by Stacy Gail
Shit, this old codger was fucking laughing at him. “If you really thought I was dead, you wouldn’t be here. Or are you going to try to convince me that this sudden meeting of ours is a remarkable coincidence?”
Grigor shook his head. “I would never insult your intelligence. Again, you speak the truth. I came here to speak with you.”
“How did you know I was here in the first place?” His thoughts immediately went to Jubilee and Celestial Bodies. If he had somehow left a trail that could lead Knives there…
“I had the belief that keeping an eye on your Dasha would eventually lead me to you. You see, I believed the same thing that you said of me—that you were too strong to be taken out so easily. And here you are.”
Polo smiled his most affable smile while imagining ripping Grigor’s head off with his bare hands. “Here I am.”
“I am glad of it. Glad and grateful you were there the night Dasha was attacked. One second I’m in my car far down the street, getting sleepy like the old man I am, and all is peaceful. The next, the girl explodes from the building with some cowardly d’yavol in hot pursuit. Had you not been there, I very much fear Borysko’s oldest daughter would not have survived.”
“She’s tougher than she looks.”
“So are you. To use your words, there was no way anyone could have gotten the drop on you so easily.” Then he paused. “Though, considering how I’ve caught you so unprepared tonight, it’s entirely possible I’ve overestimated you.”
“Keep thinking that,” Polo suggested, still smiling. It sweetened his mood when Grigor’s own smile faltered. “See where it gets you.”
“What I want to see is not a silly argument between the two of us. I wish to see us working together to solve a problem we both have.”
“What problem would that be?”
“Being dead.”
Polo froze. “What?”
Grigor’s thin mouth twisted as though he tasted something bitter. “I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of my unfortunate demise. Unlike the spectacular death scene you and your friends staged fit for Hollywood, there were no witnesses to Nizhy Vitaliev trying to kill me. Trying, and almost succeeding.”
“Holy shit.” Polo stared at the other man. “You’ve been Knives’s bodyguard since I came on board as Dasha’s guard, and that was a lot of fucking years ago. To think Knives would turn on you is like…like thinking Dash would turn on me.”
“It’s not surprising you think this. Dasha has a much different temperament than her brother. You’ve never witnessed behavior from her that made you wonder what she would do to you if she ever suspected you’d crossed her. But for me, this thought was always preying on my mind. In some ways, a part of me has been prepared for Nizhy’s betrayal from the very beginning.” He shrugged in a way that looked like he was trying to get out from under of a world of weight. “This preparedness doesn’t make the betrayal any easier to swallow.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Polo said, trying to imagine what that had to have been like, to have the one life you’d guarded with your own for so long, suddenly turn on you. It was almost too painful to bear. “What happened?”
“The murder of Konstantin Medvedev happened,” came the flat reply. “You know Knives ordered it, of course.”
“Know it? No. Suspected it, yes. You were the confirmation we were looking for since you disappeared at the same time Konstantin was murdered,” Polo said, his mouth tightening. What had happened to Dash’s other bodyguard, Konstantin Medvedev, had been horrific, and a terrible slap in the face of the powerful Medvedev family. “We’ve been trying to gather evidence to prove it.”
“We?”
“My intel guys, Yuri Rodin, his son Alexei and Indigo Ruiz, as well as some friends you don’t know.” And he thought it best to keep it that way.
Grigor nodded in apparent understanding of this. “Yuri Rodin is very good at intelligence gathering. None better. Mind like a steel trap.”
“He was the one in charge of background checks on potential employees for my new nightclub, River Styx. It was all just normal shit, until he stumbled across some applicants who belonged to Knives’s new Vitaliev Bratva. Then, after going over the hotel’s security video where Konstantin was taken, Yuri’s fairly sure he saw one of those job applicants carrying Konstantin out. Later on, at the end of Konstantin’s funeral, I spotted what I think might be the same guy in Knives’s personal security.”
“Yet you’ve not done anything about this?”
