“Answer me,” I demanded.
Silence.
She was stubborn, but so was I.
I slapped her between the legs.
A gasp escaped her before she slayed me with a lethal gaze. “Sorry, was I supposed to keep count?”
My teeth clenched. I vowed to make her count every orgasm I gave her until she begged me to stop. Before I could give in to the desire to start right then and there, I pulled my hand away and stood.
“Bad pets don’t get rewarded.”
Fury cooled all of the desire in her gaze. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, D’yavol. And when you do, I’ll smile when they cover you with dirt.”
Fuck. That was kind of hot. And annoying.
I gripped her face. “If I go down, I’ll take you with me. Your Mikhailov blood will keep me cool in hell.”
An uncertain flicker passed through her eyes, and then she looked at the ceiling, dismissing me in an arrogant way no one else would dare. I released her roughly, and with a hot rush of frustration, I walked out of the room to find Yulia scrubbing up blood with an obsessive mentality.
The woman had knocked on my front door seven years ago, unperturbed by the guards and guns, and announced, “I would like job.”
I recognized her from two different occasions.
In my preteens, she fed me and my brother a hot meal and gave us a place to sleep for the night when she found us camping out in her car during a snowstorm. She was also on the news for butchering her husband with a meat cleaver without a single explanation, serving a decade in the looney bin. I should have thought twice about it, but instead, I opened the door wide and said, “You can start today.”
She’d proven to be a loyal servant, which was invaluable in this house.
Standing on the front porch, I grabbed a pack of cigarettes from Ilya’s jacket pocket, took one out, and put it between my lips. Blood trailed across the driveway to the garage, where Albert was busy dealing with the body.
I slipped the pack back into Ilya’s pocket. “Lighter?”
He shuffled for his Zippo, flicking it open. I lit my smoke, inhaled on it deeply, and headed to the car parked in the drive before hollering at Pavel across the yard.
My newest recruit, lanky and still in his late teens, hesitated.
I watched him mosey his way over here, inhaling on my cigarette. “You got a stick up your ass or something?” I asked, blowing smoke out of the side of my mouth. “Or did your girlfriend try something new last night?”
Laughter resounded through the yard.
The kid turned red. “No.”
“Let’s go. You’re driving.” I flicked the smoke to the snow and sat in the back seat.
I hated the taste of cigarettes, but I’d needed a hit of nicotine. I pulled a piece of Big Red out of the center console, tossed one onto Pavel’s lap, and watched him grip the wheel with white knuckles.
“You know how to drive, don’t you?”
“I can figure it out,” he stammered.
Jesus.
Viktor recruited and trained my men, but apparently, driving wasn’t included. I could get someone else to take me, but instead, I sat back in my seat and prepared for a sketchy ride into Moscow. Pavel had to learn eventually.
I checked my watch, noting the blood on my hand and shirt. The kid must have gotten the brake and gas pedal backward; the car suddenly lurched forward and then stopped abruptly.
I ignored it.