Page 15 of Dirty Crown
“She’s fucking useless to me now,” Ilya said. “If we can’t make a deal, then what the fuck is the point?”
Faster than I thought humanly possible, Amara was at Ilya’s side. She slammed her fist into his temple and reached down to draw a gun from his side holster. She held it to his head and flicked the safety off.
“I refuse to listen to you blather on about another woman,” Amara hissed in his ear. “I fucking refuse to sit here and have you denigrate a girl who has done nothing but obey orders and clean up the filth that you dump on her. You’re going to transfer her a million in cash, or I’m going to fucking shoot you right here and now.”
“Go ahead,” Ilya chuckled. “The minute you try, my guards will unload their guns into you. If I die, then you die.”
“At least I’ll take you out with me,” Amara growled. She caressed Ilya’s temple with the end of the barrel, like a dangerous lover. “I’d rather drag your corpse to hell than sit here idly by while you destroy another woman’s life.”
I wondered what had happened to her when she was gone, because I’d never seen her so enraged. I liked it, but I didn’t like that something terrible had to happen for me to see this side of her.
“You don’t have the balls to do a damned fucking thing to me,” Ilya insisted. “Not after I broke you myself.”
Behind them both, Ilya’s guards had set Maksim down to the ground and were standing at attention with their guns pointed at Amara. He had six in total, and I didn’t see how she was going to get out of this on her own.
Which is why she was lucky that she wasn’t all by herself. She had us with her, and my Kings and I had anticipated something like this.
I nodded to Ryker why was standing at the end of the row farthest away from me.
He nodded back, reached into his jacket, and pulled out his own weapon. He snapped the safety, leveled it at Ilya and said, “I guess you’ll take this risk over a million dollars? What is that, chump change to you, right? Listen to Amara, give Avery her due, and then get the fuck out of here.”
Kingston drew his weapon. Then so did Archer and Valen.
I finally stepped forward, handed Ivan a handgun, and lifted one of my own.
“I guess being around your dirtbag son taught me a thing or two about not trusting anybody from your family,” I said with a smile. “I’m sorry about his nipples, by the way.”
Confusion flickered across Ilya’s face and he opened his mouth then closed it again. He turned around and looked towards Maksim, but his son stood impassive without speaking.He turned back to me.
“What do you mean? His nipples?”He scoffed out the word as if it was a joke. As if he had no idea what I was talking about, and of course he didn’t. But he thought it was something amusing, nothing serious.
“Why don’t you ask him?” I replied, raising an eyebrow in defiance.
“What the fuck is this bitch talking about?” he asked, turned around to look at his son.
“She hurt me,” Maksim said, speaking at last. His voice quavered as if he was about to cry. “She cut me. She made me bleed, daddy. She hurt me bad.”
He started speaking in Russian, and tears welled up in his eyes. I was filled with joy at his pain, and I laughed at how he reverted to baby talk when he was fighting humiliation.
After everything he’d ever done to me, this pleased me more than anything else.
“What a fucking pussy,” I giggled and waved my gun towards Ilya. “I can see why you wanted me to join the family, then you’d have at least one child who wasn’t a complete and utter disappointment.”
“It’s not that,” Ilya exclaimed, whirling back to me. He was still facing down the barrel of all our guns but acting like nothing was out of the ordinary. He was either very stupid or had nerves of steel, and the longer I talked to him the more I suspected it was the first one. “It’s that I wanted access to Ivan’s shipping networks. It would open my family business up to international destinations we don’t currently have.”
“You wanted to use them fro drug and human trafficking,” Ivan said, narrowing his eyes and brandishing his gun. “Just own up to it. I think that’s the worst part dealing with somebody like you. You think I can’t see your true intentions because you think I’m as stupid as the rest of you.”
“I don’t think that,” Ilya replied, but you could hear it in his voice. He just assumed we were all as easy to fool as his son and other people he did business with. “Now let’s get back to injuring my son. If you did hurt him that much then we demand compensation.”
“Give Avery her million before we continue any conversation,” Amara said with a sharp nudge of her gun towards him. She made contact with the side of his head and Ilya looked more irritated than pained.
“Fine,” Ilya begrudgingly agreed. “I’ll do it. Fuck you’re persistent.”
He pulled out his phone and went through a few actions. I could see him tapping in a passcode, then swiping to send funds, and finally closing it and holding the it up. “Tell the bitch to check her account.”
Amara looked back at Avery. “You want to let me know if the money’s there?”
I had removed her bonds a while back, but until then she’d been unmoving and almost too stunned to speak. But when Amara spoke, Avery picked up her phone, logged in and waited a few minutes. It always took a little while for money to complete the transfer, and during that time I enjoyed myself by staring down Ilya and Maksim, one by one. Mind games to exert my power and amuse myself.
