Chapter Thirteen
Dimitri pulled a knife from his pocket and opened the razor sharp blade. To his credit, Boris did not flinch away as Dimitri had expected him to. He lifted his chin instead. In fact he looked as if he was expecting Dimitri to slit his throat. That was not an insult. It was a compliment to have such a reputation. It was just too bad that making that choice would only make things worse. No matter how angry she was at her father, Toni wouldn’t have wanted Dimitri to kill him in cold blood.
“No.” Dimitri deliberately cut the zip ties binding Boris’s ankles to the chair legs. He saw the old man’s calf muscles bunch and quickly blocked the halfhearted attempt at a kick. “You know, I’m letting you go. You would do well to not piss me off and make me change my mind.”
“Why would you let me go?” Boris looked confused.
“Because killing you serves no purpose.” Dimitri shrugged. “Unlike my hotheaded brother, I understand the value and satisfaction to be gained from making someone suffer.”
Boris’s brow furrowed as he processed this thought. “A real man would kill me and have his revenge.”
“Imbecile,” Dimitri said in Russian. “You are too stupid to understand that putting you out of your misery is far too easy. A real man—as you say—understands that there are far worse things than death.”
“Such as?” Boris stood up, holding out his hands to Dimitri as though he was a servant.
Dimitri slit the zip ties on Boris’s hands, deliberately nicking the skin and making the man swear.
“You fool! You could cut my vein and have me bleed out right here on the floor! I thought you didn’t intend to kill me. Or must I die anyway because you are stupid?” Boris’s tone and manner all suggested he was the worst sort of man.
“Come now.” Dimitri didn’t take the bait. “It’s a paltry cut. You were asking me to slice you wide open not three seconds ago. Now you’re going to cry about a little scratch? I think you’re goading me. Are you really that stupid?”
“I’ll take this incident before the council and have you sanctioned!” Boris announced. He rubbed his hands and stomped his feet, presumably to get the circulation flowing.
“Really?” Dimitri pursed his lips. “I feel like that would go badly for you. Nobody likes you, Boris. You’re a joke. You think you are important, but you’re nothing more than a gnat that nobody has bothered to swat. Try what you want, but you’ll find that you’re about to enter a whole new world of bad luck.”
“You have no power over me,” Boris said, dripping arrogance.
“Not personally,” Dimitri agreed. “But since I just bought the laundering rights on three of your businesses, I think you might want to rethink what you assume I can and cannot do.”
Boris’s face paled a few shades. Then he turned and stomped out of the room. He got to the end of the hall and paused. Dimitri almost expected him to say something else about the situation, but the man had only one more order to issue. “Stay away from my daughter. She’s an engaged woman.”
Dimitri snorted. “Now you’re just being ridiculous. But I’ll keep it in mind. Really.”
Boris was just walking out the door and ascending the steps to the portico when Ivan grabbed his arm, looking almost wild eyed with crazed excitement. “Rustikov’s men are here. They’re at the gate demanding their boss be released.”
“How convenient for them then.” Dimitri gestured to the door Boris had just exited from. “He can run up the driveway and catch himself a ride.”
“Don’t you think we should retaliate?”
“For what?” Dimitri shook his head. “They came to rescue their idiot boss. That’s nothing to punish them for. That kind of loyalty is rare, especially since Boris is such an ass.”
“We can’t let this kind of thing go without a response!” Ivan actually got in Dimitri’s face.
Dimitri put one hand out, laying his palm flat on Ivan’s chest. He bodily shoved the man out of his personal space. “Be very, very careful, Ivan,” Dimitri murmured. “You’re already on thin ice after that stunt you pulled with Anatoli.”
“Stunt!” Ivan snarled. “At least Anatoli does something. You sit around and do nothing. You wait and you play games and everyone laughs at you behind your back!”
Dimitri felt a jolt of shock, but immediately concealed it behind a poker face. It would not do to have Ivan believe that this asinine behavior was intimidating Dimitri. In reality it was just making him realize how pervasive Anatoli’s stupidity was. It was time to clean house.
Dimitri deliberately turned his back on Ivan and left the basement. He ascended the steps, Ivan hot on his trail. With long strides, he caught up to Boris. The man had already reached the front gate. His men stood with their weapons visible, waiting for their boss to exit Dimitri’s property.
“Open the gate!” Dimitri shouted to the enforcer in the booth. “He was not a prisoner here.”
“Bullshit!” Boris snarled.
Dimitri held out his hands. “I did not order your abduction and I’ve taken pains to isolate the ones who did in order that they be punished.”
Boris curled his lip, backing quickly out the gate toward the safety of his own men. Dimitri grabbed Ivan, shoving the man forward and then giving him a kick in the pants for good measure. Dimitri knew he’d taken Ivan completely off guard. Otherwise the man would have never been so easily shoved around. But this time he went sailing through the gate and right into the arms of several of Boris’s men.
