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He shrugged. “In my experience, love and hate are the two sides of the same coin. The opposite of love is apathy, mother, not hate. If you actively hate Roman, you still have powerful feelings for him.”

He felt everyone in the room gaping at him. Of all the stares, the one he chose to meet was Katie’s. She was the only person here who would truly understand what he was saying. After all, she’d both loved and hated him.

Sure enough, she smiled wistfully at him just a little. Then she mouthed the words, “I love you.”

“And I, you,” he murmured back aloud. His gaze swung to his mother. “Thank you for that, Claudia. You may have been a complete failure as a parent, and I may have been raised in hate, but at least I have the satisfaction of knowing I was conceived in love.”

“Love?” she screeched. “I despised Roman Koronov!”

“He never got over you, either,” Alex said calmly in response to her enraged outburst.

His simple words deflated her like a balloon. She collapsed into the same chair she’d been sitting in earlier. All of a sudden, she looked every year of her age and more.

She stared at a spot on the carpet for a minute, or maybe even a little longer. And then looked up and said, simply, “Kill them both.”

Katie let out a cry of distress.

Alex laughed.

Claudia looked up at him sharply. “You think this is a joke? That I won’t do it?”

“I think you’re a fool for underestimating your own son, mother.”

Claudia raised a hand to forestall the thugs from dragging him and Katie from the room.

“You asked me if I thought you wouldn’t see my approach to you coming. Let me ask you a question. Did you seriously think I would barge in here without a back-up plan of my own?”

“You’re bluffing,” she scoffed. “I have access to every operational deployment order in the CIA. No team was sent out here to save you.”

He threw back his head and laughed richly at that.

“What?” she demanded.

“You thought I would call the CIA for help, knowing that you have the agency in your back pocket? That was a stupid miscalculation on your part. I guess we know which side of the family my brains come from, now, don’t we?”

Behind him, Katie gasped.

Smart girl. She’d figured out what he’d done.

Claudia half-rose from the chair. “What have you done?” she demanded.

“What else, mother dearest? I called father dearest.”

The phrase ‘father dearest’ was the pre-arranged signal. Alex had just enough time to dive for Katie and knock her flat on the floor beneath him before every window in the house burst inward in an explosion of shattered glass, as a Spetznatz team poured in, their AK-47s spitting death.

CIA men leaped every which way for cover, firing back as all hell broke loose. Dozens of tiny razor-sharp cuts from flying glass sliced his arms, back, and face as he covered Katie as best he could.

The lights went out, and the chaos was complete as muzzle flashes exploded from every direction. Something hot slammed into his left leg, and he grunted involuntarily in pain. It took a little maneuvering to roll on his side and tend to the wound, but he managed to tear off a length of his shirt and tie off the gunshot wound without getting hit again.

“Can you move?” he yelled in Katie’s ear.

“Yes!” she shouted back.

He paused long enough to peel off one of the two cloth patches taped to the shoulders of his sweater and to slap it on Katie’s shoulder. The infrared marker cloth would identify her to his father’s men as a friend in the firefight and not a foe. His remaining shoulder patch would do the same for him.

“Follow me, a stay low,” he told her as the worst of the gunfire moved outside the house.

“Ya think?” she retorted.