“What about you?” he asks.
“I’ll catch up with you later. I have a phone call to make.”
Andrei arches his brow in question, as if I have to explain what I do on my own time to him. “You still hooking up with that drunk chick from the club?”
“No,” I bite out, and his smile only grows.
“No shame in that game. She was a hot piece of ass.”
Before I can grasp onto logical thought, I’m at his throat, squeezing my fingers around his thick neck.
“What the fuck, man?” he sputters and shoves me off him. “What’s your fucking problem?”
“You are my goddamn problem,” I snarl. “Why don’t you try using your fucking brain for once before you spew every thought that comes to your mind?”
“I think you forget who you’re talking to.” He brushes out the wrinkles in his shirt and snarls in my direction.
“How could I forget?” I narrow my eyes at him. “You never let anyone forget that you are Vasily’s fuckup of a son who can’t keep his dick in his pants or the snow out of his nose.”
“Fuck you,” he spits, practically foaming at the mouth. “Maybe next time I see that pretty little piece at the club, I will take her for a ride myself.”
“You even try it, and you won’t live to see the next day,” I tell him. “Vasily’s son or not.”
He considers my words and then laughs like it’s all a joke. I think he’s fried every fucking brain cell he had left.
“Fuck this place. It’s making us both crazy,” he says. “I’m going to go get my dick sucked.”
I glare at his retreating form and wait until the GPS tracker I have attached to his car actually disappears down the street. It will be a miracle if I survive the week without murdering him, but for now, I have other things to worry about.
When the coast is clear, I head downstairs and bail over the back fence into the von Brandt’s yard. The lights in the house are off, and I know from watching them that William and his wife tend to go to sleep at the same time every night. Nina is a different matter. She could still be up, which might be a problem if she sees me before I can get to her. But either way, I’m about to find out.
It takes me all of five minutes to pick the lock on the patio door. William von Brandt is too cheap to install a security system, another sign that the guy is not as intelligent as I’d hoped. The layout of the house is almost identical to the house next door, so it isn’t difficult to navigate in the dark. I take my time on the stairs, trying to remain noiseless as I traverse my way to the upper bedrooms.
The master bed is at the end of the hall, which is where William sleeps peacefully, blissfully unaware that I could smother him with a pillow right now if I really felt like it. That’s just how easy it would be, yet he thinks he’s untouchable, ratting us out to the feds.
Nina’s door is on the opposite side of the house, and when I stand outside of it, I can’t hear anything to indicate she might be awake. Vasily will want a report from me within the hour, so I don’t have time to fuck around. It’s now or never.
I wrap my fingers around the doorknob and turn, relieved to find that she’s in her bed. But she isn’t asleep. She has her back turned to the door and her headphones in as she bobs her head and taps out messages on her phone. Briefly, I consider that she might be texting Kat, and I wonder what else she had to say about me.
I tug the pistol from the back of my jeans and creep around her bed, waiting for the moment to strike. Before I can get as close as I wanted, she notices my shadow, and she peers up at me in horror. She opens her mouth to scream, and I lunge at her, slapping my palm over her lips and locking her into my grasp.
“Don’t make a fucking noise,” I warn her.
Her chest heaves as she tries to drag in a breath, and she nods in understanding. Nina knows what sort of business ventures her father’s involved in. I doubt this is even the first time someone has threatened her this way.
“I’m going to remove my hand from your mouth,” I tell her. “But understand this. If you even attempt to scream, I will put a fucking bullet in your head so fast you won’t have time to think twice about it. And then I will walk down the hall and do the same to your parents. Got it?”