Chapter 163 say goodbye
The young hostess with dark hair swept into a tight bun noticed me enter. She took me in from head to toe and didn't miss the cigarette hanging from my lip as I scanned the restaurant.
I felt the wolf under my skin stir, quiet, calculating. Humans always stared a little too long when my temper was rising; the Alpha aura leaked through the cracks when I was fighting the instinct to tear someone apart.
"Sir you can't smoke in here", Her tone was polite but I didn't bother looking in her direction.
My nostrils flared. The air tasted like humans, fear, and old cooking oil. No wolf scents here. Good. That meant no pack interference.
"Is Viktor here. He is expecting me", He wasn't and I hoped she didn't notice that.
Her heartbeat skipped. Fast. Uneven. She smelled the danger rolling off me in waves even if she didn’t understand it. Humans always sensed predators, even if they couldn’t name what hunted them.
"Oh", Her olive completion went pale as I said his name. Though now she looked at me differently if at all. She tried to keep her eyes on the floor instead of making direct contact. "He's in the back", She responded.
"Perfect", Luck was in my favor, it seemed. I didn't want to beat him in a pulp in the middle of his family's shady restaurant. After all that wouldn't look good for the Volkov family. I had just enough good sense left to contemplate what was going to happen and the potential consequences.
My jaw ached from clenching too hard. The wolf hated restraint. It wanted Viktor’s blood on the walls. But an Alpha never acted without purpose… even when fury blurred the edges of his vision.
Antonio was waiting in one of the black cars on the street. If his Intel was correct, Viktor was here and he was alone. That's what i needed. Few bodies to concern myself over later.
My vision tunneled as I followed the sounds of the busy kitchen. The scent of garlic and cheese wafted through my nose, despite the cigarette hanging from my lips. A few of the line cooks and wait stuff side eyed me as I wove my way through the kitchen, but no one stopped me.
Their fear surrounded me like a physical scent, sharp and unmistakable. My presence alone forced humans to part like water around a boulder.
Every step I took echoed with the authority of an Alpha who could command wolves… and terrify humans without trying.
There was an air of darkness and malicious intent coming off me in waves. It made everyone in a ten foot radius wary to look at me for so long and it was so strong they couldn't even fathom getting close to me. It was an image of pure, unadulterated rage.
The wolf inside me growled approval.
"For a man who stole millions, you shouldn't have a shitty fucking office", The moment the door clicked shut behind me, Viktor's head snapped up from the table kinda shocked to see me. The room was dimly lit and and the concrete walls were covered in sales. The graphs fit the image of a shady business man.
His scent hit me immediately, fear, sweat, a hint of cheap cologne, and something sour beneath it.
Humans never hid their terror well. To a wolf, they were useless and he knew it.
"Andrey", Viktor shoved up from his desk immediately. His wide eyes took in my expression, and I noticed the way his throat bobbed. "What are you doing?", His voice wavered with uncertainty.
"It appears that my little dancer was robbed", I flicked ashes from my cigarette over the scattered folders on his table. "I paid five million dollars for her and she only got five hundred thousand dollars. I want you to explain that",
Elena’s name alone sent a violent ripple under my skin, my wolf reacting to the thought of someone hurting what it instinctively saw as mine.
He didn’t know she was special.
She didn’t know either.
And she never would, not if I could help it.
Viktor instantly balked at me. His mouth opened and closed as he stuttered. "Why do you care?, .... You just using her for a fuck. Does it matter how much she got out of it",
The growl that rose in my chest wasn’t human. It vibrated through the concrete floor.
I didn't realize it was happening until his face slammed onto the table and my fist was bashing into the side of his skull. The world moved in a blur and everything was dark at the edge of my vision. My fist hit him repeatedly in the side of his face. I heard the sickening crunch of his teeth breaking and the squelching of blood.
Rage surged through me, hot, electric, primal. My claws didn’t extend, but they wanted to. The wolf pushed against my bones, urging me to shift, to tear, to end.
"You know I liked to believe that I was a reasonable, and a pleasant man but it turns out I'm so awful", I said more to myself more than Viktor, pausing to wipe the perspiration from my brow with my sleeve.
"What the fuck man!", Viktor coughed, sending red droplets over a manila folder. "Did you really come here for this because a whore didn't get enough money",
"Ty dolzhno byt' tupoy", I hit him so hard that I heard the legs of the table scrape against the concrete floor as his skull bounced on the wood. Leaning forward, I hissed in Viktor's red swollen ear. "Don't you ever fucking talk to her like that. She is worth more than any penny you deserve. Elena is worth it all",
Her name soothed the wolf but only slightly.
She was human, fragile, unmarked… but something in her scent called to the deepest parts of me.
Parts I refused to acknowledge.
Viktor spit more blood onto the table, I was smoothing him against. A crooked smile appeared on his face and i saw the red in his teeth.
"She is a whore like others and she will always be that", His fractured smile made me feel like a snake was wrapping around my neck.
My vision flashed black and gold , wolf colors, buried just beneath the surface.
"Do you know how many men have had her? Do you know how many men have paid hundreds of thousands just to sink their cocks into her tight cunt",
The wolf snapped its jaws inside my skull, begging to be let out.
"Shut the fuck up", I lifted him by the back of his collar and bashed his head onto the table. He coughed but merely chuckled again while struggling to cough again. "Let's see.... .. oh yeah, I also fucked her. It's not good business to let the goods go out in the street without tasting them first",
My hand dropped from the back of his neck. Every ounce of my blood felt ice cold. Although that didn't cool my temperature. Instead that pushed me further into my fury. So frigid that it was a new type of burning entirely.
A low, lethal rumble escaped me—the kind no human throat could produce.
I took one last drag from my cigarette. Then I put it on the gaping cut on Dax's cheek. He writhed and screamed as I pressed the burning end in his raw, oozing wood. I heard the satisfying sizzle of boiling blood and smelled the burning flesh. My free hand hit the back of his head, keeping him down onto the table as I shoved the butt of the cigarette into his cheek.
His screams filled the room, but they were nothing compared to the wolf snarling inside me, urging me to rip, tear, punish.
As he screamed, tears spilled down from his eyes, and I felt nothing at the sight. My emotions had gone numb, with only hatred and anger leading me on.
"You will never lay a finger on Elena because you will never have hands again. You will never see Elena because you will never have eyes again, and you will never speak to her or speak about her because you won't simply have a tongue again", I followed the statement with another powerful blow to the side of his face.
My knuckles cracked. The wolf purred.
"poproshchaysya ublyudkov, potomu chto ty umresh' segodnya"
~say goodbye mother-fucker because you gonna die today~