Page 37 of Sins and Virtue

Walking up to the grounds first, eying my peripheral surroundings.

“I don’t, but my wife told me doing some extracurricular activities besides killing is helpful to understanding people,” he explained.

As if that was obvious.

The man thought putting men through a round of Russian roulette was enough bonding time to make men be brothers in arms. What a genius. Not.

“Aw,” Sergei mocked a coo. “Your wife! Your pretty little wife!” “I thought you were supposed to be the Pakhan, but it seems the true Pakhan is Selene.”

“Don’t speak her name, you bastard.” Mikhail lowly grunted, a tense edge in his brow.

“Why are you scared she’ll hear us?”

“No,” Mikhail let out a harsh breath, loading his gun as his chest shifted under his all-black camouflage hunting suit. He walked forward, the snow crunching underneath his same-colored winter boots. The relationship between the Pakhan and his wife took a surprising turn as they were arranged to marry and forced to hate through multiple attempts of sabotage and pain; now they were stronger than ever as Selene was pregnant with their son. In all honesty, the man was a kitten now that he found love.

We followed his narrow trail, lingering closer and closer as he began ascending upward to the entrance of a broken crypt on a hill. The walk up felt like gravity was pushing us back down. Yet standing our ground, we kept going forward, pivoting only when our bodies needed to rest.

Mikhail huffed. “Though when she finds out where we are, she’ll kill us all.”

Sergei laughed like a maniac.

The mistimed conversation amused me as I suppressed the smile on my face.

Ah, crazy bastards.

But alas, what more could I ask for?

Then a lethal, calculating voice spoke through the shared line, halting the interaction. “Can we get back to the task at hand? We don’t have time to waste.” Adrian, the man— the fleshbag who was an emotionless sentient being and the brother of Pakhan's wife— commented.

“Alright, buzzkill,” Mikhail sighed, his large tatted shoulders rolling. “Let’s go.” He turned around, yelling out loudly, interfering with the signal of the earpiece as it made a loud shrieking sound akin to nails on a chalkboard that made me want to stab my eardrums.

Not only that, but it pissed off Dya.

The three of us removed the ear piece simultaneously as it hung over my shoulder, Adrian and Sergei cursing underneath their breaths.

“Seriously, you fucker!” My voice bit the brutal cold air. “Are you trying to make us deaf?”

He raised an insolent brow as he was obtuse. “What? I didn’t do anything?”

I gawked at him as he remained unfazed.

“Forget about it. Let’s just get what we came for and go.”

Mikhail huffed. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Kostya.”

Rolling my eyes, I moved onward, towards the abandoned, worn crypt. With every passing step, the passage appeared never-ending, time evading us. The snow didn’t help with the travel, as rubble of stones led the uncharted pathway, making it difficult to determine solid ground.

When we finally arrived at the top of the stairs, the dilapidated crypt that appeared small and nothing more at first was a forfeited medieval castle with arched gates. The ancient structure stood with thick, impenetrable walls with arrow loops embedded in them, towers at each cardinal point and was made of sandstone. Now that we were here, the castle dominated the landscape, seeming to serve not only as a fortress but something far worse. Almost to keep enemies from entering but also them from leaving,

“Is it just me, or does this place look bigger than before?” Mikhail questioned, looking around at the premise, which had surely doubled— tripled— quadrupled in size from what we had mapped out.

“I thought I was the only one.” Adrian nodded in agreement, with thin hints of fascination in his voice.

I grunted, and the pit of my stomach churned. Haunted by a subtle inkling of a devastating future, we cannot return from.

“Really?” Sergei lifted his hand to scratch the back of his head. “It looks like the same old shit to me.”

No doubt, he wasn’t a man of his significant intelligence.