Page 107 of The Darkness is Calling

I try to think carefully about their accent, which I did not pay attention to at the time.

“And?” the youngest asks with enthusiasm, convinced the bet is his.

Unfortunately, my memory is not in his favor.

“British.”

“British?” he exclaims, shocked, while the other two look at me strangely.

“The two of them were British. I cannot say the same about all of them.”

“We didn’t push the interrogation,” Yar informs me. “We wanted to wait for your orders first, and we assumed you would want to handle them personally.”

“That is exactly what I intend to do.”

Someone tried to kill me or, at the very least, abduct me. They attacked my family on my territory, stopping me from reaching the woman who has already earned a unique place in my life in time.

Of course I want to play with their blood.

“Is it just me, or does this whole attack seem personal?”

All three of them look at me strangely.

Yaroslav rises from the sofa where he had been sitting beside our brother and goes to the bar next to Dimitri. He pours himself a finger of vodka and takes a long sip, contemplating my words.

“I want some too,” Sasha complains.

“Pour it yourself,” he snaps back.

That earns him a few curses from the youngest, who gets up and shoves Yar out of his way with his shoulder.

“Stop that, or I’ll break this glass over your head.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Yar rolls his eyes. “I’ve told you a thousand times it was an accident. I meant to hit you in the back.”

Their arguing gives me a headache, in a moment when I wish Ekaterina were beside me and I could rest my head on her chest.

When the fuck did I become this dependent on her?

There is only one way to replace her absence.

Blood.

“It seems suspicious to me too,” Yaroslav says, turning back to me. “Someone set a trap for us with the supposed information about Konstantin Borislov’s murder, making sure you, specifically, would be there. They didn’t try to kidnap us. They tried to kidnap you. They could have killed you, but they wanted to take you somewhere. To someone.”

He has voiced my thoughts exactly.

“I want to see the two of them,” I tell them.

“Do you think you can find out whether the theory is right or not?”

I slowly lift my gaze from the glass toward Yar, who is waiting, like the others, for my answer.

“I want to find out if one of you is going to win the bet.”

But my older brother is moving closer to me.