Infernal: Bite The Bullet (7 page)

“He was.” I nodded, rubbing my arms against a
chill that had nothing to do with the cold. “His broken body was dumped under a
bridge, just like this one.” I looked around at the dirty walls, the windblown
litter and the bright graffiti, and anger swelled, thinking of my baby brother.
“Like so much garbage,” I said, paraphrasing his earlier threat. When I managed
to look back at Konstantyn, I was beyond angry. I was seething. “The
pathologist found traces of four different class-A drugs and seven different
types of semen in his body. Daniel had bruises and ligature marks all over,
he’d been tortured, ripped open. And you want to know what else? He had a new
mark on his body, a fucking peace sign, on his neck, just like the one on your
arm
.
”
I stabbed at the scar like he’d done with the picture. “So
I ask you again, did you kill my brother?”

I was met with calculating, stony silence. His
eyes narrowed on my face, and I got ready to run.

“You come with me.” Konstantyn rumbled.

Oh God. I’d been right!

My heart dropped into the acid pit of my stomach
and I started to scream, torquing around him and darting for civilisation with
a full holler in my lungs. His hands wrapped my wrist and snatched me back,
gagging me with his palm. I kicked back at him, fighting for my life, for real
this time. No fluid dancing, my movements were designed to hurt, and he cursed
as my heel connected with his groin, his arm banding under my breasts to crush
the air from my lungs and cage me.

“I am not your enemy,” he growled over the
pounding thunder of my heartbeat. “You will come quietly, if you want to know
who killed your brother.”

The man knew something about my brother’s murder,
and that was all the bait he needed to hook me. After months of frustration and
dashed hopes, I clung to the strong arm of hope he offered.

Might he be luring me to my death? Quite possibly,
but one thing I knew with unerring certainty: if Konstantyn Lazarenko wanted me
dead, he could have taken my life there and then, under that graffiti-painted
bridge. And if I walked away? I was condemning myself to a lifetime of doubt.
Four and a half months of not knowing, stretched to an eternity.

And so I took the gamble and stepped off the kerb
that had me following him down the street with minimal protest. Following was a
loose interpretation of what was really happening. It was more that he had a
death grip on my arm and was all but dragging me down the street. At least I
wasn’t screaming anymore.

“Where are you taking me?” I shook my arm in his
grip and tried not to look like I was tripping after him.

I didn’t expect him to answer, so when his voice
broke the silence of the night, I thought I’d imagined it.

“To a place where it’s safe to talk. I have
evidence, I will show you.”

Uh huh.

The dingy warehouse neighbourhood didn’t exactly
fill me with hope. My mind ran images of an industrial space adapted into a
torture chamber, where he could tie me up and nobody would hear me scream.

But that was the thing about London. You could
turn a corner and move from a slum to a millionaire’s enclave. Or vice versa.
Victorian terraces to steel and glass modernity in a few footfalls.

My nose crinkled as we rounded a corner and the
stagnant, brackish smell of the river Thames drifted to meet us. Warehouses
dissolved to urbanisation along the riverfront, and Konstantyn’s hand dropped
from my elbow to my wrist. He wasn’t hauling me along anymore. His eyes were
straight ahead, his grip a firm pressure that told me he’d chase me if I ran.
He’d softened the choke chain, but he still held my leash.
Bastard.
I
still hadn’t forgiven him for humiliating me.

We pushed through glass doors into a tall
apartment building, and were greeted by a security guard. The uniformed man
gave me a smiling once-over that said he thought Konstantyn was getting lucky.
Yeah.
Right.
He was more likely to get bashed in the head with the nearest
available blunt instrument.

I kept that in mind as he hustled me into the
glass elevator.

He leaned against one side with a nonchalance that
had to be feigned. No one could be that calm, and when his eyes met mine, I saw
that he wasn’t. He was strained and angry and, if I was going for broke and
guessing everything? I’d say he was scared.

Ever the mastermind of tense silences, Konstantyn
wasn’t the one to break this one. I brushed my hair over my shoulder and leaned
on the glass, watching the numbers go up. “So, are you going to talk to me?”