“This man is Ivan,” Dimitri shouted. “He betrayed me in words and in deed. He is the one who took Boris Rustikov prisoner and I present him as a gift to be punished in whatever way Boris deems fit.”
Ivan’s cry of outrage was lost in the cacophony of laughs and jeers coming from the assembled Rustikov men. It occurred to Dimitri that Boris’s estate must have either a skeleton crew, or no guards at all. Then he realized how and why they’d come looking for their missing boss, and how they’d known exactly where to go.
“Clever, clever, girl,” Dimitri murmured.
***
Toni kept her backpack close as the bus headed across town toward Kabalevsky territory. She felt paranoid. Of course she was carrying a huge amount of valuables in her back, so maybe she was entitled to a little paranoia. The bus bounced over a few potholes and Toni nearly came out of her seat.
“Careful there.” A male hand grabbed her arm and steadied her in the seat.
Toni glanced up to find herself staring at a very handsome man. He was probably her age with dark hair, dark eyes, and a very nice smile. He had that look, as if he were interested in maybe getting her phone number or going out for a drink or something.
Toni forced herself to relax. “Thank you.”
“Do you ride the bus very often?” he wanted to know. “I’ve never seen you here before and I take this line home from work every night.”
“I’m just going to visit my uncle,” she said uncomfortably.
Was the guy being too nosy? She couldn’t tell. In fact she was utterly aware in that moment of the vast gulf between herself and other twenty-three year old women. She was suspicious because practically everyone she knew would lie for personal gain. Then she looked at other people around her and had trouble believing they were any different.
“Would you maybe want to go out for a drink with me?” the young man asked. “There’s a place at the next stop that’s pretty good.”
She swallowed. The vast gulf between her and this man was simply too much to bridge, at least for now. She offered him what she hoped was a polite smile. “I think I really just need to get to my uncle’s.”
He shrugged. “All right then.”
The man moved away and Toni felt her eyes prickle with tears. Her mother was dead. Her father was an ass. She’d fallen in love—yes, she’d totally fallen for Dimitri—with a criminal who had only used her to get to her father. Her life was a wreck. The only option she had left at this point was to go to her uncle’s and try to regroup.
When the next stop came, the young man got off the bus. He gave a little wave and a smile, but she knew that she would never see him again. She spent the rest of the ride to her uncle’s torturing herself with images of the nice young man meeting a beautiful young woman, getting married, having a house full of kids, and then growing old together. For some reason she kept obsessing over the notion of sitting on a back porch somewhere in a rocking chair with her husband of sixty years by her side.
Finally the bus reached her stop. She could see her uncle’s restaurant half a block down. Climbing off the bus was a relief. She opened up her stride, moving quickly down the sidewalk as she eagerly approached the front doors of what could probably be considered the Kabalevsky stronghold.
“Antonina!”
She half turned in shock and glimpsed her father. Her father! Picking up her pace, she was practically sprinting toward The Samovar. How had her father managed to get here so quickly? He should have been tied up at Dimitri’s for hours, to say nothing of the diversion she’d put together with her father and Dimitri’s men!
“Antonina, you stop right there!”
Her legs wanted to obey, but her brain was too smart to let them. She ignored his arrogant demands and burst through the front door of the restaurant as though her butt was on fire. The hostess drew back in surprise, looking as if she were ready to throw Toni right back out the door.
“I’m sorry, can I help you?” The woman cocked her head to the side and looked doubtful.
Toni sucked in a huge breath. She had no idea if her father was enough of an idiot to actually walk through the doors of The Samovar. “I want to talk to Nikolai or Viktor. Now. They’re my uncles. Please?”
The young woman paused, looking skeptical. Then she picked up a phone. “What’s your name?”
“Toni Rustikov.”
“Yes, Mr. Kabalevsky? This is Nicole. There’s a Toni Rustikov up front to see you. Shall I send her away?”
Toni snorted. She could actually hear her uncle’s voice on the other end of the line. It didn’t sound like Nikolai, which meant it was probably his younger brother Viktor. Her mother had been the youngest of the three. The baby.
The hostess looked mortified. “Okay sir, yes. Right away, sir.” She put the phone down and looked apologetically at Toni. “I’m sorry, let me show you into his office.”
“Thank you.” Toni glanced behind her. The front door of the restaurant was opening. She saw her father and his favorite enforcer Pyotr step inside.
The door to Viktor and Nikolai’s office opened. The hostess nodded as she let Toni into the office, then her father started shouting. The door closed behind her and his voice was blissfully muffled.
“What in the hell is going on?”
Toni turned and couldn’t help but smile. It was Viktor. He was smiling and holding out his arms. She accepted the embrace and then pointed to the door. “My father decided to make an appearance. I thought I made a clean getaway, but I was apparently mistaken.”
Viktor laughed. “You have a seat and I’ll go deal with my dear brother-in-law.”
“Thank you!” Toni sank gratefully into a chair, still clutching her pack to her chest. She was going to be all right. She was going to figure this out. Eventually.