Page 43 of Refrain (Beautiful Monsters #2)

I’d forgotten about the connection to Arno, but as I head for the elevator and ride it to the top floor, it shoves its way into my mind again.

Could the Petrovs have crossed the Cartel?

Jose certainly seems like the type of enemy to warrant an increase in security, but Piotr always worked hard to soothe his allies in the drug trade.

No, I suspect that another enemy has him spooked.

Any other day, I’d consider finding out who.

Now, it’s all I can do just to focus on breathing. Living. Fighting.

My fingers are slick with sweat. Breathe.

I do, keeping the gun tuckedinsidethe pocket of my jacket.

His jacket. I smell him even here, clashing with the growing stench of Wolf Blood and real blood in the air.

I still taste him, faint at the back of my throat like a memory, one I cling to as my past looms ahead of me.

The door to the suite is locked this time, and a scowling man in a black suit answers it when I knock. He takes one look at me and mutters something into the headset affixed to his bald head. A reply comes a second later, laced with static.

“Let her in.”

The man steps aside and leaves me to wander the maze of corridors alone.

I find Piotr in a study. The same one that used to serve as his base of operations back in the old days.

Once again, nostalgia has me rooted to the spot.

The floors are still dark wood, the walls a familiar shade of black.

He even kept it furnished the same. I used to sit on his lap while he sat on that chair and snarled orders into the old-fashioned rotary phone on his desk.

Make me more money. Kill that bastard. Bring me their heads.

Today, he seems to be in the middle of bookkeeping. A ledger is open in front of him. When he sees me, he lets a silver pen fall from his hand and rises swiftly to his feet.

“Ksei—”

“I discovered your little spy. You won’t bother her again,” I throw at him, but the words don’t land with the impact I want. My voice is a pathetic rasp andhejust…stares.

“Did you kill her?”

I would sell my soul to never see that look on his face again. Hope. Hunger. He inhales sharply, seeming to grow larger with every breath of air he takes, feeding off mine.

“No.” I clench my fingers together. “I’m not a monster, like you.”

“Ah, but you wanted to.” His tongue seems to caress each and every word, gently driving them into my skull .

Did I? He advances a step before I can convince myself of the opposite.

He’s wearing black again. Another tailored ebony suit with a blood-red tie to draw the eye. “Another obstacle between us gone.”

I back away until I’m on the other side of the room, leaving a leather chair between us. “Was she the only one?”

Of course not. His eyes take on that cunning, predatory gleam.

“A diligent man uses more than one eye to see with,Ksei.”

My own gaze fights to stay clear. My eyes sting. My vision is a sloppy smear. Who else? Darcy? Francisco? Who else does he have in his pocket to watch me and whisper back in his ear?

I can’t smuggle them all to Ivan .

“Is this why you came to me now,Ksei?” he asks in a dangerously soft tone. “Or is that just what you told yourself?”

It’s like he’s inside my head, pulling the strings to my emotions—broken puppets manipulated across a stage doused in gasoline. The savoring looks he casts at my body serve as the lit match tossed on it all.

When his tongue shoots out along his lower lip, I’m ablaze.

“I thought you were brave enough,”Domi said. My heart pounds, striving with every beat to prove her wrong.

“I wanted to ask you one thing before I kill you,” I tell him, fighting to make my voice stronger. It breaks. My hand shakes. I don’t pull the gun just yet, but I can. I will.

“Of course.” He folds his hands over his front, continuing to smile that wolfish grin. “You may ask me anything. Anything you wish.”

Anything. It’s a dangerous prospect. I need to shoot him in the head and be done with it. Hope is an awful fucking thing. It seeps into your conscience before you can smother it, tipping the scales between fear and hate.

“Tell me…” I swallow hard and fight to suck in air. I won’t go back there. I won’t be sucked into the memory.

As if to taunt me, the images appear anyway—my father dead, my stepmother lying bleeding and broken, my sister.

“Anna…Anastasia.” Just by saying her name, I’m clawing decades-old wounds open in one fell swoop. “My sister. Where is she?”

I wait for Piotr to shrug me off, but a curious thing happens. His smile falls, but his eyes still gleam as an ominous sensation clenches in my stomach. I learned to grit my teeth and pray to God whenever he got that look.

“Your sister.” He shakes his head sadly, though he’s not really concerned. In fact, I’ve never seen him look so happy. “She’s alive, Ksei. She’s safe.”

