Page 4

ROMAN

“ H er name is Zoya Vladislava Novikova,” I said, tossing a manila folder of photos onto the conference table between Gregor and Artem.

I took a seat across from Gregor and crossed my arms over my chest.

Damien leaned forward, flipping the folder open and plucking a photo out to examine it. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” I answered, picking up a small mother-of-pearl spoon to slather caviar on an unsalted cracker.

“No.” He put the picture back into the folder and chose another.

“There is no way this woman is Egor’s daughter.

It’s not possible. Egor’s daughter would be under a bridge somewhere tormenting hikers for tolls.

This woman is beautiful. She looks nothing like her brothers, Dumb and Dumber… what the fuck were their names?”

Mikhail spoke up. “Leonid and Lenin.”

I stared at the photographic image Damien dropped on the table. And admitted I had my doubts at first, too.

A woman with vivid green eyes and golden blonde hair stared out of the picture.

The expression on her heart-shaped face was a deceptive mask of innocence.

She looked like she was plucked from a fairy tale—not the real Russian fairy tales that warned children of the dangers of the world, but the commercialized ones where everything was beautiful and ended in a happily ever after.

“It’s her. I saw her. She was the one piloting the helicopter.”

I had been reluctantly impressed to learn she had a pilot’s license.

Piloting was a unique and useful skill to have, especially for a woman in our world.

It had been a smart move on her part. It granted her control over a formidable method of escape.

Cars could be chased down; helicopters, not so much. As I learned the hard way.

“How could you possibly know that?” Artem asked, a lethal edge to his tone that questioned my word.

I would forgive him this time since his brother was the one whose life hung in the balance.

“If she was the pilot, then she was wearing a helmet, and it was dark and in the middle of a fucking thunderstorm. I know we all say you have the eyes of an eagle, cousin, but they’re not that sharp.”

They didn’t have to be that sharp.

She was wearing a helmet, but the visor was up, and I saw those eyes. Intense, emerald-green eyes that stared back at me that night, and in my dreams every night since.

I knew that color. It was the same color as the emerald hummingbirds my mother loved. It was a very distinct green, one that I had seen nowhere other than in those delicate feathers—until now, in her gaze.

“It’s her. I know it.” I popped another caviar-covered cracker in my mouth. The salt of the roe burned my tongue. I’d never learned to appreciate caviar like a true Russian. But I also hadn’t eaten in two days.

“Okay, so we know the girl was the pilot, but how do we know for sure that she’s Egor’s daughter?” Gregor asked.

Fighting the urge to snap at them, I fanned out the pictures and picked up one printed from a newspaper.

In the grainy black-and-white photo, she wore a white dress and stood next to a man old enough to be her grandfather. The caption below it read “Egor Novikoff weds his daughter Zoya to prominent businessman and twice-widowed Yelizarov Foma Makarovich.”

“Makarovich. Isn’t he the one who?—”

“Tossed his first wife into a freezing lake and left her there to die? Yes,” I answered, staring at Zoya’s face in her wedding photo, wide-eyed and tight-lipped as if she were struggling not to cry.

“She got herself out of the water and back to the house. He wouldn’t let her in, and she froze to death on her front porch. He was married to his second wife a week later.”

Kostya let out a low whistle.

“She is his second?” Artem asked.

“Third. The second died a few weeks after miscarrying a child. She was malnourished and abused. The official report said the grief killed her, but the coroner suspected starvation and lack of medical care had more to do with it,” I answered.

“So, Egor’s daughter was the one who survived?”

“She’s a widow,” I confirmed, laying the photo down and pulling out another one from the stack.

This one was a picture of the elderly man, his throat a gaping red smile.

“It looks like someone took care of her husband on their wedding night. Probably saved her a lot of pain.”

The men all nodded, staring at the grotesque image.

I leaned back in my chair, watching their expressions. “She is the reason Egor didn’t retaliate after you killed his sons.”

I had to admit the kill was efficient, but sloppy.

Whoever had carried out the hit on Makarovich had more determination than skill. There were hesitation marks, like they weren’t able to get a single clean cut.

The jagged lines meant the subject suffered. He would have bled out fairly quickly, but death wasn’t instant.

It wasn’t a clean kill. But it got the job done.

I didn’t know this girl. She was my enemy. She had made herself my enemy the second she took my cousin.

But still, there was a kernel of pride growing in my chest.

“The girl used her dead husband’s money to buy her freedom and then bribed a few Russian officials to toss her father into a Siberian asylum.”

Mikhail was the first to laugh and then struggled to cover it with a cough.

I grinned at him, knowing exactly why he found it as funny as I did.

“Damn. That’s cold…literally. It would’ve been kinder to kill the bastard,” Mikhail chuckled.

I agreed as I drummed my fingers against the table, fighting to remind myself that she was the enemy.

“I have a feeling she knows that.”

I’d spent hours digging into this woman. Piecing together every fragment of information I could find, from hundreds of sources.

She was smart enough to avoid social media, which was rare for someone her age.

Because she was an attractive woman, most of my contacts back in Russia didn’t give a damn about anything else—just that she was attractive.

Even the fact that she’d been married didn’t matter to them. They were more than willing to overlook “used goods” for a chance to fuck her.

