Wait.
And watch.
Monitor what was, essentially, my family.
Hours passed.
The light blurred, fading out as night swirled in. Streetlamps turned on, creating a glow that made my eyes ache. I acclimated, waited some more, and then a car appeared at the top of the road.
A Bentley.
No, it couldn’t be this easy, could it?
My mouth curved into a smile when the car pulled up outside the gate. The guard stopped to speak with the driver before opening the aperture. As the vehicle rolled inside the drive, for a moment, I was blind—the Bentley was hidden. Then it pulled out and stopped before a house with a portico and large columns that told me Vasov had a taste for the classics. As the car came to a final halt, the driver climbed out first, opened the door to the passenger’s side, and there he was.
My father-in-law.
For a second, my heart pounded so hard that blood rushed in my head, but ruthlessly, I held my breath. Accustomed to the whirl of the adrenaline rush and the need for calm, I focused, then tapped the trigger before slowly squeezing once I’d aimed.
Seconds later, Vasov started to crumple on the steps that led to his house.
Before he could fall over fully, I let another shot rip three seconds after the first.
As guards poured out, panic hitting the Bratva base at the sight of their downed leader, I leaped down off the counter, quickly disassembled the rifle, stored it away, and made my way out of the apartment and toward the exit.
I hurried because the guards would be making sweeps for the sniper behind the attack, and made it into my car with a few minutes to spare, pulling off onto the parkway when men began running around the corner of the street, guns raised like they didn’t give a fuck if people called the cops.
With a smirk, I switched on my playlist and blasted Alkaline Trio out of the speakers as I opened the windows and sped home with one thought on my mind—just let Vasov hurt Inessa again when he didn’t have knees to stand on.
INESSA
I gotthe call before Eoghan arrived home.
Even though I’d been expecting it, I hadn’t expected what Victoria was telling me.
“Papa was knee-capped!” she was shrieking, half deafening me, even as I wanted to laugh.
Trust Eoghan to do something weird.
I didn’t know him well enough to consider this standard practice, but what I did know about him was that he didn’t think inside the box.
“Is he okay?” I asked flatly, as I stirred the sauce in the pan, grateful I’d gone to the effort of watching another recipe video on Facebook and had decided to make it just in case Eoghan came back home early from his trip of vengeance.
After all, I’d already pissed him off by not taking a guard with me when I went shopping with Lisandra—stupid, too stupid to live, I feared—and then by not answering his calls or messages when he’d tried to get in touch, which I had to assume was the case or he wouldn’t have asked about my cell.
Food was the least I could do.
But now that I knew the details of what he’d done for me, I figured some limp red sauce wasn’t the way to go about showing my gratitude.
As I stirred the concoction in the pot, eying it dubiously, I inquired, “Are you okay in the house?”
“Of course.” She tutted. “That isn’t the point. You don’t sound cut up about it, Inessa!”
Her chiding tone had me grimacing. “If you’d seen what he’d done to my throat, Victoria, you’d know why I wasn’t all that sympathetic. If Maxim hadn’t called out his name, distracted him—”
“Why do you have to taunt him?” she whined. “I don’t understand you.”
“And I don’t understand you,” I snarled back. “For God’s sake, we’re not dogs to be whipped. Hell, I wouldn’t do what he does to us to a dog!”