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ROMAN

M ickey slips into the tech head group like he was born into it. It’s almost amusing, how fast they recognize one of their own. Within minutes he’s glued to a screen, laughing at some joke I don’t understand and completely absorbed by whatever the fuck the little symbols on the screen mean. I haven’t explained Mercura to him yet. There’ll be time for that, although I suspect that by the time we leave, he’ll probably know more about how it works than I do.

I leave him to it and follow Pavel into the private office. “It’s good to see Mickey here.” He touches a key, and the screen bursts into life. “He’s too smart for light and sound shows at a parade, boss.”

“I’m starting to get that.” I lean over his chair. “What am I looking at?”

“An academic paper by one Lawrence Carter Rydell.” Pavel grins at me. “Aka paparazzi journalist Lance Ryder.” The journalist’s shiny smile appears onscreen, and my fingers tighten on the back of Pavel’s chair.

I’d love to shove those gleaming white teeth straight down the fucker’s throat.

“What you told me at the parade, about the Naryshkin Treasure, was the missing link. It turns out that Lance is just the name he uses as a byline on pap pieces, which is why I couldn’t find anything on him before. Lawrence Carter Rydell, however, is the very posh son of an aristocratic British mother and wealthy American father. He grew up between London and Miami. Daddy was a hedge fund man, Mummy had the posh connections. Lawrence was educated at Eton, then later, Oxford. This was his final paper.” He clicks back to the academic paper.

“‘The Redistribution of Imperial Russian Wealth in the Soviet Union,’” I read aloud. I frown. “So this fucker studied Russian history?”

“Not just history. He studied linguistics, learned to speak Russian fluently. Even spent time in Russia. According to this paper, his particular area of interest was the so-called Naryshkin Treasure. I’ve sent you a copy in case you’re interested.”

“So our boy likes Russian treasure stories. What’s this got to do with him chasing Lucia?”

“Everything.” Pavel clicks again, this time to a news story. “Ten years ago, Lawrence’s nice life came crashing down when Rydell senior was found dead in his Miami mansion. Turns out he had a small gambling problem. And Rydell senior wasn’t just using his own money. He also dipped into the hedge fund he was managing, to the tune of several million. Gambling is mostly illegal in Florida, so his favorite places to lose money were high-stakes private card games. Clearly he got in too deep with the wrong people. His death was supposedly a suicide.”

I scan the article briefly. “Bratva hit,” I say curtly when I finish.

“Since the Russians run nearly all the card games in Florida, it definitely looks that way. Lawrence certainly thought so. He went on a one-man mission to track down his father’s killer. His family was completely bankrupt, and after his father’s disgrace, none of his old connections wanted anything to do with him. He started writing freelance articles about Russian crime families. He pitched them to the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post , but nobody really gave a shit about some Russians running a game in Miami. He wasn’t subtle, asked questions in the wrong places, and caught the attention of the wrong people. The only reason he didn’t wind up in a ditch like his father was because nobody actually printed his articles.

“Then he started pitching the tabloids instead and found his audience.” He clicks again. “This was the last article he wrote under his own name.”

My heart stops.

Lucia’s face is front and center on the screen.

She’s a lot younger, sure, but it’s unmistakably her.

“Darya Petrovsky.” Pavel’s voice has a satisfied edge. He spins in his chair, clearly pretty happy with himself. “She’s the daughter of Russian bratva legend Sergei Petrovsky, who, I’m guessing, is the old man currently hanging out in your finca.”

All I can hear is my father’s voice: “Go to Sergei Petrovsky’s compound. He’ll take care of you...”

The room spins around me, past and present colliding in a weird slipstream. Pavel’s voice seems to come from a long distance. I have to force myself to concentrate on what he’s saying.

“According to this article, Darya and Sergei disappeared from Miami about six years ago.” Pavel clicks to the next page. “The Petrovsky bratva virtually ran Miami until Sergei’s first stroke, a decade ago. He lay in a coma for months. Nobody thought he’d survive, which is probably why there was a coup, led by this guy. Vilnus Orlov.”

He enlarges one of the pictures. My gut churns as Vilnus fucking Orlov’s brutish, narrow-eyed face stares back at me.

“Problem was,” Pavel goes on, “Old Man Petrovsky didn’t die from his stroke. Orlov had killed all of the Petrovsky brigadiers and was in control of the Coconut Grove compound. There was no reason to spare the old man, yet instead of killing him, Orlov brought him home to the compound. The reason why Orlov didn’t just knock off his rival is a mystery that fascinated Lawrence.” He clicks back to the photo of Lawrence Carter Rydell. “He had a whole stack of wild theories about the Petrovskys, who, incidentally, he blames for killing his father. This article claims that for four years after Sergei’s stroke, the Petrovskys and Orlovs all lived together in the Petrovsky compound in Coconut Grove. Just one big unhappy family. Except for Lucia’s—I mean Darya’s—mother, that is. Her body turned up on a Miami beach about two years into the party. She’d clearly been enduring torture for a long time. She was covered in scars and had been repeatedly sexually assaulted.”

