29. Alexei
Alexei
I stand on the deck, scanning the horizon. “They should be here by now.”
“They took a light plane to Monaco, then another to Genoa,” Andrew says. “We’re currently fifty nautical miles off the coast, and they’re coming out by high-powered boat, so—”
“They should be fucking here by now,” I snap, lifting the binoculars.
“And here they come,” he says dryly, as a distant light appears on the horizon.
But his words are echoes, because I’m already halfway down the stairs, taking them in large swinging leaps and coming off the final one at a run.
I wait on the swimming platform, my heart beating harder than a virgin at his first fucking prom.
She came.
I know it’s wrong. I know the safest thing by far would have been for her to go to Roman’s finca.
And I don’t give a fuck.
I could never have asked her to come. I didn’t dare hope that she might choose to. But as the boat comes into focus and I see her slender frame poised in the rear seat, I can finally admit how desperately I wanted her to choose this.
To choose me.
And now that she has, it’s game over.
Roman, my father, Mickey, my sister—they can all go to hell. I’m done pretending for them or anyone else. I can’t be without Ofelia anymore. I don’t want her to be without me.
And after what went down today, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’m letting anyone else handle her security, ever again.
The boat slows to a purr and sinks down, nudging the side of the Quantum Drift. I throw the line to David with a curt word of thanks, but all I can see is Ofelia’s tearstained face, her long, elegant limbs as she stands, shaking slightly, in the back.
Then I’ve plucked her out of the boat, taking her mouth as I step back onto the platform. Cradling her against me, I kiss her on and on, oblivious to the crew tying the boat or the armed guards still holding weapons as they step onto the Quantum Drift.
Not trusting myself to speak with an audience, I carry her across the deck and upstairs. She turns her face into my shoulder, and my hand cups the back of her head, shielding her from watching eyes until we finally reach the upper deck.
“Tell me you’re not hurt.” I press my lips to her forehead.
“I’m fine.” Her words are faint, catching in her throat. “But, Alexei. Teresa and Julia—”
“Are fine.” I cut her off. “Apart from some stitches and bruises.”
“They’re okay?” Ofelia’s wide blue eyes search mine anxiously. “You’re absolutely certain?”
“Positive. They got free of the men sent to kill them, and they’re recovering just fine.” I try to keep the bitterness out of my tone. It will be a long time, if ever, before I forgive the dragons for losing Ofelia, even if logically I know it isn’t their fault.
“Seline?”
My mouth hardens.
“This wasn’t her fault, Alexei.”
If you fucking say so.
“Mak’s team have her,” I say tightly. “They’ll take care of her, Ofelia. Until we can work out what the hell is going on.”
“She helped me escape.” She frowns. “I would be dead now—or even worse—if it wasn’t for her. You need to make sure she’s treated well.”
“I will. I promise.” I suppress a very strong urge to say Seline Duval could go to hell and I’d consider it too good for her. I kick the door to my suite open, cradling her head against me as I carry her inside.
“It’s like the night in Paris,” comes her muffled voice from beneath my hand. “When you carried me inside the hotel.”
“And you sound as exhausted now as you were then.”
“I’m certainly a lot dirtier.” She gives a choked laugh. “I need a shower before anything else. I walked through miles of mud to get here.”
“Shower.” I kiss her. “Food. Then talk.”
“Shower.” She kisses me back. “Drink. Enormous drink. Then talk, and maybe food.”
“Done.” I deposit her in the shower and kiss her again, lingering until she moans under my mouth. I nearly take her there and then, mud be damned.
“Go.” She steps back, pushing me away, and her soft laugh is the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.
“Fine.” I take a last look at her. “Even covered in mud and stinking like a sewer,” I say, “you’re still the most gorgeous fucking sight I’ve ever seen.”
“Now that’s some dirty talk right there.” Her laugh is still shaky, but to my relief, her shock seems to be fading. “No pun intended.”
I shake my head. “Not even kidnapping and a close encounter with death can make your jokes any better.”
She throws a sponge at me. “Get out and let me get clean.”
I close the door, catching a glimpse of myself in the opposite mirror that makes me stop.
How long, I think, staring at my reflection, has it been since I’ve caught myself smiling?
For that matter, when was the last time I felt happy enough to truly smile?
For so long, happiness has been a fleeting thing, something I capture for a moment, a day here and there.
