mean.”

Havel’s smirk disappeared and he straightened in his seat, placing his hands on the table and deliberately rising slowly, with menace.

“Don’t you?” Havel let his question hang in the air before continuing. “The Bratva doesn’t like when attention is brought to them unless they deliberately ask for it. You were given to this family to get you out of Russia and away from your highly positioned uncle. You were drawing too much negative attention to him. Now, what could you possibly have done that was so bad not even the Bratva could sanction it?”

Havel shoved away from the table and strode toward Adam, who leapt to his feet in alarm. He tried to stand his ground, but the hulking, muscular, tattooed thug bearing down on him gave him nowhere to go.

“This is ridiculous,” Adam said, his voice shaking. “You don’t know anything.”

“You think not?” Havel came to a stop uncomfortably close to Adam. Havel was several inches taller, bringing his collarbone in line with Adam’s eyes.

Adam was forced to look up when he answered.

“There’s no evidence.”

“There’s always evidence,” Havel countered. “As an accountant, you should know that. No one gets away with their crimes forever.”

Adam scrambled back, hitting the wall behind him then sliding toward the staircase leading to the top floor.

“What about you?” Adam tried to sound tough but failed. “What about your crimes?”

“That is between me and God.”

Havel believed he would one day face judgment, then spend his eternity in purgatory. He was at peace with that. He was not at peace with monsters like Adam getting away with their crimes while still living on the earthly plane.

“But you…” Havel stalked the man across the room, their movements made eerie by the candlelight. “You are a killer. You will burn in this world before I allow you to go to the next.”

“You’re a killer too!” Adam protested. “What’s the difference?”

“I don’t murder innocent women.”

The truth lay in the air between them. Up to that point, Adam hadn’t known how much Jozef or Havel knew about his proclivities. Havel thought it was about time he lay his cards on the table. He was done with Adam living in his little cottage, enjoying his candlelit meals. Havel was going to give him something to worry about until the moment he was ready to end things with the accountant. He would torture the other man’s thoughts, drive him to the edge, then he would do it some more before finally taking his life.

Havel wasn’t doing it for any noble reason. He wasn’t doing it for the women whose lives Adam had stolen prematurely. No, he was doing it for himself. He wanted vengeance for the innocence this man stole from the woman he loved.

“Those women weren’t innocent,” Adam protested. “They were all prostitutes. They sold sex. They deserved – ”

Havel reached for his gun, pressing it to Adam’s temple. “Finish that sentence, accountant.”

Adam chose to remain silent.

Havel stepped back, tucking the gun back into his holster. “We’ll finish this conversation another time.”

Chapter Forty

Jozef greeted the Bratva with nods and handshakes as he accepted his place among them.

He’d been led by their footman to the ‘study’ where business was conducted during those times when it absolutely must occur on palace grounds. In general, the palace was used as a vacation home for the top members of the Bratva, not business.

Jozef believed the Bratva had brought him to the palace to make a statement. They wanted him to know that he was welcome among them. If they’d been trying to intimidate him, they would have invited him to Moscow. If that had been the case, Jozef would’ve left Shaun behind, despite the invitation making it clear that her presence was mandatory.

Jozef didn’t care if he went to war with the entire Bratva organization, he would protect his wife with the last breath in his body.

Fortunately, for their sake, it seemed the Bratva didn’t want him dead.

There were eleven men in the room. Jozef recognized all of them. The eldest member, a ninety-eight-year-old mobster by the name of Ivan Siberia, was the top voice of the Bratva. They called him Siberia because no one knew his actual name. Not even Ivan knew. He’d gone into a Siberian gulag as a teenager in the 1930s. He’d been among the first Bratva to rule the prisons. He’d had a reputation for blood-thirsty brutality that had only grown over the years. There were rumours that held he’d had enough men killed to fill a modest-sized city.

Ivan Siberia was the reason many of the Bratva of his age didn’t have families. He would use women and children for leverage, then kill them for sport. Despite his terrible reputation, or maybe because of it, he’d become a figurehead in his old age. And though the old man insisted that mobsters should never have families, rumour had it, Ivan had sired many illegitimate children over the years. He kept them well hidden from the organization he’d helped found.

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