Afternoon, day fifteen…

I hurry to my office. Maks and Slavik are waiting for me, and the look of anger and frustration on their faces mirrors that on Jasha’s.

Something’s up.

“You haven’t seen the news, I take it,” Slavik says.

“Not yet.”

Maks is my tech man. He grabs the remote control from the tray on my desk and presses a button. The screen at the end of the room slides down from the ceiling.

He presses some more buttons. A newscast from a short time ago starts playing.

Vilyat Toporov is in Russia.

“Bastard gave us the slip. He left behind his wife and children,” Maks says.

Local news media in the town of Sarovisk are reporting that Vilyat has just donated five million dollars to fund an orphanage. The newscaster refers to him as a “successful businessman and philanthropist”, and bile rises in my throat.

“A news story ran in the local paper this morning,” Jasha says. “His wife is on the front page, with her kids.”

He thinks that being in the media spotlight will keep him safe from me, from his family.

Idiot.

My anger recedes, replaced by amusement. How did someone as stupid as him ever make it this far? Through sheer brutality and dumb luck, apparently.

I pour myself a vodka, and then one for Jasha, Slavik, and Maks. I take a sip, enjoying the burn. There’s a dull ache inside me at Feodyr’s absence, though. That chant in my head…the list of survivors…it’s down by one. He was there since the beginning. He was the most loyal of my foot soldiers – until he turned on me.

We all knew this was a dangerous game, and

But now is not the time to dwell on my loss. I drain half my drink, looking at the screen.

“I’m very sad,” I say. “I wanted to be the one to tap that final nail into his coffin, and he’s gone and done it himself. I can only pray that I get to him now before Edik or Latvi do.”

Jasha nods in understanding. “Remember, Latvi is scheduled for tonight. Unless you want me to reschedule.”

“No, the timing is excellent. Vilyat will get the message. So will Edik.”

I shake my head in scorn.

By blasting himself all over the news, he is literally begging the government to investigate him, and by extension his business associates. His brothers. I know what his financials look like, I know how much income he actually reports. It doesn’t support that kind of donation. The authorities will want to know. How did he get five million dollars?

He thinks he’s scored a point. All he’s done is delayed his death.

And Vilyat has, of course, just extended an enormous middle finger to me. Five million dollars – the exact amount that he was supposed to send me. And the clear message that when he sent his niece to me, he was sending collateral without actual value.

“So,” Jasha says. “What body part do we send him first? I’m thinking the left tit.”

An instant surge of rage explodes inside me. I stifle the urge to punch him in the throat. He’s ready to cut pieces off Willow, right now.

“Why would we give Vilyat what he wants?” I ask, forcing my voice to stay calm and steady.

Jasha gives me a sidelong glance. “What do you mean?”

“He thinks he’s the game master. He thinks he knows what my next move will be. Send him a piece of her, which he’ll ignore. Send him more pieces, he’ll ignore that too. All the time he’s planning, circling back, getting ready for his next move. Being predictable is a sin in this game, Jasha. A deadly sin. I have a better idea. All of you, go pack your bags. I have some calls to make.”

I move at lightning speed. I send a maid to Willow’s room to pack her clothing. I make the necessary phone calls.

Willow is cold and remote when I go to fetch her, so I don’t bother to explain where we’re going. When I see her hurting, I have the urge to comfort her, and I’ve got to fight that as if my life depended on it.

She’s a thief. She’s stealing who I am, and if I don’t put a stop to it, I won’t recognize the man I become.

After we pile into the car, she actually falls asleep on the way there. I know she hasn’t been sleeping well. I know because I watch her on my security cameras, far more often than I should. I watch her when she cries. I watch her when she smiles – which is all too rare. I watch her and want to be with her, and I stop myself. Most of the time.

We pull up in front of her uncle’s house, and my men begin piling out. She wakes up, then stares at me in shock. “You’re letting me go?” The soft note of hope in her voice makes me want to beat her until she screams. Until she bleeds.

How dare you want to leave me, you ungrateful bitch? Don’t you ever try to leave me – you belong to me.

“Can you count?” There’s an edge to my voice.

“What do you mean?”

“Has it been thirty days?”

That snaps her back to reality – the reality where I’m a stone-hearted asshole who uses innocent human beings as chess pieces.

“It’s the evening of the fifteenth day, sir.”

I slide out and gesture at her to follow me. “Then there’s your answer.”

Then she sees the news van. And more of them are pulling up.

“What are they doing here?” she asks, and the confusion and fear in her voice are a balm to my polluted soul.

I like my women scared. Fuck me, I’m no better than the men I’m destroying.

Jasha and Maks and Slavik are standing nearby.

I tell her exactly what her uncle has done, and she sucks in a gasp of horror.

“Yes,” I tell her. “It means exactly what you think it means. He’s totally fucked you over. Thrown you to the wolves. Now, here’s what you’re going to do.”

She listens, then nods, her expression blank.

As we walk toward the house, she says “Can you bring Lukas here too?”

“No,” I snap. “You’ll never see him again.” I’m not doing the boy any favors if I let him grow up weak.

She stops walking. “Then no deal.”

Have the last two weeks taught her nothing? “You’ll do what I fucking say, or I’ll break you.”

Her gaze flicks over to the news cameras. “He needs to come here. Please.”

“Are you actually trying to negotiate with me?” Rage flares inside me. I’ve already given her so much. Too much.

