Page 27

27

ROMAN

I hear Lucia leave.

I don’t trust myself to stop her. I’m almost afraid of what I might do if I get my hands on her right now.

The fact that she doubts my ability to protect her?

That makes me want to snarl like some primitive caveman and tear down the fucking walls.

As for thinking that I would consider trading her, like some kind of livestock? To the fucking Orlovs ?

“ Fuck! ” I grip the back of one of the dining chairs, forcing myself to breathe instead of hurling it through the plate glass window. I’m beyond furious. I’m fucking outraged .

I have a dark, primal urge to summon Lucia back to my penthouse. To mindlessly tear her clothes off for the second time, then take my savagery out on her body until she knows, without any shadow of a doubt, who she belongs to. What it actually means to be mine . To own her so completely that she realizes how insane it is to even suggest that I might fail to protect her.

I grind my teeth, still battling for control.

The only reason she’s not horizontal underneath me is because whatever tiny fragment of rational thought I’m capable of right now knows that, for once, sex isn’t the answer.

Lucia is terrified.

That much was plain the moment I met her. Now, however, I’ve seen how deeply embedded the fear is within her. And despite my current fury, I know what that kind of terror does to a person. It colors every encounter. It makes every person a suspected enemy and every situation a potential trap.

I’ve felt the same fear she does. I spent years running from the Orlovs, the same enemy she’s running from now. That should make all of this easier, but it doesn’t. It makes it so much more complicated.

I have a thousand unanswered questions, but those can wait. Now that I know who is chasing her, her identity should be easy enough to work out. But I need to move carefully.

Extremely carefully.

I’m grateful for whatever instinct made me keep my inquiries about Lucia to a tight circle of people I trust. Now, more than ever, that is vital. There’s no chance I will ever allow the Orlovs to get anywhere fucking near Lucia.

But as for me getting close to the Orlovs?

A surge of something dangerously like excitement thrills through my veins.

I put vengeance on the back burner twenty years ago. Initially, I didn’t have the means to execute it. Later, I owed Yuri and Mikhail my loyalty. I wouldn’t do anything to endanger them or involve them in a war that wasn’t theirs. More recently, I’ve been focused entirely on Mercura and safeguarding my godchildren’s future. War with another clan is not part of that plan.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve ever given up the idea of revenge.

I’ve only delayed it.

I know that one day I’ll hold Vilnus Orlov’s life in my hands. Stare into his eyes as I watch him die. I know it with a stone-cold, unmoving certainty. Killing Vilnus Orlov is a marker on the road of my life, a milestone I can see in the distance, that I’m moving inexorably closer to every day.

Vengeance is the reason I’ve always known I can’t have a family or children. The kind of vengeance I intend to take upon the Orlov bratva isn’t the kind of thing a man comes back from. It’s wholesale slaughter and destruction. Vilnus Orlov’s end won’t be found in a simple, anonymous bullet to the back of the head.

It will be no less than the destruction of everything he has. Of anyone who dares stand in his defense. Of every single thing he values.

The exception, of course, being his woman, if he has one, and his children.

Unlike the Orlovs, I do not punish innocents for the crimes, real or imagined, of those meant to protect them.

But I do want Vilnus to know I’m coming. I want him to watch, with increasing fear, as I draw ever nearer. I want him to fucking know who’s hunting him.

It took me years to discover the names of the men who murdered my father. I had to be careful. The Orlovs combed the streets of Miami, looking for a boy they’d assumed wouldn’t last a week. I could have run, like my father had ordered me to. But despite the danger, I knew even then that one day I would have vengeance. And so I watched and I waited. I followed the men with sparrow tattoos as they searched for me in buses, trains, and airports. I learned who they were, where they lived. The name Vilnus Orlov, when I finally discovered it, meant nothing to me. I didn’t know why he and his men had killed my father or why they wanted me so badly. But even as a teenager, and despite my father’s orders, I knew that one day I would watch every fucking one of them die.

By the time Vilnus Orlov is face-to-face with me, I want him so goddamn terrified he’s pissing his pants.

