the men were dead. I would have kept them close, pretended to be friends, slowly found their weakness, and then exploit them.
Or maybe he had somehow made his peace with all of that, and simply yearned for his people to be powerful. He’d created a movement in Nigeria and did his best to uplift black people. He seized the opportunity with the drug trade and gave the Nigerians a seat at the global domination table.
It was him. It has to be. And I must say, the plan was genius.
Fela placing the monkey heads around was the perfect misdirection. Who would have thought to have us focus on the ugly part of the brotherhood—the possible racism and disgust for the lion’s new girlfriend? Fela probably guessed that Kaz would have done anything to figure out who would be terrorizing me. And the lion had exhausted all resources and energy. Meanwhile, every dead animal signaling racism would force me to despise the brotherhood, trust them less. It was Fela’s own messages to me—don’t trust them, they’re a bunch of racists, and they’ll never except you.
One thing kept me calm as I considered this whole situation more.
Pavel and Fela didn’t want me dead. They just needed Kaz busy.
They could have killed me. There was no way to ignore that fact. Pavel had many chances to slit my neck, put a bullet in my head, or even place a bomb in a place that I frequented. Pavel not only could have murdered me in Moscow, but him and I had been alone in Paris, planning dates for Kaz and me. There were tons of opportunity.
I will have to talk to Kaz about what to do with Pavel and Fela. Can we truly kill people that didn’t try to kill us? Or can this be handled a different way.
Here was another situation within the brotherhood that I was sticking my nose in. Just like with the Corsican, I believed Kaz could solve this without violence and death.
I thought about the childhood friends Kaz and I had killed. Zahkar should have died. He murdered Yuri over a damn picture. He had been innocent, but a dumb ass. Had he only brought the photo to us and been truthful, everything would have been fine. Instead, he plotted and hid things behind Kaz’s back. He proved to be disloyal. But once he took out Yuri and then his mother, I sentenced him to death.
We don’t kill innocents.
Clearly, Kaz had reached the same thinking with Abram. We knew the man had nothing to do with the monkey heads, but the underage brothel was enough for him to die. His death served as common sense.
But Pavel? Is it wrong for me to want to save him or even Fela? Why can’t I yearn for both of the men’s deaths, like I did for the others? How did they make me feel bad for them?
Innocent death was present in this situation. While they hadn’t murdered people or tried to take me out, they had killed the monkeys, a chimpanzee, and gorilla. Two of the animals had been pregnant which meant that there were little orphan baby animals. So, Pavel and Fela’s hands weren’t completely clean of blood.
But still. . .I hesitated when it came to plotting their deaths.
Kaz and I will have to discuss this on our way to Italy.
I pushed the mental war out of my head and joined everyone for our trip.
On the plane, everyone held somber expressions. I didn’t know how close everybody had gotten to be with Pavel, but many looked to be feeling down about his guilt. Even Boris shook his head a few times at the realization. For a few minutes, he took me to the side and tried to argue that maybe Jean-Pierre was tricking us.
Thirty minutes into the plane ride, Kaz instructed us to meet in his conference room. Morale was down, but I doubted Kaz would be motivating or lifting anyone’s spirits. He looked exhausted and disappointed. The last time I’d seen him like that was after my miscarriage.
At least he doesn’t want to bomb all of Italy. But poor Pavel. What will happen, when Kaz sees him?
Kaz pointed to the monkey head situation as having something to do with my miscarriage. Had they not appeared, we would have never gone to France. There would have been no kidnapping or current annoyance of Jean-Pierre. Things would have been business as usual. For that, I knew Kaz would crush Pavel’s windpipe.
But would he