Wildblood

Chapter 57

57

Kai

A dismembered arm was surprisingly hefty. With a dull thud, Kai dropped the limb to the floor and stepped over its writhing owner. It’d made a decent weapon, but he preferred his hunting knife. His shirt was doused in viscous red after the carnage, the blood smeared over his arms, neck, and face. Pyotr’s goons had come at him the second he’d emerged from the basement, and Kai had no qualms removing their appendages. Who needed fingers, anyway?

A mechanical thumping pummeled his already battered skull. A laundromat. He was in a fucking laundromat. At least it disguised the ruckus he’d caused, though he wished Pyotr would’ve picked a less cliché front business. Stripping off his shirt, he threw it into one of the still-running washers and slammed the door. It was getting crusty, hampering his movements.

The place was old and stank of mildew, piss-colored florescent lights flickering over stained vinyl. A doorway on the back wall led to the offices, and Kai glimpsed one of Pyotr’s overinflated bodyguards rushing from his patrol in the cramped corridor. The last man standing.

Dressed in a too-pricy suit, the man barreled forward. As he closed in, Kai headbutted him in the nose, then clapped a palm over his mouth, muffling his scream. Blood gushed from the wound and ribboned over Kai’s fingers as he drove the bodyguard into a dryer. Panicked, the man reached for his gun, but a hand closed over his wrist, halting him. Kai shook his head and tsk ed, then clamped his teeth around the man’s ear.

He ripped the fleshy shell clean off.

The bodyguard collapsed to the floor, cupping the side of his head before blacking out. With the last hurdle discarded, Kai moseyed into the office, a trail of viscera following him.

Pyotr sat calmly at his desk, flipping through the contents of Kai’s wallet. It was a modest space—cream walls, filing cabinets that looked decades old, and drapery in desperate need of a dry clean. Pyotr paid no attention to the intruder, unconcerned with the mayhem the wolf had wrought. A caged animal let loose in his home, and he didn’t even twitch.

Kai spat the ear out onto Pyotr’s desk.

Finally, the mobster’s gaze lifted, and he smiled, cold and humorless. He leaned sideways to peer past Kai at the man sprawled unconscious on the floor, blood pouring from his face. Beneath Pytor’s white dress shirt, Kai saw the bandages around his mangled shoulder—a parting gift from the wolf.

“How easy it is for you…to tear through meat, to kill. Most have to snuff out the person in the mirror before they can butcher so unflinchingly. But you?” Pyotr laughed, low and dark. “It’s as though you were made for this world.”

Pyotr had no idea how wrong he was. If Kai had been made for this world, his existence wouldn’t be marred by so much pain—senseless, meaningless pain. There was no justification, no grander purpose to it. No, he’d ended up here precisely because he wasn’t made for this world, and he suffered for it.

He may have been a killer, but he refused to be a weapon for anyone but Miya.

Kai nodded toward the wallet. “That’s mine.”

“So it is, Kai Donovan.” Pyotr tossed it onto the desk next to the dismembered ear. “An unusual name for a Russian.”

That his mother was Tatar never seemed to matter. No wonder she’d wanted out. “Not my given name.”

“Ah, your chosen name, then?”

He supposed that was true. Even after remembering Mikhail Zverev, it didn’t resonate. Kai was a name he’d chosen as a child—a reconciliation between the place he’d come from and the one where he’d found himself. A testament to being diaspora. Donovan wasn’t inherited either. Alice had offered it to him, and he’d accepted.

“Dead men shouldn’t be so curious.” Kai refused to answer. Every so often, his mind flicked to Miya, to Crowbar, to Bastien and Ama. He didn’t think Zverev would kill them, but the merc had violated their agreement. If the King of Spades had put up enough of a fight, driven the beast into a corner, who knew what he’d do?

Kai felt the weight of his own blood trail like a manacle. He’d been driven into a corner too.

Pyotr chuckled, the threat rolling off him like his moral compass. “Fools shouldn’t try to tell the future.”

Before Kai could snipe back, a door wedged between two shelves at the rear of the office swung open. From the alleyway outside, Ivan Zverev stepped into the claustrophobic room, and he wasn’t alone. Caelan followed, Zverev’s bear-like hand clamped on her shoulder. He didn’t seem to be forcing her, but he wasn’t taking his chances either. He was badly scuffed up, his shirt bloodied where he nursed a stab wound in his side, though it did little to impede him.

