Page 57 of Toxic Salvation (Krayev Bratva #2)

KOVAN

“What’s wrong?” Pavel asks the moment he catches me alone on the verandah.

I hold up my phone. “Two missed calls from Denis. Including a voice message that sounds like complete shit.”

“Let’s hear it.”

I press play. Static crackles through the speaker and car horns blare in the background. Then Denis’s voice comes through, raspy and weak. His words are so slurred that they’re incomprehensible. It’s a slush of Russian and English, chunks missing, chopped, and screwed.

“Do you understand any of it?”

Pavel squints at the phone, his eyebrows pulling together as he concentrates. “I think he’s talking about a promise…? Or maybe prisoner?”

“Fuck.” I raise my voice toward the house. “Osip!”

Osip rushes onto the verandah, alert and ready. “Where’s the fire?”

“Do we know where Denis is tonight?”

“I can find out where he is in under five minutes.”

“Do it. Fast. We need to get to him ASAP.”

As Osip disappears into the house, Vesper appears in the doorway. She’s wearing a black and white slip with a neckline so deep the tops of her breasts peek out at me. I should give her a dress code, especially when the boys are here.

I would do it, too—if I weren’t worried she’d bite my head clean off.

“Everything alright out here?” she asks. She’s been chipper ever since I supposedly reduced security by half.

At least that’s what she thinks I did. The security is exactly the same as before. But now, half the men are stationed outside the grounds, which means she doesn’t see them. I don’t actually have to compromise, but I still get the credit.

Which translates to sex. Lots and lots of thank-you sex.

A better man would feel guilty about duping her. Too bad I’m not a better man.

“Everything’s fine. Just running some recon on a few of my men. We might have to step out for a bit.”

Her lips purse. “All three of you?”

“Shouldn’t take long.”

“That’s what you said yesterday when you left for that ‘business meeting.’”

“Why is business meeting in air quotes?” I ask. “It was a business meeting.”

She steps onto the verandah, hands on her hips so I know she’s serious. “No one has a business meeting at eleven at night, Kovan. What do you take me for?”

I hook an arm around her hip and pull her toward me. “Beautiful?”

“Nice try.” Despite the glare she’s giving me, she laughs.

I’m about to kiss her when I notice Osip appear in the background. He holds up his phone to show me the location.

I give Vesper a distracted peck and release her. “Duty calls.”

She sighs heavily. “I really hope you catch this bastard soon. I want my husband back.”

“You have him. He’s just gonna be a little late coming home tonight. But don’t worry—” I nip the edge of her ear before kissing the nape of her neck. “—I’ll give you a series of mind-numbing orgasms to make up for it.”

She turns beet red and swivels around to see if Pavel or Osip caught that. But the two of them have discreetly left already.

Satisfied that we’re not being overheard, she smiles. “I’ll hold you to that.”

The abandoned apartment building sits in the worst part of the city—the kind of neighborhood where streetlights stay broken and sirens wail all night. The city’s scheduled to tear this place down in two weeks.

That’s too late for Denis.

We find him lying in a puddle of his own blood outside the front steps.

One look at him and I know we’ve found him with only minutes to spare. Long enough to get some information out of him. Not long enough to actually save his life.

“Denis.” I balance on one knee as I look down at him.

He’s been stabbed multiple times. A dozen bright red wounds gleam from his abdomen. His eyes struggle to focus on mine in the darkness. The whites are bright, a sharp contrast to the red staining the rest of his face. When he opens his mouth, more blood gushes out.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “The pain will stop soon.”

Denis chokes on his own blood, but there’s a gargling sound coming from the back of his throat.

“He’s trying to speak.” I grab him gently by the shoulders and haul him upright.

He clings to the front of my shirt. His grip is strong for a man who’s going to be dead soon.

“M-my f-family…” he mumbles.

“They will be looked after,” I assure him. “I will keep my promise, Denis. I swear it.”

The fear on his face ebbs instantly. If it weren’t for the blood dripping from him, he’d look almost peaceful.

“Was it Ihor?” I ask. “Did he do this?”

I feel something at my wrist. Denis is trying to push something into my palm. It’s a scrap of fabric. A red skull stitched into black material.

“This is a gang sign,” I say.

“So not Ihor?” Osip asks in confusion.

“Denis, who gave you?—”

But when I look up from the scrap of fabric, Denis is already gone. His eyes stare unblinkingly into the street light hanging above us.

“Fuck.” I lay him back on the rough concrete. “Get his body off the street. I want him cleaned up and prepared for burial.”

“Do you think this was just a random attack?” Osip asks. “That gang sign—I’ve seen it before. They’re low-level. Not connected to the Bratvas.”

“But they can be paid to do a Bratva’s dirty work,” I growl. “Denis was Ihor’s right-hand man. The fact that he was targeted so soon after he defected is significant. Ihor may not have murdered Denis himself, but he sure as hell ordered this.”

Osip shakes his head. “I don’t get it. As far as Ihor is concerned, Denis is his man.”

“Don’t be so fucking stupid, Osip!” Pavel explodes, staring at Denis with regret. “It’s obvious what this means.”

Osip blinks at Pavel, his skin a sallow yellow under the street lamps. “Is it?”

I wipe the blood on my hands against the seat of my trousers. The red smears across the dark fabric. “Ihor knows.”

“Knows what, exactly?” Osip whispers, though I suspect he’s already come to the same conclusion.

“That Denis turned.” I stand up, my knees cracking. “That we got to him. That his most trusted lieutenant has been feeding us information for weeks.”

Pavel passes a hand over his face. “How is that possible? We were careful. Denis was careful.”

“Careful doesn’t mean invisible.” I pull out my phone and scroll through my contacts. “Someone saw something. Someone talked. Or maybe Ihor’s just smarter than we gave him credit for.”

“What do we do now?” Osip asks.

I look down at Denis’s body one more time. A man who died because he chose the right side. A man who left behind wives and daughters who will never see him again.

“Now, we assume that Ihor knows everything Denis knew. Every location. Every safe house. Every plan we shared with him.” I start walking toward the car. “And we prepare for war.”

“What about the other men who turned?” Pavel asks, falling into step beside me. “Are they all compromised?”

“We have to act like they are.” I stop at the driver’s side door and look back at the grimy street corner where Denis died. “Contact every single one of them. Tell them to disappear for forty-eight hours. New locations, new phones, new everything.”

“And after forty-eight hours?”

“After forty-eight hours, we’ll know who else Ihor got to.” I open the car door. “Because anyone who doesn’t make contact by then is either dead or never really turned in the first place.”

Osip climbs into the passenger seat. “This changes everything.”

“No,” I correct him as I start the engine. “This changes nothing. We always knew Ihor was dangerous. We always knew he was smart. The only thing that’s changed is that now, we know he’s ready.”