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OLEKSI

This house used to be one of my fortresses, but now the once magnificent entry hall is nothing more than a fucking wreck. Glass litters the floors and the sound of the attack still rings in my ears. This is not the first time I’ve been left among destruction, but it is the first time it has happened in my own home and the first time it’s left me feeling like the attackers ripped my heart out through my soul. The silence is thick with Sabrina’s absence as I stand in the aftermath, the memory of the attack replaying through my head and blood pounding in my ears like a war drum that refuses to stop.

My arms instinctively close around Elena’s small warmth, the only thing grounding me. She stirs softly against my chest, strapped to me in the baby sling. Her cheek rests trustingly just over my heart, and her soft breaths heat a path around it, totally unaware that the only mother she has known for her short nine-month life is gone. I swallow as the anger and pain pound through me once again, and my hands curl into fists at my side.

“We’re going to get her back, sweetheart,” I whisper to the little girl I have just found out is my niece—a tiny part of my brother’s heart and soul.

My jaw clenches when I think of an image of the petite, brave woman with a huge heart, fiercely protective instincts, and an unmatched loyalty to those she loves and cares about. A woman who risked everything and carried the burden of my brother and her sisters’ secret all alone for the past eight months, knowing the dangers that one little slip about Elena’s parentage would create.

Still, Sabrina didn’t think twice about it and took Elena on as her own daughter. She truly is a remarkably special person. My brow furrows as Clyde’s words echo through my head. I hope we find her before the people who took her find out just how special Sabrina is.

What the fuck did he mean by that? I turn to where Lev, Clyde, Syd, and Ivan huddle near the front door, my eyes narrowing as a dreadful feeling starts to creep into my gut. I didn’t get to press Clyde about what he meant because we were interrupted by Syd who came to tell me that Lev was chasing down one of the fucking Russian Special Forces bastards that were still loitering around the property. She was floored to see Clyde alive, and then Ivan joined her to let us know that Lev was back.

Once back into the foyer, I had to get my men to work on starting the cleanup and making plans to re-secure the mansion. With all that out of the way, I can press Clyde for answers. Walking toward the group, Syd is the first to see me, and she gives me a tight smile as the rest of them turn. Drawing nearer to them, I signal them to keep their voices down. They know why as their eyes land on the little angel snuggled against me, secure in her baby sling.

I can see that Lev is still pissed that he didn’t catch the Russian fucker that vanished into the early morning.

“I’m sorry, boss,” Lev says, his voice low. “He just vanished.”

“It’s okay, Lev,” I say, trying to keep my cool. We’re all tired. Lev, Syd, and Ivan had been the only three of my men that weren’t taken down by tranq darts and gotten a few of the bastards before the entire fucking team crashed into my house. “They are slippery cunts and know their way around this town better than we do.”

Elena stirs, her little mouth opening in a sleepy yawn. I adjust the sling to keep her quiet.

“Where is Magda?” Ivan asks.

“Sabrina gave her a few days off,” I say. “She wanted to visit family in Moscow.” I catch the time on my watch. Almost five-thirty in the morning, and it already feels like a lifetime since Sabrina was taken. “Magda should be back before six.”

“It’s best not to leave the little cutie alone right now,” Syd says.

“I don’t want her out of my sight until I know what the fuck is going on,” I growl and my eyes catch Clyde’s. “Why the fuck did General Ergorov and his team of Russian Special Forces take Sabrina? What do they want with her? Has this got something to do with Tara and Gavriil digging into some Russian woman’s birth certificate?”

Clyde’s eyes narrow to slits. “What do you know about that?” His voice is low and deadly calm.

“Not much,” I admit. “We found a Russian puzzle box that Tara had hidden in hers and Sabrina’s apartment. In it was a birth certificate for a Lidiya Zorin, a photograph of the famous Russian cryptographer and mathematician, Anya Novikov, and…” I hesitate to tell them about the adoption papers of Gavriil and Irina that Sabrina and I found in a hidden compartment of the box.