I want to punch something. I want to hit something so badly I have to clench my hands into fists to stop myself putting them through the nearest wall.

All I can see are the scars beneath the Orlov tattoo on Lucia’s back. The thought of Vilnus Orlov putting his hands on her, of taking a knife to her beautiful body, makes me so fucking dangerous that I almost don’t trust myself to speak.

“Go on,” I say through gritted teeth, glad Pavel can’t see my face.

“Lawrence clearly attracted a bit too much attention with this article. He was shut out of Russian circles, probably had his life threatened. He disappeared from the Miami scene and reemerged a year or so later in London, under the name Lance Ryder. Had a whole new ID made, changed the way he looked. He didn’t lose interest in the story, but he did get smarter. He made his latter pieces more puff and gossip, clickbait shit nobody takes that seriously. Like this one a couple of years ago, when he photographed Alexei Petrovsky attending a Russian Society ball in Miami. Alexei is Lucia’s—Darya’s—brother.”

I study the picture. Alexei resembles his father. Blond, tall and rangy, with Sergei’s hawkish features and deep-set blue eyes, although one is covered by an eye patch.

Courtesy of the fucking Orlovs, no doubt.

“Ryder makes a big deal out of the fact that despite being a prisoner of the Orlovs, Alexei Petrovsky still apparently runs his father’s empire, albeit on a tight Orlov rein. And this is where Ryder’s old academic papers meet the modern tabloid world.” He clicks again, and then, with a dramatic flourish, indicates a tabloid headline on the screen. “Behold,” he says theatrically. “Ryder’s theory about the Petrovsky family.”

Is the Naryshkin Treasure Buried Right Here in Miami?

The secret reason the Petrovsky crime family have survived the bloodiest coup in bratva history.

I scan the tawdry article beneath a grainy photograph of Alexei, trying to keep a neutral expression with no small effort.

“So,” I say curtly when I’m sure my voice is steady. “Ryder believes Sergei Petrovsky is, in fact, Sergei Naryshkin. The son of a prince, raised in a Russian gulag. He theorizes that Prince Naryshkin had a fortune in pre-revolutionary treasure, hidden in a vault beneath the Naryshkin family estate in Russia that the communists couldn’t manage to break into. Ryder theorizes the old prince taught Sergei how to open the family vault. When Sergei left the gulag, he broke into the Naryshkin estate and escaped with the fortune locked away there, including some missing imperial Fabergé eggs.”

I don’t allow myself to think about the Swiss lockbox.

I know, without any doubt, where one of those missing imperial eggs is.

And the name Sergei, while not unusual, is too much of a coincidence to sit easily with me.

“Ryder thinks the eggs are the reason the Petrovsky clan rose so rapidly in the Miami crime world,” I go on, working hard to keep my voice steady. “According to this article, he thinks the Orlovs launched a coup on the Petrovskys to gain control of the rumored treasure, but for some reason couldn’t find it. So they kept first Sergei, and now Alexei, alive because they have either information or the means to access what the Orlovs want. That’s also why they tortured Sergei’s wife, trying to make him talk.”

“More importantly,” says Pavel, glancing at me, “Ryder thinks that’s why Sergei and his daughter ran from Miami. His theory is that Sergei left Alexei in charge and saved his daughter from suffering the same fate as her mother. But when they disappeared, they took either the fortune itself or the means to access it. Ryder’s theory is that Alexei is the Orlovs’ ace in the hole to trade for it when they eventually catch up with Sergei and his daughter.”

I stand back from the screen and eyeball Pavel. “And you believe this shit?”

He shrugs. “Ryder does. He’s a rich kid who found himself bankrupt. Went from having membership at every club that matters to being refused entry to any of them. He’s been reduced to grubbing a living from snapping pics of Z-list celebrities he despises. He wants to believe in buried treasure, and my bet is that he’s trying to get a piece of it. From where Ryder sits, I think he believes he’s actually entitled to it. He’s definitely obsessed with the story.” He meets my eyes somberly. “And he knows Lucia is Darya, boss. That much I think we need to be sure of.”

I drum my fingers on the back of his chair, my head spinning.

