Page 197 of Lethal Obsession

I nod.

“Justice means eliminating the threat to our family. In our world, that is just business.

“But vengeance, Alexei?” He shakes his head slowly, staring deep into the twisted metal of his past. “Vengeance is hatred—and hatred is a gulag. One that will hold you forever and then come for those you love. Even if they never deserved to be behind those walls in the first place.”

He places his hands on either side of my face, resting his forehead against my own. “Leave your gulag here, today,” Papa says. “Inside these walls. Leave it in the wreckage, where Aleksander and I should have left ours. Because no matter who built the gulag you are living in, Alexei, only you can choose to leave it behind. And if Lars and Ofelia are not reason enough for you to do that, then no man ever had reason at all.”

39

Alexei

On the runway Papa takes out his battered silver hip flask. “I want you to have this.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I can’t take that, Papa.”

“You are the only person who knows its story.” He smiles as he presses it into my hands. “Without a story, no object has meaning. Drink from it the freedom Aleksander and I fought so hard for, and the friendship that carried us toward it. Carry it not in memory of me, Alexei, but as a reminder that no man can live his best life behind prison walls—and that freedom only exists when we choose it for ourselves.”

Papa’s dignified figure is the last thing I see as the plane leaves the Paris runway. He stands beside the sedan, hands clasped before him, spine ramrod straight, uncaring of the persistent drizzle and gathering chill. As we lift into the air, he raises one hand in salute. From my seat by the window, I raise the hip flask in return—though whether he sees me or not I can’t tell.

I unscrew the cap and take a mouthful of the Graf vodka inside, feeling its warmth trickle down through my body, as if my father is still at my side.

“Aleksander’s voice is more real to me than those who still live,” he said. I turn the hip flask over in my hands, thinking of all the times since Lars was shot that my best friend’s voice has rung through my own mind. Something tells me that even if he doesn’t make it through this, his voice will live in my head just as clearly, and for as long, as Aleksander’s has lived in my father’s.

And what would he say to me now? I think. The immediate stab of pain that accompanies any direct thought of Lars is so great I drink again, longer this time.

I search my head for his familiar acerbic replies, but for once, I hear nothing.

Oh, I mentally chide him. So now you choose to go silent, you contrary prick?

But instead of Lars’s voice, rather unusually, it’s Dima’s that I hear: “You don’t need to get your hands dirty like this. Not anymore.”

I shrug it off impatiently. I would never delegate the filthy tasks ahead of me to other men. Some tasks a man must do himself.

My father’s voice is next: “Vengeance is hatred. Hatred is a gulag . . .”

I turn the hip flask slowly in my hands, my thumbs rubbing over the scarred surface, the dented base, thinking of what lies ahead of me.

Kiril Novikov must die.

That is business in our world. I gave him a chance, long ago.

He used that chance to come after Ofelia.

That, I won’t forgive. It is a matter of honor, one I can’t in all conscience allow to go unanswered. I feel no guilt about taking his life, nor any hesitation about the task itself.

Marty Hunter Jr. and his daughter I feel similar contempt for. Hunter has grown fat on my money, and on the Orlovs’ coin before that. Now he has climbed into bed with those intent on destroying not only me, but Renata Cardeñas, one of the most honorable and honest people I know.

Cold fury rushes over me at the memory of her pale, set face the night she was raped. It’s a fury I remember well, one which back then had coalesced into a hard, fierce focus toward only one possible conclusion: Carter Thorne’s death.

I don’t regret one cut of my knife that night, nor any of the pain I inflicted. If I was back in that room again, I would make the same decision, a thousand times over.

But his father—Silas Thorne?

I shift uncomfortably in my seat.

Mak told me Silas Thorne is a piece of shit, and going by the deplorable actions of his son, not to mention the vile activities of his digital media network, I have no reason to doubt him.

But he is also a father who lost his son.