“Not here.” He stared up at the ceiling and I
followed his eyes to the red flashing light of the security camera. We rode the
floors in silence after that.

The doors pinged open and he led me down a
minimalist corridor to a black door, then ushered me inside an equally
minimalist apartment.

I hesitated on the threshold as he toed off his
shoes and padded inside.

“What is this place? Your apartment?” I asked,
holding back.

The danger had registered from the start, but now
that I was about to be closed into his apartment with him, I was
double-doubting my own intelligence.

“Leave the door open, if it makes you more
comfortable,” I heard him say, “but make your decision and stop wasting my
time.”

I had to remind myself I was doing this for
Daniel. I’d thrown my stake in the pot. This wasn’t the time to back-out.
Besides, security had seen me with him. We were caught on the CCTV in the
elevator. He’d be stupid to do anything.
Right?

Right.

Leaving the door wide open, I kicked my shoes off
beside his and padded into his apartment. Eyeing the rooms I passed for a potential
ambush, I made it to the living space without anyone jumping out at me. When I
walked over the threshold, he was behind the kitchen counter, bent over
rummaging for something, and I took the opportunity to look around. His place
was open-plan, huge and sparse in the extreme, with black, white and chrome
shining from every surface. That didn’t impress me as much as the giant wall of
glass. The whole front of his apartment sported stunning views of the river,
all the way down to London Bridge, which twinkled with lights in the darkening
evening.

I didn’t want to turn away, but then I felt him at
my back, and turned, expectant. Konstantyn motioned for me to take a seat on
the leather sofa. His face was unreadable as he placed a bottle of Nemiroff
vodka and two shot glasses on the table between us. He tipped the bottle
towards me, and I was tempted, but I shook my head. I needed clarity, not
liquid courage. He shrugged and poured himself a drink, reclining in a way that
showcased the breadth of his shoulders, the thick power in his arms.

Christ, he could snap me like a twig if he
really wanted to. I’m an idiot.

“Tell me what you know,” he said abruptly.

I arched a brow. “I thought you were the one
answering my questions.”

He shook his head and poured himself another shot,
his dark eyes concentrated on me when he sat back. “First, you talk.”

“Okay.” Daniel’s story was on public record. What
did I have to lose? I gathered my breath and my thoughts, and half-wished I’d
taken the drink he’d offered. Crossing my legs up under me, I leaned towards
him. Not knowing what he wanted to know, I started from the beginning. “My
brother, Daniel, was just twenty years old when he...”

I cleared my throat and tried again. “He was a
dancer: nightclubs, stage shows, video, TV. You know, whatever paid the rent.”

Konstantyn nodded. Any dancer understood that.

“Then last year, he got an invite to audition at
Vinyl Scratch Studios, and won a part dancing in a Beastrider video. He was
made up about it, went on their European tour, got invited to lots of private parties.
He was just a kid. He was star-struck. At first he kept in touch all the time,
but later, communications between us dried up. He hardly answered my texts,
started keeping really late hours, and never hung out with his old friends anymore.
Some nights he wouldn’t come home at all. I hoped he had a new boyfriend, but I
was worried, you know? It was so out of character for him. Then I got the note
–”

Konstantyn raised a questioning brow.

“It was slipped under my door. Written in his
handwriting, it said he was sorry, that he’d gotten into trouble with some very
dangerous people, and that he had to go into hiding for a while. He said I
mustn’t try to find him, or to go to the police, or they’d kill him. He said I
should just sit tight, burn the note, and when the time was right, he’d find
me.”

“What did you do?”

I cradled my head in my hands and exhaled roughly.
“I did what he asked. For five days, I agonised over that note. I sat by the
phone waiting for him to call. I dialled the police a hundred times, hanging up
at the last moment. Finally, the phone did ring, but it wasn’t Daniel. They’d
found him, like I told you.” My laugh was bitter, remembering my horror when
they broke the news that he was dead. “None of the DNA in his body was
traceable to any known criminal or sex offender. No witnesses came forward, and
all the police leads led to nothing.” I shrugged through the pain of remembering.
“They hinted at a drug-fuelled sex-orgy gone wrong.” I choked a little, beating
down tears.

