Page 19

Mikhail

Mikhail

“Where is he?” I asked Benjamin as soon as I entered the warehouse. I asked Peter to take Arielle home after the gala, and I rushed here immediately.

True to my suspicions, the idiot responsible for the attack on my port was foolish enough to show his face at my gala. We would’ve missed him if one of Enzo’s sensors hadn’t caught the minute camera embedded in his glasses. He must’ve thought himself brilliant enough to sneak into an exclusive gala, make videos of our transactions, and sneak out without being noticed.

“The basement,” Benjamin replied, leading the way. “He’s a tough nut and has refused to say a word since we brought him in.”

“He will talk. I just need a minute with him, and he’ll be singing like a fucking canary,” I seethe, increasing my strides.

When Enzo beeped me with the alert that they’ve got him, I was hit with both relief and anger, and I had to force myself not to leave the gala midway and smash the bastard’s head into a brick. We finally got to the basement after what felt like forever. The thick, musky air of the abandoned underground room was nothing compared to the fog of red clouding my vision. I could taste the metallic tang of blood on my tongue as we drew closer, and I couldn’t wait to draw it out of him.

“This is him,” Benjamin announced, and the whitest looking being I’ve ever seen lifted his gaze from his position on the floor to meet mine. He looked almost transparent and ghostly with pale white skin, bright green eyes, and hollow cheeks. Despite his haunted looks, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I’d seen him somewhere or I’d encountered someone who looked like him. A haughty look of arrogance appeared on his face, and he spat at my foot, earning him a punch in the jaw from Enzo, who stood guard next to him.

He smiled. No scream, not even a little whimper. He bared his teeth like a fucking psychopath and graced us with a megawatt smile.

I watched his little display with interest, taking off my suit jacket and cufflinks and rolling my sleeves above my elbow. He was just my type of crazy, and I was going to have a lot of fun breaking him.

“Knife.” I stretched out my hand to Enzo, who already had my tools spread out next to him. He knew me so well.

I turned to Benjamin. “Take off his clothes, tie his hands and feet, and hang him upside down on the hook.”

A sinister feeling settled in me as I watched his pale face slowly acquire a beautiful crimson hue as blood ran to his head.

“I think we got off the wrong foot,” I said, settling on a chair in front of him. “I’m Mikhail Ivanov, how about you?”

He attempted to spit on me again, but his current position was not complying, and he ended up with his sputum on his forehead.

“You’re quite a snake, aren’t you?” I said, observing as the red on his face darkened with anger. “Since I was raised a gentleman, I’ll go over introductions one last time.”

“I know who you are, bastard,” he cursed.

“Of course you do. It would be very weird for you to attack the business of someone you know nothing about, wouldn’t it?”

“Just chop him into bits already,” Benjamin sneered, disgust etched on his face as he watched our prisoner.

“Don’t be rude to our guest, Benjamin. We’re not cavemen.”

Unlike him, I wasn’t a brute, and I preferred to play with my food and draw out as much as I could before delivering the last blow. I found a certain feeling of ecstasy in breaking the toughest of characters.

“I don’t like to be kept waiting Мо й дру г .” I returned my attention to him. I liked to treat his type like I was performing an exorcism. I force their names from them before anything else.

“You bastards don’t even know the people you’ve destroyed. You just go about life with no clue how many lives you’ve stolen,” he yelled, and his face adopted a deeper shade of red.

“So, this is a crime of passion, and here I was thinking you had a higher purpose or sought something more important, like power,” I asked.

“Your grandfather destroyed my family,” he spat, his voice dripping with hate.

“And the sins of the father rests on the son,” I replied, suddenly growing bored of our little tèt-a-tèt.

I don’t know what I was expecting from the person who tried to burn down my business, but a whiny little bitch was not one. So much for being tough. I rose up to my feet, walking around him in close circles.

“You could’ve gone off quietly and taken care of your family, but you decided to show your face to me. I guess you love a good sequel then,” I said, slashing through his Achilles. His cry of agony echoed through the room, reminding me why I chose to torture people in this room. The reverberating echoes from their screams sounded so much like the most chaotic classical music, and it had the same effect on me as a stimulant.

“I’m like a fucking hydra,” he screamed. “If you cut me off, my brothers will rise in my name.”

“Then, I’d be more than happy to cut them, too,” I replied, slashing off his second tendon.

I let out a curse as some of his blood sprouted from the cut, soaking my white shirt. “I see your blood moves the same your saliva does.”

I pulled out a handkerchief and wiped some of it off my neck.

Knowing he was some vengeful rat from a dingy apartment the sun never got into and probably spent his whole life hunched over a computer planning the ultimate takedown of the Ivanov family brought me a form of relief.

While crimes of passion were the most dangerous and tended to span through generations, they were also the messiest and ill-planned.

“Now, I know why you looked so familiar. Are you Adam’s brother?” I queried, peering at him.

He didn’t answer, but the burning look of hate in his eyes was enough.

“I thought I ordered every member of that colony to be wiped off the surface of the earth?” I turned to Enzo, who gave me a blank stare.

“I’ll take care of it,” Benjamin said. He never missed out on the opportunity to unleash mayhem.

“You’ll never get rid of us all—”

“Oh, shut up.” Enzo groaned, kicking his head.

A look of pity stretched across my face as I watched him splutter and fight for air. When I arrived here, I expected a worthy opponent. Finding the brother of the man I killed months ago was a slight rain on my parade, and my blood lust suddenly went cold.

