Page 4 of BRATVA'S Avenging Bride
Black plumes twisting against the night sky like something dying slowly, choking the air with the stench of burning paint and flesh. Fire trucks block the street, their lights painting the ruins in red and blue. Men in yellow gear move through the wreckage like ants picking over a corpse.
My club. My territory. Myproblem.
I get out and lean against the car, watching it all burn down to nothing.
Emil stands beside me, his jaw tight with barely contained rage. "Pakhan won't like this. Three dead. The building's a total loss. And Boris—"
"Boris was a pig. So was Abram. If I'd known what they were running in there, I would've done this myself."
"You did know." His voice is careful, but accusatory.
He is right. I did know. Not the details, but enough. The girls. The locked doors. The way Boris's books never quite added up, the way money disappeared into pockets that weren't mine.
I knew, and I let it continue.
That was my mistake.
"Show me the footage again."
Emil pulls out his phone, queues up the security camera file we pulled from the hardware store across the street. The angle's shit, but it's enough.
I watch her jump out of the flames. Walk away.
She's small. Dark hair wild around her face, clothes torn and stained black with soot. She moves like something broken learning how to stand again. Stumbling, shaking, but upright. Alive.
She stops in the middle of the street and turns back to watch it burn. The firelight catches her face, and even through the grainy footage, I can see it.
Satisfaction.
"That's her," Emil says. "Katherine Vine. Twenty-three. Been working there three years. No record, no family, nothing. She's a ghost."
"Not a ghost." I zoom in on her face, studying the way she stands there like a goddess surveying her own apocalypse. "A survivor."
"She killed three of our men."
"She killed threerapistswho worked for us." I pocket the phone. "There's a difference."
Emil goes quiet. He knows better than to argue when I use that tone.
I should be angry. I should be ordering her capture, her punishment, her death.
But all I feel is...fascination.
She walked into a building and burned it down with my men inside. She saved the girls and left the monsters to choke. She didn't run until it was done.
That's not revenge. That'sexecution.
"Find her," I say.
"To do what?"
I smile, slow and cold. "To talk."
The address takes twenty minutes to track down. A shithole apartment in a building that should've been condemned a decade ago. Cracked windows, graffiti on the walls, the kind of place where people go to disappear.
Perfect.
I take the stairs two at a time, Emil following behind me. The door to the flat is thin, flimsy. One kick and it would cave.
