Page 121 of Scorned Beauty

Chapter

Thirty

Dom

Margo

They’re gone.

Me

Lucy signed?

She did.

Fuck you, Margo.

It’s for her protection. You understood this.

I would have found another way.

My role is as a matchmaker. I’m getting tired of playing mediator between men with oversized egos. Finish what you started. And take your woman shopping. She’s got a ball to attend.

Though I didn’t knowthe specifics of the covenant/contract Lucy signed with Margo, it had something to do with agreeing tomarriage prospects. Good luck with that. My sister was too independent for arranged marriages. I had a feeling her get-out-of-jail-free card was to annoy the fuck out of each prospective groom, enough so Margo would break their agreement to save everyone’s sanity. But for now, it would protect Lucy from bratva retaliation stemming from going after Tomlin.

I slid my phone into my pocket and stared at the man lying on the bed. Grigori Petrov. He had leukemia from radiation exposure four years ago due to an arms deal involving nuclear material. Last-ditch effort with chemotherapy failed. It was a shame karma got to him first. That was why he kept Sloane around. If he couldn’t sell her, he was hoping to have a nursemaid when the time came. Anton tried to kill him under orders from Tomlin. Grigori discovered that betrayal and contacted Margo for an exchange since she’d asked him about Sloane before. The exchange was medical care. Margo told me rescuing Sloane cost her more than she’d like and I’d be receiving that bill, too.

Fuck that. And I told her if she was going to charge me for Grigori's medical bills, then she would have to reveal the name of Sloane’s harassers.

When Margo revealed it was Tomlin, I thought she was full of shit because it was too much of a coincidence. But Trevor matched payment records between Scotty’s Cleaning and the Tomlins’ Park Avenue residence. It didn’t come up in our searches because it was under the maiden name of Tomlin’s mother. The back alley picture where the dumpster was located matched the building’s architecture.

“Is it over?” Grigori groaned from the bed.

I approached him. Standing off to the side and leaning against the wall was Sandro. He was eyeing the Russian with the chilling intent of a grim reaper harvesting his next victim. In our line of work, being afflicted with a terminal disease did not eraseour past atrocities. Atrocities could traverse a morally gray line, but trafficking children fell on the irredeemable side. For this, Grigori deserved to burn in hell. He was well on his way there, but it didn’t mean we couldn’t give him a taste before he met his maker.

We’d turned off his morphine drip that kept him comfortable and Sandro injected him with a drug cocktail he used in interrogation that fried the recipient’s nerves.

Grigori was pale, sweating, and moaning in misery.

I leaned close. “Not until you tell me where Anton is.”

“For the last time,” he gritted, jaw clenching with each syllable, “I. Don’t. Know.”

When he’d been more lucid and coherent, he told us that Tomlin must be hiding Anton and the rest of the crew who betrayed Grigori.

I glanced at Sandro and he shook his head, meaning Grigori was telling the truth and he had nothing else to bargain with.

I walked to Sandro. “How do we finish this?”

“I’ve kept him alive long enough. The serum is going to kill him in a few hours.”

“Can’t you just shoot me?” Grigori cried with whatever strength he had left.

“That’s what they all say,” Sandro said without a trace of sympathy.

“I won’t be satisfied until I get Anton,” I said. That motherfucker strangled Sloane.

“Neither will I,” Sandro responded. “But Grigori is finished.”