30. Radimir

30

RADIMIR

An hour later, Valentin, Gennadiy, Mikhail and I sat down at the big table in Gennadiy’s dining room. “What’s going on?” I asked.

Gennadiy sighed and leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “According to our guy in the police, they know it was foul play. They found a partial footprint in the bathroom: someone wearing shoes, and Borislav was naked.”

“How have they found it now?!” I demanded. “It’s been almost a week! Borislav is in the ground! I thought they’d closed down the crime scene and gone home!”

“They had,” said Valentin sympathetically. “Spartak has cops in his pocket just like we do. Word is, he suspected it was murder and pushed them to go back and take a second look.”

I put my head in my hands and unleashed a long string of curses. It had been raining that night, my shoes had probably been wet and dirty. Why hadn’t I checked the floor before I left? But I knew the reason: I’d been racing after Bronwyn. I lifted my head and looked around the table. “I’m sorry,” I said solemnly. “I fucked up.”

Gennadiy reached across and patted my hand. “You’re human, brother, much as you like to pretend it’s not true.” The others nodded sympathetically. But Valentin looked drawn and tense. He was probably thinking that it should have been him in that bathroom, doing our family’s dirty work. If I’d let him, we wouldn’t be in this situation. He wouldn’t have been running after his lover. But I’d been too determined to protect him… I cursed again.

“The good news is, the police don’t know it was you,” said Gennadiy. “All of the families have had visits from the police.”

“The bad news is that Spartak has heard,” said Mikhail grimly. “He knows now that his brother was murdered. He’s called a meeting of all the families. He wants us there now.”

“Your woman—” Gennadiy began.

“She has a name,” I cut in.

He nodded apologetically. “Bronwyn. Is she going to be able to handle this?”

I glared at him. He’d wanted to kill her. That had always been his preferred solution, cleaner and simpler than marrying her. And what really bothered me was...if the situation was reversed, if he or Valentin or Mikhail had gotten themselves involved with a woman, I knew that I would have been pushing them to kill their lover, to protect them, just as he was trying to protect me. “She’s already lied to the police for us,” I said. I thought of how hard she worked, how she refused to quit despite being in constant pain. “She’s tougher than you think!” It came out sharper than I meant it to, and I felt my face heat.

We both dropped our gazes. I stood up. “Let’s go and see Spartak,” I muttered.

Spartak could have held the meet at his house, or at a club. But he demanded that we all go to an abandoned theme park on the edge of town. The wind whipped snow sideways, rocking the Ferris wheel back and forth a few degrees. Above us, an old-fashioned roller coaster sagged sideways, looking like it might collapse on us at any second. And the haunted house, once comically unscary, had been turned into something genuinely unsettling by mold and rot, the roof sagging and the broken windows gaping like jagged maws. At one in the morning, in the middle of a snowstorm, there was no one but us for miles and Spartak’s message was clear: he could kill us all and no one would know.

We formed a circle: about twenty of us, the same mafia families who’d been at Borislav’s funeral, but everyone had left their partners at home. Spartak was in the center and the instant I saw him, my chest contracted in fear. He was stalking around like a riled-up bull, his fury so great that he couldn’t stand still.

The last person arrived, and Spartak’s men formed a wider circle outside ours. “For security,” Spartak told us. But they faced inward, not outward, their guns at the ready. My stomach started to churn.

“My brother,” spat Spartak, “has been murdered. And everyone with a motive is standing in front of me.” He paced around the circle, glaring into faces. People gulped and tried to meet his gaze.

Spartak reached our side of the circle and stared at Valentin, then Mikhail, then Gennadiy...and then me. “I’m going to find out who it was,” he told us. “And when I do, I’m going to take whoever you care about most and make you watch while I take them apart, piece by piece.”

I imagined Bronwyn, screaming and bloodied, and wanted to throw up. But as Spartak stared at me, I forced my expression to be stony and cold. A flicker, and I was dead.

Spartak finally nodded that we could go. I climbed into the car, shaken. I’m used to being threatened but Spartak’s threat was suddenly real in a way it wouldn’t have been a month ago.

For the first time, I had a weakness.