59. Max

The guy strapped to the metal chair with duct tape wails like a baby when my fist slams into his cheek. Honestly, I've barely even touched him and he's blubbing.

"Tell me who told you to shoot up the bar," I ask him again. Blood trickles down my arm, staining the cuff of my white shirt. The damn cut on my palm has opened up again. Natalya was right, I should have got it stitched. Oh well. It will be another nice scar to add to my collection.

"Fuck you," the asshole wheezes through his broken nose. "I'm not saying anything!"

Kolya laughs like a psycho. "Let's see how long it takes before you change your mind."

He's really pissed. I get it. If he hadn't been in the bar when this clown and his buddies strolled in with AK-47s - my fucking AK-47S! - the place would have been a fucking bloodbath.

It hasn't escaped my notice that the police took a long fucking time to show up either. Way longer than normal. Someone must have paid them off to turn a blind eye.

It's another niggling problem I have to deal with. If cops on my payroll are playing both sides, I need to know about it. Corrupt cops can't be trusted not to bite the hand that feeds them. I know this. However, if they're not loyal to me any longer, I have a problem.

It's yet another item on my to-do list. Which is getting longer by the day.

There's a loud scream as Kolya drives a blade into the man's thigh. Judging by the way the blade wobbles, he's hit the femur. Ouch. That's gotta hurt.

I'm genuinely surprised the guy's not talking yet. He's clearly not the brightest crayon in the box. It took Kolya very little time to track the idiot down after he and his friend ran away. Kolya cornered them in a brothel. The friend was waiting for his turn and died immediately. This clown was balls deep inside a girl.

Which reminds me, I need to pay off the brothel madame for the mess Kolya left behind when he dragged our friend out.

He's still naked with his little pecker on show. Little being the operative word. I watch with distaste as he pisses himself. Gross.

"OK! I'll talk!" Snot and tears run down his face. Kolya picks up another knife and spins it around, more than ready to make a few more holes in the guy.

"Who hired you?" When the idiot on the chair hesitates a little too long, Kolya drills a new hole in his other thigh.

It takes a few minutes for the screaming to stop, by which point I'm partially deaf in one ear.

"A guy called Tallin. He's paid us half when he handed over the guns and said we'd get the rest when the job was done." He sobs. Bet he's regretting taking the job on now.

"Tallin's working with Uriov," I muse, mostly to myself. Kolya is aware and it doesn't matter if the guy on the chair knows. He's not leaving this room.

"Please, I'll tell you anything you need to know," he cries, struggling against the tape binding his arms to the chair, which is bolted to the concrete floor. Blood and piss pool around the drain beneath the chair.

"What do you know about the new drug on the streets?" It's a long shot but he might have heard something.

"Drug?" His eyes are wide, confused. The pain is messing with his head.

"Ghost Chili."

"Only that the word is you're supplying the stuff and it fucks people up."

As I suspected. Someone is distributing it and blaming it on me. This guy knows nothing, he's a low-level grunt. I nod at Kolya and he pulls his gun out and shoots the pathetic asshole in the head.

"Call Konrad and a cleanup crew, then go home and get some sleep." He looks wrecked.

Just as I leave the warehouse and jump into a waiting SUV, Sasha calls.

"Boss, I have some bad news." Sasha never calls me boss unless we're in a meeting with the other guys. While I am technically the boss, our relationship is a lot more nuanced than that. The fact he's being so formal sends a shiver of dread down my spine. "Are you sitting down?"

"For fuck's sake, just spit it out, Sasha!" Artem looks at me in the rearview mirror and I shake my head, indicating that we need to wait here for a few minutes.

"Leon and Pietr followed Natalya and some guy she works with to one of the women's shelters set up by Kolanski. She was getting some material for an interview, I assume. Natalya and the guy went inside and our guys parked up in a side street to wait for them to come back out. Not long after they were distracted by a woman claiming her kid had been taken. They went to help but it turned out to be a false alarm, the kid had just wandered off."

"Is this cute story going anywhere, Sasha?" I grind my teeth. If my malyshka is in trouble, I need to know.

"Yes, just giving you some context before you lose your fucking shit," he snaps. "So in the ten minutes or so the guys didn't have eyes on the car Natalya and her colleague arrived in, someone put an explosive device under it."

My heart stops beating. The world fades until all I can see is my malyshka dead. She can't be dead. I refuse to entertain the notion she's gone. Not when she doesn't know how I feel about her.

Memories of my father's death hit me like a sledgehammer. The sound of the explosion. Heat. Burning fragments of metal stinging my flesh as I ran toward the car. Screaming. The scent of scorched flesh and blood. The shocking realization that my all-powerful father was dead and the Bratva was now mine.

"Maxim! Listen to me!" Sasha is yelling in my ear. I rub my jaw reflexively and focus on what he's trying to tell me. If she's dead, I will hunt down whoever is responsible and make them pay. The irony of losing my father in a bomb blast and now Natalya isn't lost to me. Are the two events linked in some way?

My brain can't compute right now. All I can think about is my angel. I refuse to accept she's gone.

"Tell me, I need to know. Is she dead?"

"No. She's injured but not too badly." I suck in a breath and fight to calm my racing heart. Artem is watching me carefully. He knows something's wrong but not what. "The bomb went off when her colleague unlocked the car but thankfully she'd stopped to check her phone. She was thrown—"

"Hospital, which fucking hospital, Sasha!"

"St. Margarite's."

"St. Margarite's get me there, now!" I yell. Artem, to his credit, doesn't ask questions. He just puts his foot down and drives.