Grievous (Wanted Men #5) - Nancy Haviland Page 0,80
stood on the other side of the door, listening to a grown man weep over his dead lover.
Would he have to wait another six days before he could feel Sergei Pivchenko’s bones break by his hand? Another six days before he could watch Pivchenko’s blood pool on the floor at his feet?
He paused as he rounded the final corner and stood looking down the hallway. His distraction was in a room fifty feet away, and he was out here trying to steady his erratic breathing and racing heart. He took out his phone. He had to do more. He shouldn’t be blocking this need he had to react. Markus deserved…
Black spots danced in his periphery. He bent to rest his hand on his knee. “Goddamn you, Gheorghe,” he whispered, cursing his cousin for bringing this back. He’d been getting through the wait just fine, concentrating on his pet. She’d been fulfilling her purpose. Keeping his mind occupied. “I will personally deal with your murderer, brother,” he vowed again. “I swear on this empty life I now have; I will cause that man pain unlike anything anyone has ever survived. I will keep him. And I will break him. So many times I will break him. I swear to God. Not even his mother will recognize him once I get started.”
His phone clattered off to the side when his knees hit the stone floor. His skin flamed, and his air choked off. He felt as if he were burning in hell. If only. If he were lucky enough to make that journey, he would offer his soul to Satan in exchange for that fucking Russian’s location.
“Markus. I do not hear you anymore, but I hope you can hear me when I beg your forgiveness for my weak imagination. It cannot produce a punishment harsh enough to honor you. I do not know what I will do when I have that man at my feet. I fear I will kill him before I can make him pay.” He slammed his fists into the stone floor three times, each time harder than the last. “I am terrified I will kill him. I want to kill him so badly. I want to kill all of them. I want to take the life of everyone who was spared. I want you back, and I cannot have you!”
His roared bounced off the walls, the echo of it fading into silence, his panting breaths all that was left as he knelt there alone. He dug the heels of his palms into his wet eye sockets and tried to gain his composure. What would make the pain of losing his baby brother bearable? He looked at his phone. His contacts were illuminated, his pilot’s number at the top. He reached for it. He would return to New York. He would personally go through the families. Baikovs. Tarasovs. Didn’t matter anymore. Someone must know something. He would kill them in pairs. No. In groups of three. He liked that number. He would line them up. By the time he got to the third in the bunch, the man would reveal whatever information he knew, if only to save his own life. And he would lose it anyway.
“Lucian?”
His thumb hovered over the contact. He raised his head and felt a relief he didn’t understand wash over him as an ethereal image floated towards him. She was once again in white. But this gown was only the one thin layer, the shimmering silk clinging to her long legs. She still wore his mark of ownership around her slender neck, and he could see it clearly because she’d put her hair up.
“I heard…you shouted. Are you okay?”
Yasmeen. His pet. An obsession he’d never expected to have. She’d readied herself for bed. For his bed. Where he would undress her. Study the perfection of her body. Taste it. Feel it. Impale it. Take pleasure in it while offering the same.
He had men to kill first.
“Lucian?”
He focused on her exotic eyes that were shadowed with concern. They should be hooded with desire as he thrust into her wetness. If he licked her pussy, the concern would leave and they would hold what they should; a yearning for him. She would open herself and take him away. Keep men he liked and respected safe. They were victims just as he was. Markus had been taken from them, too.
But to kill some of them would feel so fucking good because they were responsible by association. To