‘But I thought—’
‘That’s all right,’ he said easily. ‘Everything can wait until the morning.’
Skylar jumped to her feet. ‘If you’re sure…’ she said hesitantly.
‘I’m sure,’ Hammond replied, busying himself with some papers on his desk. ‘Good night, dear.’
Slightly disappointed that she was being dismissed, Skylar slunk out.
Hammond immediately hurried into his private bathroom and masturbated, staring at his well-put-together reflection in the mirror while thinking of how it would feel, the first time he came in Skylar’s mouth, the first time he stuck it into her, the rubbing and fondling of her big breasts naked against his bare chest.
He could wait.
Why not?
He’d done so, many times before.
Sierra had shopped. Reluctantly. She’d bought clothes she knew would please her husband. Although why the hell she wanted to please him was beyond her comprehension.
Oh yes. Of course. She’d given up. Given in to the threats and insults he hurled at her. She was his docile arm-piece. She was — to the general public — the perfect wife.
Hammond had caught her in a trap, and the only way out would be to end it all.
Or… she could run to her parents and tell them what a terrible monster her husband was, and hope and pray that he would not carry out any of his dire threats.
However, that would be taking too big a risk. Hammond was a dangerous man, and as long as she went along with what he wanted — everyone would be safe.
As each day, week, month passed, Sierra sought solace in a variety of pills. They kept her calm. They kept her going.
They were gradually sucking the life out of her.
BOOK TWO
Chapter Twenty-Five
Six months after the murder of his older brother, Boris, Sergei Zukov had moved to Mexico City, where over the years Boris had built many solid connections in the arms and drugs world. Sergei was finished with Russia. Even though the Zukov gang supposedly had people in high places on their payroll, those people had done nothing about finding and prosecuting his brother’s murderer. It seemed to be too sensitive a subject, with no one prepared to do shit.
And why was that?
Because Boris Zukov was a known criminal, and even though he’d never spent more than one night in jail, it was a well-known fact that Boris was capable of monstrous crimes. Kidnap, murder, torture, drugs, arms running.
Neither the authorities nor the public cared that a violent criminal had been thrown from a fourteenth-floor window to his certain death.
Sergei cared. Sergei cared deeply. His brother was everything to him. Boris had raised him when their mother had run off with a local car salesman, leaving them with their drunken, violent father, Vlad.
When their mother left, Boris was sixteen and tough as an old boot. Sergei was six, and scared.
Over the years Boris had protected him from everything, making sure that he attended school, watching out that nothing bad happened to him. Boris had acted more like his father than Vlad.
Vlad was a heavy-set lazy oaf of a man, who couldn’t care less about raising his two sons, although he certainly didn’t mind living off the money Boris brought home, never once asking where it came from.
Boris hated him. He taught Sergei to feel the same.
When Sergei was ten, Vlad had arrived home one afternoon and flown into a drunken rage when he’d discovered that Sergei had finished the paltry amount of milk left in the empty fridge. He’d beaten the boy badly, cut his cheek with a razor blade, then settled back to watch TV, nursing a full bottle of vodka.
That night, Boris returned to their small apartment late. He was already creating a fierce reputation selling street drugs and making sure he was available for any other jobs that might come his way.
Collecting debts.
Stealing cars.
Even a little murder on the side if the price was right.
Yes, at twenty, Boris Zukov was an up and coming man.
After he’d gotten home, having had a rough night of sex with a randy local girl, he’d walked in to check on his younger brother, only to find Sergei crouched in a corner, whimpering and covered in blood from a gash on his cheek, his eyes blackened, his nose broken, and his skinny body full of welts from his father’s heavy belt.
It wasn’t necessary to ask who’d done it. Boris had no doubt that it was Vlad.
With a mask-like face he’d marched into the bedroom all three of them shared, taken a pillow from Vlad’s bed, and returned to the family room.
His father was passed out in an armchair in front of the TV, still clutching the bottle of vodka he’d been swigging from earlier. It was empty.
Stealthily, Boris positioned himself behind the chair, placing the pillow firmly over his father’s face, ignoring the old man’s muffled cries of shock.
Boris kept the pillow in place until there was no breath left in the drunken man.
Suffocation. Vlad deserved it. He was a sorry excuse for a father — they were better off without him.
When Sergei was eighteen, Boris had packed him off to a college in the UK. Sergei had liked it, what with all the pretty girls and available sex. Mastering the English language had come easy for him; learning economics and book-keeping was also a breeze. When he’d returned to Moscow, Boris had put him to work organizing the financial records of his various so-called legitimate businesses, most of which were merely a front for his criminal activities.
It was tricky. Two sets of books, sometimes three — but Sergei had turned out to be a master at manipulating numbers.
Everything was going smoothly until Boris’s untimely death. It was then that the problems had started. Sergei had attempted to take over, but there were men in the organization who did not want him seizing control. Men who were older and more experienced. Men with more clout, who thought
Sergei had burned with fury, for he knew that as Boris’s brother
Yes, Sergei was smart all right. He’d never stolen from his brother, but with Boris gone he began manoeuvring money from the businesses, then moving it out of the country. After a while he’d amassed enough to
