Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
“They call me The Death Dealer.” I didn’t know why I answered, let alone told her the truth. “You can call me Dmitry.”
Fear flickered across her face, and I knew she recognized my name, had probably heard it spoken about when she was a child. I could imagine what was said to her and murmured the words,
“Tikho, malyshka... a to Diler Smerti pridet.” Quiet, malyshka... or The Death Dealer will come. I traced her jaw with a thumb that had ended more lives than she had years on this earth.
She swallowed. “Are you going to kill me?”
I should. It would be cleaner. Easier. Instead, I leaned in until my lips brushed the shell of her ear. “Not tonight, malyshka. I’m stealing you from this gilded cage and putting you in another… one where only I hold the key.”
Her breath caught, sharp and startled, her body tensing. I pressed the chloroform rag over her mouth a second later, and she fought hard for someone so small, nails raking my wrist, heel slamming my shin. But I was stronger, and the drug was merciless.
Her body softened against my chest, weighing nothing in arms. It was a far cry from the corpses I carried that were three times her size.
I lifted her like a kidnapped bride, and ivory silk spilled over my black sleeves stained with blood. The diamonds on her necklace caught the moonlight and glittered. I left her room, stepping over the dead guard in the corridor, his blood already cooling on the marble.
I carried her to the service alcove, one that every luxury wing had, and found a laundry hamper on wheels half-full of soiled table linens from the gala, heavy cream damask still smelling of caviar and champagne.
I zip-tied her wrists and ankles loose enough not to cut off circulation and taped her mouth as insurance.
I laid her inside gently, curled her limbs so she fit, and tucked the silk gown around her like I was wrapping something breakable. I pulled a thick tablecloth over her, hiding her long white-blonde hair, the diamonds, and, especially, the bruises.
Acting like I was just doing my job, I pushed the cart through corridors that were dim and half-deserted. Staff were drunk on stolen vodka or hiding from the bosses. Anyone who glanced saw only another faceless worker pushing laundry toward the loading dock. No one looked twice at dirty linen.
The job was fucked, but I didn’t give a single damn.
Outside, snow fell in thick sheets. I rolled the cart straight to the catering van, lifted the hamper into the back, and secured it. Snow fell harder as I pulled through the gates. In the rearview mirror, I saw the dacha lights blurring into smears of gold.
“Sleep, Zoya Ivanova,” I said, voice rougher than I meant. “When you wake up, the world you know will burn. And I’ll be the one holding the match and using you to make your father watch every flame.”
For the first time in decades, I had something alive that belonged only to me. It was a living blade to carve deeper into Ivanov than any bomb ever could.
Chapter 3
Dmitry
Ikilled the engine three kilometers outside St. Petersburg and let the silence swallow the space.
The old slaughterhouse stood in the dark distance like a rotting cathedral. The red brick was weathered and aged, all the windows long since broken, and the loading bays hung open like the building was screaming for help.
I bought the property twenty years ago with blood money and turned it into a house of horrors. A tomb no one ever left.
Tonight, it would hold something I never planned on taking or keeping.
Snow hissed against the windshield. Zoya was still out cold, silent and unmoving. I climbed out, boots crunching on frozen gravel, and opened the rear door.
After removing the linens from the laundry cart, I stared at her. Zoya Ivanova lay exactly where I’d left her. Her wrists and ankles were still zip-tied, and her mouth sealed with tape, an obscene sight contrasting with the diamonds glittering at her neck.
Her chest rose and fell, slow and easy. The pulse at her throat fluttered like a trapped bird.
I brushed my finger along her cheek. Her skin was like silk and ice. Her ivory gown had ridden up during the drive, exposing the long, pale line of one thigh.
I lifted her as if she weighed nothing and carried her through the loading bay. The air inside hit like a fist. The memories of raw meat, bleach, and twenty-year-old blood were forever baked into the concrete and steel.
Chains hung from overhead rails, rusted meat hooks swaying in the draft. I walked past them all to the converted freezer room at the back.
Steel door. Biometric lock I’d installed myself. I unlocked it, and it opened with silent fluidity.
Inside, the walls were lined with stainless-steel tables, drains in the floor, and one drainpipe bolted to the far wall.