And now that I know it was him, or those he commands, who carved those lines into Lucia’s back, I want that revenge so badly I can fucking taste it.

There’s only one pakhan. Whoever carved lines on Lucia’s back acted on Vilnus’s orders, and it’s he who will pay for it.

“ Fuck .” I spin away from the window, anger pumping through my veins to an almost unbearable degree. The mere thought of those bastards standing over Lucia with a knife turns my blood to ice. There isn’t a boxing ring in existence that could contain the kind of rage I feel.

There’s only one way to combat this level of emotion, and it doesn’t involve punching Dimitry around a mat.

It involves cold, hard rational thought.

Every fact I can acquire.

And then meticulous, strategic planning.

But first, it involves making sure Lucia Lopez doesn’t bolt before I have a chance to do any of it. Snatching my phone, I punch out a message to her.

Do not even think about running. Until and unless I specify, you are my employee and bound by your contract. Please ensure the children are informed that I have given my consent to their involvement in the procession. I will contact you in due course regarding the issues you raised. Meanwhile, rest assured that your privacy will be entirely respected and your safety guaranteed.

My thumbs punch out the final sentence with enough force to bend the screen.

How could she ever think I’d hand her over to those animals? Or that I couldn’t keep her safe from them?

“I’m yours, Roman,” she’d said. Even the memory of it has my body roaring for urgent release. But clearly, she doesn’t have any fucking idea of what being mine means.

One day, very soon, just as soon as my desire to strangle her with my bare hands fades enough to feel comfortable, I intend to remind Miss Lopez exactly how I take care of what is mine. Obviously my lessons thus far have fallen short.

That highly dangerous train of thought is interrupted by Dimitry’s name flashing on my phone screen. I snatch it up and punch the button. “What,” I snarl.

“What the fuck climbed up your ass?” Luckily for him, he doesn’t wait for a response before continuing. “Pavel found a trojan.”

I rake a hand through my hair and fight the urge to pour another Scotch. Can this day get any fucking worse?

“How bad is it?”

“He’s not sure. I’m with him now. He did try to call you first, but clearly you were... otherwise occupied.”

“Can it, Dimitry.” Normally I’d hit him with a comeback, but I’m not remotely in the fucking mood. I hold my phone out. Sure enough, there’s been a dozen missed calls during the time I spent with Lucia. I didn’t even notice the fucking thing ringing.

It’s five p.m. now. I make a rapid calculation. “I’ll be there within the hour. Tell Pavel I want to know exactly what we’re dealing with by the time I arrive.”

“Should I call Luis—”

“I can fucking drive myself.”

“Copy that .” Dimitry’s clearly got the measure of my current mood.

I feel a vicious sense of satisfaction. Lucia Lopez might have doubts about exactly how dangerous I am, but I can guarantee that right now there are at least thirty tech heads shitting their collective pants in anticipation of my arrival.

I head for the shower for the second time in an hour, tension coursing through my body like an electric current. I turn the water to ice-cold and revel in the discomfort. I need to wash every trace of Lucia off my body, get her bewitching scent out of my skin and her face out of my mind, or I’ll never be able to focus on whatever goddamn trojan virus has been sent to hijack Mercura. I eschew my usual suit, reaching for my bike leathers.

It isn’t the quiet whisper of the Mercedes-Maybach I need tonight.

Despite the fact that late-night rain is forecast, I take the elevator to the basement and head straight for the MTT 420-RR road bike. It starts with a deeply satisfying roar. I raise the security door and hit the road at an indecent pace, weaving impatiently through the city traffic. I’m itching for the steep curves of the mountain roads above Malaga.

There’s something about all of this that I’m missing, something nagging just at the edge of my conscious thought, like an out-of-focus picture.

I remember very little about the years before my mother left and my father was killed. Thinking back to it is like standing on a ship and watching a distant shoreline fade into fog. My view of the past is obscured by the storm of hardship that followed. Now, however, I feel a sudden need to remember as much as I can.

