Page 21 of Danger Close (Mourningkill #3)

My Blood

Cobra

“Welcome home, Mr. Guerro.” The guard stood, rendering a salute before he gestured for the gate of the Vasiliev mansion to lower. I waited, my Audi rumbling as I put up my window, ready to take the long, winding drive to Jericho’s haunted mansion.

It was technically my house as well, even if I never felt at home there. Neither had Yuliya, my half-sister.

The old studio apartment that Teri and I had shared in Barstow, California was a home. It was personal, intimate, and perfect for a small family. Somewhere in its imperfections were the signs of life. The Vasiliev mansion, on the other hand, had no such familial “vibe” as the young agents say.

From some angles, it looked like a castle, with gothic spires and high ceilings.

If Neuschwanstein and the Addam’s family house had an abomination of a baby, it would be this damn building.

Its roof was as high as the ancient Adirondack trees around it.

Stars outlined its menacing towers, like it had been pulled out of a Grimm fairytale.

If I listened very hard, I could hear the rustle of deer hoofs and wolf howls in the surrounding forest.

The whole thing was strange, anachronistic. A perfect representation of its chief inhabitant, Jericho Vasiliev. I parked the car on the circle drive, and walked out, walking up the marble steps to the front door, spinning my keys around my index finger and catching them in my palm.

I could still feel the burn of her skin against my hand. I felt her tears against my thumb. I’d felt her longing, and her tenderness in her gorgeous azure eyes. She wanted me as badly as I wanted her. But something had crossed her mind and made her pull away.

I’d need to fix that, too. Retirement meant I had plenty of time for projects. I was racking up a to-do list a mile long.

“Mrs. Teresa Guerro.” I said the name out loud just to taste it on my tongue.

My need to be near her, to be a part of her, was an ache that I’d written off as a folly of youth. But here I was, past middle-age and still wanting her as desperately as I had when I was a twenty-year-old buck.

What am I going to do with you, Princess? How can I wipe the fear and pain from your eyes?

The bright lights in the bottom floor glowed through the large windows. My brother was still awake. Insomnia ran in the family.

I stepped through the glass double doors, opening it wide to the cool marble interior.

“In here!” Jericho’s voice wafted like a foul smell from his office.

I sighed, pivoting from the grand staircase that led up to our rooms, and turned towards the library that served as Jericho’s office.

My brother scowled behind his grand desk, his eyes weary as he pressed two fingers to his forehead. Without looking, Jericho flicked his wrist towards the vacant armchair in front of him.

I really, really, really didn’t feel like dealing with his dramatics today. But there was no other way to converse with Jericho Vasiliev.

“Your’e still awake?” I said, looking at the time. Almost midnight.

“Dismantling the Mafia is tiresome work,” he said with a long, aggrieved sigh.

In his time as the head of Paradigm, he’d halved the power of the big Mafia families, including our own. Our father, Anton Vasiliev’s legacy, gone! And good riddance.

I was surprised that he hadn’t torn this mansion apart himself, brick by brick.

“I’ve assembled a report on the findings from Teresa Guerro’s phone, and a preliminary data search.” He flicked a hand towards a folder on his desk without looking up from the papers he shuffled around.

I was surprised that was all he’d done. I reached out to pick up the slim folder, flicking up to the front page, but not reading anything.

“I’m surprised at your restraint,” I chuckled.

“I did not run a full check because, as you’ve previously stated, you wanted us to,” he leaned back in his seat, interlocking his fingers over his abs, “ Keep our noses out of your personal life .”

The passive aggressive little shit.

He was angry that twenty-nine years ago, my divorce papers crossed his desk. I told him to sign it on my behalf then butt out. I told him to refrain from meddling in Teri’s life, and in my daughter’s.

He’d never forgiven me.

He kept whining, “that’s my niece! She’s my blood!”

I’d never heard the end of it. He metaphorically slapped me silly, telling me to fight for our family, and for my child.

He told me to investigate, and figure out what the hell happened.

But my juvenile heart knew, without a doubt, that Teri had gotten my letters, and my bank account, and still decided that she’d had enough.

That I wasn’t welcome in the life she built around our child.

That was the day I lost custody of Trinity Blaze Guerro, and Jericho had never, ever, forgiven me.

Now that the picture of what had happened became clearer, one pixel at a time, I wasn’t sure I could forgive myself either. And I sure as fuck never wanted to admit that my brother was right about something. I’d never hear the end of it.

“Care to give me a summary?” I lifted the folder, hoping to get us back on track.

Jericho shrugged, his lips pursed. The man loved to hear himself talk, so if I just waited him out, he’d spill whatever the findings were. He stared at me, unblinking, his thumb wiping over his bottom lip.

“Teresa Guerro’s phone is uneventful. No social media to speak of, which is bizarre.” His slow, cadenced Russian accent bugged me. He was born in the US, but since becoming the Pakhan, he played up the accent as a means of intimidation.

To be honest, it kind of worked for him. No one was scared of an American accent. Except for maybe a North Korean.

“What psychopath in this day and age has no social media?” Jericho lifted a single brow.

Me. I had no social media. But I went for a more obvious answer,“ You have no social media.”

“And I’m the Pakhan of the bratva, and a psychopath.” He shrugged, unapologetically. “But her? No digital footprint? Not even a Kohl’s reward card? That’s highly suspicious.”

