Dirty Passions An Interracial Russian Mafia Romance (The Lion and The Mouse #5) - Kenya Wright Page 0,126

on your suit. They may be worried about letting you enter again.”

“No. I want everyone to see the blood, especially the dancers.” I shook my head. “Let these chicks see what I’m about.”

He grinned. “Really, Emily?”

“They need to understand. No lap dances for the lion anymore.”

Chuckling, he took my hand and guided me away. “My wicked mouse. You have no competition.”

I better not.

I glanced over my shoulder at the new corpse. I didn’t know who would clean up Zahkar’s body. Being that he ordered the death of Yuri’s mother, I could care less. She had been an innocent women already mourning her son, and they’d rushed into her apartment and beat her to death.

Over a fucking picture. Fuck him.

For Zahkar, I would have no remorse.

Meanwhile, with the small amount of answers more questions came. But now the key to end this would be to find the right question. The fundamental one.

Why not just kill me?

If they didn’t want me around, there had been plenty of chances.

They got the butler and maids. Bothered Zahkar by digging up photos from the past. Couldn’t they have just killed me an easier way? Jean-Pierre snatched my ass right out of Kaz’s bedroom. While the Butcher was smart, he wasn’t a mastermind.

Something is not adding up.

When I was alone in Kapotnya, Surely, someone would’ve followed me and blew the drug house up or even Yuri’s mother’s place. A sniper could have shot me all the times I left the house to go to the building.

The person might’ve gotten chased or discovered, but there were moments where I could’ve been gone. Even with the dead monkey heads and the gorilla. Why not sneak in a bomb? Why the animal flesh? They knew I would find it at a particular moment. There could’ve been a bomb that was small enough to just get me.

Why take great care and use all these resources to terrorize me?

Hold up. Do they really want me dead? I could have killed me by now with less resources.

As we went through the Gentlemen’s club and made our way outside, I started to realize a possibility.

“What’s on your mind, mysh?”

“I believe we’re looking at the monkey head situation all wrong.” I stopped in front of the limo. “They’re not threatening to kill me. No one has actually tried to hurt me at all.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“It also says a lot. If they can get dead animals into the lion’s den, why not simple kill me? Through poison, a bomb, an assassin, a sniper. I mean come on. The Knights of Babylon killed your Aunt Fanya. And I’m sure your uncle’s castle had serious security.”

“The best.” He frowned. “But that’s enough. I don’t want to think about the ways they could’ve tried to kill you.”

“True, baby. However, the point is that they never tried to kill me.” I gave him a weak smile.

He frowned.

“Kaz, think about it. I got more scratches from the French’s kidnapping than I did from this situation. Do they really hate me at all?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “In some way you’re making sense, but I would rather not think of this at all.”

“Think about it.”

“I am. They could have killed you, but they didn’t.”

So, what are we missing?”

He looked past me, silently thinking for several seconds. “Perhaps, they only want to keep us busy.”

“Yes. This could all just be a distraction.”

With a skeptical expression, he sighed. “But, a distraction from what?”

“I don’t know, but that’s the fundamental question.”

“The fundamental question?”

“Yes.”

Opening the limo door, Kaz gave me an odd look. “Then, we need to find out the answer.”

Chapter 30

Misdirection

Kazimir

We road in the limo.

While Emily quietly lay against me, I considered what she’d said.

A distraction? That’s an interesting thought.

Magicians used misdirection as a form of deception. It drew the audience’s attention to one thing in order to distract the audience from another. Managing audience attention was the aim of all illusionists as well as the main requirement of all magic acts.

A distraction?

When Sasha was a kid, he had been a fan of magic. Constantly rambling about it as I tried to listen to my rock music.

According to Sasha, magicians misdirected audience attention in two ways. One was to lead the audience to look away for a fleeting moment, so that they didn't detect the sleight of hand. The other approach was to reframe the audience's perception, distract them into thinking that an extraneous factor had much to do with a particular feat. While the audience focused on that, other things