all of it. In the room when I saw neither of you were there, I just
killed them, too, but with the woman, it was very close, too close.
But I escaped. I was out of there before anyone realized what had
happened.”
Thomas said, “Why, Mikhail? What did your father tell you to
make you want to do this? What?”
“He didn’t make me do anything. He simply told me how you
butchered my poor mother, went through her to get to him. You
shot her in the head and laughed as my father held her until she
died. Then you tried to kill him but he managed to get away. He
told me that, and he began teaching me to prepare myself to avenge
her. And I’m here now. I’ll kill you just as you killed my mother.”
“You killed your stepmother, didn’t you, and her children?”
Becca said.
He laughed, actually laughed. “Yes, I hated her as much as she
hated me. She didn’t want me ever to come back during my vacations.
And her spawn–they weren’t all that surprised when I killed
them because they had guessed that I hated them. As for her, she
pleaded just like her pathetic daughter.”
Becca said, “And your own little brother? Your father’s other
son?”
I tried to kill him, burn him out of existence, just to leave ashes,
but he survived. My father sent him to Switzerland, to this clinic
that specializes in burns. He knew then what I’d done. I called him
a coward, told him he’d let that wretched woman, those children,
distract him from killing the man who butchered my mother. You
know what he said? He said it over and over, tears in his eyes,
wringing his goddamned hands–it had been an accident, he’d lied
to me all those years. I didn’t believe him. He wanted it soft and
easy–a woman in his bed, children around him–but I wasn’t going
to let him forget my mother, just erase her memory, and turn
away like you would turn away.
“Now I’ve got you both and I’m going to kill you, just as you
killed my mother. It’s justice. It’s retribution.” He smiled as he
raised his gun, aiming right at Thomas.
“No!” Becca yelled. “I won’t let you!” She hurled herself in front
of her father.
Mikhail Krimakov gave a scream of rage when Thomas shoved
Becca to the floor. But he didn’t have time to cover her with his
own body. Mikhail shot him in the chest, knocking him backward.
Mikhail dropped to the floor, grabbed Becca’s ankle, and jerked
her hard toward him. He slammed his arm around her neck, and
pressed the gun against her ear even as the balcony glass door shattered
inward and Adam leapt through the billowing draperies and
the broken glass into the bedroom. He stopped dead in his tracks.
Mikhail smiled at him. “You try to kill me and the little bitch is
dead. You got that?”
Chapter 30
Mikhail said, the gun pointed in Becca’s left ear, “That bastard
shot my mother in the head. He’s paid for it. You move and I’ll
blow her head off. You won’t even recognize what’s left.”
Adam couldn’t believe it, just didn’t want to accept what he was
seeing. “I should never have let you stay here. Damn me, I should
have drugged you, Becca, and hidden you away.”
But Becca didn’t hear him. Mikhail’s arm had tightened until she
couldn’t breathe, until everything turned black and she heard voices
in the distance, but they didn’t reach her, not really.
Mikhail eased up on Becca’s neck as he waved his gun at Adam.
“Drop that gun and do it slowly and very carefully.”
Adam let the gun fall to the floor. It came to a stop, he saw, about
thirteen inches beyond his left foot.
“I dropped the gun. You’ve killed Thomas. No one else is near.
Let her go, damn you, you’ve already choked her unconscious.”
“Yeah, right, you asshole.”
Thomas felt as if his chest was frozen, a good thing, he knew,
because soon enough he would be in such pain he probably
wouldn’t be able to think, much less move. Krimakov’s son was