It was my bad luck that I was snared just as thoroughly with him. Not by virtue of the money, no. Thou shalt not steal was an easy commandment to obey when the Lord’s wrath was so much more immediate. I preferred my balls unsmited; too bad it hadn’t been so simple a decision for Vasily. And because it had not, I was very likely going to have to do something I would regret. Removing my foot from his neck to place it on his crotch, I thought Vasily might accept the regret happily if he could trade places with me. His mouth hung open as he gasped wetly for breath. Just as moist, his eyes were the apprehensive velvet brown of a dog caught pissing on the carpet.

Yeah, a bad, bad boy, but he wasn’t escaping this with a swat on the muzzle. “The money,” I prompted, applying pressure. Up until then Vasily had been playing dumb, an act at which he excelled with true Oscar quality. As his opportunities for children began to dissipate beneath my heel, he abruptly decided owning up to it and taking his medicine was the best way to go. Once he began to talk, he couldn’t spill the location of his ill-gotten gains fast enough.

“Please . . . please, Mr. Gurov. Please. Sorry, so sorry. Never happen again, swear. I swear.” Still pinned to the floor, Bormiroff babbled on in that vein for some time as Konstantin drank his tea, undisturbed by the pleas or tears. Seeing a grown man cry from pure terror wasn’t enough to spoil a good cuppa. It might even add to the pleasure, if I correctly read the glitter behind the older man’s wire rim glasses.

“Yes, Vasily, my friend, I believe you. It truly shall never happen again.” Carefully patting his lips with a linen napkin, Konstantin stood and removed his glasses to tuck them away beneath his suit jacket. “Who knew you possessed a knowledge of the future to such an astounding degree?”

It was coming. It was coming and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing I could do about it. I felt my mouth go dry and my ears ring lightly as the air in the room went dead. But as stagnant as the atmosphere was, it still carried Gurov’s next words with uncanny clarity. Simple and innocuous, a casual bystander wouldn’t have guessed them for the death sentence they were.

“Stefan, we shall take a taxi.”

Implied was that the car was at my disposal for a disposal. With that he was gone, not a glance spared for the convulsively trembling man on the floor. In his mind, Vasily no longer existed except as a trunk accessory to be sandwiched between the spare tire and the jack. Trailing behind Gurov, Sevastian gave me a wink and a puckered smack of his lips. A bastard by any definition of the word, he was doing my customary job today, and he delighted in seeing me taking his. He and others thought I was overly fastidious about the wet work . . . that I didn’t like to get my hands dirty. Shaved head gleaming, thick lips curled in a gloat, he couldn’t wait to see my cherry popped because, frankly, he didn’t think I had the stomach for it.

I was beginning to think he was right.

The sharp smell of ammonia hit the air and I lifted my foot with a grimace. “Jesus, Vasily.” As I wiped the sole of my shoe on threadbare carpet, his hand moved to cover the now-wet crotch of his pants. Shame and despair had twisted his face into something primitive and unrecognizable. A Neanderthal watching a tornado form out of the sky above him would’ve worn a similar look: terror, disbelief, and a crushing realization of his own mortality.

“Don’t.” The incoherent prattling had stopped as Vasily’s face went putty gray. His chest hitched as the air whistled through his stiffened throat. His brain had locked down along with the rest of his body. He had one word and one word only left available to him, and he said it again with the voice of an aged and brittle rubber band stretched long past its breaking point. “Don’t.”

Goddamnit. I was fucked, and I was fucked but good. If I didn’t take out this embezzler, Konstantin would make sure I suffered what should’ve been Vasily’s fate and most likely before the sun went down. Only two more days and this shit storm had to come now. It was enough to make you believe in God, because random fate simply didn’t have the poisonous ingenuity for something this nasty.

Reaching down, I took a fistful of his shirt and pulled him upright. His legs gave out immediately, the muscle tone but a distant memory. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the white and staring face of the bartender. I ignored him; he was just another piece of the furniture. He belonged to Gurov the same as the restaurant did, and the possibility of his causing any trouble was nil. Giving Bormiriff a brisk shake in an effort to restart his engine, I ordered not unsympathetically, “Stand up, Vasily.” He tried; I have to give him that. He did try. Unsteady as a newborn foal, he did his best to straighten his traitorous limbs beneath him. After several seconds in which my grip was the only thing holding him up, he managed to stay up with only a little help.

“Good, Vasily. One foot in front of the other.” Heavy hand on his shoulder, I steered him toward the back exit. He nearly fell again as he realized we were headed toward the back alley, but I stabilized him and kept him moving. In the surrounding hush his choked wheezing was the only sound to be heard. He was walking to his death, staggering really, but the end result was the same. He knew it. I knew it. What could fill that silence? What the hell could you possibly say?

“I have a brother,” I stated in soft contemplation as his shoulder spasmed beneath my steadying grasp. “Did you know?” Of course the poor bastard didn’t know. All he knew of me was my role as Konstantin’s shadow. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t talking to him. “His name’s Lukas, after our grandfather.” I pushed at the exit, paying little attention to the buzzing alarm. Passing out of the gloom into a brilliantly sunny Miami morning, I continued with a numb tongue that was flying solo and out of control. “He needs me, Vasily. He needs me alive. Can you understand that?”

From the gasping sobs that vibrated his frame and had him dropping to his hands and knees on the asphalt, I had to assume he didn’t. I couldn’t blame him; I don’t think I would’ve understood either. He was crawling away from me now, the pathetic, terrified son of a bitch, over pavement littered with broken glass that tore at his palms. I could see the blood in a scarlet handprint on a discarded fast-food bag.

“Vasily.” I didn’t remember drawing my gun, but the crosshatched rubber of the grip filled my hand as cool plastic teased my trigger finger. It was the only thing I could feel. My arms, legs, even my face, felt numb and lifeless, but my palm felt the imprint of the gun as if it were a brand, red-hot and marking me for life. “Be still,” I said gently. “It’s over.”

And it was over. Once I put him down, it would be all over . . . for the both of us. But Lukas would live. Lukas would be free. Whether that made it worthwhile depended on your point of view. I raised the 9 mm. It was unfortunate for Vasily that his point of view no longer counted.