“I’m not as sure as Yuri is on the ID. Yeah, the guy I saw with Knives looks a lot like the man in the hotel video. But the angle and video quality are too poor to take it to the Medvedev family as proof.”
“I see your dilemma,” Grigor said after taking a few moments to chew that over. “To unleash Pavel Medvedev and his remaining sons on Nizhy would start a war the likes of which this city has not seen in many a long decade. Blood would flow like a river.”
“I’m hoping to avoid a war, but I don’t know if it’s possible at this point. I’ve just got to try to minimize whatever damage I can by getting ironclad evidence about who our true enemy is. And it sure as hell isn’t the Scorpeones.”
“Pavel won’t need such ironclad proof. He had to bury his youngest, then was disrespected by the new head of the Vitaliev Bratva. I doubt you’ll have to worry about talking him into accepting a war against Nizhy.”
“I’ve got other concerns besides Pavel.”
“Like what?” When Polo didn’t answer, the older man’s frown slowly disappeared, and he lifted his chin as he studied Polo. “Ah. I see.”
Damn it. “What is it you think you see?”
“Dasha. You want Dasha to give her blessing on taking out her brother. You want her to understand.”
“You’re wrong.”
“How sad,” Grigor mocked. “A man who loves is a man who is soft. I never thought I would see it, but this is what you’ve become.”
Damn it again. “No wonder your ex-wife couldn’t stand you.”
“I don’t deny it.”
“There was an actual sniper that night I was shot, did you know that?”
Grigor’s amusement vanished. “No.”
“Sniper was there for Dash. Not me, not anyone else. Dash was the target that night, just like she was the target a few nights ago. This isn’t a fucking game, and I’m not some goddamn schoolboy worried about whether or not the girl I’m crushing on will still like me when all is said and done. Her life could be lost if I don’t get this right.”
“Then why do you hesitate? Tell her what is happening and strike.”
Polo shook his head. “No way. There’s no fucking way I’m ever going to let her know that her own brother is gunning for her.”
“To keep her ignorant is to keep her in the worst danger.”
“I can protect her from it. Just like I’m protecting her from knowing the last of her family has betrayed her.”
Again, understanding bloomed in Grigor’s weathered face. “So you think you can spare her the truth?”
“I’ve done it so far.”
“Because you don’t want her to feel as you did when your family betrayed you.”
That hit so close to the truth, he very nearly swung at the old man. “You fucking kidding me? This isn’t about me.”
“Do you not see that you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too, boy? You wish for the impossible on this.”
“I can do this. I can protect Dash from everything. You do not know how fucking motivated I am on this. I’ll sacrifice whatever I have to, even her belief in me, if I can keep her in the dark that her own family is gunning for her. She loves Knives, Grigor. She said that. I can’t take that away from her. I won’t.”
Grigor made a pitying sound, and it was made that much worse because this time instead of mocking, it seemed genuine. “Dasha’s brother wants her dead, you stupid, stupid boy. You turn yourself inside out trying to protect her even this knowledge, you’ll end
up protecting her from nothing. Her ignorance will get her killed, and that will be on you.”
Fuck. If he’d known Grigor was going to be this annoying, he wouldn’t have tried so hard to find the bastard. “I’ll protect her from Knives. I’d die to do it, and I’ll most certainly fucking kill to do it. Dash gets out of this alive, and she gets out of it happy.”
“I never knew you were such a romantic.”
Seriously, Grigor was just begging to have his nose broken. “Maybe I just don’t want the drama of convincing Dash her brother wants her death to be the excuse he’ll use to wage war against the Scorpeones.”
“It’s sad he’s so insecure that he feels he needs an excuse. He has a need to feel all his moves are justified and righteous. His father would have simply done whatever he needed to get done, and that would be that.”
“Tell me about it.”
“The mind of Nizhy Vitaliev is…” Grigor seemed to search for the right word. “Convoluted. In his view, he and his sister are unbeatable when they’re together. But for a long time now, they have not been together. He’s insecure with her living her own life away from his control, especially now that their father is dead. He feels that having her out in the world makes him vulnerable. His love for her means she can be used against him. This is something Nizhy Vitaliev can never allow.”