As soon as I kick the city lights, I open the throttle and feel the monster leap beneath me. The bike surges at my slightest touch, engaging every sense as I rocket up the steep road leading to Mercura. It’s this I need, the wind whipping against my body, the fierce tension of being at one with a machine as deadly as I feel right now. Every mile of concentration strips away another layer of distraction. The faster I lean into the tight bends, the more distance I get from the chaos in my mind and body. It takes about twenty minutes of hard, ruthless riding to gain the almost utopian mental plateau where my mind is entirely free of conscious thought.

The place where the magic happens.

Some people, I know, open their mind through meditation, or perhaps hypnosis of some kind. But for me, my unconscious is accessed through complete mental and physical focus. Climbing a rock face with no harness. Jumping from a plane.

Or speeding up a twisted mountain road on one of the fastest bikes known to man.

I lean into the road and let the visions come.

I ’m eight years old, and it’s late at night.

I wake abruptly, to a strange tension that seems to hang in the air above my bed. I can hear the faint rumble of voices coming from downstairs. It’s rare for my parents to have visitors so late at night. I slip from my bed and crawl out to the landing.

The kitchen door is slightly ajar. Cigarette smoke weaves out of it, blue in the dim light. I can see a vodka bottle and three glasses on the round wooden table. A man is sitting with his back to me. He’s very tall, even taller than Papasha, with wide, strong shoulders. Despite his obvious strength, his voice is gentle as he addresses my father in Russian, and vaguely familiar.

“This is a bad idea, Aleksander.” Long fingers stub out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, then light another. “Let me help you.”

“Helping me means war.” Papasha’s voice is harsh with pain. “We have not come so far to lose our children again, Sergei.”

“The Cardenases are a Colombian cartel.” The man’s voice is contemptuous. “This is not war, not for me. It is nothing more than pest control.”

“No!” My mother interrupts them. I realize, with a shock of fear, that she is crying. “You do not understand.”

“I know you ran away from the Cardenases in Bogotá when you were a girl, Rosa.” The man’s voice is calm. “I understand you are afraid of your family. But here in Miami, they are still small players. Please believe me when I say they pose little threat to me.”

“Sergei.” Papasha breaks in. “The Cardenases have a Russian connection. Rosa’s contact told her that is how they found her.”

In the short silence that follows, fear wraps around my child’s heart, the previously unknown terror of realizing those whom I had thought invincible are suddenly, incomprehensibly, afraid.

When the visitor speaks again, his voice is deeper, harsher. “Just because they’re Russian doesn’t mean they know anything about us, Aleksander.”

“Why else would they trade Rosa’s whereabouts to the Colombians?” Papasha sounds impatient. “Russians don’t betray each other—unless they think they stand to gain something. And whether you deny them or not, Sergei, the rumors about you, and the contents of the vault, continue to swirl. Now we must assume the past has finally found us.”

“Perhaps.” The visitor pours vodka into glasses and raises his own. “Za druzhbun, brother.”

“How can you drink to friendship?” My mother’s voice is shaking. “Your entire family is also at risk, Sergei.”

“And I will protect them,” the man growls. “Just as I will protect you, if you will only let me.” He lights a cigarette from the butt of the last and draws deeply. “What did your contact tell you about this Russian connection?”

“Nothing.” Papasha shakes his head. “All we know is that the Cardenases are coming for Rosa—and that it was a Russian who leaked her whereabouts.” He empties his glass. “That is all I need to know. We both know what happens to those who wait too long to act. I will not make that mistake again.”

“There is a difference between being smart and being reckless, Aleksander.” The man’s voice is measured, but there is steel beneath it. “You know what happens when families are split up.”

“The moment your vor begin asking questions, we will both have a target on our backs.” Papasha pours more vodka. “If we act now, we have the advantage of surprise. Rumors may surround you, Sergei, but none know of the connection between you and me. If we act quickly, they may never know.

“But if you go to war with the Cardenases on my behalf, or the hunt for the Russian informant becomes public, how long do you think it will take before people put two and two together?” He shakes his head. “I cannot ensure that vault stays closed, and our children stay safe, unless my wife is free to do what I need her to.”

