Page 94
“The last person driving this car was Troy Banks. Cora’s husband,” I say tightly. “I’m hunting that piece of shit. Whoever sold this car to your shop, I want a name. Right now.”
Alexei nods once. “Give me one minute.”
While Alexei strides off to interrogate his floor manager, I tear through the car’s interior looking for any clues pointing to where Troy is hiding. Under the driver’s seat, I find a crumpled fast-food napkin and a wad of chewed gum stuck to the floor mat. The filthy fucking animal.
Alexei returns a moment later, flanked by a broad-shouldered man wearing a grease-stained T-shirt and a thick silver chain.
“Ivan was the one who bought the vehicle yesterday,” Alexei says.
“Tell me everything,” I demand. “Describe the man who brought it in. Was his name Troy? Was he favoring his left shoulder like he had a bullet hole in it?”
Ivan shakes his head. “No injury, man. And his name wasn’t Troy.”
“He could have used a fake name.”
“He could have,” Ivan agrees with a nod. “But he didn’t. I know the guy who brought it in. He runs with Simeon’s crew.”
The name hits me like a physical blow.
“Pyotr Simeon?”
“That’s right.”
Alexei cocks a dark eyebrow at me. “You know this Simeon?”
“Not long before you got out of prison,” I say, my voice trembling with fury, “I had a run-in with Pyotr Simeon’s brother. They were running a human trafficking ring, kidnapping women off the street for bride auctions and underground brothels.”
“How many did you kill?” Alexei asks.
“Most of them. Pyotr Simeon restarted his brother’s operation, and his goons kidnapped Cora. Fuck. What if Troy is connected to Simeon’s gang? Troy steals my car, flees straight to them, and they sell off the vehicle. I knew that bastard vanished too cleanly. They’ve been hiding him.”
“You might be jumping to conclusions,” Alexei cautions. “Troy could be rotting in a ditch somewhere, and Simeon’s men merely lifted your car off the street.”
Maybe. But a cowardly, pathetic parasite like Troy would happily buy protection from a trafficking syndicate. I rack my brain, desperately trying to recall every single detail Cora told me about the morning she was taken off the street.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
I tear it out, checking the caller ID, and see it’s one of my men at the house.
I press it to my ear. “What?”
“Boss.” The head guard’s voice is grim. “We just had an intruder try to come over the east wall. He fired on us the second we spotted him. We had to take him down.”
My stomach drops onto the greasy concrete.
An armed intruder breaching my home. It’s never happened before. I’ve made other enemies. It doesn’t have to involve Cora.
“Who was he?” I demand, gripping my phone.
“We squeezed a name out of him before he bled out,” the guard replies. “He was a byki working for Pyotr Simeon.”
The world stops spinning.
I killed Pyotr Simeon’s brother and destroyed his operation, and now he’s involved with the husband of the woman I love. Troy will have told Simeon about me being in his kitchen. Touching his wife. Declaring her to be mine.
Killing my woman would be Simeon’s ultimate, blood-soaked revenge.
A sudden, horrifying vision flashes behind my eyes: Cora standing in front of the mirror in that deep-water dress, luminous and soft, a perfect target out in the city with only two guards between her and a bullet.
