Grievous (Wanted Men Book 5) (26 page)

“Sorin, take Yasmeen upstairs.”

“Are you not going to introduce us?” Gheorghe drawled.

“No.”

Paying no attention to the exchange, Yasmeen placed her hands on his chest. “Wait. Is Miranda okay?”

“Yes. Your friend is fine. She is worried about you. We will take care of that when I join you in a few minutes. You can call her and reassure her you are not being tortured in my dungeon.”

Happiness burst to life before him. Her smile was so genuine, small lines fanned out in the corners of her eyes. “Really?”

“Yes, pet. Really.”

She stood on her toes and kissed him full on the mouth in front of the others. “Thank you.” After daring to squish his face between her hands, she skipped to the door. She waved at Gheorghe and Claude but saved her smile for Sorin. “Lead on, Heimdall.”

Sorin gave her a funny look as he turned.

“What.” She questioned it—of course. “You don’t know who Heimdall is? Guardian of Asgard? Thor? Loki? Come on, Sorin. You don’t live in a cave.”

As they left, Sorin merely grunted.

“So, be honest.” Her voice drifted back as they went down the corridor. “Have you had any personal interactions with any of the ghosts who live here?”

“Only the ones I killed myself,” Sorin muttered.

Yasmeen’s shocked laugh faded as they moved further away.

Gheorghe was looking at the empty doorway. “Is Sorin making jokes with your playmate?”

Lucian picked up the poker, but rather than take out his cousin’s knees, he stoked the dying fire. “Aside from my personal business, what brought you here, Gheorghe?”

“I wanted to see for myself how you were doing.” He added to that when Lucian slowly turned cold eyes on him. “Also, the time has come to decide how we will deal with this situation once it unfolds.” He took a seat at the table. Claude stood rooted to the spot just inside the door. Lucian knew better than to ask the sentry to sit. If they were women, he’d have asked Claude how he was doing.

“You were right when you said Pivchenko wasn’t done,” Gheorghe said. “He is planning on striking one last time at his family. You were also right about the means he would use. Artur Baikov received a call.”

Lucian hung the poker on its hook and turned. “Artur is your contact? Is he a reliable one? What does he have to lose?”

“I dispatched Zlatan yesterday morning to pick up a young girl by the name of Karina. She is sulking her bitchy ass off in a safe house in Newark. Her surname? Baikov. Loving brother? Artur. He can be trusted.”

Satisfied with that, Lucian moved on. “And what did Sergei ask of him?”

“He requested a small team brave enough to go up against Vasily and Alek. Artur told Sergei he would get a crew together and would be in touch. He is waiting to hear back from me before he does anything more.”

Disgust filled him, sickening Lucian’s stomach. Disloyal people had that effect on him. “What is happening in Vasily’s camp?”

“The Tarasovs are doing as we were doing. Waiting. They have found a trail of bodies Sergei left behind, but their hands are tied because the coward has gone to ground. None of our hounds have picked up his trail, which means he buried himself and hasn’t come out since.”

Nothing new. That was frustrating, but Lucian got past it to outline exactly what he wanted ready when the time came to move on Sergei. Actual plans couldn’t be made until the time came, but being prepared was smart.

He remained in the room with his brother’s partner for as long as he could before excusing himself. Thirty minutes was all he could take with such a trigger. He took the back stairs two at a time, slowing once he reached the second level and had gone halfway down the south corridor.

Six days had passed since he’d identified Markus’s body at the morgue. Six days since he’d made that call to Claude, telling him of Markus’s death. Six days since he’d brought Markus’s body home, welcomed Claude into his house and led him to Markus’s bedroom where a fucking coffin had taken the place of his brother’s bed. He’d closed the Frenchman into the room and stood on the other side of the door, listening to a grown man weep over his dead lover.

Would he have to wait another six days before he could feel Sergei Pivchenko’s bones break by his hand? Another six days before he could watch Pivchenko’s blood pool on the floor at his feet?