“I am not asking for anything for myself, you know that.” Her voice is low and urgent, her eyes pleading. “You seem to care about him in some way.”

I could kill her right now. I could break her in two. The blackness is threatening to rise inside me, and it takes everything I have not to lose it. “I said no.”

I start to walk, and she doesn’t move.

I paste a fake smile on my face for the cameras, walk back to her, and put my hand on her arm. “You’re playing a dangerous game here.”

She keeps her voice light, matching my fake smile with one of her own. “I am not trying to harm you or defy you in any way, sir, but if we both just vanish from your house, it will break his heart. I am doing this for him, and it’s better for him. Please.” But she’s not really asking me. The reporters are approaching, and for this one rare moment, she has the advantage.

“You’ll pay for this later.”

She leans in and speaks, her voice low so my men don’t hear her. “It doesn’t matter what I fucking do, sir, you make me pay whether I’ve earned it or not. So have at it. Either I’ll live through it, or I won’t. I’m trying to protect a heartbroken little boy. If I can spend some time with him, and just keep letting him know that I’m not his mother but I am his friend, and if I can give him some advance notice before I leave him for good, it will be easier on him than me just disappearing. Losing his mother has already emotionally damaged him for life. Too much heartbreak will turn him hard.”

Hard like you, you inhuman piece of crap, is the unspoken message.

Yes. I am hard. That’s why she shouldn’t fuck with me.

She’s only won the skirmish. Not the war. I call Jasha over. “Bring Lukas and his caretakers here.”

Slavik goes over to talk to the press, to tell them we’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.

It’s more like half an hour. Anastasia is so zoned out that I have to have her injected with stimulants just so she can function. And she still looks like shit. She’s losing her looks and her youth; life with Vilyat is destroying her.

Anastasia does as she’s instructed. She introduces me as her cousin, and we talk about how I’m helping to manage Vilyat’s local charity, and how I’m donating a million dollars of my own money to a local children’s home.

I put my arm around her shoulder. Anastasia flashes her rictus smile at the camera and babbles about how proud she is of her family.

I smile at the camera. I’ve sent a returning volley back at Vilyat. “I’ve got your wife and your kids and your house now, bitch.”

I will feel quite at home there. I wired the house and planted my employees there many months ago. I will send away the last few remaining employees of his – in little bits and pieces.

* * *

WILLOW

Helenka and Yuri are sitting in their rooms, waiting to see me.

I’m with Anastasia in her bedroom in the west wing of the mansion. I’m seething with rage at her.

Just when Sergei had her somewhat de-fogged, she found more sedatives that she’d hidden somewhere in her room and popped them. Her eyes can’t focus and she’s literally drooling.

There’s a nurse there with her now, and there will be one by her side twenty-four hours a day. A team of maids is tearing the room apart. Every last bit of furniture will be removed, and they’ll bring in a cot for her to sleep on. Sergei ordered it, and I didn’t make a peep of protest.

“You selfish bitch,” I seethe at her, and my harsh words penetrate her fog a little bit. “Damn you. How can you do this to your children?”

She sways where she’s sitting. “You don’t know. What I’ve been through.” She speaks with difficulty, as if her tongue is swaddled in cotton wool. She’s so pale, she’s almost translucent. She looks like she’s aged ten years since I last saw her, which is startling, because she’s always had that amazing, age-defying beauty.

And I don’t give a damn.

“Oh, boo hoo!” I spit at her. “We’ve all been through hell because of the men in this family. You think my last few weeks have been a bed of roses?”

Tears of self-pity well up in her eyes and spill down her cheeks. “You think…my life…has been a bed of roses?”

“I think you married a drug dealer and you knew exactly where the money was coming from, and you were perfectly fine with it because it financed a very luxurious lifestyle,” I snap. “I was born into this nightmare family, and I didn’t know what we did for a living until after my parents died. You chose to be a part of this, and you knew all along.”

She pulls up her shirt, and I stifle a gasp. Bruises all over her abdomen. Yellow and green…older bruises. Blue and red and purple…fresh bruises.

One of her ribs looks deformed. He broke her rib and she never went to the doctor.

I want to vomit. Cowardly, filthy, evil bastard. He hit her where it wouldn’t show.

I gesture to the nurse. “She needs to see a doctor for this.” The nurse nods.

Anastasia looks up at me, eyes vacant. Drool runs out of the corner of her mouth and splashes on her lap. “If I told anyone, he’d take my kids and have me killed.”

A part of me wants to pity her, to tell her that I don’t blame her for being like this. She made a mistake when she married Vilyat. I’m sure that he was sweet and charming at first. And once she’d said “I do”, it was too late. Actually, as soon as he set his sights on her back in Russia I’m sure it was too late. That’s how it is with the men in our family.

But I think of Helenka and Yuri, and how she has all but abandoned them to her addiction. And I summon my inner monster. What would Sergei do?

I glare at her. “Anastasia? You’ve turned into a drug addict. That was your choice. You sleep all day and hardly ever see them. You left them when they needed you the most. Sergei said you can’t see them again until you’re clean, and I am a hundred percent with him on that.”

“It’s not fair. When did you turn so mean?” she snivels.

I glance at her.

“When your husband threw me into the ocean with sharks, and I learned how to swim with them,” I say, and I leave the room, ignoring her heartbroken sobs.