A Silent Reckoning: Sinner's Empire by Nikita Slater (ereader iphone .txt) 📗

off the pistol beneath his jacket. He wanted nothing more than to murder the man in front of him, but he wasn’t going to do it in public and he wasn’t going to do it before he got the information he needed.

“Surgery.” Rassoul looked green, as though it was everything he could do to keep his lunch to himself. He knew what kind of trouble was coming his way, but it was a point in his favour that he wasn’t on his knees begging for his life.

“Where?” Krystoff demanded.

“I’ll take you to her.”

No one tried to stop the two men as they moved through the first floor of the hospital toward the operating rooms. Everyone knew who the men were and none were willing to stop them.

Rassoul halted outside of the locked doors of a surgical room.

“She’s in there. Has been since she arrived. We… we can’t go in though.”

Krystoff wanted to tear the man’s head off, but the dim place in his brain that still held some semblance of logic knew he couldn’t bust down the doors to his wife’s surgery. He would contaminate the room with bacteria, or germs, or whatever. He also didn’t want the people working to save her life to pause for even a second while they sorted out who he was and why he was there.

“Where do we wait?” he grunted.

Rassoul looked somewhat relieved and pointed down the hall. The two men made their way to a private waiting room. The lack of comfort in the room, the bare walls and metal chairs, were a reminder that Krystoff was standing in a hospital, not something he’d ever intended to do.

He hadn’t even visited Leeza after the birth of her first child. He’d fought with her over having the baby at the mansion, but she’d wanted the hospital resources at her disposal. She’d always been an obedient child, but when it came to her son, she could be quite stubborn. Finally, he’d been forced to accede to her wishes. Especially when Dasha had chimed in to tell him to stop stressing out his pregnant daughter.

“Tell me what happened,” Krystoff said coldly to Rassoul.

Krystoff inspected one of the chairs, making sure it would hold him, and turned to sit. It creaked beneath his weight but held. He was a big man and he’d taken out a few chairs in his time.

Rassoul paled, but took a chair opposite Krystoff, doing his best to make eye contact as he spoke.

“We went to the Christmas market to find your nephew’s fiancé.” He spoke matter-of-factly, but the words seemed to choke him, as though he was pushing them through a throat gone stiff with fear. “Mrs. Koba said she wanted to have lunch with the girl but didn’t want to have to go through Jozef.”

Krystoff listened in shocked silence. He’d told Dasha to stay the fuck away from Jozef and Shaun while the two men severed business ties. It was a dangerous time. She shouldn’t have gone near Shaun without Krystoff and a full team of bodyguards. What the fuck had Dasha been thinking?

“She took me and three others as backup, which was unusual, since, as you know, Mrs. Koba is more than capable of handling herself.”

Dasha insisted on taking only one bodyguard when going into the city. She’d always insisted she didn’t like the feeling of being followed everywhere she went. Krystoff had balked, but had eventually given in around the time she was able to take his heavy ass down during a sparring match.

“I drove her to the market, she found the girl, then we met them at the restaurant,” Rassoul continued. “Mrs. Koba told all of her bodyguards, me included, to remain in the kitchen while she ate lunch. This wasn’t an unusual request as she doesn’t like us to be seen by the restaurant’s guests.”

Krystoff shook his head, trying to sort through the information. “Dasha and Shaun went to the restaurant for lunch together?” When Rassoul nodded, Krystoff asked, “Where was Jozef? He doesn’t let that girl out of his sight. Why was she at the market by herself?”

“She had her bodyguard, Karl, and a driver with her. I think she was trying to complete some Christmas shopping by herself when Mrs. Koba found her. Jozef didn’t come until later.”

“Jozef was there?” Krystoff asked sharply.

Rassoul nodded. “I think the bodyguard texted him. He showed up right after all hell broke loose in the restaurant. He dragged Dr. Patterson away from the scene.”

“So, he wasn’t in the restaurant.” A hint of relief cut through Krystoff’s anger. He wouldn’t have to go to war with his nephew if he had nothing to do with the attack. “How was the girl?”

Rassoul hesitated, then answered. “She was bleeding but alive.”

“She was attacked too?” Krystoff was confused but relieved that it appeared neither Shaun nor Jozef had anything to do with the attack. It must’ve been one of his enemies, though he wasn’t certain who. Krystoff had a strict policy of taking his enemies out before they could get to him. His last one had been Vasiliy, who’d died at Jozef’s hand a year earlier.

“Sir…” Again, Rassoul hesitated.

“Spit it out,” Krystoff growled in annoyance. There was nothing he hated more than men who chose to cower rather than speak their mind, even if it was unwanted news.

“I was the first to get to Mrs. Koba after she was wounded. The only two people in that washroom were Dasha and Shaun. I think… I think your wife tried to kill the doctor. She ordered us to finish the job before Shaun could leave the premises.”

Krystoff gaped at Rassoul in surprise. It was impossible… wasn’t it?

Dasha had been the most vocal over the past year about how Shaun had done exactly what they’d predicted, torn the family apart. She’d held onto more anger than any of the rest of them over Jozef’s arrest. But lately it seemed as though she got over her anger. When Shaun arrived back in Prague a few months