Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
LUKYAN VOLKOV
Three months later
“Where is she?” I roared into the face of the man at my feet, veins popping out of the side of my neck.
He shrank back, dark brown eyes shrouded in fear. “I don’t know! I swear to God, I don’t know!”
I held up the six-by-nine photograph again so he could see it clearly. “Lyla Voznesensky. She’s a client of yours, isn’t she? No. Don’t answer that. It was a rhetorical question because I already know she is. She came to you a few weeks ago, and now, I want to know where she is.”
“I already told you! I have no idea where she is!”
I stabbed him in the shoulder. He screamed—a loud, ear-piercing sound that echoed around the darkened room of his office in downtown Las Vegas. “I don’t believe you,” I snarled.
Rodrick Peterson was one of the go-to people for creating new identities.
For the past three months, I’d been searching for Lyla, looking under every nook and cranny for even the slightest hint of where she could be hiding.
And so far, I’d found fucking nothing. It was like she’d poofed. Disappeared into thin fucking air.
After the events that transpired at my grandfather’s estate in Russia, things had been…
chaotic, to say the least. My father’s injuries had been severe.
Critical. He’d been airlifted from the grounds and rushed straight to hospital.
Aleksandr and Nikolai remained behind to deal with the fallout from the bloodbath while Illayana, Autumn, and I went with Father.
After hours and hours of surgery and countless blood transfusions, the doctors managed to pull him back from the brink of death.
It was a shock. Witnessing the gunshot firsthand, seeing with my own eyes how much blood he’d lost…I’d resigned myself to the fact that he wouldn’t make it. Had tried my hardest to brace myself for the inevitable pain and anguish that would succumb me should he die.
Most people wouldn’t have survived a straight shot to the chest like that.
But my father wasn’t just anyone.
He was the toughest, baddest, most resilient fucker I’d ever known.
If anyone was ever going to tell the Grim Reaper to fuck off, it would be him.
While we’d been in hospital with him, Aleksandr and Nikolai were sorting shit out back at Sergei’s. It turned out, you couldn’t have a full-blown shootout in your backyard without attracting some sort of attention.
The law enforcement kind of attention.
Lucky for us, Sergei had the local police department in his back pocket—easy to do when you were one of the most powerful and influential men in Russia. Business might have been a little rocky, but my grandfather was always efficient at making sure he had the authorities right where he wanted them.
Cops came. It was unavoidable. But with a few words from Aleksandr and some cash, they turned and went on their merry way with a word of warning to clean up the mess quickly.
From there, things moved swiftly, and the days and weeks that followed passed by in a blur.
Aleksandr remained in Russia for two months to handle affairs while Father was recovering, and Drea, Illayana, Arturo, Nikolai, and Tatiana returned home to keep on top of things there.
Once Father was on the mend, he, Autumn, and Aleksandr came back to Vegas.
There was no funeral for Sergei. No wake where people talked about how much they would miss him and what a great life he had led.
The bastard didn’t deserve it.
With his death, the Pakhan title fell to my father, and his first order of business had been to cement clear control of the organization in Russia.
It didn’t take much. Everyone heard about what happened.
How we’d managed to thwart Sergei’s last desperate act to kill everyone he deemed untrustworthy, despite overwhelming odds.
The families in the Bratva were quick to fall in line behind my father with zero outcry.
And me?
I spent every goddamn waking moment searching for Lyla. With Sergei dead, the threat hanging over my family died with him.
She didn’t want to be found. That much was obvious. I could understand why, and sympathized with her. She was hurting. To save me, she had to kill her own brother, someone she loved and cared for. It was an unfair position to be in. An impossible decision to make.
And yet, she’d done it.
For me.
To save me.
I had to talk to her. I had to make sure she was okay. I just wanted to be there for her. Comfort her. Help her.
I didn’t know why she wouldn’t let me.
“Okay! Okay!” Rodrick groaned. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know! Just please, stop hurting me!”
I let go of the knife, leaving it lodged firmly in his shoulder, and dangled both my forearms over my knees. “Lyla Voznesensky,” I repeated, pointing to the picture.
He licked his dry lips, panicked eyes darting all over. “Yes. Yes. I remember her. She came to me a few weeks ago, asking for a new identity. New name. New social security number. The works.”