“Oh. I almost forgot. There’s one other thing,” Pavel says. “It’s about the trojan virus.” He throws me a manila file. “You can get Mickey to explain the details if you want, but basically, the upload didn’t come from Pillars. That is, the user hijacked their high-speed connection, but the actual upload came from a mobile location close by. Most likely a yacht at the marina.”

“Ryder?”

“Our best guess is yes,” he says, “but we don’t know for certain. Going by his obsession with Russian bratva, though, I think it’s a pretty good guess.”

“That’s a problem.”

Pavel looks uncomfortable. This is the part of my business he stays out of. It’s a conversation for me and Dimitry, rather than the tech heads. “This is good work, Pavel.” I stand up, clapping him on the shoulder, and he looks relieved. “And you know what the best part is?”

He looks at me uneasily. My lips twitch. I’m never really going to tire of fucking with the tech heads. “Now,” I say genially, “you can get the fuck on with the Mercura launch, instead of playing detective.”

The relief on his face is almost comical. “Thank God,” he says fervently. Then, clearly realizing how he sounded, he looks at me nervously. “I mean—that is, I didn’t mean—”

“I should fucking hope not,” I say sternly, suppressing my laughter with no small effort. I wish Dimitry was here. These moments are just wasted when I’m alone. “Go on, then,” I add, nodding at the door. “Fuck off.”

Pavel scurries out, leaving me with a picture of Lance Ryder—or whatever the fuck his name is—and an absolute fuckton of questions.

I n the end, though, I decide my questions are going to have to wait.

If I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s to trust my gut. And my gut says I need every fucking piece of this puzzle in my hands before I start piecing it all together. So I shove Lance Ryder and the Naryshkin Treasure into my mental vault and instead apply myself to the one thing currently demanding my attention: Mickey.

“And Pavel gave me an actual job to do, but I don’t think he thought I’d be able to do it, but I did, in, like, five minutes.”

I’ve never heard him speak so much, nor so breathlessly. I shift gear around the bend and keep listening.

“And so Pavel said I should come back, and they’d show me more about what they’re doing, but he said it was up to you. But, like, can I?” Mickey turns to me, his eyes shining. “I mean, I know I don’t know exactly what you’re working on there, and I get that you can’t tell me, but even if I could do small bits...” His voice trails off hopefully.

I’ve been thinking about this in the back of my mind since our conversation on the way to the lab. Instead of answering immediately, I pull the car to the side of the road, so we can have a proper conversation. “Tell me something, Mickey. Have you ever had a girlfriend? Or boyfriend,” I add hastily. “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

He stares at me, his face slowly coloring. “Why would you ask me that?” he mumbles uncomfortably.

“I’ll tell you why. Those guys you were hanging out with in the lab? Most of them started working for me when they weren’t that much older than you are now. My people found them in basements and school classrooms, hacking into the same kind of shit you’re undoubtedly hacking into now. That’s the thing about the fun little games you’ve been playing, Mickey. Sooner or later, someone notices. It’s just a question of who and when. And when someone offers a teenager a huge fucking salary and unlimited access to all the tech they need, do you think anyone ever says no?”

He frowns. “I guess not.”

“Nope. But these are guys who’ve spent most of their lives in front of a screen. Most of them were geeks at school, too focused on what they were hacking into to care much about friendships, let alone relationships. Want to know what those guys spend every minute doing when they’re not working for me, Mickey?”

He nods, but by the color on his face, he knows what I’m about to say.

“They’re either watching porn, gaming with long-distance and usually unobtainable people they’ll never meet, or creating avatars of the objects of their desire. Let me tell you what they aren’t doing. They aren’t actually dating. They’re not out in the world, learning how to interact with other people. They’re living off pizza and soda instead of taking care of their physical bodies. Typing instead of talking. And the closest most of them have ever come to actually making love to anyone is on the other end of a virtual reality headset.”

Mickey’s eyes are glued to my face. He gulps nervously but doesn’t say anything.

“I know you’re far too smart for school. So sooner or later, you’re going to have to make a choice—do you want a career in academia, in government, or in private business? If your goal is to win the Nobel, then you need to stop hacking and get into academia. If your goal is to work for the government, well.” I grin. “You and I probably need to part ways pretty soon.” He laughs at that. “And if you want to run the business your father left behind, then you need to listen to what I’m going to say.”

“I don’t care about academia,” Mickey says. “I mean, I get the importance of the piece of paper. But I don’t want to go into research. And I definitely don’t want to work for any government agencies.” His lip curls in a way that reminds me so much of Mikhail it’s uncanny. “History doesn’t have much nice to say about government agencies.”