He paused as he rounded the final corner and stood looking down the hallway. His distraction was in a room fifty feet away, and he was out here trying to steady his erratic breathing and racing heart. He took out his phone. He had to do more. He shouldn’t be blocking this need he had to react. Markus deserved…

Black spots danced in his periphery. He bent to rest his hand on his knee. “Goddamn you, Gheorghe,” he whispered, cursing his cousin for bringing this back. He’d been getting through the wait just fine, concentrating on his pet. She’d been fulfilling her purpose. Keeping his mind occupied. “I will personally deal with your murderer, brother,” he vowed again. “I swear on this empty life I now have; I will cause that man pain unlike anything anyone has ever survived. I will keep him. And I will break him. So many times I will break him. I swear to God. Not even his mother will recognize him once I get started.”

His phone clattered off to the side when his knees hit the stone floor. His skin flamed, and his air choked off. He felt as if he were burning in hell. If only. If he were lucky enough to make that journey, he would offer his soul to Satan in exchange for that fucking Russian’s location.

“Markus. I do not hear you anymore, but I hope you can hear me when I beg your forgiveness for my weak imagination. It cannot produce a punishment harsh enough to honor you. I do not know what I will do when I have that man at my feet. I fear I will kill him before I can make him pay.” He slammed his fists into the stone floor three times, each time harder than the last. “I am terrified I will kill him. I want to kill him so badly. I want to kill all of them. I want to take the life of everyone who was spared. I want you back, and I cannot have you!”

His roared bounced off the walls, the echo of it fading into silence, his panting breaths all that was left as he knelt there alone. He dug the heels of his palms into his wet eye sockets and tried to gain his composure. What would make the pain of losing his baby brother bearable? He looked at his phone. His contacts were illuminated, his pilot’s number at the top. He reached for it. He would return to New York. He would personally go through the families. Baikovs. Tarasovs. Didn’t matter anymore. Someone must know something. He would kill them in pairs. No. In groups of three. He liked that number. He would line them up. By the time he got to the third in the bunch, the man would reveal whatever information he knew, if only to save his own life. And he would lose it anyway.

“Lucian?”

His thumb hovered over the contact. He raised his head and felt a relief he didn’t understand wash over him as an ethereal image floated towards him. She was once again in white. But this gown was only the one thin layer, the shimmering silk clinging to her long legs. She still wore his mark of ownership around her slender neck, and he could see it clearly because she’d put her hair up.

“I heard…you shouted. Are you okay?”

Yasmeen. His pet. An obsession he’d never expected to have. She’d readied herself for bed. For his bed. Where he would undress her. Study the perfection of her body. Taste it. Feel it. Impale it. Take pleasure in it while offering the same.

He had men to kill first.

“Lucian?”

He focused on her exotic eyes that were shadowed with concern. They should be hooded with desire as he thrust into her wetness. If he licked her pussy, the concern would leave and they would hold what they should; a yearning for him. She would open herself and take him away. Keep men he liked and respected safe. They were victims just as he was. Markus had been taken from them, too.

But to kill some of them would feel so fucking good because they were responsible by association. To watch them die as Markus died would be a start. Wouldn’t it? Would that not make him feel better?

His demons were silent, their attention on the woman coming down in front of him. That mouthwatering scent he would remember forever filled his nose as her knees met his.

“Did you fall?” She cupped his cheek and lifted his head. He closed his wet eyes against the open and honest kindness that fell over her features. “Oh, Lucian. What happened?”

“The Russian stole my brother from me,” he blurted. “I must avenge him. I want him back. Like a child, I want Markus with me again even though I know that is impossible.”

He shook his head and brought his hands up to cup her breasts through the lightly beaded bodice of her sleeping gown. His knuckles were bleeding, but he wasn’t careful. He smeared blood over one covered nipple and then the other, ruining the purity of the white. He ruined its purity. Just as he was doing with the one who wore it. The one who was saying something he couldn’t hear.

