“Baron,” I mutter, not that Sergei knows the difference.
“Viscount, baron, or prince, you can’t kill him.” The older man grips my forearm as I step into the room. “Your uncle wouldn’t like it.”
“That’s a joke. The man who slices up rivals with a smile on his face would take issue with me dealing out the same kind of justice?”
“Think of the mess—the floorboards have just been stripped and you just paid a fortune for that silk wallpaper!”
I laugh, loud and hard. “Ah, Sergei.” I slide my arm across his broad shoulders. “Put you in a headscarf and you could be a babushka.”
His eyes narrow and he mutters a curse. “The floors are old. Historic. Not a piece of shit dance floor. You want to stain them red, you go ahead, but I tell you, the Pakhan wouldn’t like it.”
“He’s not here, either.” My arm retracts, and I straighten my cuffs. “And what if I become the next Pakhan? You’d be doing my bidding then.”
“I have always been here for you,” he says, thumping his chest with affront. “Even when you were a snot-nosed kid. Wasn’t it me who brought you here from Finland?”
After my parents' car crash, he means. My uncle sent him to bring me to London. I couldn’t speak a word of English, and my Russian wasn’t much better. He sent a man with two half ears and a scarred face to collect a grief-stricken seven-year-old. It’s little wonder I ran the other way.
“Didn’t I chase you when you ran?” he says. “Like the devil himself? But what do you mean, if you become Pakhan? Konstantin doesn’t want you involved, and not like this. Your father, he was a different kind of man.”
A decent sort of man.
“My uncle would make me in my father’s image, no?”
“What?”
“Sergei, Relax. Nothing is changing. Don’t tax your brain.”
“And what about him?” He inclines his head in the direction of the whimpers, to the figure beyond the open door.
“I don’t plan on killing him, either.” Or, do I mean I don’t plan on making a habit of it? It’s hard to tell given this sensation in my gut. It feels like silt swirling from the bottom of a riverbed. Granular. Murky. Wrong. It was my intention to frighten him. To make him suffer a modicum of the fear I’d experienced when I’d found him draped in a semi-conscious Isla. To teach him a lesson. But then there was the filth found at his apartment. Fucking scum.
As I push the door wide, frightened eyes meet mine over the slash of duct tape. Tied to the chair after a half thorough beating, my guest begins to protest under the tape.
“Hello, Giles.”
“He hasn’t stopped quaking since he heard her voice,” Sergei spits, sticking with Russian.
“Were you worried I’d called Isla here to offer her a little retribution of her own?” With a pout, I swipe up a mallet abandoned on the painter’s scaffold. “I thought about it, but she doesn’t seem the avenging type.”
Behind the tape, Giles mutters muffled words, his eyes beseeching.
“What am I going to do with you? I suppose I haven’t decided yet.” Rotating my wrist, I begin to swing the mallet, making him squeak from behind the tape. “I want to kill you, and that’s not hyperbole. My head tells me your loss would make the world a better place.” Eyes wide, Giles shakes his head staccato, his knuckles white over the arms of the chair. “But Sergei makes a good point. He doesn’t want your blood to stain the floorboards.” My attention swings Sergei’s way with a smile, though I make a point of frowning at the chimney breast. “And there are the walls, of course. As you can see, they’ve already started to paint them.”
His shaking head turns to vigorous nodding and a series of muffled pleas.
“Fucking pussy,” Sergei curses in English, switching to Russian as he almost falls over an industrial tub of paint. “Fuck! When are you going to let the damn decorators back in to finish?”
“When we’re done here,” I answer, beginning to rotate my wrist, and the mallet, again. “Obviously, there will be a little mess no matter what route I take.” I pivot on my heel to face him. “Alexander, or his grace, the duke, if you prefer, was planning on digging a hole for your body on Sunday morning. I’ve spoken to him since and you’ll be pleased to hear he’s downgraded his plans to breaking both of your legs.”
Welling tears spill and track down the tape as I lift the mallet over my shoulder before bringing it down hard and fast. Halting an inch above his knee.
“You’ll need a different tool,” Sergei suggests. “A hammer, at least.”
“For the benefit of our guest, English, if you please.”
He does so, his gaze flicking to Giles, adding, “Maybe you just kill him now. This is not a man, this is mouse.” He makes a silly squeaking sound.