Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 46132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“You fucking cowards,” the voice growls—my voice, in my best Russian accent. “You fucking worms. The Kuznetsov family is a joke. You are jokes for serving them.”
“What the fuck?” one of the guards growls, shouldering his rifle and beginning to creep down the hallway.
I press myself flat against the wall, making my breathing quiet, melting into the deeper darkness of the tunnel. The other guard aims with his gun and together they start approaching the speaker, coming closer to me each moment.
My body is primed. My mind is ready.
“Be a weapon,” Felix told me when I was only ten years old. “Then nothing can stop you.”
When they’ve walked so close to me that I can smell the stink of their cigarettes and their whiskey, I silently slink from the shadows and walk up behind them.
I take the Tasers from my pockets and bring them to their necks at the same time, the sound loud in the confines of the tunnel, the electric-blue lighting up so that their shadows spread like silhouetted claws.
They yelp and collapse onto their fronts, and then I work quickly, taking the syringes from my belt and injecting them in the throat.
I drag their bodies deeper into the tunnel, stowing them in the darkness.
They’ll wake in a few hours with groggy heads and no clue how they got there, and I’ll be long gone.
I turn off the speakers and take the guards’ ring of keys, and then head to the service elevator that will lead to the mansion.
One last job.
I think of Sparky, hopefully, curled up in the nook I made for him in the motel room, safe under his mound of blankets. I hope that the noise of the motel parking lot isn’t too distracting for him, and then I find myself remembering one time when I had to leave him and some asshole set off fireworks. I came back to find him shaking, his mess streaked all over the carpet.
“One last job, boy,” I whisper, and then push it all from my mind.
I use the key to unlock the elevator and step inside, pressing the button that will take me to Dobry’s door. I aim my gun at the doors as they close and the elevator starts to rise with a judder. The elevator was built after the estate, a clumsy job so that it rises in fits and starts.
Hacking Dobry’s communications told me all I needed to know, and soon the doors will open onto what, from the outside, looks like a supply closet.
But still, I need to be cautious.
Thankfully, the doors open onto the inner darkness of two wooden doors, not the barrel of a gun. I poke them open with the silencer of my gun, ignoring the ostentatious finery of the carpets and the wall hangings and all the rest of it.
I move forward, gun aimed, the sounds of the party downstairs muffled through the many walls separating us.
A cheer—a laugh. Music plays.
But it all sounds faraway.
I count the doors as I move, constantly watching for the guards.
But it seems Dobry wants some privacy this evening. I stop outside his absurdly ornate door, the frame all carved patterns, and lay my ear against it so that I can better hear what he’s saying.
He’s speaking in Russian, his voice a low growl. “You have no idea what I’m saying, do you? You stupid American whore. Now you will make yourself useful, at least. Now you will do what you were bred to do—please men, you disposable slut.”
I clench the grip of my gun tightly, blood rushing in my ears.
Disposable slut.
The phrase makes me want to make this last a long time to make this evil bastard suffer in the most gruesome ways.
But every man I’ve ever been contracted to kill has been as evil as this bastard.
I’m about to try the door when Dobry makes an animal noise of pain and surprise, and then snaps, “Stupid whore. What do you think, a little cut changes things? Come here. Now.”
“S-stay back,” a woman hisses.
The bravery in her voice touches something deep inside of me. Her voice is husky and womanly at the same time, a singer’s voice, and just in those two words, I can hear so much.
I can hear the deep wells of her soul.
I can hear her strength, her fear, her humanity.
It punches me in the gut, this realization because simply hearing a woman’s voice shouldn’t have this effect on me.
I shake my head, pushing those crazy whirring thoughts away.
One last fucking job.
I push the door open, glad the bastard didn’t think to lock it.
The room comes into view in all its unearned opulence, but my vision hones in on the sight of Dobry and the woman. Dobry has his back to me, blood dripping onto the floor, probably from his face. The woman holds a golden letter opener, tinged with blood, gesturing with it, her back pressed against the wall.