I chuckle. “Probably not. Okay, then. Here’s what I think we should do. You keep going to school. Play the game. Keep your head down, like you have been doing. Stay under the radar, but start enjoying being there. Take up a sport, go to school dances. I can help you,” I say, when he looks uncomfortable. “I’ll make a deal with your school so you only attend part-time. I’ll tell them you have a private tutor or something. Two days a week, you come to the lab and work with the tech kids. Start learning the family business. I’ll make sure you get to do all the illegal stuff you can handle, but you’ll do it in my center, under Pavel’s supervision. No more hacking with your friends at school, or from home. And you agree to let me help you get fit and strong.” I fix him with a stern look. “You’ve seen enough by now to know that our business gets violent. If you want a place in it, you need to learn how to handle yourself. Are you prepared to commit to that?”

Mickey bites his lip uncomfortably. “What if I’m no good at it?”

“Ha!” I laugh. “You know how big Dimitry is, right?”

He nods.

“Well. When I first met him, Dimitry was a scrawny kid who couldn’t land a punch. He was getting beat on all the time.”

Mickey’s eyes widen. “Seriously?”

“Yup.” I wink. “But don’t ever tell him that I told you that. So what do you think?”

He’s already nodding enthusiastically. “Yes. I can do that. Yeah, that would actually be super cool.”

“Good.” I turn back to the wheel and pull the car onto the road.

“Uncle Roman?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you think that if I... get fit, and do... what you said, like with school dances and stuff, that I might have a girlfriend one day?”

I grin. It amuses me that after the confident young man I spoke to in the car earlier, I’m now talking to the uncertain teenage boy who is desperately in need of reassurance. “I think I can guarantee that you will, mate.”

He digests that for a moment.

“Uncle Roman . . . about Lucia.”

Darya, you mean.

My hands clench the steering wheel, but I keep my voice even. “What about her, Mickey?”

“She’s your girlfriend, right?”

I keep my eyes staring straight ahead, trying rapidly to think of how best to answer that one.

“We don’t mind,” Mickey says quietly. “None of us do. We like her. I just thought you should know that.”

“That’s good.” I grip the steering wheel and start taking the bends a bit faster. “I’m glad you like her.”

Except that after everything I’ve just learned, I’m not so sure that I should be glad about that at all. I’m not sure that allowing the kids to get attached to Lucia is even safe. And as for her being my girlfriend, as Mickey put it?

The truth is, I don’t know what the fuck Lucia is to me now.

Darya.

Ever since she came into my home, I’ve been gradually breaking every rule I’ve ever set for myself. Some of them I don’t regret, like making the kids my priority. Part of me has always known I should have taken more responsibility for them, and now that I have, I know it’s the right thing to do. For better or worse, Mikhail left his children in my care. At the least I owe it to him to make sure they’re safe and loved.

But when it comes to how I feel about Lucia?

Darya.

I wrench the car around a corner with enough speed to make Mickey give me a side look.

Fuck.

If she knows even half of what Pavel has turned up, then Darya Petrovsky has been lying about a lot more than just her identity. And as much as I don’t want to face it, there’s more than just a chance that her presence in my house is no accident.

I need time to read through Lawrence Carter Rydell’s paper. To find out about the Naryshkin family. Whether or not the journalist’s theory is right about the name change to Petrovsky. And if so, what connection there might be between the Petrovskys and the Borovskys.

Because if my hunch is right—and they’re rarely fucking wrong—then the Sergei I once overheard talking to my father in the kitchen is actually Sergei Petrovsky, aka Sergei Naryshkin, heir to a legendary fortune.

The same man who my father trusted to get my mother to safety, and whose secrets he fucking died to protect, is now living in my villa. And his daughter is sleeping in my bed.

Can that really be a coincidence?

My entire focus all this time has been on making Lucia feel safe. Gaining her trust. But she’s never trusted me enough to so much as tell me her real name.

Now I’m left wondering if I’ve been played.

If she’s an enemy, I’ll find out. I’ve never let emotions get in the way of business, and I’m not about to start now.

Except that the thought of putting a bullet between those beautiful almond-shaped eyes makes me sick to the gut. And even the suspicion that she might have been playing me all this time is like feeling the earth crack under my feet.

Worst of all, I’ve got nobody to blame but myself. For breaking my own rules. For letting her into my home without knowing everything I needed to. For making this about anything more than just sex.

I should have stuck to that contract. Better yet, I should have fucked her and then walked away.

But it’s too late for that now. Lucia— fucking Darya— is in my house now. In my children’s lives. Which means I’m going to have to just let this one play out, at least for a while. No matter how furious I am.

I grip the steering wheel hard and take the bends home at a high enough speed to turn Mickey’s face white.

I have no fucking idea who to trust, nor how to make sense of any of this.