keep sending letters to my mailbox and people to my door.
It’s all been boiling up in me until now, when I’ve suddenly found myself bashing in the skull of this con artist chump who lied to my men when we went around town asking if anyone had leads on the Justice Killer. I should’ve known that he was a two-bit snake oil salesman just looking for a payday. I shouldn’t have even bothered getting my hands dirty with him.
But I’m off my game. Dmitry and Brianne’s deaths are still weighing on me, fucking with my head, dragging me down into sweaty nightmares of my own that have me waking up in a panic in the middle of the night again and again.
“He’s out cold, boss,” Pietrov reassures me as he pries my hand loose from the unconscious man’s collar.
I let go and look down. The man is puddled at my feet, his eyes vacant and glazed over. It’s obvious—I went too far.
“Get him out of here,” I sigh. I turn and stride over to the bar that sits in the corner. Not even bothering with a glass, I pour a shot of whiskey straight down my throat. It burns like hellfire.
Good. I need that. The pain helps me focus.
“Mr. Morozov?” comes a timid voice.
Frowning, I turn around and see my housekeeper standing in the doorway. She has her eyes aimed straight between her feet like she doesn’t want to be a witness to whatever you’d call the beatdown that just happened in here. She flinches but doesn’t say anything as Pietrov and another of my lieutenants, Slavik, drag the con man’s limp body past her and out of the room.
“What?” I snap.
“You have a visitor.”
My frown deepens. “Who is it?”
“She—she says she’s from Child Protective Services?”
Oh, fuck.
I forgot all about that. Today is the appointment for a check-in with CPS. They want to know how Niko is adjusting, how he’s feeling, what I am doing to make him comfortable. Most of all, they want to know if I can provide a good home for him.
I look down at my hands. They’re covered in blood. My face is, too, from where I head-butted the man being dragged out. My breath smells like whiskey and the collar of my shirt is stained with sweat.
I don’t look like a good adoptive father.
I look like a monster.
“Tell her to go away,” I snarl.
I turn to go back to the whiskey, but I notice my housekeeper hasn’t moved.
I whirl back. “What did I just say?”
The woman gulps and for the first time, raises her gaze and meets mine. “I did that already, sir, like you told me to do last time. She said that if you don’t meet with her within the next five minutes, she’ll call the police to come take your neph—the boy.” She’s wringing her hands in front of her and fidgeting like she wishes she could be anywhere else on the planet.
But her stare is firm. It cuts through the cloud of chaos in my head.
Fuck.
It looks like this meeting will have to occur as planned.
“Probational status,” I say in a low, dangerous voice.
If this welfare woman was one of my soldiers, she’d known that that tone meant she should run very, very far away from me.
But she doesn’t. Maybe she knows what I’m learning—that I can scare these counselors away from here again and again, but there will always be another one. And another. And another. Like a fucking plague of locusts.
“Yes, Mr. Morozov, probational status,” the woman—I think she said her name is Helen something—says firmly. She’s got a nasty furrow in her brow. “You’ve got a week to make some—I’m being generous to call them this—changes in your life and home. Otherwise, I’m coming to take Nikolas away and put him somewhere more suitable.”
Helen stands up and tucks her file folder under her arm. I’m still rubbing the busted knuckle in my hand. I can feel the blood on my face drying too.
“Get things in order, Mr. Morozov,” she says distastefully. “You don’t have much time.”
She strides out with a haughty tilt in her chin, leaving me alone in the sitting room.
God. Fucking. Dammit.
This is the last thing I needed. On any normal day, I’ve got a sprawling business to run. A business that has roots in every shadowy corner of the city and demands my undivided attention to keep it operating smoothly. When mistakes get made in my line of work, people die. Add to that this