Page 147 of Ruthless Rustanovs

There is no one else to kill. Now you will have to decide how to live your life.

Ivan stood on the hill overlooking Wolfson Point, the small Idaho mountain town he now called home.

Pondering, not for the first time, the last thing his older cousin, Boris, had written him.

The two-line email had arrived shortly after he’d sent a one-word response to Boris’s wife’s heartfelt invitation to join the family in San Francisco for the holidays.

“No,” he’d answered. Only to receive a rather ominous, and much less friendly, email from Boris a few minutes later.

He would have liked to dismiss his cousin’s words. The musings of a formerly great fighter who’d slipped too easily into family life—just like his older half-brother, Alexei. But weeks later, standing behind the house he’d won in a card game earlier that year, Boris’s words continued to haunt him.

There is no one else to kill.

After the murder of his family, Ivan had spent every waking moment either plotting to kill or killing. With Boris’s help, Ivan had taken out the mafia boss who’d ordered the hit on his family, his entire small-time organization, and his three adult sons.

All that was left of that crime family now were the women and children. And Rustanovs didn’t harm women and children.

Ivan wished there were still more men to kill. His fists reflexively opened and closed as he looked over the bucolic mountain town. Even now Ivan’s hands longed to beat another person to death.

He’d become known for that. Beating the men who’d help bring about the death of his family into a bloody pulp before finally releasing them into the afterlife with two shots in the chest courtesy of his father’s old GSh-18.

Ivan’s new take on the method the Rustanovs had become infamous for back when they’d still been a crime family.

Even Boris had been impressed with his young cousin’s technique.

But not any more. Now Boris sent him terse emails that made Ivan feel like a petulant child for not accepting the invitation to Christmas dinner.

For refusing to pretend he wasn’t a monster.

Something to be hidden away in the dark—or in a dark house in the mountains of Idaho.

One did not invite monsters to Christmas dinner.

Why couldn’t his cousin and his opera singer wife understand that?

“Sir, Hannah has a request.”

Ivan looked over his shoulder. Gregory, one of the servants who’d come with the house, stood behind him in his usual ensemble of tailored pants and a cable knit sweater worn over a tie and button down shirt.

Yet in spite of his relatively light attire, Gregory didn’t show any signs of feeling the biting chill of a winter day in Idaho, Ivan noted.

Not so much as a shiver, even though the freezing wind was strong enough to blow the older man’s formerly lacquered gray hair into complete disarray.

“Yes, what is it?” Ivan asked, not bothering to keep the irritation at being disturbed from his voice.

“Hannah would like to feed the prisoner, if you don’t mind, sir. She fears he might meet an untimely end before he is able to stand before the judge.”

The request, as with all of Gregory’s requests, was carefully worded.

As if he were addressing a king rather than some random guy who’d won this house and its extensive property in a high-stakes poker game from Gregory’s last boss.

And Ivan had the feeling, not for the first time, that Thomas Wolfson—the man he’d won the manor from—wasn’t just some unlucky sap who’d played his last desperate hand completely wrong.

Mistaking Ivan’s stony, Russian demeanor for bluffing, and going all in with the deed to his mountain manor house to cover his bets.

Back in Vegas, Wolfson had seemed like nothing more than a foolish man-child when he’d lost to Ivan.

Even going so far as to cry and beg the Russian who’d just taken his house in a card game for the chance to win it back.

The house had been with his family for generations, he’d tearfully told Ivan.

Since the early 1800s. The whole town would be devastated when they found out a non-Wolfson now owned it.

He had to let him win the house back. Or buy it back.

He could raise the money, he’d insisted. Just give him a few weeks.

Ivan wasn’t all that moved by his tears. Or the sight of a grown man, down on his knees, begging. For some reason, losing your whole family in a car bomb hardened your heart against men who didn’t think before using their family’s centuries-old home as collateral during a high-stakes card game.

Truth be told, the situation also hit a little too close to home.

As Ivan discovered after the death of his family, his father had been concealing the real reason he was so desperate for Ivan to join the Rustanov family business.

All those opera donations, the house in the north of Nevsky, the constant stream of beautiful women—pets—traded out before their thirtieth birthdays, the respect that came with being a member of one of the richest families in Russia…

their father had gone deep into hock with the wrong people in order to keep up appearances.

The issue, as it turned out, was generational. Ivan’s grandfather had been brought up as a crime family accountant. Ivan’s father had assumed that he, like his father and his father before him, would be responsible for keeping the Rustanov money laundered and off the books.

But his father had been wrong in that assumption.

When his nephew, Alexei, took over, he decided the only people who could touch the Rustanov fortune would be those with actual degrees and experience in investing.

Of course, Alexei gave shares in the new company he’d created with the Rustanov holdings to everyone in the extended family.

Shares that eventually made most of the family members billionaires, depending on when they sold them.

His father, as it turned out, had sold his shares embarrassingly early.

And for millions as opposed to billions.

But rather than go to his nephew for a loan when the millions ran out, he’d gone to an “old friend of the family.” A friend who had been happy to extend Ivan’s father several high-interest loans.

Not everyone liked the Rustanovs sudden metamorphosis into a legitimate business family.

And to this old friend, lending Ivan’s father money had been like welcoming home a prodigal son.

One who was more than willing to put his dusty laundering skills to secret use, against his nephew’s express bidding.

