happened right in front of their eyes.
And they never had any idea.
Could she be right?
The main reason why Sasha had come so close to killing me was due to his damn magician theory of misdirection.
Was it all a distraction in the end? What have I been ignoring?
Emily believed that a threat may not be there. If so, why hadn’t she come close to being killed? Where were the stray bullets? The explosions? The men trying to grab her in the night?
They went through a lot of trouble to put dead animals in my house? Why not a bomb? Why not make the side of her bed explode? Or even her building? She went in there all the time.
A cult like the Knights of Babylon had been rumored to have hundreds of powerful men. I didn’t like to think of it, but I believe enough influential men could figure out ample ways to kill Emily.
They hadn’t truly tried. With the dead animals and bloody rats, they’d harassed and threatened. Intimidated and disgusted us all. But, no harm had come Emily’s way.
And with each animal corpse, I had changed the direction of my attention—going here and then there. With the monkey heads, I had taken my mouse away from Russia, due to that a battle had come with the French. There’d been a chimpanzee while we were gone, but it was all before Jean-Pierre kidnapping Emily. In fact, I had been considering returning to Moscow.
More misdirection.
When we finally returned, I went back to the business of dividing territories. And the animals appeared again. This time the cult’s symbol dripped in blood on the bedroom wall.
According to Rolan, the cult had killed Uncle Igor’s wife, my Aunt Fanya.
They hadn’t given her a nice little warning on her wall. They had carved her up.
I gazed down at my mouse. Several drops of Zahkar’s blood decorated her blouse and suit jacket. She looked like a sociopath coming from a daily murder. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
My little psycho. My gorgeous killer. You are a force to be reckoned with.
She looked up at me. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m thinking about your theory.”
“It makes a little sense. Right?”
“It does, but I don’t want it to just be wishful thinking and we ignore a real threat.”
“No. I think if they wanted me dead, they would have at least come close.”
It scared me to even think of the possibility.
“I’m still thinking about this.” She continued, “Every time you started to deal with brotherhood business, the animals appeared.”
“So, someone doesn’t want me to get things done with the brotherhood?” I sighed. “Or at least, they don’t want me to pay attention to a particular area.”
She let out a long breath. “Who would benefit with you ignoring what’s going on when it comes to territories?”
“The ones in control, and the ones who believe they will be in control.”
She tapped her leg. “So, let’s think about the meetings. Monkey heads came the night of the ball. What meetings were you having the next day?”
“The top ones. Who would be positioned close to me? As well as handing out Sasha and Luka’s territories. That ended, when the monkey heads appeared. I took you off to France. And then when I was in France, I considered having us go back. The next day, the chimpanzee appeared.”
“As if to say, stay in France.” She frowned. “When you had the meeting days ago and gave me Kapotnya, did you give out Sasha and Luka’s territories?”
“No. I only dealt with Russia. Sasha had control of our assets in Italy.”
“And Luka?”
“Small spots here and there, he was mainly helping me with overthrowing the Kremlin.”
She shook her head. “Just a light little government coup. That’s it?”
“Those are the top ones that come to mind. However, I’ll look into the rest. Either way, I never got to that meeting due to the dead gorilla.”
“Wait.” She shook her head. “Italy comes up for the second time today. That’s a sign.”
“It is. In that picture, all the men are dead except three.”
“Your god father who apparently is building a church for no followers. Rolan who is awesome and innocent, and then—”
“Fela.”
She bit her lip. “After seeing Fela in chains, I definitely don’t want to bother him. I don’t even want to think of him as doing anything.”
“But, you have a point, mysh.” My head came alive with possibilities. “Who would have had that picture?”
“Zahkar claimed to not have it. I actually believe it. He killed because Yuri had it. I’m