Used by the Russian Mafia Boss: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance by Bella Rose Page B

evidence free in case anyone unexpected should come along.
    On the opposite side of the hallway she saw a conference room. There was a space that looked like a billiard room with the looming black shape of a massive pool table. She realized there was a bright light coming from the opposite end of the hallway. As much as she wanted to explore these rooms, she needed to find out what was going on first.
    She crept forward, barely breathing as she approached. Finally she heard voices. Dimitri sounded angry, Anatoli sounded petulant, and there was another voice that was eerily familiar although she could not imagine what the owner of that voice would be doing here of all places.
    “I’m sick of your inability to take action!” Anatoli said irritably. “This whole process will take years if we continue at this rate!”
    Dimitri didn’t back down. “If years is what it takes to do things right, without incurring the wrath of any of the other families, then that’s what we do.”
    Toni peeked around the corner and found herself looking at a long, low room with narrow windows high up near the ceiling and tile covering both the floor, and walls. There appeared to be a floor grate in one corner with a hose neatly rolled up beside it. The sight of it gave Toni stomach cramps. Was this a torture chamber?
    Her attention was drawn to the man sitting in a chair. He’d been placed dead center of the room, his hands and feet bound. His head was bowed, but she would have recognized him anywhere. It was her father.
     
    DIMITRI KNEW HE was in danger of losing his temper. He was having visions of releasing Rustikov and then tying Anatoli to the chair and beating some sense into him. What was his brother thinking?
    “Did you come up with this idea?” he asked Anatoli. “Because it reeks of Ivan’s interference.” Dimitri cast a glance at his enforcer. Ivan was leaning insolently against the wall, looking bored. “I would expect Ivan to jump the gun on something like this, but I thought you had better sense.”
    “You said yourself that the Kabalevskys don’t give a shit about this man!” Anatoli insisted. “Who cares what we do to him. I want to know why he disrespected my sister.”
    “And you think that Katya would thank you for this choice you’ve made?” Dimitri asked quietly. “Our sister who would never condone hurting a man she once loved?”
    “Who cares?” Anatoli snarled. He began walking in circles, waving his hands wildly. “She’s a woman ! You know that women are weak and cannot make a good decision when it comes to business!”
    “I have to disagree.” Dimitri pushed his fingers through his hair. He now had a bruised and slightly battered Boris Rustikov in his basement while the man’s daughter was asleep upstairs in Dimitri’s bed. There were so many problems with this situation that he didn’t know where to begin.
    “Kill him,” Ivan proposed in a lazy, disinterested tone. “Kill him and dump his body in the river. Katya will be avenged, and nobody will be any wiser. It isn’t as if there’s anyone who would miss the man.”
    Dimitri saw Boris stir. He was obviously conscious even though he was pretending to be out of it. Dimitri strode forward and grabbed the man by his stringy, thinning hair. Yanking his head back, Dimitri gazed into his face. Both his eyes were going to be black, and his lip was split and bleeding. He looked like hell, but that didn’t really matter. He was alive.
    “What do you have to say for yourself?” Dimitri asked in Russian. “Do you know why you are here?”
    “Because you are a coward?” Boris said thickly. His tongue appeared to be swollen as though he had bit it during the beating. “You are a coward and a bastard and you will rot in hell!”
    “Actually, I am not a bastard,” Dimitri said calmly. “However you sired a bastard on my sister. Do you have anything to say for yourself? You left her in that condition, refused to see her again, and discarded