Bone Deep(16)

“The mistake was mine in giving you my name. Allow me to correct it now. Do not ever call me that again, Asinimov. My name is my own,” she bit out. “I am Bone and it is all I will ever be.”

Her voice raked his soul.

She stepped over Azrael’s body and picked up a wing-backed chair, wedging it under the door handles to the room. Then she turned and made her way to Vadim. She didn’t acknowledge Dmitry in any way.

He would have intercepted her but something stopped him—some intangible caution kept his feet still. This kill was his by blood right but he remained where he was. He didn’t understand it at all.

She lifted Vadim by his lapels and thrust him on the sofa. The man whimpered. Vadim was at least two hundred pounds heavier than Bone and a good foot taller, but she moved him as if were a ragdoll and he let her.

“You have killed innocents,” she said softly.

Vadim opened his mouth but nothing came out.

Bone walked around behind him and stood, not touching him. It was enough of a threat that Vadim’s pants wet at the front.

She sighed and it rang with death. “You have sold young girls into slavery for years and years, Vadim Yesipov.”

“He is mine,” Dmitry said, finding his voice. He couldn’t let her have him.

Her gaze sought his and when their eyes met, Dmitry hissed in a breath.

“Why would you take him?”

“He killed my father,” Dmitry answered. He was on autopilot, every sense blanketed, overcome, by her.

She shook her head. “No, he did not.”

Chills danced up his spine as a warning shot through his brain. Something was wrong with this entire picture.

Dmitry didn’t move, blood pouring from his shoulder, pain breaking over him in great waves as confusion rained down. “You know who it was,”

She remained silent, simply staring.

“I gave the order,” Vadim wheezed from the couch.

“It mattered not that you gave any order, Yesipov. You forget who pulls your strings,” Bone quipped.

She cocked her head but her gaze never left Dmitry and his soul froze. “Who was it?” he demanded, his voice strident in the enormous, quiet room.

“A killer.” She directed her next words to Vadim Yesipov. “I have followed you from the time I knew your name. I have watched as you and your partner sold young girls to Joseph, stepping away from their cries for freedom, abandoning them to a life filled with strife and pain. Tell me, Yesipov, I would know—do you think you are a good man?”

Dmitry cursed and it rang through the room. But still he didn’t move. He had waited years for this moment. He’d suspected Vadim was the one behind his sisters’ disappearance. Though he’d been nothing more than a child himself when they were taken, once he’d reached his teens, he and his father searched for them.

Then his father was murdered and Dmitry had been given another quest. Always he searched for killers. He was sick of it.

But his sisters were never far from his mind or heart. Over the years he’d managed to unravel a bit of the tangle of their disappearance. When he discovered Vadim had been involved in it Dmitry vowed to make him pay.

One thing led to another and then First Team had been in Trident’s lap. So the time for vengeance on Vadim Yesipov was upon him. Was he going to let another killer step in and take the right from him?

“He is not yours. He is mine, Bullet’s, Arrow’s, Blade’s, and…” Her voice trailed off as her gaze pierced him and it seemed she read his mind.

“Say it,” he demanded. “I would hear her name from your lips.”

Dmitry had heard her whisper the name as she’d taken Minton that morning in Virginia. It shocked him as nothing else had. Of course there were many girls in Russia who held that name. It might not be…

“He is Ninka’s and by right of her suffering, he is ours to take.”

It was if saying the dead girl’s name cracked open her soul or at the very least her memories. There was a pregnant pause and Dmitry took a step forward.

Bone cocked her head, and the killer peering from her eyes measured him. It was eerie how the violence bled off her, soaking the room in her intent.

“Do not move any farther, Asinimov. It is time to deal death and I would not take you by mistake,” she dropped into the silence.

He stilled, recognizing she was on a hair trigger. Her fingers held Vadim’s head surely, almost but not quite stroking the other man as she had Azrael.

“She was mine,” Dmitry told her.

“She was ours the moment this man sold her to Joseph. I know what my sisters have failed to realize—she was your sibling. I have kept your secret and I recognize your blood rights here, now. But you did not watch her break. You did not hold her hand in the dark of night. You did not feed her when she starved. Where were you when she needed you, Asinimov?”

His heart shredded. He’d been a child himself when Ninka and their sister disappeared. Yet every single day he blamed himself for not finding them. It was a cross he bore in his waking and sleeping moments.

She shook her head when he said nothing, and then lowered her mouth to Vadim’s ear. “Do you think you are a good man? Give me your truth and I will make it easy. Lie and I will make it more painful that you could ever imagine.”

“She will come for you,” Vadim said with a sob.