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Hannah’s head whipped around as she stared at him in astonishment. “You knew? You knew that Emmy had a different father, and you didn’t tell me? How long have you known?”
Nikolai looked physically pained as he returned Hannah’s wounded, outraged stare. I could see the muscle in his jaw twitch as he considered how to respond, most likely searching for the least inflammatory version of events. “Ivan told me last year.”
“You knew he was talking to Emmy? You knew everything?” Hannah hopped up from the booth, facing Nikolai directly, her eyes looking wounded and angry. I followed suit, also feeling anger stir in my gut at Nikolai’s betrayal. How could he not tell us?
He shook his head. “I didn’t know he was talking to her. He only told me he’d come across the information and knew how dangerous Armstrong was. He didn’t want the connection between Armstrong and Emmy to blow back into her life. Or yours.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Nikolai tipped his head back and took a deep breath before gazing down at her. The depth of his frustration and regret was plain to see in his normally icy blue stare. Pain and distress briefly contorted his features, surprising me.
Obviously, I’d seen many displays of affection between Hannah and Nikolai in the years they’d been together, seen him stare at her with emotions ranging from indulgence to love to blazing lust, the last being the most unfortunate and uncomfortable to witness. However, he was hard to read in any other context, his emotions typically tightly locked and definitely not openly expressed.
Watching him, I could clearly see how Hannah’s anger was unsettling him. He kept clenching his fists, then consciously trying to loosen the tight grip as if to release the discomfort. It was a remarkable indicator of his own distress.
“I was trying to protect you. All three of you.” He grabbed Hannah’s arm. “What would you have done if I told you about Emmy’s dad?”
Hannah’s jaw was jutted mutinously, clearly more interested in holding on to her anger. “I don’t know. You never gave me the opportunity to make that decision,” she replied snappily.
The muscle in Nikolai’s cheek tightened. “You would have gone running to your mom, wouldn’t you? You would have wanted to get to the bottom of the situation, question her about why she didn’t tell you.” He briefly glanced my way, then back to Hannah. “You would have wanted to tell Emmy. I know you, Hannah. I know you would have felt guilty every time you looked at her and couldn’t tell her the truth.”
Shit. He was dead on. That was exactly what Hannah would have wanted to do. Her eyes shifted away from him as she contemplated what he said, her shoulders dropping as she digested Nikolai’s words. Sensing an opening, Nikolai pulled her into his arms, his hand gripping the side of her neck, forcing her gaze back to him.
“Baby, I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you. I almost did a million times, but I knew it wasn’t safe and I knew you’d go crazy having to keep the secret.”
His gaze implored her to understand. Doubt crept across her face, but an angry little frown remained. “So what? What if I did tell them what I knew? Why would that be so bad?”
“If you told Emmy, you both would have looked into Armstrong, done some kind of research on him, tried to learn about him. And he would have known it. Ivan thinks he may have threatened your mom to stay quiet about him being Emmy’s dad. Imagine how she would react to you guys knowing and doing research on a fucking psycho like Armstrong. Hannah, this guy…he’s sadistic. He is into sex trafficking, enforced slavery, all kinds of fucked up shit. But I know you, you’d want to know more. And that would put you both squarely on Armstrong’s radar. More than you already are.”
Her shoulders dropped completely, her mouth going slack as she non-verbally confirmed Nikolai’s thinking. We would have done everything he said. Nikolai could have warned us, told us it would be dangerous, but I know us. We would have been unable to resist doing some kind of digging. And that would have blown up in our faces.
The last of Hannah’s anger extinguished, she shot me a look full of concern. “What are we going to do? We can’t go to mom. If she’s being threatened by Armstrong all this time, telling her we know is going to cause her to melt down. How can we stop a guy who has tons of influential, amoral allies and unlimited money and power?”
“We’re working on it. Ivan has been in touch with Mikhail in Moscow. The one thing that is working to our advantage is that Armstrong has made a lot more enemies than he has allies. He’s known to be unreliable and impulsively savage, which has ended up burning a lot of bridges. We can capitalize on that and hopefully set him up.”
“What does he want?” I asked almost fearfully.
Nikolai tore his gaze from Hannah and flicked it to me. “He wants to use you as a bargaining chip. His partners don’t trust him anymore. He thinks if he offers his blood—you—it will create more trust, more alliances.”
I frowned. “How many alliances can he create? I’m only one person.”
“It’s the demonstration of good faith. He wants to marry you off to the son of Eduardo Martinez, the head of the biggest cartel in Colombia. If Martinez gives Armstrong the green light, he can move his business into South America, an area he hadn’t been able to get a foothold due to his behavior and history.”
Shock made me weak, and I was relieved to feel Katya’s arm around my shoulders because I was certain it was the only thing keeping me upright. One part of me was grateful to be spared all of this information until right now because pondering the exact hell this deranged stranger that was my father wanted to throw me into was incomprehensible.
“When is this supposed to happen?” I whispered.
Nikolai shot me a compassionate look. In the last couple of years, while we weren’t exceptionally close, he had become something of a surrogate brother to me.
“I’m sorry, Emmy. Sorry I couldn’t tell you, sorry you have to go through all this shit. Believe me, I know what having a fucking nightmare for a father is all about. You don’t deserve all this bullshit.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t know the timing of things. I think that’s what the information from Orlov is about. Somehow that slippery asshole got access to Armstrong’s plans and I imagine right now, Ivan and Drago are beating the fuck out of him in order to learn exactly what they are.”
Barely able to process this information, my face fell into my hands. My father was not my father. My real father was the absolute worst. My real father wanted to abduct me and ship me off to Colombia as a bartering chip in some criminal enterprise. My head was spinning.
Oh, and my boyfriend, who had known all this, was down at a mob warehouse torturing my stalker. How had I lived such an incredibly unremarkable life only to be thrown to the literal wolves all within the span of a month?
“Does he know where I am?” I whispered, my eyes sweeping the bar.
Nikolai winced. “He might, but you're safe here.”