“Or you can let me hunt the bastards down,” the stranger growls, “and kill them before they even get close.”

“We said that once before.” Papasha’s voice sends a shock of fear through me. It’s cold and hard, the voice of a man I don’t know. “I will not live another Paris, Sergei.”

The deathly silence that follows frightens me. It’s full of ghosts I can’t see and don’t understand.

When the visitor finally speaks, his voice is resigned, quieter than before.

“Tell me what you need me to do.”

Papasha leans across the table toward the other man. “Get Rosa out of the country. Give her a new identity, one that can take her anywhere she needs to go. Hide her tracks well, and don’t tell me how you’ve done it, until and unless we know it is safe. She will take the key to the vault with her. If we’re right, her disappearance will expose both her enemies, and ours. We can deal with them once and for all. Rosa will stay one step ahead of them until we are certain the danger has passed. And so long as that vault can’t be opened, our children are protected.”

“You cannot use Rosa as bait!” The man is almost pleading.

“I know how to run, Sergei.” My mother’s voice is sad but strong. “I’ve done it before, I can do it again. But I can’t run with Roman, and I can’t protect him if they find us. Not like you can.”

“Then let me take him to the compound—”

“No.” Papasha’s voice is firm. “That will only confirm the rumors. There must be no connection between your family and mine, or all of our secrecy has been for nothing. It’s why I’ve always insisted we use the tunnels to visit you. If there’s any chance it is Ilyan behind this—”

“Then he is a dead man.” The visitor’s voice is flat and deadly. “And I will find him long before he finds us.”

“You don’t know that. You can’t.”

There is another silence, a longer one this time.

“Sergei.” Papasha speaks again, quietly. “I owe you my life. Not once, but a hundred times over.” The visitor makes a harsh noise of dismissal, but Papasha speaks over him. “No. Let me finish. Even after we made it to America, we both knew this wasn’t over. We changed our names, and swore to maintain a discreet distance from one another until we were certain we had either hunted down the danger, or outlived it. Now we have to face the possibility that danger is shadowing us again. You must remember the lessons our parents taught us: a door cannot be breached so long as the keys to it remain hidden.”

“I built that vault first to protect our fathers’ legacy, and then to protect our children from that same legacy.” The stranger’s voice rises with anger. “I made those decisions to save lives, Aleksander, not to risk those most precious to us.”

“And this is me trying to help you do that!” My father’s voice is uncharacteristically vehement. He draws a deep breath. When he speaks again he is calmer, but still strong.

“After Paris you took the legacy our fathers left us both, and made it your own. I have let you carry that burden alone, for too long. I’m asking this of you now in their name, as well as for myself: if we cannot escape that lethal legacy, then let me at least ensure our children do not pay the price for it. Let me do what I must to ensure that all our children can live the life we dream for them, free of the past.”

“How is this freeing them from that past?” The man sounds exasperated. “I built that vault to protect us, not to hold us hostage—”

“And it won’t. All I ask is that you promise to get my wife to safety. If all goes well, there will be no need to do anything more. But if it does not... then our children will have options. We will never live another Paris. And I know that no matter what happens, you will protect my son.”

The man turns to my mother. “Rosa. Are you certain this is what you wish? It is a terrible thing, for a woman to leave her child.”

“It is the only way.” My mother’s voice is shaking but strong. “Let us do what we think best, Sergei. Just promise us that our son will be safe.”

“I will protect him with my life, Rosa.” From the landing, I see the visitor’s gnarled, twisted hand reach out and grip my father’s, who covers it just as tightly with his own.

“I want this over, Sergei,” my father says hoarsely.

“Very well.” The man’s voice is resigned. “You have my promise, Aleksander.”

A n indignant car horn squeals, and I swerve just in time to avoid the blinding headlights, my heart racing. I pull the MTT to the roadside and pull my helmet off, taking deep gulps of clear mountain air. My body feels as if it is still on that landing, the conversation as clear in my mind as if it took place yesterday. It seems extraordinary that I could ever have forgotten it.

But I guess there was a lot that I tried to forget back then.

