“That is okay. I do not need to hear it. I see the difference in you since last summer. Oh,” he paused and turned back when he would have reclaimed his position center stage. “She was not collateral damage; she was a target. I lost what once brought me happiness, so I had my friends take what once brought the elusive emotion to you.”
It was the malicious enjoyment in Sergei’s voice that got Vasily. That incomprehensible feeling of loss blazed through his veins, burning and destroying, forever reigniting the fury that had been born the day he’d lost Eva’s mother. Or what little he’d had left of her. Those special moments he’d looked so forward to, the ones where he’d watch her, unnoticed. The ones where he’d ache for her. The masochistic ones he’d gone back for month after month, year after year. Gone. Forever.
“Your friends?” he questioned, hoping to keep Sergei in place until he could figure out how the fuck to get that grenade off Yana before the pin came out. If only she’d look this way so he could better see it’s position, but she was staring at Alek. Or rather, behind Alek.
“Yes. You must know by now that I have become quite close with a few members of a rival Bratva. Boys? You might as well come out, so I do not appear so outnumbered.”
Three men, including one Vasily recognized as his enemy’s eldest son, stepped out to flank Sergei.
“You remember Artur Baikov, don’t you, Uncle?”
It had been Baikov soldiers Sergei had brought in to commit Kathryn’s murder. Vasily had followed the ones responsible to Russia and had killed every one of them.
Before he could answer Sergei by spitting in the face of that name he abhorred, Alek was speaking.
“After seeing them, I suppose it’s only fair for us to show our hand.”
Vasily frowned and looked over in time to see Maksim and Anton appear behind Alek while Gabriel and Quan entered the scene through the archway of the kitchen. Vasily would have bet the last chance he wasn’t sure they had that Micha and Jak were somewhere in the house. And even though he loved each one of them as a brother, he was not happy to see them. He glared at Gabriel. Where the fuck was Eva?
“And so come the sheep,” Sergei mused, unconcerned. “I don’t know about these odds.” He patted Yana’s exposed cheek with the barrel of his gun. “How are you doing, Yana? I imagine you would like me to wrap this up. Let me see what I can do for you.” He raised only his eyes and locked them on Vasily. “You missed one, by the way. When you took your trip to Russia last summer? You thought you got them all. You didn’t. He did not go there to hide. He is still around. In fact, he recently told me how they laughed when they ran your little blonde off the road. I think he said he was the one who threw the match.”
Vasily shoved by an unsuspecting Dmitri and lunged. He needed a piece of this fucking sniveling pussy who’d targeted their women and children.
The shot sounded, and he felt the familiar burn of a bullet enter his body just below his ribs on his left side. He kept moving as his boys sounded off in shock and outrage.
Or he would have kept moving had Dmitri not banded a heavy arm around his waist and jerked him around so he was facing in the opposite direction. His byki gave Sergei his back so any shots that followed would go through him before they reached Vasily.
“You fuck! What are you doing?” Dmitri shouted in Russian. He was looking over his shoulder. “What the fuck have you done here? Women and children, Sergei? Innocent people? This man?” The roar of his voice blocked up Vasily’s ears. “And all because you feel guilty for being inside a whore while your wife and son were snatched? You should have manned the fuck up and owned what you did!”
Vasily shook Dmitri off and had to bite back a groan when the effort chewed into his wound like a hungry lion.
“And you,” Dmitri continued, pointing at Artur. “Did you look into his history at all before you offered your aid? Are you even aware it was your whore he was fucking at the time?” Maksim had come across that tidbit yesterday.
While Sergei’s “friends” turned livid eyes on him, Vasily met Yana’s terrified stare and tried to communicate how sorry he was that this was going to happen.
♦ ♦ ♦
As Alek looked on in disbelief, watching a dark spot spread on his uncle’s black shirt, he remembered a time a neighborhood dog had taken his legs out from under him as he’d run to Vasily’s car that had pulled up to the curb in front of their house. He’d torn his knee to shreds in the fall, and by the time he’d gotten up and carried on, there’d been a stream of blood running down into his sock. Vasily had scooped his ten-year-old ass up and kissed both his cheeks before looking at his leg. You are not crying. Why? Alek had shrugged, biting his lip as hard as he could to hold back the tears he wouldn’t let fall in front of his hero. You are a better man than I will ever be. If that was my knee, I would be calling for my mama by now. He’d tucked Alek’s face into his neck and taken him into the house to patch him up.