Boris saw before the bullet plugged into his forehead?
Viktoria.
It was what he deserved.
It’s what she deserved.
Konstantin said nothing, but he did nod before offering the phone to her. She didn’t understand what he was doing, and the only thing she really wanted right then was to ask where in the hell Pavel was and why he wasn’t here.
With her.
Where she needed him.
Konstantin nodded at the phone. “Take it and call Kolya back. Pav will be there to take the phone, too. I couldn’t have them here. Not when I needed people I trusted to be with Vadim, too. I couldn’t trust anyone, remember? I needed people there, too. So, they had to go, yes? But I couldn’t explain that to them. And what if he had a backup? What if he had something else that he could use against me that I hadn’t planned for? At least they would be there … if we all died here, they would be there to end him, too.”
So yeah, he was just like their father.
Just enough.
Enough to make the hard choices.
She didn’t tell him that, though.
Viktoria took the phone.
20.
“IT SHOULD be done by now.”
Vadim’s gaze finally drifted away from Pav, but only long enough to check the clock. He could see the wheels turning in the man’s head—working out the time difference between here, and Chicago, before he nodded.
“Yes, I believe it should be done,” Vadim said.
The smile that turned on Pav could only be described as fucking sadistic. This asshole was ridiculously proud of the fact he was about to—if he hadn’t already—arrange the murder of his second son and hand his daughter to a monster like she was a gift for him to devour.
There was rage, sure.
But there was hatred, too.
Hatred was a whole different kind of beast for Pav. He could subdue his rage—he could feed it with something other than violence to keep it in its cage until he was ready to act upon it. Hatred, though?
He couldn’t control that at all.
Right then, it’s all he felt, too.
At some point during their time with Vadim, Kolya had pulled a chair across the room, and forced Pav to sit in it whether he wanted to or not. That was fine—he continued to sit right in front of Vadim, regardless of the man’s opinion of his proximity. He wanted a constant reminder on Vadim’s mind of what was coming for him soon.
Very fucking soon.
Like right now.
Pav jumped out of that chair like he was a bullet coming through a gun. He’d never been so focused on one thing before—never zoned in on just one thing that nothing else existed. Except for Viktoria, maybe.
It wasn’t the same thing.
He never wanted to kill her.
Pav greatly wanted to kill Vadim.
Those knives he’d been playing with all evening, another constant reminder for Vadim to see while the two sat only inches apart, were back in his grip and ready to be used again. He never felt more comfortable and more at peace than when he was holding a knife—or fucking Viktoria. Two entirely different things, sure, and yet they both brought him a calm like nothing else ever could.
Vadim couldn’t even prepare for the man coming at him. He leaned back a bit, but where the hell was he going to go? The high-back, leather chair stopped him from being able to get away, and given that Pav was already sitting so close to him, it wasn’t like the asshole could come forward without ramming right into him.
He was fucked.
Pav liked that.
The tip of one of his blades caught Vadim right on his lower, right eyelid. The other came to the right side of his mouth to catch him on the very corner of his mouth. He started with the eyelid first, pulling the blade down through the skin so that when it tried to heal, the scar would be horrible, and the pain would be made worse by the fact every blink would pull on the wound.
He kept the blade at the corner of Vadim’s mouth pulled taut to keep him in place while he worked on the other side of his face. Vadim let out a shout, and his hands came up in an attempt to fight back against Pav, but it was useless.
“Try me right now, and that knife is slicing through your fucking cheek,” Pav said. “The blade is so sharp … it won’t take very much at all for it to do the job. Never took you for a Glasgow