Page 2 of The Enemy of My Enemy: Pt. 2

Chapter 1

Viktor~

It was the next day, late afternoon, and I was in my father’s office with my brother, and I knew that I was being unreasonable, but I did not appreciate how Kasimir hadn’t brought me the head of who did this yet.Yeah, we were only a day in, but I didn’t care.

“I get it, I really do,” Kasimir said as he poured himself another glass of vodka.“But we’re still trying to identify the men.”

“It shouldn’t be this hard!”I roared.“We have their goddamn pictures!”

“Not everyone in the country is registered to vote, Viktor,” he drawled out.“It stands to reason that these men might be nomads.”

“He’s right, son,” my father remarked.“No one with a family would dare cross us.The risk would be too high.”

“And Armen only has his sister and niece, which...”Kasimir shrugged.“I mean, we could torture them if you want to, but-”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped.

“They can still be questioned without the torture,” my father pointed out.“Since neither the sister nor the niece are minor children, I do not see the problem.”

“We’re missing something,” I said as I began pacing the room.“If the other men were truly nomads, then how in the fuck did they know Armen?How did Armen know them?How did he know that they’d be trustworthy enough to do this?”

“You know, you talk as if all Russians are limited to Korolev territory,” my father said.“If those men aren’t from here, they could have easily come from a million different places, blending in perfectly.”

“But that still doesn’t tell us how they got in touch with Armen or vice versa, assuming that Armen was the one behind this,” Kasimir replied.“I mean, was he behind this or just another pawn.”

“Well, if he wasn’t the one behind this, then that means that Aurora is still in danger,” I said, the words like shards of glass in my throat.“If it wasn’t him, then the man who wants my wife dead is still out there, and we’re not doing a fucking thing about it.”

“Hey, that’s not true,” Kasimir automatically denied.“We’re doing what we can without sounding alarms all over the place.”

I stopped my pacing long enough to look over at my brother.“Yeah, no...you’re right.”

While I wanted to tear this city apart to find out who was behind this, if it really was the Chinese, Romanians, or Germans, then we didn’t want to tip them off without a plan in place, and we couldn’t put a plan in place if we didn’t know anything, which we didn’t.Plus, we didn’t need to announce to our enemies that the Korolevs and Marchettis might be going to war with each other over this, doing their dirty work for them.All-in-all, we needed to play our cards close to the vest on this one.

“If it’s any consolation, we’ve ruled out Dushenka,” Kasimir remarked, and quite honestly, it hadn’t even occurred to me that it could be her behind this.Not for nothing, the woman was too stupid to pull off a successful birthday party, much less orchestrate an assassination.

Still...

“How were you able to eliminate her?”I asked, better safe than sorry.

“She was one of the first people that we questioned, and...”Kasimir shook his head.“Honestly, I don’t know how you managed to fuck her as long as you did.She’s insufferable.”

I shot him a look.“Focus, Kasimir.”

“She was a mess,” he continued.“As soon as we pulled her aside, she turned into a hysterical disaster, and taking this from someone who’s tortured more than his fair share of people, you just can’t fake that kind of meltdown.She begged us to believe her, swearing that she’d never cross a Korolev.”

Ignoring that, I said, “We need to tear Armen’s life apart.We need to know why he’d agree to this, whether he was the originator or not.”

My father shrugged, something that he didn’t do often.“Could be a simple case of not agreeing with the marriage,” he stated.“And after you made your intentions clear at the reception, maybe he or whoever is behind this saw killing her as the only way out.”