Fucking Hampton had been there. That meant he had other pictures of what had gone down that day, and those could be detrimental to my Bratva. Even though I was working on getting out of the game, it didn’t mean that they couldn’t still charge me with it.
I noticed the laptop sitting on the card table in front of the wall and sat down on the chair, opening it. It was password protected, just as I had expected it to be, but my fingers flew over the keys regardless, typing in the all-too-obvious password.
Naomi.
The screen lit up a moment later and I shook my head, a wry smile on my face. It really couldn’t be that easy, could it?
It didn’t take me long to locate a cache of pictures in a folder, and it was as I suspected. He had taken numerous photos of that day, some with my face fully visible.
Fuck me.
I let out a slow breath as I dragged the entire folder over to the recycling bin and permanently deleted it. The pictures were still on the hard drive, but I was going to make quick work of that in short order as well. I should just take it with me, but I wanted the fucker to know what I had done.
To know he didn’t have a chance in hell of beating me or getting my wife.
After I finished with the photos, I turned the laptop over and unscrewed the back, finding the hard drive. A few well-placed stabs to the fragile board destroyed it, but I wasn’t done. I carried the laptop over to the kitchen sink and threw it in, pulling out the revolver that was stashed in my jacket and extracting one bullet.
Using one of my knives, I pried the top loose on the bullet and exposed the gunpowder, dumping it on the destroyed laptop. A small spark from the lighter that I had found lying around, and the gunpowder erupted in a nice blue flame over the electronics. I watched it burn for a few moments until it started to smoke and then doused the damn thing with the faucet, leaving it in the sink.
I might have gone a bit overboard, but hell, at least I felt better about destroying his shit now.
Straightening my jacket, I walked back over to the wall and stared at the photos. It would be easy for me to rip it all down and take the photos with me, erasing any notion of my wife from his existence.
But as I stared at them, another thought came to me.
I could use this to my advantage.
Pulling out my cell phone, I turned away from the wall and dialed a familiar number that I thought I wouldn’t be calling again. Hell, I hadn’t called it to begin with.
“You’re shitting me, right?”
I stared out of the window, my own jaw clenching. “Marchetti.”
“Well, at least it’s not your wife this time,” he said, his voice hard. “What the fuck do you want, Kirilenko?”
I swallowed my retort. “I need your help.”
He sighed loudly into the phone. “I already told you I’m not getting into this war.”
“Well, in case your information is slow,” I drawled. “I’ve handled my shit. The Krasnaya Bratva is gone for good.”
“So I have heard,” he replied a moment later. “Then why the fuck do you need my help?”
“It’s not your help I need,” I continued, picturing his face growing redder by the minute. I really shouldn’t goad him like this, but hell, I enjoyed it. “I need your wife.”
“Is that Gavril?” I heard from the background. “Give me the phone, Roman! No, you don’t get to give me that look at all. I’m carrying your fucking child right now. What? You don’t like this side of me? Well, you try carrying a bowling ball around all day and see how you feel!”
“I’m not letting you fucking talk to him,” I heard Marchetti growl in response.
“You’re not letting me?” his wife challenged, her voice growing hard. “Then you can birth this baby. How about that?”
There was a murmur of an apology and I grinned, knowing that Marchetti was being controlled by his wife just as much as I was. Imagine that. Two of the most powerful men in fucking LA being carted around by our balls.
“Gavril,” Ilsa said a moment later. “What can I do for you?”
“I need you to help me,” I told her, knowing full well that Marchetti was listening to every single word. “I will text you a location. When the time is right, I need you to direct the LAPD there.”
“What’s at the location?” she asked. “And what’s in it for me?”