Kai swallowed the bile that seared up his throat, his stomach lurching at the sight of the girl. “Caelan?—”

“They’re safe,” she said as though it were her foremost thought, then took stock of his grisly appearance. “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

Somewhere in the maelstrom rending Kai’s mind, the pieces slotted into place. She’d given herself up to protect them. His heart twisted behind his ribs, shame gnawing away the rage that’d fueled him to this point. Kai had failed her. They all had. And Zverev had catalyzed it. Accusation curdled on his tongue, but he didn’t dare wield it. He wasn’t about to feed Pyotr information, though he would’ve relished the opportunity to tear out Zverev’s jugular.

“Vanya, I’m disappointed,” Pyotr’s smooth voice cut through the tension.

Eyes fixed on Kai, Zverev guided Caelan in front of him. “I apologize for my tardiness.”

Pyotr wagged a finger and shook his head disapprovingly. “You know I don’t care for apologies, Vanya. I expect results. You put my daughter at risk. You knew where the forgery was for three days and did nothing .”

That moved the behemoth. His head turned toward his employer. “Why do you want this kid, anyway? She’s a threat to no one.”

“Her captors used her as leverage against me,” Pyotr scoffed. “Obviously, I’m going to get rid of her.” His eyes slid to Kai. “Besides, you think I don’t know that she appeared out of thin air? That her sleepwalking—all over the news when she went missing, by the way—didn’t coincide with my daughter’s own…experiences?”

Caelan hadn’t been the only one under a supernatural influence; Alina must’ve shown signs too. No matter how desperately she tried clutching her secrets to her chest, Pyotr found a way to wrench them out.

“You’re mad,” Zverev growled.

“You get half the money for half the work,” Pyotr said with a swipe of his hand.

Zverev visibly stiffened. His grasp on Caelan tightened, and a muscle feathered in his jaw as he suppressed a scowl. “My methods were never up for negotiation.” He pushed the teen forward a step. “You still got what you wanted.”

Pyotr turned his chair to face Zverev fully, crossing an ankle over his knee. “You’re soft, Ivan. You think I don’t know why you need that money?” A slow, snake-like smile spread over his face. “Chemo’s expensive in America, but trying to save an old man from cancer is like trying to drain the ocean of salt.”

Shock replaced ire, Zverev’s throat bobbing as he choked something back. Kai watched the exchange, his mind racing for a way to pry Caelan from Zverev’s maw. If he acted now, it would force Zverev’s hand, but Kai wanted to take advantage of whatever conflict was brewing between the two men. Sweat trickled down Zverev’s temple, the scent of cortisol wafting off him like garlic breath. Someone Zverev cared for was slipping away, but Kai hadn’t pegged him as the type to flirt with futility. Cancer was often a death sentence in the elderly; he knew that intimately.

“You meddled in my business?” Ivan finally spoke.

“I don’t hire strangers,” Pyotr chided, “and I know all about you, Ivan Zverev.” He chuckled, standing from his chair. “O’Neil’s Florals. What would a man like you possibly get out of working for a fossil like O’Neil? Unless, of course, it was sentimental.” He slipped his hands into his pockets, eyeing Zverev as though he were a slab of meat to be minced. “The old man saved you, gave you a place to call home.” He shot Kai a pitying look. “An orphan’s story is a dime a dozen.”

Kai kissed his teeth, but uncertainty wrung him out like a used washcloth. He’d visited O’Neil’s—met the snarky old man trimming thorns off a rose. It was odd, finding a Russian merc arranging flower baskets for an Irishman, but it made as much sense as Kai and Alice had. A crochety old woman raising a fucked-up kid who’d lost his home and family. When Alice had been sick with cancer, Kai would’ve bargained with any devil for an extra year of life. He wasn’t ready to be alone, and something told him Zverev wasn’t either.

“You’re a piece of shit,” Kai snarled at Pyotr, no longer able to bridle his tongue. He had no love for his distant cousin, but he understood what it meant to sell your soul only to come up short. The sheer helplessness, the offense of it all—it turned his insides into lava, scalding his veins.

“You and your kind are all dogs in the end. You just need the right master to be obedient to.” Pyotr gave Kai a once over, then reached behind his back. “Though I didn’t expect you to escape your crate. Now I have to decide which of you to put down first.”

Kai’s gaze flitted to Caelan, who peered back at him with wide, stormy eyes. Fear had finally crawled inside her, a slight tremor working through her spine. With nothing to offer her, his attention shifted to Zverev, and they exchanged a weighty look.

He’d been demoted, and his new cut wasn’t enough to buy old man O’Neil an extension on his expiration date. No amount of stoicism could mask the despondency etching the lines of Ivan Zverev’s face. For a moment that felt too long, too laden, the earth stopped on its axis, and indecision thickened the room. Each of them had a choice to make, and none would be without a heavy cost.

A sickening click punctured the silence as Pyotr aimed a gilded revolver at Zverev’s head. “Go on, beast. Earn your pay.”