That long-ago night took place when I was still safe. When home meant alfajores on a Friday afternoon and days spent sitting quietly on a small stool at the back of my father’s shop as he worked. Any memory of those days has, for many years now, lived in a box in my mind marked before .

That box was closed long ago, buried beneath a new, far harder reality.

What I do remember, with painful clarity, is that soon after I sat on that landing, my mother kissed me goodbye for the last time.

I left for school one day as a happy eight-year-old boy with a vague memory of a strange midnight conversation.

I came home to find my mother gone and my father sitting at the kitchen table, a half-empty vodka bottle on the table in front of him and eyes as dead as a winter sky.

After that, the days became lonely. Bewildering. And then they became frightening.

Two years later, I stood outside the kitchen window and watched men with red sparrows on their hands torture the life from my father’s body.

Then I ran.

I grip the handlebars on the bike, breathing slowly and steadily to calm the sudden rush of childish fear and anger.

I’ve punched bags hard as any boxer and ridden at speeds most racers would fear to go, but I realized long ago that some emotions can’t be outrun. They live in unseen places, emerging when I least expect them.

My right foot tingles like a reminder.

I haven’t thought about the old tattoo on that heel in a long time.

I guess that’s what happens when you take a trip down memory fucking lane.

It was my father who tattooed the small, neat series of numbers on the sole of my foot, only days before he died. Maybe he knew even then that time was running out. He made me memorize the name of the Swiss bank that held the safety deposit box the numbers opened.

“It is a precaution, moy syn , nothing more,” he told me as he worked. “If I should die before your mother comes back, this is how you can find her. But you must be careful. You cannot tell anyone the whereabouts of this box, and you must never be followed there. Do you understand?”

It was the first adult secret he entrusted me with, and the only reason I agreed to run when he ordered me to.

Either way, by the time I ran, Switzerland might as well have been Mars for all I was able to get there. It was only years later, after Yuri had adopted me and when I was certain the men with sparrow tattoos were long gone, that I finally made the journey to the Swiss safety deposit box that the tattooed numbers opened.

I went there hoping to find my mother, or at least a clue to her whereabouts.

Instead, I opened the box and discovered a priceless Fabergé egg.

I would have traded the former for the latter without a second’s thought.

First, I went to the nearest Swiss bar and got rolling drunk.

Then I got back to business.

I gave up any last hope I had of discovering what had become of Rosa Cardenas Borovsky. Instead, I eventually used the Fabergé piece as collateral for the loan with which Mikhail and I started Hale and Mercura.

Never once did it occur to me to look inside the egg itself. Now, that seems remarkably short sighted, but at the time, all I had seen was what wasn’t inside that box.

But now, remembering that long-ago conversation, I wonder if my father might not have hidden something else inside that egg. He was a jeweler, after all. One who specialized in designing intricate locks. It’s what made the Borovsky safes so famously impenetrable.

I remember the vault he built, just as I remember the Miami compound where he built it. I ran there after his death, just as he told me to.

But after I saw men arrive at those gates with sparrow tattoos on their hands, I gave up any hope of finding sanctuary there. And the vault had never mattered to me in the first place, beyond the fact that my father had built it. In time, both ceased to matter to me.

I was too busy trying to survive.

As for the man who promised that night to hide my mother and to protect me?

I kick the MTT into life with unnecessary force.

That bastard failed.

So profoundly that I lost both my parents, and any chance at a normal life. He broke his promises to my family. He let killers come to my door. And wherever he took my mother clearly wasn’t safe enough.

I turn the bike back onto the road and roar onward in a satisfying spray of gravel.

I don’t know exactly what I’ve learned through recovering that particular memory. It brings little with it other than bitterness, and anger.

Whatever may or may not be inside that egg can fucking stay there, for all I care. And the name Ilyan means nothing to me at all. I’m not even entirely certain I remember the name correctly.

I tuck the memory back into the box it came from and close the lid.

None of it gives me any idea how to manage either Lucia Lopez or the motherfucker currently attempting to hack into my billion-dollar project.