“Please tell me that you didn’t go poking around here in Moscow?” Clyde’s eyes bore into mine. “Is that why the two of you came here?”

“There were a few reasons we came here!” My brook becomes frosty. “Admittedly, that was on the list. But the hospital had burned down…”

“And I got hold of some of my contacts to find out about the hospital records,” Syd picks up the conversation.

“Did you specifically ask about Lidiya Zorin?” Clyde’s tone becomes more forceful.

Syd and I exchange a glance, and I nod.

“We did,” Syd answers.

“Sabrina had a theory that Lidiya may have been Tara’s real name and that Carla and Sol may have stolen her from Russia, and that is why their parents lied to them about who Tara’s real mother was all these years,” I add. “Sabrina wanted to know if her parents were kidnappers, and then her theory seemed even more plausible when her mother, Carla, went missing in Moscow a few days before we arrived here.”

“What?” It’s Clyde’s turn to look confused. “Why would you think that Carla had gone missing in Moscow?”

“Because Sam told us that Nikolas’s yacht had gone missing near Trabzon,” Syd answers. “He told us that it had just disappeared off the radar.”

“Carrying my aunt, Carla, and Mark.” My hand absently strokes Elena’s soft hair as she sighs and moves position.

Clyde’s brow furrows deeper, showing us he didn’t know about this. “What were they doing near Turkey?”

“They were on a cruise celebrating my Aunt Galina and Nikolas’s engagement,” I explain. “But they were supposed to be going to the Bahamas.”

“That’s a serious detour,” Clyde points out the obvious. “Wait!” His eyes register his realization. “Trabzon is on the Black Sea coast, not far from the Georgian border.” His eyes hold mine, and I can see his mind putting the puzzle pieces into place. “It would make sense that if Carla wanted to come into Russia, she’d do so through a not-so-obvious route.” He looks at me wide-eyed as full realization dawns. “Fuck! Do you think Carla knows that Tara was looking into her real mother, and that’s why she came here?”

Now my mind’s reeling as I had not thought about that possibility. “Has there been any news of Tara’s whereabouts?”

“No.” Clyde shakes his head. “I was in Russia when Sam called me with instructions for an urgent extraction of first Sabrina and Elena, and then you.”

“What?” Syd, Ivan, and Lev splutter.

“What kind of an extraction?” Syd asks suspiciously.

Clyde raises his brows and purses his lips. “The kind where they have a seemingly tragic life-ending accident.”

“Erased!” Syd’s brows shoot up, and she looks at me. “Jesus, fucking Christ, Oleksi, what kind of hornets nest have we kicked here?”

“That’s what I want to know.” My eyes bore into Clyde’s. “Why were you in Russia?”

“I promised Tara that I would look into Lidiya Zorin for her,” Clyde admits.

“Was that before or after she dumped your bleeding body at a hospital and ran?” Syd sneers, her tone filled with malice, which shocks me as I’ve never seen such spite in her before. But it’s fleeting, and the hurt and anger that flashed in her eyes during her outburst are gone as quickly as they came.

Clyde turns to her. His eyes are icy as he drawls, “Actually, I didn’t want Tara to take me to the hospital at all. I told her to run and go to a safe house. But she’s as stubborn as a fucking ox and took me anyway. Then I had to all but get security to escort her from the hospital to leave me. Tara, unlike some people, knows what loyalty is all about.”

Before they can get into a full-blown argument, I intervene. “So Sam hasn’t been able to locate Tara yet either?”

“No.” Clyde’s answer is curt and clipped. “When I asked, all he said was that he may have a lead.” He looks at me curiously. “Did Sam tell you that Carla went missing in Moscow?”

“No,” I reply. “Sabrina tried to call her mother, but a Russian woman, a housekeeper at a hotel in Moscow, answered and told Sabrina that she’d found the phone in a room.”