I’d considered getting Facebook, because I had a kid, and stalking her was becoming a pastime. But then I just… couldn’t be bothered.

“She has no boyfriend, no lover. She doesn’t seem to text at all.” He blinked, slow and purposeful. This was all a part of his performance. “There are frequent calls to one Trinity Guerro, though. Ever heard of her?”

He lifted a sarcastic brow. I rolled my eyes. His jokes aren’t funny.

“No boyfriend, you say,” I said idly, opening the folder and pretending to read through papers. My eyes honed in on the relationship line that said “no significant other”.

“Most of her calls go unanswered. In the past month, her outbound calls have tripled in frequency. However, the reception has remained the same. My niece rarely answers.”

His niece. Not my daughter. Possessive bastard.

Jericho was a selfish egotist. But he was also weirdly selfless. He took family seriously. That was how he roped me into the fold. It’s why he kept such a protective arm around our sister, Yuliya.

When Jericho was uncharacteristically silent, I lifted my head from the papers and flinched when I saw his furious expression.

“What?” I asked, when he didn’t say anything else.

“I just find your lack of curiosity so… fascinating .” His smirk was menacing. “After all, you said she was the love of your life.”

“How I felt three decades ago isn’t reflective of how I feel now.”

Except it was. My feelings had not changed one bit.

The look on Jericho’s face was skeptical, smug, and condescending all at once. But he did not respond to me.

“What now?” My head fell backwards from the power of my eye roll.

“Nothing.” Jericho clamped his mouth shut.

I knew it wouldn’t stay that way long. He was preparing to give me an earful, and the longer he thought about it, the longer the lecture would be.

My brother, of course, did not disappoint. He launched in on me with a fury. “You kept me and Yuliya away from our niece for thirty years—”

“ You didn’t stay away,” I barked. “You were there when she got her green beret! You were there when she got her Combat Infantry Badge—”

Things which I had not been there for because I was respecting the life her mother had built. Or, at least, the life I thought Teri had built.

“No thanks to you!” He interrupted, slamming his hand on the table as the wood creaked under the pressure.

If he thought that would scare me, he had another thing coming.

“No, you did it in spite of me!” I yelled back, my hand in a fist. “She’s my child, and you made sure you were there when I couldn’t be!”

“That was your choice!”

“That was her choice! Teresa’s!” I gestured to the folder on his desk as a means of indicating that this was what Teri had wanted. Or, at least, what I had interpreted to be her wishes. “I was respecting her decision. I was respecting the mother of my child.”

“Did you ask her? Did you reach out and tell her that she hadn’t been abandoned? Did you try to fight for it? For your family?” He knew the answer, but he asked it anyway just to make a point.

It was the same old song and dance. The reason why I never came home.

“She filed for divorce, that was pretty fucking definitive.” Except, maybe it wasn’t…

“You just let it happen.” The scorn in his tone prickled my skin.

Many, many times in my life have I wanted to punch him in the throat. His smart-ass demeanor, his meddling, his infuriating way of popping up and sticking his nose into something I wanted to keep to myself was enough to drive anyone crazy.

But all of those paled in comparison to this moment.

“It’s none of your business.” It wasn’t his business back then, and it isn’t now.

“That’s where you are wrong, brother,” he said, his lips pulled back in an angry snarl. “Family is always my business.”

I flexed every muscle in my body, trying not to lunge over the desk to rip his throat out.

“ My family,” I gritted out. “Not yours.”

“You are my family, brother.” Jericho’s eyes narrowed, his own fists clenched on the leather armrests.

“That little girl should have grown up with the world at her fingertips. She should have had ponies, and castles, and everything a girl could possibly want. Instead, she was moved from school to school. She had more stability in the Army with deployments than she did growing up! Don’t even get me started on your ex - wife and her revolving door of odd jobs. I’m surprised they didn’t starve!”

I agreed with every word. But I also didn’t have all the answers. There was more to this than met the eye, and I wasn’t going to argue with Jericho “fuckwad” Vasiliev.

“Fine,” I relented, shifting to the next item on my list. “Can you do a favor for me?”

We’d moved the discussion along. The shouting portion of our brotherly interaction was done. End scene.

“Mm,” Jericho said, waving his hand dismissively in a way to say that, of course, I could.

“The bank account I made for Teri and Trinity,” I said, using the nickname my daughter had adopted, “Can you check to see what’s been happening with it.”

I’d purposely not had access to it because I needed to resist the urge to spy. To micromanage. To see what she was spending money on… to search for signs of a new man in her life.

Jericho lifted his brow, then gave a half-shrug. “I don’t remember any of the bank information, but I’ll find it and let you know.”

“The phone is locked, and even though she has few text messages, there are a few incoming that were of interest,” Jericho said, almost as a throw away statement. “Take a look and see if you can make heads or tails from it.”

I stood, leaving him to his work, pressing the home button of the phone, and typing in the passcode on the report. I didn’t need to look it up though—she made the fatal error of using a code that was easy to guess: Taz’s birthday.

The text messages were mundane, mostly marketing and sales spam, reminders to vote, some phishing scams that were left unread.

The only thing of interest were a dozen messages spaced weeks, sometimes months, apart, each from different unknown numbers, and contained only three letters: I. C. U.