Satin Princess(105)

I glance at Lev and Yulian. Both are transfixed by the scene playing out in front of us. Lev looks like he wants to reach into the screen to strangle Marina himself.

Yulian is enthralled. Like he doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, even though we saw the aftermath yesterday.

“I’m your cousin, Marina,” Yaromir whimpers. “Are you really capable of killing family?”

She looks surprised by the question. “I told Daddy once when he was questioning my direction for the Bratva: I’m capable of anything.”

Yaromir’s face goes blank for a moment. It’s the same expression he gave me at our last meeting. And I know exactly which memory he’s reliving.

“Aw, are you still sore about the girl?” Marina taunts.

“All these years, I knew you killed her,” he says softly. “But I never really understood why. She did nothing to hurt you. She was innocent.”

“No one is ever innocent, Yaromir.”

She presses the tip of the gun up under his chin. Yaromir closes his eyes and whimpers again.

“Do you remember that night when we were thirteen?” she asks. “The dinner party by the lake?”

It’s a tone I recognize well. It’s the tone she uses when she really wants a man to listen to her. Raspy, seductive, irresistible.

“Well,” she amends, “I was thirteen. You would have been a little older… Do you remember how wonderful that night was?”

“You killed her because you were jealous,” he interjects.

“I killed her because I wanted to,” she says simply. “Because it made me feel powerful. Because it made me feel heard.”

“You really are fucking crazy.”

Her eyes widen at the insult, and for an instant, I’m sure this is the moment where Yaromir takes his last breath.

But I’m wrong. I watch her hand twitch violently before she reins in the urge. She still has more to say, apparently.

“I gave you my virginity that night,” she continues as though he never interrupted her. “I rode you under the stars while you promised you’d never look at another woman again. Do you remember that, cousin?”

Yulian’s eyes go wide and he turns to me, looking sick to his stomach.

I feel nothing. Incest is just another check on Marina’s growing list of sins, barely worth a footnote. I’m honestly not even surprised.

“Do you remember, cousin?” Marina asks again, her voice low but sinister.

“I remember.”

She nods. “Remember the promise you made me?”

“I remember everything,” Yaromir whispers.

His body is beginning to slack, as though he knows what’s about to happen and he’s surrendering to it. He keeps glancing at the bodyguard bleeding out on the floor just behind the sofa. I wonder if he’s imagining himself sprawled out in the same way.

“I didn’t look at another girl for three years,” he says—as if that will save him now.

“You should have spent the rest of your life pining for me.”

He doesn’t even look surprised anymore. “I wish Anton had killed you.”

And in the end, that’s what does it. Maybe my name was the final straw. Marina suppresses a scream, a shrill sound like nails on a chalkboard emanating from her like some unholy nightmare creature. Then her hand slashes through the air.

Yaromir’s throat splits open. His eyes go wide and blood sprays out in a wide arc. Then he falls, his blood soaking into the white carpet. An ocean of red spreading and spreading and spreading.

Marina stands there, one hand holding the bloodied knife and the other hand holding the gun. She’s shaking uncontrollably with rage.

She stands over Yaromir’s body for a full minute before she turns and goes back the way she came. The hidden door swings shut behind her.

And then she’s gone.

“Jesus Christ,” Lev hisses.

Yulian pauses the video on the two dead bodies and turns to Lev and me. “That was… more intense than I was expecting.”

“She wants the Bratva,” Lev says. “The Bratvas, rather. Both of them.”

“No,” I say. “That’s not all she wants. There’s something else.”

“Revenge,” Yulian offers.

I give my brother a nod. “Correct. But she’s not going to get any of it.”

“The bigger question is, how the hell do we get our hands on her?” Lev says. “She’s evaded us for a goddamn month now.”

“I’ve questioned the men,” Yulian says. “There doesn’t seem to be a mole in the ranks, at least not that we can suss out.”

“And yet…”

“Brother,” Yulian says in a quiet voice, “I think we need to start talking to the staff. Think about it: they’re the silent, invisible part of the house. Always around but never considered.”

Lev looks mildly impressed as he turns his gaze on me. “He has a point.”

“I’ve vetted each and every member of my staff,” I snap. “None of them can be the mole.”

“We need to be doubly sure, Anton,” Lev says. “Yulian’s logic is sound. And I don’t think any of the men have betrayed their oath to the Bratva.”