Page 178 of Ghost Ribbon

I shook my head. “No. I need a heart. He needs a heart.”

He ran a hand over his face. He looked tired, like he was barely holding himself together. “Okay. Just stay low for now, alright? I have a meeting with them. They want you present, but I’ll find an excuse. It’s better if they don’t see you in this state.”

He gave me a warning. “Just don’t kill anyone anymore, okay?”

“If none is a match, I will.”

His jaw clenched and I could see he struggled to remain calm.

“One has to be a match,” he said. “First, go wash and then go back to the hospital.”

I looked down at myself.

Right. I was full of blood.

Chapter 43.5 Dimitri

I was tired. Fucking hell, I was tired.

Rei had been crying nonstop since he found out Marco collapsed and all I could do was hold him because I couldn’t take the pain away. That was the worst part. Rei was my baby. My entire fucking world. He didn’t deserve even one tear on that beautiful face of his.

And then, as if the universe decided I hadn’t suffered enough for one night, Alexei had turned into a mass murderer.

Listen. I have no issue if my cousin wants to kill the entire country for all I care. Blood is blood. Family is family. If Rei were the one lying on that table with a heart that refused to beat on its own, I would have done worse. I’m more impulsive than Alexei after all.

But the motherfucker went around shooting people in the head in full view of cameras. He walked through the city and left a trail so bright every organization in the underworld could see it.

Now I was forced to sit in an emergency meeting with the “hags,” as Ilya called them.

My grandfather sat at the head. He had held the Morozov seat for me since my father died, waiting for the day I was ready to take it. I liked him but I knew this night would test every ounce of that loyalty.

One of the older men, a thin, liver-spotted bastard from the Smirnov family, cleared his throat. “Dimitri. Good of you to finally join us. We were discussing the… situation with your cousin.”

I leaned back in the chair, legs spread, hands loose on the armrests. “Discussing. Is that what we’re calling it?”

Another voice, gravelly, from further down the table. “One hundred and forty-seven civilians, Dimitri. In a single night. Do you understand the attention this brings? The police are already circling. Every family at this table has spent decades keeping our business in the shadows, and your cousin just painted a fucking target on all of us.”

I tilted my head. “My cousin needed a heart. He took steps to get one.”

A woman - rare at these tables, but the Petrova matriarch had always been vicious - let out a laugh. “Steps? He went on a slaughter.”

“This crosses a line none of us can ignore. The vote has already begun. Some are calling for exile. Others for death.”

I felt the words like ice water down my spine.

They wanted Alexei dead.

I looked around the table slowly, making eye contact with every single one of them. “Say that again.”

“Alexei has drawn too much heat. If the authorities dig deep enough, they will find connections to all of us. Either he is removed from permanently… or he is removed from this world.” A murmur of agreement rippled around the table.

One of the hags leaned forward. “It’s unreasonable, what he did. If a man wants to kill, he does it quietly. Not in the middle of the street with cameras rolling. He has endangered every alliance we have. I vote for elimination.”

Another nodded. “Agreed. Exile is too soft. He will come back. Better to end it cleanly.”

A third. “The Morozovs have always been volatile, but this is madness.”

I had grown up with him. Fought beside him. Buried people with him. He was colder than me, but when he loved, he loved like a fucking natural disaster. And right now that disaster had a name, and that name was Marco, and Alexei would burn the world before he let him die.