But this old friend had been less than happy when he eventually discovered that not only was Ivan’s father going through money too fast to ever pay him back in full, he’d also taken to skimming off the profits he laundered for the family.

So one of the skimmer’s bodyguards had been bribed and outfitted with a bomb. A lesson served, and a warning to any other wayward Rustanovs who might think to take advantage of their old crime world connections.

Big mistake.

That friend paid for his “lesson” with the lives of every single male member of his crime family over the age of 18. Now there was one less crime family to be taken advantage of, which when you think about it, probably wasn’t the intention of that lesson at all.

It had taken Ivan nearly a year to avenge his family’s deaths. Everyone who could possibly be punished for what happened was dead, but…

Ivan was still here.

With a murderous rage that still burned.

And no way to douse the flames.

So no, he hadn’t given the spoiled rich kid his house back.

In fact, Ivan moved in the very next weekend, and had been surprised to find it still fully furnished.

His home in Nevsky had been outfitted in the same modern baroque style all the Rustanovs tended to favor.

But this Idaho manor was a reflection of the country it resided in—one that had still been widely populated by indigenous nomads during the actual Baroque period.

The manor, though grand and sprawling across thirty-six acres of prime mountain real estate, was the kind of place built by people only a couple of generations away from doing everything with their hands. Exposed stone and wood for days, and not a hint of damask to be found on the walls.

Save for the gym, solarium, and Olympic-sized pool, it could not have been more opposite from his childhood home in Nevsky.

Yet Ivan found himself settling into this new digs just fine.

It was the perfect place for a recluse. It even came with two servants who lived in one of the property’s detached cottages.

When he’d come through the front door with Wolfson’s deed in hand, they’d merely exchanged a look, then asked if he’d be in need of their services.

The two older servants had shown no signs whatsoever of missing the man Ivan replaced.

In fact, they had been nothing but respectful and deferential during his months in residence.

Even going so far as to turn away a few of the townspeople.

The ones who came to the door yelling about how it wasn’t right to have “one of his kind in the kingdom house.”

Well, that is, the two servants had been nothing but deferential until now.

Ivan’s eyes flickered toward the manor’s strange outbuilding.

It looked like a simple stone structure from the outside, but Ivan had been surprised during his original inspection of the property to find what appeared to be several jail cells inside, with just enough floor space left to create a narrow walkway in the middle.

At first he assumed it was the site of the town’s former jail, maybe a holdover from the 1800s.

But inside the cells were cushioned floors and what looked a lot like oversized, silk-lined pet beds.

Yes, it was strange. But it had been the perfect place to throw the man he’d caught snooping around the property two days ago. A spy sent by his cousin, Alexei, to “check on him.”

The man, overly thin, had been asked by his interfering cousin to get in and get out, and then provide a detailed report. Ivan could easily see why his cousin had sent this particular fellow to do the job.

The usual hire for the job would definitely have stood out in the small Idaho mountain town, but this short, spindly fellow with his sweater and jeans worn under a goose down parka, fit right in.

If not for having made the bad decision to get very drunk at the town’s only bar before completing his reconnaissance mission, his cousin’s spy might very well have finished the job without detection.

However, Gregory noticed him staggering around the property almost as soon as he stepped foot on it and soon after that, Ivan had the whole story from him before tossing him in one of the cells.

But now it would seem Gregory’s wife, Hannah, was having a fit of conscience.

“How many calories does someone need to survive?” Ivan asked.

“Fifteen to eighteen hundred, I believe, sir.”

“Tell Hannah to give him fifteen hundred.”

“Very well, sir.” Gregory backed away with a small bow.

And Ivan, one side of his face numb with cold, the other numb for different reasons, went back to staring at the town below. With Cousin Boris’s words still ringing in his ears: There is no one else to kill. Now you will have to decide how to live your life.

How did one even go about doing that when everything and everyone has been taken from you? When your past felt like someone else’s life, and you couldn’t see anything in your coming future but pain and regret? He didn’t have a clue.

Ivan glanced once more at the outbuilding.

Wishing he could kill the prisoner inside.

Use the man to temporarily relieve his constantly burning rage—at least for a little while.

But that would only give Alexei the perfect excuse to come here in person, and a visit from his interfering, overly-concerned cousin was the last thing Ivan needed.

Boris and I are worried about you, he’d told Ivan after somehow finding the unlisted number for the house’s only landline. We thought you would recover after you had your revenge, but it is clear this has not happened.

Nyet, he wasn’t any better than he’d been during those months he’d spent waiting to recover from his wounds before he could take action.

When he’d done little more than drink vodka and plot how he’d avenge his family’s deaths once the burns on his face had healed.

But now here he was, over two years later.

He’d avenged the hell out of the murders of his parents and sister, but he felt more dead now. Now…..

There is no one else to kill. Now you will have to decide how to live your life.

He’d have Gregory release the man and drive him back down the mountain tomorrow, Ivan decided with a huff of ice-cold air.

A couple of hours before the only drivable road into town officially closed for the winter.

It wouldn’t open again until spring, which meant his cousin wouldn’t be able to send anyone else to spy on him after Ivan returned the current fellow, weakened and the worse for wear after three days in an unheated jail cell.

It was a good plan. A decent, small revenge. But still…

Boris’s words continued to burn in Ivan’s head as he stood in the frigid cold, looking down on the town that didn’t want him here.