to insert it. I remembered the feel of the flesh splitting beneath the blade, the rush of blood.
I wondered if cutting a dead body would be much different.
As I crouched down beside him, Konstantin joined me. His features were set in hard lines, a contrast to his usual bemused expression.
I searched with my fingers along Thaddeo’s arm, surprised at how cold his body now was. It felt almost like rubber. Then in the middle of his thigh, beneath the clothes he had been buried in and skin, I felt the shape of the key.
“Have you found it?” Konstantin’s voice was oddly tight.
I looked up. His brows were drawn low, his lip pressed into a thin line. His eyes weren’t on me but rather on my hand pressing into Thaddeo’s leg.
“I have.” I looked back down.
Carefully, I slit the fabric of his pants, giving myself space to work. I pinched the key between two fingers, then brought down the blade. The skin cut easily under the pressure, splitting like pages of a book. No blood spilled out, only a little machine.
The size of my thumb, the machine’s purpose was to generate and spit out a random number each nine minutes. It copied the safe, which also generated a random number every nine minutes. Without the code from the ‘key’, the vault was impenetrable.
I held it up to Konstantin, ignoring the strange bodily fluids that coated it. “There is your key, Konstantin.”
Konstantin brought out a handkerchief, which I assumed was for the key, until he passed it to me and took the key. He didn’t blink at the grime covering it.
“God, he had that in him?” That came from Roman. “That’s fucking disgusting.”
I watched as Konstantin held the key up to the light, his eyes sparkling. “Smart,” he noted. “I didn’t know Thaddeo had it in him.”
“He didn’t. It was my idea.”
Konstantin turned his head to me. A smile gracefully overtook his face, but I caught the vicious bite beneath it. “That makes much more sense. Thaddeo was an idiot, but my Elena is far from one.”
23
Konstantin Tarkhanov
The bank manager greeted us by the door, having seen our car pull into the parking lot. He stood in the doorway of one of the oldest and most prestigious banks in New York, with colossal architecture and an exclusive clientele.
The bank manager dabbed his forehead fretfully as he took us in.
“Mr Tarkhanov, I wasn’t aware you had an appointment...not that you need...”
I smiled at his nervousness. “No matter. I’m here for an entirely different reason.”
When I told him to take us to the Falcone vault, the bank manager hesitated. I could see the flash of fear in his eyes, remnants of what Thaddeo had left behind, but then he remembered I was the new king. He had more of a problem with Elena joining me.
“Mr Falcone gave strict instructions that Mrs Falcone is not allowed to enter the vault,” he said. His eyes pinned to Elena almost accusatorily.
She glared back.
I felt my teeth flash. “Elena is welcomed to enter the vault anytime she chooses,” I said, my voice was soft but my tone firm. “Or does the grip of a dead man still keep a hold you?”
The bank manager shifted on his feet. I could see his primal instincts fighting with his brain. He wanted to obey me—why shouldn’t he?
Thaddeo may be dead, my expression said. But I am very much alive. And I have no qualms about reuniting you with your old boss.
His fear of me won out and he gestured for us to go ahead. “Of course, sir. This way.”
The vault was located miles beneath the ground, shrouded in concrete and security. For decades, since the first Falcone had stepped off Ellis Island, they had been slowly gathering information and secrets about the world around them. Like idiots, they had congregated all that information in the same place.
Their reasoning had most likely been that no one would ever get their hands on the number generator, but my Elena had proven that theory wrong.
I turned to assess the woman in question.
She hadn’t looked nervous since we arrived, but I knew the bank manager’s dislike towards her had been the reason she had kept her walls up. Beneath her withdrawn but sharp expression, I could spot the flicker of uncertainty.
Of fear.
My dreams were often filled with imaginings of killing Thaddeo again. I had viewed him as a petty but stupid mobster who would prove to be easy prey, therefore I had killed him efficiently.