Polo thought back to all the times Knives had tried to get both Dash and him to move back to the Vitaliev estate, and could only shake his head. “If Knives was so worried about his sister’s safety, why kill her bodyguard? Konstantin Medvedev was the best possible bodyguard around, and loyal to the bone. He would have died for Dash.”
“He did die for Dasha, though he didn’t know it. When Nizhy first asked me to eliminate Konstantin, I had the same thought as you—if he wanted his sister safe, why would he take out her bodyguard? But to Nizhy, it made sense. If he could make his sister feel so targeted, so pressured, so hunted, she would come home voluntarily to be protected by her big brother. And if he could put the blame on the Scorpeones in order to eliminate that family once and for all, so much the better.”
Polo took in a slow breath. “Knives asked you to kill Kon?”
Grigor nodded. “He’s asked me to do many bizarre actions throughout my time guarding him. Most of the time I was able to talk him out of these actions. But that was when Borysko was still alive. Now with his father gone and Nizhy getting more and more power-mad as the head of the Vitaliev Bratva, getting him to drop the idea of killing one of our own became impossible.”
“Jesus.” Polo looked down at his bare feet and tried to wrap his head around it all. “So…did you do it? Did you kill Konstantin Medvedev?”
“Don’t be stupid, boy.” For the first time, the heat of anger edged the older man’s tone. “It was my refusal to kill Konstantin that made Nizhy try to kill me. When I turned my back on him, thinking the matter settled, he cracked me on the head with God knows what. The next thing I remember is hitting the water as he dumped me in the lake. Luckily for me, I am an excellent swimmer.”
“Fuck.” He’d have to remember to tell Alex that he’d been bang-on target in his suspicions about Grigor’s fate. “So for two months you’ve been hanging out with your ex and playing dead? Why not go to Pavel Medvedev and tell him your story?”
Grigor grimaced. “Ever since Borysko died and Knives assumed control of the Bratva, I confess that I’ve covered up how unwell Nizhy is. Knowing Pavel, he wouldn’t appreciate how I kept silent on this subject, despite the fact that I did it out of respect for Borysko.”
“Translation—you didn’t want to end up dead for real.”
“Instead I chose to wait for you to show your hand. I cannot bring Nizhy Vitaliev down on my own. Neither can you. He’s become too strong, too well-insulated with that army of badly trained malcontents. To protect your Dasha, you know in your heart that you’ll have to bring Nizhy down. He will never stop trying to kill his weakness.”
“Great,” Polo muttered, while the world around him turned a darker shade of black. “And here I thought all the shit Dash had been put through was Knives’s way of winding tension up against the Scorpeone family.”
“That vendetta is still alive in Nizhy’s heart, make no mistake. It was the spark that kindled his inner fire long ago, and it’s a fire that has never gone out.”
Polo’s gut twisted at the thought of his former family. “Now there’s something I can understand.”
“No, you don’t understand it,” came the surprising reply. “You were tortured for years, yet you found a way to rise above it, Polo Scorpeone. Nizhy, the pampered mifiya prince, was at the mercy of the Scorpeones for a handful of days. But he allowed that event to twist him into something that not even his father could recognize. You don’t understand Nizhy Vitaliev, the man you call Knives, because you could never be him. You had that chance, but you chose another path. A better path. This is why Borysko placed you so close to Dasha, his treasure. This is why he called you his second son. You were the son he wanted. You were the son he could be proud of.”
Something deep and profound stirred in his chest at that, but he pushed it aside so it wouldn’t derail him. “Borysko sure as hell wouldn’t be proud knowing that his true son is trying to kill Dash.”
