Ghost (Boston Underworld #3) - A. Zavarelli Page 0,90
would.
There is only one way for me to go on. The only way that I know. And it’s written in blood.
I turn to Nikolai, who is watching the conversation, but remains carefully quiet.
“What of Dmitri’s men? The trainers?” I ask him.
He does not look to Viktor for permission to speak. He simply nods. “I have their location.”
I move towards the door, gesturing for him to follow. Viktor tries to halt me with a hand on my shoulder.
“Lyoshenka, you must stop this.”
“I will,” I assure him. “When I have killed them all.”
A hand on my arm shakes me from my blackness, and when I blink up, Magda is there. My head is pounding, and I feel the urge to retch from the amount of liquor inside of my system.
I want her to go away. I want everything to fucking go away.
“Alyoshka,” she says. “You need to eat something. It has been two days.”
No. It has been a month. A month since I died. Since everything just… stopped. I have spilled more blood in this time than in my entire career as a Vor. And I will continue to do so.
To honor her memory in the only way I can.
“Nikolai is here to see you,” Magda tells me.
“Send him away.”
“Too late.” He steps into view. “And I have something I believe you will want to see.”
My eyes move to the disk in his hand. And it is the only thing that fires a spark inside of me. Vengeance. It is the only thing that keeps me living from one day to the next. The kill. The destruction. The war I have waged on the animals who touched her. Who ever even thought of hurting her.
Magda leaves us to our privacy and I rouse the computer from its slumber, bringing up screen after screen on the wall. They are all filled with images of her. Of us.
I have replayed that video of her last day a thousand times over. The walk down the stairs. The way she paused and cried and Magda comforted her for the pain I had inflicted.
I never even said goodbye to her.
I allowed my anger to consume me. To consume her too.
She trusted me to protect her. And I did what I always said I wouldn’t. I failed her.
I close my eyes and feel Nikolai’s hand on my shoulder. I am too weak to turn him away, even if I should. He has been here often, in the days since. Checking on me.
But there is nothing new to report.
Life goes on. The Vory business goes on. Only I cannot go on.
I feel her numbness now. Her pain. It haunts me in her stead. My Solnyshko. The sun has gone from my life, and only darkness remains.
I am crying, I realize.
I don’t even attempt to hide it from Nikolai. He doesn’t say anything. He just takes over, bringing up the video on the screen. The same video I have also looked at a thousand times over. From that day at the meeting.
The day when all of this began.
“I had Mischa take a look at it,” Nikolai tells me.
And then he brings the cursor to a time stamp on the screen and clicks it. I watch as he slows down the video, and only then do I see it.
And I cannot believe I didn’t see it before.
That my anger had blinded me so badly from the truth.
“It’s on a time loop,” Nikolai answers my thoughts. “Whoever it was knew what they were doing. And they were fast. They came prepared.”
“How long?” I ask.
“Thirty seconds, maximum. You couldn’t have noticed it, Lyoshka. It was very well edited.”
My body falls back against my chair as all of my worst fears are confirmed. Talia had nothing to do with the video. But someone wanted it to appear that way. Someone close to me. Who knew I would not trust her. Or believe her.
Someone who wanted to rip us apart.
“There is something else,” Nikolai tells me as he takes a seat across from me.
“What is it?”
“Katya’s guard mentioned that she visited a security store a few months back. He didn’t know what she purchased, but found the trip to be out of character for her.”
“Then we need to talk to her.” I rise to my feet, even though I am still too drunk to make it down the stairs.
“I already tried.” Nikolai shakes his head. “But she was found dead this morning, Lyoshka. Hanging from the rafter in her ceiling.”