He looks at me in surprise. “Shit.” He spits. “I take it you investigated that?” Before I can answer, he fires off another question. “Which hotel?”

“Hotel Volkovya, in the Patriarch’s Ponds District, Central Moscow,” I tell him.

“Oh no!” Clyde’s face drops. “I’m assuming you went there?”

I nod.

“The suite number the housekeeper gave Sabrina, where she found Carla’s phone, was one that is permanently booked for some influential Russian family,” Lev adds, glancing at Ivan. “Ivan and Syd found out that the day Carla was supposedly in the suite, no one had been booked in there for the night or was reportedly in there.”

“Of course not,” Clyde says in exasperation. “There’s a reason they call that hotel the Wolf Den. Because of its discretion, each private client that has a suite there has a personal card key, and they pay per month or year, so they don’t have to book.”

“That makes sense,” Ivan says with a nod. “Although I’ve never heard of the hotel being called the Wolf Den.”

Ivan looks at me for clarification, and I shrug. “Me either. However, my family has never had much need for hotels in Russia. We have property all over the country.” My attention turns back to Clyde. “What do you know about the hotel, and why would Carla have been in a suite booked out to the Morozov family?”

“Oh fuck no!” Clyde hisses, running his hand impatiently through his hair. “It’s starting to make sense now.”

“What is?” All four of us ask him, as nothing is making sense to me yet.

“The first red flag you and Sabrina raised was poking around in Lidiya Zorin’s business, the second was looking into the Morozov family,” Clyde informs us. “While the Volkovya is discreet, trust me, the Russians still keep a close covert eye on it, especially on some of its more important families.”

My brows shoot up now as it registers. “Oh, fuck, do you think the Morozov that has that suite is General Timofey Morozov?”

“Woah!” Ivan gives a low whistle. “The man who basically changed warfare strategy and authored the Morozov Doctrine? The doctrine that is still taught in elite Russian military academies?”

A muscle ticks in Clyde’s jaw as he says, “I believe so.”

His confirmation makes my blood run cold. “So are you telling me that now the Russian Special Forces have Sabrina and Carla?” I swallow. “And possibly my aunt, Nikolas, and Mark as well?”

“No!” Clyde shakes his head. “I doubt General Ergorov has Carla or your aunt and their partners.”

“You seem very sure of that,” I note.

“If Carla’s last known whereabouts were in the Morozov Hotel suite, she’s not with the same people who took Sabrina,” Clyde clarifies, his voice as sharp as the edge of a blade. “And for the record, Sabrina was taken by the Russian Military Special Authority Division, known as the RMSAD. Led by General Ergorov.”

“RMSAD?” I’ve never heard of them.

“Yes,” Clyde’s jaw clamps as he takes a breath and continues. I can see the same worry he had in his eyes earlier when he mentioned having to get to Sabrina as quickly as we could. “Ergorov doesn’t answer to the regular command structure. He runs black operations under executive privilege. The kind most Russians pretend doesn’t exist.”

“What kind of black operations?” Ivan asks before any of us can.

“The kind that makes your skin crawl and you’d find in some horror movie,” Clyde states. “They carry out biological, psychological, and... other experimentation. A lot of covert shit goes on there. There are whispered rumors of many different types of human experiments, such as genetic enhancement programs.”

My blood turns to ice now as my worst fears start to jump in front of me. “Is that why they took Sabrina?” My voice rattles with emotion. “Because she’s a high-potential individual?”

“No fucking way!” Syd’s voice breaks through the sudden tension in the room like a bullet. “What crap is that? They can’t just pick American citizens off the streets of Russia for having a superior intellect and then experiment on them. I don’t care who the fuck they are, that would have serious implications for the Russians, kidnapping an American.” She fixes Clyde with a look that could kill. “How would they even know about Sabrina?”

Clyde doesn’t flinch, and the following words out of his mouth hit me like a punch to the heart. “They’ve known about Sabrina for a long, long time.”