And the crude comments? They bothered me more than they should have.

Finally, I’d caught a break. The judge who signed the order to have Egor sent to the asylum was actually very impressed by my little kidnapper.

“What else do you know about her?” Gregor asked.

“Most people underestimate her because she’s a woman, but she has impressed the few people who have actually taken the time to notice her. One judge referred to her as the son Egor needed.”

“What does that mean?” Artem asked, picking up his coffee for a sip.

“It means that most believe she’s smarter than Egor gave her credit for and could outthink and outmaneuver her late brothers.

She was never given the opportunity to prove herself under her father’s control, and yet she still came out on top.

More than one person insinuated that if we had been going against her and not her brothers, the outcome would have been far different. ”

“Different how?”

“Didn’t say,” I answered. “But I got the impression that those who have dealt with her realize she is a force to be reckoned with. At least now that she managed to get her father taken care of.”

“What else did you find?” Gregor asked, his eyes narrowing. The smug bastard could always tell when I was holding something back.

“She bought herself an army. I believe she’s the one bankrolling Los Infideles ’ sudden surge in power.”

When I first found that out, I didn’t want to believe it. A sheltered, innocent Russian mafia princess suddenly the female boss of a ruthless Colombian gang?

It wasn’t possible. They would sooner take her money and kill her, than actually follow a woman’s orders.

Especially a woman so beautiful, with delicate features and big, innocent-looking eyes.

But I was learning very quickly that underestimating Zoya was a mistake.

“How much?” Gregor asked.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “She works in the shadows. I’ve got rumors, speculation, but I don’t have any proof. Not yet. There’s a chance she was the one behind Solovyov, but I can’t be sure.”

“What do you mean behind Solovyov?” Kostya asked, getting to his feet. “Are you saying this bitch was the one who hunted Marina from Moscow all the way to Chicago?”

“No.” I shook my head even as I gave in to the urge to lie. I shouldn’t be lying to my family, especially not for this woman. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that was exactly what I thought happened.

“You’re saying she was behind the attack on the estate? The one that almost killed Viktoria?” Artem demanded, his gun already in his hand, like he could just walk into the next room and find her waiting to be executed.

“No,” I said, again lying to my family about this woman, not knowing why.

Over the years, I had learned to follow my instincts, and that was what I was going to do, even if I didn’t understand it.

“I believe all the blame for those…circumstances rests with Solovyov in his grave. Those debts have been settled. I’m suggesting that she may have been behind his desire to come to the States, and she may have been the one paying for the Colombians that he was using.”

My cousins all stared at me, their eyes narrowed, their jaws locked.

They didn’t trust me.

Of course, they didn’t really trust me. None of them thought of me as one of them.

To them, I was just the cousin that you didn’t call unless you had to. The outsider who was only allowed to stay because of my skills. I was the Ivanov family’s personal boogeyman.

After all, I didn’t look like them. I was just as big, just as tall, with maybe even a little more muscle packed onto my thick frame. But where they were all light as snow with light eyes and a wealthy Russian education and upbringing, I wasn’t.

I didn’t talk like them, think like them, and I certainly didn’t look like them. Their own grandmother—the woman who loved them unconditionally, cooked for them, took care of them—called me Satan.

To them, I must have been the devil himself, a tool to be used to strike fear in the hearts of others but not a man to be trusted like family. Regardless of how much Ivanov DNA ran through my veins.

I picked up Gregor’s glass, dumping the rest of his coffee into Artem’s cup before pouring a finger of the Havana Club Máximo Limited Edition rum I kept in the flask at my hip.

Even my flask set us apart. Engraved with the Cuban flag, it was found among my mother’s possessions. I liked to pretend it was my grandfather’s, but I honestly had no idea. It was still a reminder to my cousins—but mostly to myself—that my heritage was more than just Russian.

“So then why does she have Pavel?” Gregor asked as I took a long drink from the cup, savoring the way the smoky aged rum burned in my throat with a mix of vanilla and a satisfying spicy finish.

“That I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care.”

“What do you mean, you don’t care?” Artem stood and took a threatening step toward me.

I raised my eyebrow at him, wondering how far he would take this.

That was the problem with having your very own boogeyman. Eventually, you started believing the rumors.

I still recognized Artem and Gregor’s authority. But that didn’t mean I was a lackey. And I would not be treated as such. If they wouldn’t love and respect me as family, they would respect me out of fear.

“I don’t care why she has him. I care that she has him.

My focus isn’t to decipher the motivation and whims of some mafia princess with a vendetta.

I’m focused on getting Pavel back to his wife and unborn child.

Then and only then will we deal with whatever delusions have her targeting our family. That is more your department, cousins.”

“So, how do we get him back?” Kostya said, putting his hand on Artem’s shoulder, a rare comforting gesture. One I recognized but had rarely received.

Perhaps Pavel’s kidnapping was affecting my cousin more than I thought. Perhaps I underestimated Artem’s compassion for family.

“Don’t worry,” I said, giving them a wicked grin that usually struck fear in the hearts of others. “I have a plan. I’m going to infiltrate Los Infideles .”

Finally, my “Satan” DNA would be worth something to the Ivanovs.