“Can’t have him back. He is gone, my pet. But you are here.” He bent and kissed the shadow of one nipple and then the other. He tasted his blood. “I would be happy if they were all dead. I would be so happy. Then I would not be the only one suffering.” He sucked the tight peak into his mouth and pressed her closer by sending his hand back to rest between her shoulder blades. She tried to resist, but he didn’t allow it. “But I would also be unhappy because Vasily and his men are…my friends. Gabriel and Vincente…I could not kill them.” He pulled the material aside to expose one round globe. He tested its perfect weight as his shoulder was shoved.

“Lucian!”

“So perfect. Your body was made for a man like me. I will never tire of its perfection, Yasmeen. I own it. Tell me again that you understand that. I own you.” He clamped his hand on her throat and stilled her struggles. He brought her flawless face an inch from his and looked deep into her eyes. “You cannot deny me what is mine. I will not let you.”

“I’m not trying to. But can we get out of the hallway? What if someone walks by?”

“Then they will witness something beautiful; my pet climaxing on her owner.”

“Uh, not only no, but that would be a
fuck
no. Absolutely not.” She slapped his hand off her breast and covered up. “I’ll give you what you need, but not in front of others. That’s a hard limit for me.” She looked at his knuckles. “Will you let me clean that? What did you hit?”

He clamped a hand on her nape and held her immobile when she would have stood. “I can fuck you in front of a theater full of onlookers if I so please. They would consume an expensive dinner while I consumed you. They would choke with envy as I had you over and over again, in every position I could think to take you. Are you aware places like that exist to cater to men like me?”

“Uh, I am now. But that doesn’t mean I want any part of them.” She gripped the hair above his ears. “Are you hearing me, Lucian? Are you with me right now?”

“I lose myself in you. It is such a beautiful place for me to be,
draga
.”

Her lip bottom trembled. “You’re here?”

“I am here,” he confirmed. He was there. So was someone else. “I have ruined your gown.”

The stiffness went out of her shoulders, and he was suddenly the recipient of an embrace that had his pet cradling his head. “God, you sure know how to scare the fuck out of me. Please don’t go there anymore. Stay with me, okay? Tell your cousin and his friend to go back home and you and I can continue to work on this together. Okay, Lucian?”

“Claude is not Gheorghe’s friend. He was Markus’s lover.”

She unraveled her arms and sat back, leaving him adrift. “Markus was gay?” She didn’t sound shocked. Just curious.

“Yes. He never told me.”

“Oh, damn.” She winced and patted his shoulder. “Well, in keeping with the honesty floating around this place, I can kind of understand why. I don’t think you realize how terrifying you are. Maybe he was afraid…?” Her voice had gone just above a whisper, and she was cringing as if expecting him to shout at her.

“He and Claude would have been welcomed into my life as a couple. I would have proudly given them the grandest wedding if that had been my brother’s wish. He could do no wrong, Yasmeen. Had he found his pleasure murdering children, I would have found a reason to excuse such an atrocity. He could do no wrong.”

She was shrinking back from him again. He didn’t let her see how it bothered him that she would do so when he was only being honest, at her request. Why did that bother him rather than annoy him?

“Uh, I guess it’s lucky Markus was such a good man then, huh?”

“He was a great man,” he corrected as she slipped out of his hold and stood.

She put her hand out, but instead of taking it, he focused on the blood on her chest. He looked away when an image formed where that blood became hers. He shook it out of his head, feeling nauseous. Not her, too.

“Come with me, Lucian. We’ll take this somewhere more private.”

“I would like to have you right here.” He needed her next to him. Beneath him. Where he would know she was sheltered.

She stepped back and a shiver shook her frame. It wasn’t a sign of desire.

“Sorry,” she whispered. Then she turned and ran.