Page 23 of Scarlet Chains
No!
The word doesn’t leave my mouth, but it screams through every fiber of my being. My entire body goes rigid, muscles locked in place like rigor mortis. The room spins slightly, and I have to blink several times to steady myself.
It takes everything inside me not to fling the phone across the room. Instead, I slowly set it down on the desk and put it on speaker, because my hands are shaking now— actually shaking— and I can’t trust myself not to crush it completely.
“If you know that, you also know it was self-defense,” I snarl, memories surging like black water threatening to drown me.
Moonlight on asphalt. The parking lot’s shadows stretching like fingers. Shiradze’s eyes wild with rage and desperation. The smell of cigarettes and fear-sweat. The metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
The knife had come out of nowhere, flashing as it arced toward my throat. I’d reacted instinctively, muscle memory from years on Moscow streets. Shiradze had lunged, I’d grasped his wrist and twisted with clinical precision… and the blade had slid between his ribs with sickening ease. His shocked eyes had locked with mine as understanding dawned.“No,”he’d whispered. Then his knees buckled and he crumpled like paper.
I blink back to the present, Stanley’s breathing heavy on the line like he’s getting off on my discomfort.
“You can spin it however you want,” he says, and I can hear him moving around— pacing maybe. “Self-defense, business, justice— call it whatever helps you sleep at night. But do you think she’ll see the difference? Do you think she’ll care about the details when she finds out her father’s blood is on your hands?”
My throat constricts. “It was justice,” I grit out. I’ve told myself this a thousand times, carved it into my bones until it felt like truth. Shiradze was stealing from us, destroying our business. He deserved what he got. But Ilona…bozhe moy, Ilona doesn’t know. Can never know.
“Justice,” Stanley repeats, savoring the word. “That’s rich. You sound just like you did when you used to lecture me about honor and loyalty. When all you are is just another killer in an expensive suit.”
“If you lay a hand on her—” I start, half-rising from my chair, but Stanley’s laughter cuts me off.
“Then what?” he spits, and I can hear the triumph in his voice. He knows he’s found my weakness, the one thing that can bring me to my knees. “You’ll kill me? You don’t even know where I am, Osip. And from what I’ve heard through the grapevine, you don’t know where she is either. She could be standing right next to me for all you know. Hell, I could be watching her sleep.”
The image sends my thoughts spinning into chaos. Stanley’s hands on her. Her frightened eyes. Her voice calling my name while I’m powerless to help. My free hand claws at my chest, right over where my tattoos mark the number of men I’ve killed. Right now, that number feels inadequate.
My vision goes red around the edges. The office furniture seems to shimmer and warp like a mirage.
“What the fuck do you want, Morrison?” The words scrape out of me like I’m choking on them. Like admitting weakness. “You want the two million? Fine. I’ll wire it tonight.”
But even as I say the words, I know it’s no longer about the money. Maybe it never was. But if cash will make this go away, if it will keep Ilona safe, I’ll pay it ten times over. I’ll sell everything I’ve built if that’s what it takes.
“No,” he says, smug as shit. “Fuck you, Sidorov. You had your chance to be reasonable. I came to you hat in hand, and you spat in my face. You told me to go cry to someone who gave a shit.”
I remember that conversation. Stanley storming into my office and demanding money like I was his personal ATM. I’d told him to fuck off. More than once.
“I wanted the two million,” Stanley continues. “But you refused to give it to me. You said I could go fuck myself. Remember that? So now, I have a better idea. I’m going to make you suffer, Osip. I’ll ruin your fucking life. Piece by piece. And now that I know your weak spot, I know exactly how to do it.”
My chest feels like it’s caving in. “Stanley, listen—”
“No, you listen.” His voice turns vicious. “I’m going to take everything from you. Your business. Your reputation. Your peace of mind. And when I’m done with all that, I’m going to take your girl. She’ll learn what kind of monster you really are, and then she’ll come running to me. Just like before.”
“Just like before?” The words come out strangled.
“Surely you know that, Osip? She was mine long before she ever spread her legs for you. And when she finds out what you did to her old man, she’ll be mine again. That’s if I let her live that long.”
The line goes dead.
I stare at the phone in my hand, realizing that I’ve gripped it so tightly I’ve cracked the screen. Spider web fractures spreadacross the display like broken ice. The silence in my office is deafening, broken only by the sound of my own ragged breathing and the rapid hammering of my pulse in my ears.
Stanley has Ilona in his sights. Stanley knows I killed her father. Stanley wants to watch me burn.
Suka!
I don’t have time to get emotional now. There are calls to make. Men to mobilize. A war to prepare for. But my hands won’t stop shaking, and for the first time in twenty years, I feel like that scared kid on the Moscow streets again— desperate and powerless and so fucking afraid of losing the only thing that matters.
But if Stanley thinks he can use her against me, he’s about to learn exactly why they used to call me the Butcher of Sokolniki.
Some lessons are written in blood.