Grigor sighed and suddenly looked a hundred years old. “Deep down, Nizhy is small and afraid. I’m sure he tells himself he would rather kill her himself out of love, rather than let someone else do it. I’m sure he even believes that this is what a strong man would do. But I call it what it is—fear. He’s a scared little boy wearing a bratva boss’s skin. And as for Borysko, he would be saddened, but not surprised by his son’s actions. Not at all. ”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Protecting Dasha is why Borysko assigned me to Nizhy in the first place, after the children returned from that kidnapping business,” Grigor said, surprising him. “As time unfurled, Borysko realized his son was… not right. He had the boy evaluated by several people, and that was something Borysko’s son did not tolerate well. I know that at least one of those people chosen to quietly evaluate him wound up dead at Nizhy’s hands.”
“I heard about that. A guy by the name of Nikolai Voromin got his head stomped in by Knives. Literally.”
“All because he had been tasked to unveil the true Nizhy Vitaliev. The results of that particular evaluation broke Borysko’s heart.”
Polo pulled his hoodie lower to cover his scowl. “I can’t believe Borysko never told me about Knives being mentally fucked up. It was a matter of Dash’s security. He should have told me.”
“Wait until you become a father, and then see how easy it is to face the reality that your own child is a demon. Borysko did his best when he put me in place to protect the world from Nizhy.”
“His best?” It took a hell of a lot for Polo not to scoff. “It would have been best to tell me, Dash’s bodyguard, that the greatest threat to her was her own brother. I would have taken care of it then and there, and we wouldn’t be up shit creek the way we are now.”
“This, I think, is why he didn’t tell you. He was a smart man, Borysko Vitaliev. I’m sure he foresaw that there would come a day when you would have to stand against Nizhy to protect Dasha. But if you had done it a decade ago, it would have been the end of your life as well, Polo Scorpeone.”
“It’s almost been the end of Dash’s life.”
“But it hasn’t been, because you have done what you were trained to do. You protect Dasha.” With a long sigh that sounded as agitated as Polo felt, Grigor shook his head. “It’s a sad thing to see that all of Borysko’s fears have now been realized. His daughter is being hunted by his son, and the world feels like it is coming to an end.”
“It’s not,” Polo muttered, his fists knotting in at his sides. “The only thing that’s coming to an end is Knives.”
Chapter Eleven
The elevator opened to reveal the marble-tiled foyer and the copper-plated doors, blasted off
their hinges.
No.
My heart pounded so hard it made my stomach turn. I didn’t want to move. I knew this territory. I’d already walked it a thousand times. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I did. It never went well.
I refused to leave the elevator. Instead I froze my muscles in place, because if I didn’t move, I would be safe. And if I got out of there entirely, I would be better than safe.
I would be free.
Eagerly I reached for the button panel to have the elevator take me away from this hell once and for all, but I blinked and the panel was no longer there. Neither was the elevator car itself. It had spat me out without my noticing, and suddenly I was in the threshold of the blasted-out doorway, looking at the cavernous living room of Polo’s penthouse.
Oh, no.
I didn’t want to go in. I hated this place. Hated everything about it.
No. No, that wasn’t right.
How could I hate this place? This was where I would find Polo, and once we were together everything would be all right.
I just had to find him.
Hesitantly I stepped across the threshold and into the living room that now resembled Polo’s office in his nightclub, Heaven. Seated at the desk was my brother, Knives. His hair, almost black and as thick as mine, fell over his brow as he concentrated on playing Pinfinger—a game where the player placed their hand flat on a table, splayed their fingers, and stabbed the table between the separated fingers with a sharp knife.
As I approached, Knives lifted his onyx-dark eyes to me while continuing to play.
“I’m the best at this, you know.” My brother’s handsome face lit up with a smile when he saw me, his whole demeanor welcoming. That would have warmed my heart, but the moment he looked away from his game, he began to stab his hand. “Wanna play?”
“Wait, stop that, you’re hurting yourself—”
“Can’t stop playing, Dash. The game’s not finished.”
“Oh my God, look what you’ve done.” As I watched in horror, a finger was severed, stabbed clean through, then another. A pool of blood on the desk blotter bloomed to spill onto the desk itself. “For God’s sake, stop what you’re doing!”