Page 86 of In Her Blood
“Uh-huh.” Evelina stared at him. “Except youstolethat money.”
“As I said, I was saving important—”
She shot out her foot and kicked him sharply in the shin. “I’m very done with you, Pavel. Shut up.”
Pavel opened his mouth, but, blessedly, Mikey spoke over him. “We’re here.”
Evelina straightened, happily ignoring Pavel’s questions of where they were, and allowed Otto to help her from the vehicle.Once again, Pavel was dragged out, but she continued to ignore him. A strange flicker ofsomethingthreatened inside her, just for a moment, as she gazed again up at the distillery that loomed in front of them. But it passed.
While they’d been taking stock and cleaning up after the battle, discussion had naturally turned toward what to do. She didn’t have half the resources she should and she wasn’t fully confident Artem’s limited cleaning crew could manage a job of that scale. To be fair, she also hadn’t asked.
Then Mikey had gotten the alert on Pavel, and a brilliant idea had struck her about the time she heard someone whisper the wordflammable.
She was planning to up-end the Nikolaev legacy, anyway. There was no sense in leaving any of it behind. Not to her mind, at least. And there was still the matter of Grigoriy, who’d been hauled off somewhere to be held until more urgent matters had been handled. She saw no sense in not dumping all her problems into one proverbial pot.
So, she’d presented her idea to her more experienced cousins, and with a little fine-tuning, the wheels were put into motion.
“Wh-why are we at the distillery?” Pavel asked.
Evelina glanced over at him. “I told you. We’re here to see Grigoriy.” Then she started forward, leading the way inside with Otto and Mikey at her back and the men from St. Louis dragging their guest behind them.
The cloying, heavy aroma of spilled and half-fermented liquor overpowered any lingering scent of gunpowder or blood, and she figured that was good. Though the alcohol stench was enough to curdle her stomach on its own.
She told herself it was a temporary necessity and made sure not to let her twisting insides show on her face. The latter task became easier, at least, when she spotted her other guest on his ass, his face contorted in frustrated rage. There was surely little he could do, what with his shot-out knee and the three guns leveled at his head.
“So good to see you again, Grigoriy,” Evelina called, drawing his attention as she moved aside to make room for Pavel. “You remember my cousins from New Jersey, don’t you?” She smiled the saccharine smile she used to always offer Pyotr in front of her father—the same one that used to get her beat later for how transparent it was.
Grigoriy’s lips curled and he spat on the floor. “You disgrace your father, doing this to his business. Ugly whore.”
Pavel muttered something in Russian, his tone filled more with horror than anger. He was dragged forward and tossed to the floor near Grigoriy’s side. No one bothered restraining him, or shooting out his knees. He was held in place with the threat of another gun hovering in line with his nose.
Evelina bounced her eyes briefly between the two, then past them to the bodies that lay spread out and slumped over in more or less the exact places where they’d fallen.
Dante stepped up to her opposite side calmly. “Everything is set up as we discussed. Is there anything more you need from these men?”
“Fuck,” Pavel cursed, desperation coloring his voice. “Your mother never should have kept those letters!”
Evelina froze, her eyes blowing wide.
She felt Otto shift. “What the fuck did you say?”
“Annetta never accepted her place,” Pavel continued, talking faster as the anger overtook him. “She didn’t raise you right for this life, and she should never have keptmementosof a life she didn’t have. None of this—none of this would be happening if you’d never learned you were related tothem!”
Dante hummed low.
Evelina curled her hands into fists. There was only one way he knew about the letters. She’d assumed Pyotr, or Grisha, was responsible for what had become of her suite while she was out of town. But in truth, given that they’d turned around and set fire to the entire house, it didn’t make much sense that they’d bothered trashing her space. She’d written that off as an impulse control problem—Pyotr had those. It had been the logical conclusion.
But she had been wrong.
Evelina drew a hard breath. “It was you.” She locked her glare on Pavel. “You’re the one who ransacked my private room, destroyed everything I owned, stole Mamma’s last mementos, and murdered Chek.” She had to assume he’d killed the guard because he couldn’t have done the rest quietly.
“I was hoping you’d cashed out some of Mikhail’s money,” Pavel admitted. “Figured I’d make it look good. I knew you’d blame Pyotr without asking a single question.” His lip curled in a sneer. “Didn’t find a dime, but imagine my surprise when I found boxes of old memories—letterswith the nameDe Salvo, of all fucking things.”
“Letters?” Romeo asked.
She felt her throat swell with a combination of guilt and failure. “There was a shoebox full of letters,” Evelina replied. “Letters Mamma wrote to her sister, desperate to reconnect, when she was a child. They never made it where they were supposed to go, and apparently, she didn’t get all of them back, but the ones she did … she held on to.”
Pavel huffed. “Like I said, Annetta never should’ve—” He cut himself off with a scream as Romeo fired a bullet into his stomach.