“And did you give it to her?”
“Of course I did! I-I didn’t realize she was an enemy of the Bratva. I swear. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have helped her.”
I cocked my head. “Who said she was an enemy?”
He blinked. “Well, I—uh, assumed—why else would you be looking for her?”
“Because she’s my fucking woman,” I said with complete conviction. “Tell me where she went.”
“I’m telling you the truth, sir. She didn’t tell me her plans or where she was going. All she asked me for was a new identity, and I gave it to her. That’s it. I swear.”
I eyed him suspiciously. In rationality, he was probably telling the truth. It didn’t make sense for Lyla to confide in him and tell him her plans. “Fine. I believe you.”
He let out a huge sigh of relief.
“What’s the name of her new identity?”
That relief vanished in an instant. His next words came out terrified and hesitant. “I can’t tell you.”
Of course he couldn’t. Client confidentiality was a big thing in his business.
I didn’t fucking care.
“Look, Rodrick, I like you.”
“You—you do?” he asked, frowning.
“I do. You seem like a lovely chap. Really.” I pulled another knife from the holster at my hip and swished it in the air between us.
He froze, his whole body stiffening. “But I really need to find my girl. You see, she thinks I abandoned her. She killed her brother to save me, and she thinks I don’t care about her.
I can’t have that. I can’t have her thinking something so terrible.
I need to make amends. And you’re getting in my fucking way—”
“No, no, no,” he began instantly, shaking his head. “You don’t understand—”
“Oh, I understand. If people found out you were giving the names of new identities away, it would mean the end of your business. After all, people are coming to you to use those new identities to hide. Kinda defeats the purpose if you start blabbing what they are.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“The problem is, Rodrick, I don’t fucking care.
” I stabbed his other shoulder. His cry of pain mirrored the first, drenched in pain and agony.
“Nothing is going to stop me from finding her. No one is going to stand in my way. I will cut every inch of your body if I have to, to get the information I want.” I frowned at the two knives sticking out of him.
“You know what, this is a little unsymmetrical. The right is a little further up than the left. Let me fix that.” I yanked out the knife in his right shoulder and rammed it back in a few inches lower.
“Ahhh!”
I nodded. “Better. Sorry, that was really going to irk me. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. I was threatening you.” I reached behind my back and retrieved another knife.
I had an almost endless supply on my person at all times because, in my opinion, one could never have too many weapons.
“I’ll start with your leg.” I tapped the tip of the blade against his shin.
“I’ll take the skin off, inch by agonizing inch, and if you still haven’t talked, I’ll move onto your other leg.
Then your arms. Back. Stomach. And then face.
It’ll be tough work, keeping you alive the whole time.
The human body can only withstand so much pain, so if we have to take breaks in between, so be it.
But the end result will be a full-body flailing.
Trust me when I say that is something you do not want to experience. ”
Rodrick paled so much I feared he would faint before I even made the first slice.
“Whadda say, Rodrick?” I tapped the blade on his shin again. “Are you gonna start talking, or am I gonna start slicing—”
“Melissa Anderson,” he blurted out instantly.
I smiled and patted his cheek twice. “Good man.”
The sound of a wailing baby hit my ears the minute I stepped through the front door.
I stayed in the foyer for a moment, taking a deep, calming breath to bury the anger and frustration I felt at another failure.
Another dissapointment. At the fact that I still didn’t have Lyla in my arms. I buried it as deep as it could go, refusing to allow that anger near the babies.
In the lounge room was Drea, trying and failing to soothe baby Ivana while Nikolai sat in the armchair, nursing baby Aleksei, holding a bottle to his mouth.
The twins were born about a month after the ordeal in Russia.
They were a few weeks early, which had terrified Tatiana.
She wanted to keep them in there for as long as possible, but the babies had decided they were ready to enter the world, and made their appearance a few days after Christmas.
They’d both been born happy and healthy, much to everyone’s relief.
Aleksei pulled in at a whopping nine and a half pounds with a full head of dark hair and cute, chubby cheeks.
Ivana—who I found out was named after Tatiana’s father, Ivan—was roughly eight pounds.
She had lighter hair, taking after her mother, and the kid was very particular about who she let hold her.