“Sorry to drop by unannounced,” I say politely. “Just had a couple of quick questions for you.”
“You’re supposed to be dead,” he rasps.
He looks more awed than anything else at the moment.
“I know,” I agree. “And I’m keen to stay dead. At least in my uncle’s eyes.”
“I had no choice,” he tells me, even though I have no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. “I had to swear fealty to him or risk my wife, my daughter.”
I pause for a moment, studying his expression. He’s not lying to me. That’s what my intuition is telling me.
Still, trusting him would be a mistake too.
“Isn’t that convenient?”
“I swear to you,” he pleads. “That’s how he convinced so many to back his claim to the Bratva. He had files on their families, their parents, siblings, their wives, their kids.”
“You expect me to believe that?” I snap. It’s all a front, though. I just want him to keep talking. To give me more information. There’s no telling what will be useful in the end.
“Half the men that follow Budimir follow him because they want to,” Anton admits. “Probably more than half, in fact. But there’s still a large number that were forced into the whole shit. It’s a fucking mess.”
I stay quiet. Sometimes, silence is the best interrogator.
“Oblonsky,” he goes on, as though desperate to make me understand. “You know the man? He served your father for twenty-three years.”
“Alexander Oblonsky?” I ask.
I know the name, though my interactions with the man have been few and far between. He was a part of Stanislav’s security team for decades.
Anton nods fervently. “He had a wife,” he tells me. “A son and a pregnant daughter. When Oblonsky opposed your uncle’s claim to the Bratva, Budimir had his family brought in.”
I tighten my grip on the gun. I have a nasty feeling that I’m not going to like what Anton says next.
He swallows and continues. “We stood there and watched as he killed Oblonsky’s wife first. Then his son. And lastly, the daughter. She… she was at least seven months into her pregnancy…”
He shudders a little, as though the memory is a poison he was trying to shake off.
It doesn’t take a genius to know why it affected him so much.
He’s substituting the victim’s faces with his own loved ones.
“And Oblonsky?” I prod.
“He had to be held back, restrained. Budimir wanted him to see what his defiance cost,” Anton replies. “Make an example out of him, you know? The man was screaming, Kill me now, you bastard! But Budimir wanted to keep him alive. So that he could live with the pain of knowing that he had caused the death of his family.”
I clench my jaw so hard I’m afraid my teeth my shatter. That son of a bitch. That murderous, traitorous son of a bitch.
Anton shakes his head, still engrossed in the memory. “Oblonsky had a knife on him.”
“He tried to kill Budimir?”
“No,” Anton sighs. “No, not Budimir. He killed himself. Slit his own fucking throat before anyone could stop him. Budimir was furious.”
Of course. Of course he was. Sick, sadistic motherfucker.
He loved the suffering. Reveled in it. Hadn’t he left me to bleed out in the woods on my own?
Hadn’t he dragged Cillian away to finish the job on my best friend?