“Here.” I handed the knife over to Benjamin. “Take care of him, and I don’t want any more of his hydra heads rising and causing more trouble.

A satisfied look crossed his face as he took the knife from me, turning to Adams’s brother with a look of glee. I checked my watch as I left the warehouse wondering if I should make a quick stop at the mall for a fresh shirt before proceeding home. The glowing hands of the watch revealed the time to be past midnight. I had spent more time in the warehouse than I intended to. But on the other hand, it was way past Arielle’s bedtime.

I opted to drive myself home for the night, wanting to relish the feeling of the wind in my hair as I sped through the fairly empty streets of New York.

I made sure to take the longest route home, wanting to spend as much time as possible in the open air. It’s been a long couple of weeks, and late-night drives have always had a calming effect on me. I needed to be relaxed before I returned home to Arielle. I don’t like it when she sees this side of me. By the time I pulled into my driveway, another hour had passed, and an eerie silence descended on the world, just how I liked it. I’ve always thought the world would be a better place without humans. No noise, no pollution, just silence.

I undid my buttons as I stepped into the house, making a beeline for the kitchen. All that driving in the open left me very dehydrated. A clicking sound echoed behind me, followed by an explosion of bright light. A soft feminine gasp accompanied the light, and I shielded my eyes from the blinding effects of the light while desperately hoping for the gasp to somehow be from Maya.

I brought down my hands to find Arielle watching me from the door. I stood guilty with a bottle of water in hand, waiting for a reaction. I should’ve changed the stupid shirt.

A moment passed before she finally cleared her throat. “Is it yours? The blood.”

“No.” My reply came out gruff and a bit sharper than I intended.

“Was it him?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t need to explain for me to know who she was asking about. There’s only been one pain in my ass for a while.

She nodded, slowly taking in my answer. “And you took care of it?”

It was my turn to nod this time, not knowing the right words to say.

“So, it’s over.”

“Yes, baby, it is,” I replied, and I could see her visibly relax.

“Go clean up, you look like an executioner,” she ordered softly and turned on her heels, disappearing from the kitchen.

Though the conversation was insanely awkward, it took a much better turn than I had expected, and I didn’t know if I was relieved by that or uncomfortable with the fact that she was slowly tipping over to the dark side.

*****

I was in the office at the crack of dawn. I had told myself it was because I had a tall stack of paperwork waiting for me, but deep down, I knew it was because I had opted to sleep in my room, giving Arielle some time to take in the events of the night. I only slept well when I was with her.

A tired yawn escaped me as I flipped through the files in front of me, separating the time-sensitive projects from the ones I could let my COO take care of. Running a family business behind the scenes and a corporate enterprise publicly was not the easiest job, but I had promised that I would make a name for myself outside of my family business, and I was so close to my Eureka moment.

“Good morning, Mikky!” Enzo yelled, throwing my door wide open and sending my head throbbing.

“If you call me that one more time, I swear—”

“You swear what?” He challenged, carelessly dumping himself on the chair across from me. “I have great news for you. I’ve had it for a while, but I was waiting till the time was right.”

He pulled out a manila envelope from God knows where and handed it to me. “Did you sleep last night? You look like shit.”

I sent him a warning glare as I roughly snatched the envelope from him and smiled in return, busying himself with the files on my desk.

“What is this about?” I asked as I perused the document in the envelope.

“Turns out buying dear Levi’s business paid off. A luxury construction and architectural company in Paris would love to propose a partnership with you for your hotels,” he said, and I reassessed the document.

When I bought Levi’s company, it was purely out of spite, and I had no intentions of using it. I was going to slowly dismantle it and sell it out in parts while he watched, but Enzo suggested I rebrand it for my new expansion. Turns out he was onto something.

“When is this meeting scheduled?” I queried, folding the paper back into the envelope.

“I told the CEO you would contact him and fix a date if you’re interested. They’re very keen on working with you and are willing to offer any price. Also, they have a complete monopoly over the European and Asian markets; that’s an added bonus. They’re not the first to send mail, but they’re the best, and with them, you won’t have to worry about visibility,” Enzo explained.

“I see you’ve done your homework.”

“Isn’t that why you hired me?” He shot back, and I couldn’t stop my eyes from rolling back. One day, I was going to put a bullet through his head, I swear it.

“So, what’s it gonna be? You’re taking them?”

I shrugged, yawning for the hundredth time, “I’ll look them up, then I’ll decide, and for the date, I’ll have to discuss it with Arielle before I can fix one.”

“Ah, yes! Arielle. I never thought I’d see the day you’d be so smitten by a woman. Whatever happened to romance being unnecessary and love being a nuisance?” He taunted, and I didn’t bother to dignify his madness with a response.

“I do fancy the thing you did with the knife during dinner. Do you know Ivan’s palm still has a hole in it? I think it might be permanent. Remind me to use the tech—”

I did not allow him to finish spewing his rubbish before I interrupted. “If you’re quite finished with your business here, the door is to your right.”

He shook his head in disappointment but still got off the chair. “Tsk, tsk, relax, I’m just saying I’m a fan of the new you. No need to get your knickers in a twist.”

I watched as he sauntered out of my office with no care in the world, picking up the envelope to go over the proposal again. I ran a few background checks on the company and decided I was taking it. It was a great deal and exactly what I needed after spending weeks chasing after a stupid hydra-claiming nuthead.