Page 56 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

When they’d decided this was the quickest way to track down where the de Medicis were hiding because Grigoriy Lenkov had been laundering that coalition’s money for decades now, they all knew it might get .

. . well . . . out of hand. Ox was not the forgiving type.

Her brother had betrayed her in a way no one ever had before or since but, more importantly, he was family.

Badger kin did not fuck over badger kin like that and expect anything but retribution.

And despite always having a general idea of where her brother was at any given time, Ox had allowed him to live for all these years, because she never knew when they might need him for something.

Trace looked down at the full-human protection lying on the floor at their feet.

There had been no reason to kill any of them, since knocking them out would do the job.

They really only needed a few minutes to get what they came for and then get out.

But they hadn’t planned on Grigoriy fighting back.

He’d always been such a weasel. Not a honey badger weasel, which he was biologically, but an actual human-like weasel.

Because who the fuck betrayed their own family?

Even Mads never did that to her mother, and God knew, that girl had had every right!

Stupidly, Trace now realized, she’d hoped that Grigoriy would simply give them what they needed without much fuss.

She should have known better, but they’d been using information from him for years by simply having specialists invade his computer and phones to get what they needed.

Right now, though, they were exceedingly short on time, and their current “specialist” was very busy.

So this time, they’d gone for the direct approach, not realizing how cocky being a Russian oligarch had made the little weasel.

Of course, more fool him. Because no male should ever get cocky around Oksana Lenkov.

Grigoriy attempted to run, but Ox had always been faster. Crazier.

She charged after her brother and tackled him from behind, slamming him to the ground the way her father had taught her all those years ago.

“We need him alive, Ox!” Steph yelled out.

Their friend stopped, keeping her yelling brother pinned to the ground with her arms, her beautiful face contorting as she attempted to control her badger rage. Finally, snarling through clenched fangs, Oksana Lenkov made her move.

“Ohhhhhhh!” all three of them cried out, instinctively cringing at the sight, although their combined sounds could barely be heard over Grigoriy’s horrifying roar of pain and humiliation.

“Nothing worse than an atomic wedgie,” Steph said with a head shake.

“This is why underwear to me is always optional,” CeCe said, before slamming down her bat onto the head of one of the security guys sitting up next to their feet.

“Is it?” Trace wanted to know. “Optional, I mean? It really shouldn’t be optional.”

“I will not be forced into garments meant to keep women in their place!”

“When those garments were corsets, I get it. But we are at a point in history where there is an array of underwear, my friend. And I am tired of seeing your pussy every time you step out of a limo.”

Ox grabbed her brother around the neck—ignoring his continuing screams—lifted him up, flipped him over, and down. Hard.

“She does love the head drop,” Steph noted.

It was true. Ox still loved wrestling from when she was learning it from her silver-medaled father and bronze-medaled mom in shot-putting.

Sadly, her baby brother had never been able to pick up any of the techniques as well as Ox did.

She had skills, though. Could have gone gold if she hadn’t been, ya know, arrested by the KGB and ended up in a Stasi prison in East Germany all those years ago.

All because of Grigoriy.

Ox dragged her nearly comatose brother over to them and shoved him into an antique Louis XIV chair like it was something she’d picked up from Ikea.

Trace opened her mouth to tell her friend to “be careful!” but CeCe wisely cautioned her with a shake of her head.

Telling Ox to take care of historically important furniture would just have her using each piece to beat her brother for the next hour.

“We have questions, little brother,” Ox told Grigoriy in Russian, “and you are going to give us answers.” She leaned in close so the badger could hear every word. “Or I am going to start taking organs you have forgotten you have—and desperately need.”

* * *

“Did you ever think, Ox,” CeCe suggested to her friend, “that maybe the reason your brother ratted you out to the KGB all those years ago was because you used to torment him so much when he was little?”

“Not my fault he is weak. And we all tormented him because he always cried like little bitch.”

“Yeah,” Steph said with a nod, “that is definitely why he ratted you out.”

Ox laughed. “You always feel bad for him, my friend.”

“Not really. He’s a scumbag that runs guns and marries girls more than half his age. But is that because he was born an asshole? Or because you beat him into being an asshole?”

“Ahhh,” Ox said as they made their way to the helicopter waiting for them far out at the edge of her brother’s property. “The question again of nature or nurture. My friend CeCe the philosopher has returned.”

“She never left.”

“At least we got what we need,” Trace pointed out. “And for once, we didn’t leave an island worth of bodies in our wake. See? We are not out of control!”

Slinging her arm around CeCe’s shoulders, Ox softly asked, “Is she ever going to let go what the old Van Holtz wolf say to us?”

CeCe leaned her head against her friend’s shoulder. “You’ll forgive your brother for turning you in to the KGB long before Trace ever forgives that old man for saying we’re out of control.”