“W-what?” Pain. Agony. Relief. I feel it all like a kick in the stomach. I’ve told myself that reality for over tenyears,but finally hearing it…

“How? Where is she?” I picture her as a child, little Anna. Her impish little smile and sweet kisses. I don’t find her in the office, and Piotr stops me when I head for the doorway.

“She’s not here,” he says. “I brought her into the country a few months ago. That’s why you came back, isn’t it?”

My roller coaster of grief comes to a screeching halt and then implodes. So it wasn’t a coincidence that I stumbled across the redheaded girl in the database all those months ago. She was bait, used to lure me here.

“Where?”

“Somewhere safe.” Noting my confusion, he explains, “She wasn’t put into the trade,Ksei.”

My lungs flood with so much air at once that I nearly choke. Is this relief? Or terror? “Then…then where?”

“My father and his wife at the time had a young child who died. They took her.” He could be referring to a doll for all the emotion his voice holds.

“They raised her, but my father has his own enemies who attacked their compound and killed his wife, so he put the girl into hiding. I offered to bring her to America for safekeeping, so to speak. It upsets you to learn this,” Piotr says almost as if in awe of the gauntlet of emotions a normal human can feel in the face of grief.

He takes a step toward me, and I nearly blow a hole through Espi’s jacket in my haste to draw the gun.

My eyes throb, my vision nonexistent. But I aim the gun in his direction anyway. I won’t miss. I can’t. “You’re lying.” Maybe Ivan was right after all. I’d rather face the fact that my sister is dead than have her memory used as a pawn to trap me again. “Tell me where she is or I’m gone.”

“I will,” he promises, and the thud of footsteps trails off. “But you must earn your present from me.”

His voice drips like liquid honey, the same way it used to whenever I did something or someone well enough to please him. My perfect littleKsei.

In his world, a “present” equated to a test. A tough client to win over or an impressive amount of drugs to imbibe, snort, or inject. Anything to make him happy. Anything to make him smile.

Fearless Chloe Parker should demand that he elaborate, but I…I can’t. I just wait, and he mulls the silence left in my wake like a wolf savoring the bloody trail of its prey.

“I promise you will enjoy it…but I do not have it ready, and frankly, I was not expecting you to arrive so soon.” He frowns, and my heart lurches. Piotr is predictable when caught off guard.

I wait for my punishment. Hands or fists? However, he doesn’t move. For now.

“Come back tomorrow night,” he tells me. “Apparently, seven days is too long a wait—”

“Likehell, I will.” I trail the gun over his forehead . Do it, I tell myself. “Tell me where my sister is, or I’ll kill you.” My wrist throbs with tension, but my finger won’t pull the trigger.

“When you return,” he tells me. “And you will . Like hell, it is inevitable. But I promise that you willregainyour lovely smile again.”

My mouth flattens in spite. He’s lying. “I won’t come back.”

“Until then, Ksei.” He turns back to whatever business I distracted him from.

I don’t know how long I stand here with the gun trained on the back of his head. Minutes. Hours. I feel numb when I finally turn away without firing a single bullet.

It’s a silent walk back the way I came. The bouncer grunts inacknowledgmentwhen I leave. By the time I make it to the lobby without a knife in my back, I realize he’s really letting me leave unscathed for the second time within twenty-four hours.

I came back to him for the second time…

It’s a thought I can’t bear to face alone. Not sober. Not painfully, achingly clean. A million lines of cocaine couldn’t give me the hit I need though.

I dig my nails into my palms. Hard…harder. I’m desperate enough to do anything and everything to escape the pressure building within my skull when I finally remember.

“If you need me, you know where to find me.”

But he isn’t in Mulligan’s when I finally slip through the front door. Francisco is manning the bar alone.

“Thanks for fucking bailing, kid!” he shouts above the din of music and drunken laughter. He must not be able to see the blood. “Where’s your little friend?”

“I…I think she’s gone.” I watch my fingers fidget with the frayed edge of my sleeve. “Ran off with a boyfriend or something.”

“Hmph.” Francisco eyes the counter with what could be deemed a disappointed frown. “I needed the fucking help. Anyway, if you’re looking for Espi, he’s gone. Arno’s closing the bar down for business, so Darcy took him out.”

Is it that late already? I glance over my shoulder and spot the dark sky visible beyond the windows. I didn’t even notice night falling during my trek across town. I’m that desperate. That needy.

“Where?”

If he’s surprised that I’m curious, he doesn’t mention it. “Davey’s. It’s on Fourth. Not far from here. I guess someone else can take your spot tonight.”