Konstantyn pushed a shot glass towards me and this
time, I downed the thing, hissing at the burn.

“The police lost interest, but I can’t let it go.
My brother’s killers are out there somewhere. When I heard Beastrider were auditioning
again, I thought I could infiltrate his crowd, get people to talk where the
police couldn’t. Somebody knows something. Daniel would never have done hard
drugs, not after our mother... Anyway, I can’t accept that any of this was
accidental.”

“It wasn’t.” Konstantyn gruffed and my heart
skipped over on a thud.

“Please,” I said, on the verge of begging. I
pushed the photo of my brother across the table towards him. “Tell me what you
know.”

“I have seen these tattoos,” he said, tapping a
finger on the photograph between us. Daniel had a very distinctive half-sleeve
tribal design over his left shoulder.

“Where?” I pounced on the recognition and watched
his brow knit. It was a look people got when they were deciding whether to tell
you the truth or wing a lie.
Dammit
. He couldn’t clam up on me now.

“In a video,” he replied tightly, just when I’d
been about to prod him.

My heart sank a little. “Daniel was on MTV. That’s
common knowledge.”

“Not music. Different video,” he said, his accent
thick, and his dark eyes bored into me, willing me to understand something I
didn’t want to hear, but had to.

Oh God
.

I choked on tears I was fighting to hold back, the
insinuation something so vile I didn’t know how my heart was taking it without
stopping.
My kid brother...

“I want to see,” I said finally, swallowing the
bile that burned the back of my throat.

“No,” he rumbled. “You don’t.” He poured more shots
of vodka and threw his back.

In that moment, I wished for the whole bottle.

“But there is something I can show you,” he said.

He slipped a key out of his pocket and pushed
himself up from the couch to unlock a drawer beneath his black desk.

A cell phone buzzed in his pocket, and Konstantyn
paused, drawing it out and cursing at the display as he answered.

I could just make out the accented male voice
coming through the phone.

“Lazarus,”
it said
.

“Yes,” Konstantyn admitted grimly. “Took you long
enough to find me. Where is she?”

His dark eyes flashed to me and I offered him a
curious raise of my brows.

“You are not alone?”
the disembodied voice
asked
.

“No,” he replied, moving away from me until I
could no longer hear the other half of the conversation. “Just some dancer...
Yes she is... No... I’m listening.” His eyes flicked back onto me. “I need to
take this, in private,” he said, striding to the sliding balcony door. “Don’t
move.”

He stepped out onto the balcony and the glass shut
behind him. It only did so much to stifle the sound of him barking into the
phone in guttural Ukrainian, pacing as the conversation grew increasingly
heated.

Don’t move. Right
.

I leaned forward and inched the drawer open,
checking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t watching me peek inside. It
was neat, but full. Papers lay in organised bundles and as I rifled through
them, my fingers curled around a passport. Gingerly, I picked it up, almost
dropping the thing when the motion shifted sheaves, uncovering the handgun
underneath. My hand whipped back from the lethal piece, wide eyes flashing over
my shoulder to see him still pacing, his face fixed in an angry snarl as he
talked.

He had weapons, and I was an idiot. Straight up.
Tentatively nudging the gun to the side, I picked up the passport I’d dropped
and flicked through to the identity page, keeping one eye on the Ukrainian. The
picture showed his face, but not his name. Ivan Zelenko, it read.

Who was this man? Clearly not just a dance
instructor. And what the hell was I getting myself into?

I lifted the front of a thick manila folder with
one finger. Inside it were blurry pictures of men and women, bound, naked, in
every sexual position imaginable. My gorge rose, but my fingers were compelled
to keep flicking through them. I was skimming the images so fast, I nearly
missed the one I was terrified of finding.

Daniel. Naked.

Oh God.

I thought it’d been bad seeing the aftermath of
his broken body in the morgue, but this was a whole other level of degradation
and abuse. I struggled to breathe through the disgust cloying in my stomach. My
mind spun.