The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) (54 page)

Yes, Ava would have loved her.

Ava.

His Ava.

He was leaving her again. He was breaking his promise after all.

Fuck.

A scuffle behind him had him reaching inside his coat for the 9mm tucked against his ribs. He spun, weapon in hand, and froze.

John Paul stared back at him, unflinching.

“What…?” Dimitri shoved his gun back into its holster. “What are you doing here?”

John Paul continued towards him, slow, like they were taking a leisurely stroll through the park.

“Someone needs to get Robby out.”

Dimitri just stared, dumbfounded. Then he snapped.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he roared. “There is no walking away from this.”

“You don’t know that.”

John Paul started forward.

Dimitri slammed an open palm into the man’s chest.

“Go fucking back.” Each word was chewed up and spat out. “You are not coming. Ava needs you. She can’t lose both of us.”

His hand was smacked aside.

“She won’t.”

He was walking and Dimitri had no choice but to scramble after him.

The warehouse was a concrete pillar of narrow windows and gray stone. There was a plaque over the high, cargo doors, but Dimitri didn’t wait to read it.

He glanced at the man next to him.

“There’s still time.”

John Paul nodded, his face set as he stared with single minded focus at the wood panels. “Then, let’s not waste it.”

Dimitri forced open the doors.

He expected an immediate explosion, a trip wire designed to go off the second they were disturbed. But the hinges squealed and doors parted to a cloud of dust and a flat, spacious chamber supported by fat, wooden beams and a single swaying lamp dangling over a slumped, bloody figure knotted to a chair.

“Robby!”

Dimitri started forward.

John Paul caught his arm. “Wait.”

It was only then he heard the slow, barely perceptible ticking. Two tickings. Three.

He scanned the puddles of black dripping from corners and pooling across the ground. There was no telling what they concealed or how much of it; the sounds were coming from everywhere.

“I count six,” John Paul said.

Dimitri counted more, but six was bad enough.

“Robby!” Dimitri said louder.

Robby flinched and jerked awake. His head snapped up. A garble of sound escaped the bit of rag twisted between his teeth.

His right eye was swollen shut. His cheek was bleeding from a shallow cut. More cuts, deeper cuts, littered his naked torso. The middle finger on his left hand was bent at an odd angle, but he’d live.

He caught sight of Dimitri and John Paul and his one good eye widened. He cried something and rocked his head wildly from side to side. He thrashed against the bindings, filling the stillness with the squeak of wood.

Dimitri started to tell him to keep quiet, but there was a groan of weight heaving off something with springs.

“You are going to stand there?” Ivan’s voice boomed through the room. “Come in. Sit.”

There was nowhere to sit, but they took several steps closer.

Ivan laughed, a deep, rumbling laugh that rolled like thunder in the darkness. “You bring your daddy, Dimitri? You need courage?”

“He’s only here to take Robby.” Dimitri scanned the shadows, searching for his brother. “You don’t need him. I’m the one you want, so come out and we’ll talk.”

Robby shrieked behind his gag, twisting and rocking violently enough to nearly send himself toppling backwards.

Dimitri ignored him and stepped deeper into the room. “Or are you the one who needs courage, Ivan? Because I’m right here and you’re in the shadows.” He edged a fraction back and lowered his voice so only John Paul could hear him. “Get Robby.”

John Paul didn’t move right away. He stood where he was, surveying their surroundings.

Dimitri left him to the task. He focused on his brother.

“What happened to Elena, Ivan? They found her body.”

He moved away from Robby, hoping to keep Ivan’s attention on him while John Paul got Robby freed.

“She changed her mind.” The voice was quieter and somewhere on Dimitri’s right. “Everything we did, all our planning … nothing.”

“What was the plan?”

It was a challenge keeping a calm, neutral tone when the smell of sulfur heightened the closer he drew to the edges of the light.

“Why am I here?” Anger bristled through him. “You said you wanted to talk.”

It was stupid goading a lunatic, but he was running out of options and he needed Ivan talking. He needed to give John Paul enough time to get as far as possible

Dirt scoffed beneath approaching heels. Dimitri braced himself as the shadows dissolved off Ivan’s giant frame. His wild mane of shiny, black hair seemed to glisten in the light, framing a face scarred badly from years of chemical splatters. It matched the rest of him, a tattered landscape of burnt flesh. Most of it a shiny pink against his natural tan. His hands were the worst, they looked like he’d been digging fries out of a bubbling deep fryer. Yet despite their damaged appearance, they could assemble and dismantle a bomb in under five seconds.

Ivan was a big man. Always had been. Even as children, Ivan had seemed massive. It wasn’t just height, but the sheer build of him, the straining muscles and bulging shoulders. He could have been a wrestler.

He towered over Dimitri, a good two heads in height with the cloud of power that radiated around him.

“You are forgetting who I am,
mladshiy brat
,” he snarled, one corner of his mouth twisted downward. “You forget what I can do to you.”

Dimitri snorted. “I’m not five anymore,
bol’shoy brat
,” he spat the word for big brother out like a curse. “I will not be so easy to catch now.”

Ivan laughed like his terror was some fond memory. “Remember how would you scream when we play poke the baby? I don’t even touch you with cigarette and you squeal … like piggy.”

Dimitri hummed, ignoring all the places on his body that tingled at the memory, the old scars still perfect round burns against his flesh.

“Good times.”

Ivan took a lumbering step closer, his smirk foul and cruel. “Or when we fit you in suitcase and push you down stairs.” He chortled. “Do you fit in suitcase now? We should see, yes?”

Dimitri stood his ground. He’d learned long ago that it wasn’t the act of violence that turned his brother on. It was the fear on his victim’s face. Dimitri had spent a great number of years with that look on his face.

