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The two guards at the back door don’t hear us coming. They should have been more careful. A single strike each, and they hit the grass with a muted thump.
Inside, the house is warm and expensively furnished. There’s real art on the walls, the kind bought by a man with money but no taste. Crystal in the cabinets. A bar cart with many bottles.
We move through the ground floor together. Alexei handles the kitchen and the hallway. I take the sitting room. I step up behind a man and drive my blade through the base of his skull before he can reach for his gun, twisting the knife until he stops thrashing.
By the time we reach the staircase, the ground floor is lifeless. Alexei’s hands are slick and dark with blood.
Up, I tell him with my eyes.
He goes first.
The study is on the second floor, at the end of a corridor lined with more expensive things. I can hear voices before we reach the door. Simeon and an associate, arguing over numbers that cease to matter the split second Alexei opens the door.
The associate doesn’t get to finish his sentence. Alexei steps inside, grabs him by the jaw, and drives a knife up beneath his chin straight into the brain. He drops the corpse like trash and takes up position by the door, arms folded, watching with professional interest.
And then there are just the two of us. And Simeon.
He’s standing behind his desk, heavyset, well-dressed in the loud way of a lowlife who recently learned what money can buy. The thick neck, the gold rings, and the posture of a petty tyrant playing God.
His eyes move between me and Alexei, running the math. Two men, unannounced, through his entire perimeter. He knows what this is.
“Komarov,” he grates.
“Simeon.”
I come around the desk toward him, and he stumbles backward, his legs hitting the credenza behind him. Nowhere to go. His eyes dart to Alexei by the door, searching for a way out, but finding none.
Simeon looks back at me, terror breaking through his polished exterior. “Whatever this is, we can talk about it. Name a price. I have—”
“Your brother,” I say, stopping directly in front of him, “ran filth.”
“I wasn’t involved in my brother’s—”
“Women in vans,” I cut in. “Women in basements. Sold to men who used them and discarded them. Women who cried and bled so your brother could buy nice things.” I sweep a cold look across the room. “So you could buy nice things.”
“Komarov, listen—”
“I shut it down,” I say. “I destroyed your brother’s operation, and I thought the message was clear.”
Simeon’s mouth opens and closes like a landed fish.
“But you rebuilt it. You took your brother’s filth and you started again. More women. More basements. More men like you getting rich on other people’s pain.” I take another step, invading his space until he has to look straight up at me, and I watch the fear work its way through his trembling hands and twitching jaw. He orders violence a dozen times a day and is realizing he’s about to be on the receiving end.
“I can give you names.” Simeon scrambles for leverage. “People higher up the chain than me. Real players, Komarov, not just—”
“The first time your men took Cora,” I say, cutting straight through his panic, “it was business. Disgusting, contemptible business.”
I reach out, pick up one of the heavy crystal glasses from his desk, turn it slowly in my hand, and then hurl it at the wall behind his head. He flinches as it explodes into razor-sharp shards, raining around him.
“The second time,” I say, “you knew exactly who she belonged to. You took her because of me. You put my woman back in the dark just to settle a score.”
“Komarov, please—”
I hit him.
With my fist, clenched and rigid, driving the full weight of my fury into his face. The impact snaps his head sideways. He crashes into the credenza, shattering an expensive bottle of scotch, and slides down to the floor in a heap of blood, glass, and ruined pride.
I crouch down in front of him and grab a fistful of hair, hauling his face up until his eyes are inches from mine. His nose is smashed, blood pouring freely over his trembling lips.
