Red. (Den of Mercenaries #1)(7)

Pushing Naomi off him, he headed into the closet, only stumbling once, dressing as quickly as he could. After punching in the combination to the safe, pulling out his gun, and closing it back, he reentered his bedroom.

Watching him from her new position on the bed, eyes glittering with awareness, Naomi was quickly over her sulking. Sometimes Mishca forgot she got off on that shit.

“I’ll call you after.”

That was all she ever got nowadays. The ‘I love yous’ had stopped a long time ago.

He took the elevator down to the lobby, not surprised to see Vlad already waiting for him next to Mishca’s pride and joy, a black S-class Mercedes. The man was nearly as tall as Mishca, but with broader shoulders and graying hair. Vlad was at least two decades his senior, and yet, he still hadn’t made it any higher in the organization.

In this, Mishca understood his privilege.

“What’s the problem?” Mishca asked as he slipped into the backseat, Vlad entering the front.

“I got a call—not sure from who. He only said to tell my boss, ‘his brother is dead,’ then gave me an address—hung up after. But when I had someone trace it, it had come from a payphone, so not a lot of luck there.”

“What the f*ck?” That hadn’t been what Mishca was expecting at all. “Have you called Mikhail?”

Vlad’s eyes cut to his in the rearview mirror. “Came to you first.”

While he might have been recruited by Mikhail, Mishca’s father and the Pakhan, he was loyal to Mishca alone.

“Let’s take a look, and then we can decide what to do from there.”

As they pulled off, Mishca contemplated the mysterious phone call, trying to figure out what the hell the person meant. By ‘boss’, the called could have meant either Mikhail or Mishca, but considering he hadn’t received a phone call himself, he doubted that Mikhail’s brother, Viktor, was who the caller meant.

But…who else was there?

Mishca didn’t have a brother, only a sister.

The ride to the place they sought took longer than Mishca would have liked, but the alcohol swimming in his veins was making him antsy. He wasn’t drunk, he rarely drank enough for that, but there was enough that he was feeling the effects.

There were two cars outside the building when they arrived. And if Mishca’s eyes didn’t deceive him, there was also a dead body with a pool of blood around it as well.

“The others should be arriving soon,” Vlad said as he killed the engine and they both climbed out of the car.

Mishca had yet to learn the art of patience, and instead of waiting for their backup, he boldly went inside, gun in hand. Angry voices carried from the upper level of the building, and while he wanted to focus only on them, the crumpled bodies on the floor didn’t go unnoticed.

Mishca wasn’t sure what he had walked into, but he intended to find out.

Vlad headed up the flight of stairs first, his gun aimed out in front of him, ready to shoot anyone that stood in their way. He paused at the top, waiting until Mishca cleared the stairs as well before they rounded the corner. Mishca made the mistake of stepping on a loose floorboard, the wood creaking beneath his shoe, causing the voices to silence. When he heard the unmistakable sound of guns being drawn, he didn’t think.

Taking a breath as he turned, he fired off shots that hit two in the chest, sending another fleeing in the opposite direction. The two he had hit had managed to fire off a few rounds, but their aim was off. The sound of tires squealing calmed Mishca because he knew that the one that had escaped out a back entrance was being dealt with.

As he cleared the entryway, Mishca raised his gun once more, killing one of the two that was still moaning on the ground. The other raised his hands, like the action could ward off a bullet, but instead of killing him right away, Mishca turned to the man tied to the chair. This had to be the one the caller was referring to because the burned body across from him—a sight that even had Mishca turning away in disgust—was too small to be that of a man’s.

But his confusion grew as he stepped closer and saw the boy’s naked skin. Not a single tattoo adorned his skin. Whether it was professionally done or some scratcher work done in the basement of a house, every single man that worked under Mishca had a tattoo.

Reaching for the bag that covered the man’s head, he didn’t know what to expect when he pulled it free, maybe some idiot that had been stupid enough to get caught by their enemies and chose to align himself to Mishca on the chance that it would get him free.

Except, once he pulled that hood free, the fabric still clutched in his hand, he didn’t expect to be staring at himself.

A thousand thoughts ran through his head at that moment, but none of them were able to provide an answer to what he was seeing.

It took a heartbeat, but the boy—he was more boy than man it seemed—forced his head up, his eyes locking on Mishca, and the moment they did, a variety of emotions lit up his face, from shock to confusion, and finally rage.

“You!”

This boy couldn’t have known who he was before this moment. Mishca had thought he’d known everything there was to know about his mother. She rarely, if ever, kept secrets from him…obviously except this one.

A twin?

How could she have possibly hidden this from Mikhail? And more importantly, why hadn’t she told Mishca? He’d kept her confidence, even as a child, why hadn’t she told him?