“Her boyfriend identified the ring she’s wearing.”
Toly lifted his brows. “Before you killed him?”
Misha’s brows drew together. Another expression Toly knew well:leave it.
He left it.
“Whoever is sending souvenirs to your Raven is sending them to me as well. Obviously, it isn’t about Raven.” His gaze rested on the baggie. “It’s about us.”
“Then why bother Raven at all? Why not harass your woman, too?”
Misha’s look saidcome on, now, you know better. “You don’t have a home, and I don’t have a woman,” he said, shrugging. “It makes sense.”
“It’s the Butcher’s son, then?”
Misha spun back to the fridge and returned with another baggie, this one containing an ear. A matched set, between the two of them. The maid, the father, one for Toly, one for Misha.
“He’s here, then. In New York.”
“Yes.”
Toly didn’t ask how he knew, just as he didn’t ask why Antonina had been targeted specifically: he wouldn’t get an answer in either case. He said, “You expect me to believe you?”
Misha leveled him with a serious look. “Have I ever lied to you?”
He wasn’t looking for a flip, automatic answer, so Toly didn’t offer one. He thought hard and long, paged through his catalogue of memories, though it was unnecessary. There had been losers and toadies and wannabes that cycled into and out of the bratva, faces he couldn’t remember, names he didn’t want to remember. But Misha stood out like a beacon, always had. He could remember all the wisdom he’d passed along to him, but most of all, his honesty, no matter how brutal.
“Only once,” he said, quietly. “When you told me you were dumping the Butcher’s body.”
“I didn’t tell you, though. Andrei told you to wait for the team, and when I was with them, I didn’t explain myself.”
Damn. That was true.
Misha sat forward and rested his forearms on the desk. It was a casual pose; intimate, but not urgent. “I was surprised when I got your text earlier. I expected to hear from your club – your president, maybe, or vice president. Something formal. That Alpine’s been sniffing around. Not subtle, by the way. Everyone in my crew knows what he’s doing.
“But thenyoutexted,” he continued, before Toly could inwardly curse Kat and Tenny. “And I thought to myself ‘This is not the club reaching out to warn me, no. This is Toly wanting my help.’”
Toly swished the last swallow of vodka around in his mouth and sent his former CO a narrow look.
Misha’s brows went up. “Do you expect me to believe your president sent you here? Into my headquarters? All alone?”
“Did you expect me to come unarmed?” Toly countered.
“As if that makes a difference,” Misha said, dismissively. “You’re here foryou, and not your club. For your woman. Aren’t you?”
Toly didn’t answer – which was an answer in and of itself.
“Andrei wants you dead,” Misha went on, brutal without trying to be. “You’re a traitor to the bratva, and I haven’t forgotten that. But the Butcher’s son wants us both dead. I see no reason why we shouldn’t help one another.”
“Noreason?”
“No reason personally,” he amended. “For the moment, we can set aside our loyalties and organizations, and operate only as ourselves.”
A foreign concept for both of them. They’d been attached to outlaw groups since before either of them needed to shave. Toly nearly laughed.
“I’m serious,” Misha said.
Toly set his glass down on the blotter, between the baggie with the finger, and the baggie with the ear. “I can see that.” And he could. No one did earnest like Misha, because no one was as blunt and uncluttered as him. “What are you proposing?”