“Is that all you wanted me here for? To remind me of what you can do?” He scoffed. “We could have done that over the phone.”

Ivan stopped, leaving an exact ten feet between them. He studied Dimitri with those cold, vicious eyes like he couldn’t quite put his finger on something.

“No,” he mused at last. “You’re not afraid like before. You are king now, yes? Kings don’t show fear.”

“What happened to Elena?” he asked again. “Why did you kill her?”

At the mention of their mother’s name, Ivan’s mouth warped into a hideous sneer. Yellow teeth bared.

“She become weak.” He spat weak like it was something foul in his mouth. “She wants to run, like coward. Wants to hide, like coward. Why? For what? For you? I don’t fear you. I will kill your whore and your father. I will kill everybody until there is nobody, but you. Then I will kill you.”

“Was that Elena’s plan?” he coaxed. “Why was she after Ava?”

“Ava.” Ivan growled her name like the mere mention of it fueled his rage. “Fucking whore.”

Dimitri steeled himself against the urge to ram his fist into the man’s throat.

“She started this.” Ivan’s nostrils flared. “Elena says we kill her. We kill him.” He jabbed a finger to where John Paul was still standing. “We take mainland. We take west. We take north. In end, we take city. My city. Then she not let me kill girl.

“Take her,”
she tells me.
“Take her where no one find her.”

I say, we kill her. Now. Put her body in pieces on his door. No. She won’t.

I take her and put her on boat and I’m done. She’s gone. We kill John Paul Morel and I take my kingdom. Yes?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “No. You bring stupid whore back. Elena panics. Says we run. We leave my city. We lose everything, because I don’t kill Ava like I wanted!” He was barely holding on. The rage was a palpable force that vibrated in the strands of his hair. His fists were mutilated hunks of ham balled at his sides. “She lose me my city!”

Dimitri wasn’t sure if he meant Ava or Elena, but he was talking and Dimitri wasn’t going to interrupt with questions.

“I kill her,” Ivan says simply. “Then I think I finish job. I kill whore and whore’s friend and whore’s father—”

Dimitri slugged him.

He hadn’t even felt his fingers curling or the urge singing up his arm, but it flew in a high arc and cracked into Ivan’s jaw. The snap of his teeth sang through the room. His head snapped back with a force that flung his entire weight back two full steps. Blood spattered in a beautiful arch against the dingy light.

“Ava’s not a whore,” Dimitri bit out, resisting the urge to rub his throbbing hand.

Ivan staggered, but he righted himself. He swiped the back of his fist across his bloody chin. He glanced down at the crimson stain … and laughed.

“Did I make you angry, Dimitri?” He lifted his eyes to Dimitri. “Did I insult your whore?” He cackled, his teeth bloodstained. “Did you think only you had taste of that pussy? Shaved, isn’t it? Bald and smooth like a baby.” He licked his lips. “I almost tasted for myself, almost put a real man’s cock in that tight cunt. Would have if I’d had more time.”

He was goading him. Dimitri knew it. Knew he was playing straight into Ivan’s hands, but the image, the raw, blistering thought of him anywhere near Ava plowed into him with a ferocity that had blood pounding in his ears. He couldn’t even control his breathing. Each one slammed out of him with a ravenous hunger that refused to be ignored.

He surged forward, fists clenched. He closed four full steps when Ivan jerked back. His cackle sparked across Dimitri’s nerves, but it was the hand he shot up between them that pulled Dimitri to a stop short of his goal.

He stared at the palm sized remote. Simple. Black with a single switch embedded against the ridged front. It seemed so tiny in Ivan’s giant grasp and yet it held the weight of everything on its square frame.

“Careful,” Ivan taunted. “Your whore’s friend is still here.”

Only an idiot would take his eyes off the man who could kill him with a single punch, but Dimitri shot a glance back over his shoulder, praying against all odds that John Paul was already gone and Robby’s chair would be empty.

Robby was still bound.

John Paul was still where he’d always been, unmoving.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Dimitri snarled, trying not to calculate the distance the man could have already put between them and the warehouse by now.

“I can’t,” was his response.

“What…?”

He turned his head to Robby, taking in the ropes around his wrists, across his chest, around his ankles. He sat in the center of a dull halo of light. Just him and the chair.

Then, he saw it, the long, thin cord attached to something bolted under the chair. It was barely visible through the thick layer of dust and it vanished once it reached the circle of light.

Ivan smirked when Dimitri faced him once more.

“What do you want, Ivan?” Dimitri spread his arms out on either side of him. “I’m here. You don’t need them.”

“But it is fun!” the other man boomed. “All your life, little Dimitri never understanding why his daddy never love him. Now, you can ask. Look. He’s here. You can know the truth.”

Dimitri shook his head. “I don’t need the truth. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. Actually,” he tilted his head to the side. “I do want to know one thing. Why did you kill Killian McClary?”

Ivan frowned. “What?”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

Ivan scoffed, genuinely insulted. “My work is art. Beautiful. Who did it, was amateur. Not me.”

Dimitri hadn’t thought how he was going to let Frank know. He wondered if Ivan would get angry if he sent a quick text. But he figured John Paul could tell him once they sorted out what sort of trigger Robby was sitting on.

“What now?” he asked careful to keep his voice controlled. “I came like you asked. Now, let Robby and John Paul go.”

Ivan’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement. “You don’t want him to die? Everything he is doing to you, you could destroy him.”

Dimitri shook his head. “Then he wins.”

Ivan snorted. “Maybe you better man than me. I kill him. Cut him into little pieces and feed him to fishes.”

This wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t know how long he could keep the other man talking and he needed Robby and John Paul out of there before the explosion.