Even during the week Ofelia was here, my happiness was undercut by the knowledge that sooner or later she would leave.
But this time she won’t.
I know it in my soul. And knowing how wrong that might be, by every metric there is, doesn’t lessen how ridiculously fucking happy I am.
Hearing the shower start in the bathroom, I head downstairs briefly to meet with the Red 24 team.
“Thank you.” I shake David’s hand. “Was there any trouble?”
“None.” He raises his beer to me. “Easiest extraction we’ve done in a long while. Didn’t even qualify for the title, in fact. It was just a taxi run with standard evasion. And thanks for the generous tip.” He nods at me. “The boys are still staring at their Mercura accounts in shock.”
“You earned it.”
“Hardly.” David tilts his head upstairs. “Your girl there did the hard work. She walked over three kilometers through a rat-infested sewer, did she tell you that?”
“I knew she used a tunnel to get away from the river.”
Mak left out the part about it being a rat-infested sewer.
Although given the rather imaginative ways I mentioned wanting to torture Seline when he told me his team had picked the girl up, I’m not surprised he left out the more lurid details.
“Her sandals came off during the escape, so she walked barefoot through the tunnels, and for another seven clicks along back alleys. She did a good job, too. Checked her back the entire way.” David looks at me over his beer.
“She wouldn’t let me take off from Granada until we were absolutely certain nobody had followed her.
She even told me I had to double-check, because she wasn’t going to risk leading anyone to you. ”
Finding myself unable to speak for the second time since Ofelia’s arrival, I pour a large shot of vodka instead and swallow it.
“Are you all clear on your end?” I say when I can trust my voice again. “No awkward questions?”
He shakes his head. “The Spaniards are very good about letting us operate out of their bases. Not least because we’ve helped them out more than once.” He gives me a sideways look. “There’s only one minor issue I should probably warn you about.”
I knew this was coming.
“Luke Macarthur,” I say flatly.
David grins wryly. “Red 24 is his company, mate. Which means I had to fully brief him the moment we activated—including showing him the photograph of our passenger.”
I nod resignedly. “I guess I’d better give him a call.”
“Going by the look on his face when he saw that picture, I’d take that call somewhere private—and soundproofed.”
I make Ofelia a large gin and tonic and order some food, but when I get back up to the cabin, the shower is still running.
Taking a guess that she’ll be in there for a while, I head back down to the cyber room.
I draw in a deep breath, then fire up the secure line.
Bracing myself for impact, I hit Luke Macarthur’s number.
He answers on the first ring, his good-natured face as grim as I’ve ever seen it. “Talk,” he says curtly.
I begin to explain what happened in Granada.
“I know all of this. I’ve spoken to Mak.” He cuts me off barely halfway through. “What I’m asking is why, instead of returning Ofelia Borovsky to the safety of her father’s home, you just paid one of my teams an indecent sum of money to fly her out to your fucking yacht.”
“It was Ofelia’s decision.” I match his tone.
“One she wouldn’t have made unless my team had your location and she had good reason to believe she’d be welcome. David tells me you opened an account with them several weeks ago.” Luke glares daggers at me through the screen. “And paid extra to keep the account confidential, unless activated.”
I lift a shoulder. There’s not much point denying it.
“A more suspicious man,” he says slowly, “might almost think you saw this coming.”
“I feared it was a possibility.”
“You feared it was a possibility.” I don’t miss the caustic edge to his voice. “But you didn’t see fit to alert someone like, oh, I don’t know, her fucking father to that possibility?”
I stare at the screen, slightly taken aback. I hadn’t expected a warm reception. But Luke is the most even-tempered man I know. He’s certainly not given to emotional outbursts, so this one takes me by surprise.
“With respect,” I say rather coldly, “Red 24’s entire founding principle is high-risk rescue with absolute confidentiality. You personally gave me access to it. I don’t recall you placing a caveat on who I could, or could not, use your service to rescue.”
There’s a flat silence, during which I meet Luke’s stone-cold stare with one of my own.
Finally he shakes his head resignedly. “I should have fucking seen this coming,” he says, more to himself than me. “Zinaida warned me it would come to this, years ago. She warned me again on the night of Ofelia’s twenty-first.”
I don’t have anything to say to that.
“You know you have to tell Roman about this.”
I lift my chin in silent assent.
“Sooner rather than later, asshole.”
“I need to talk to Ofelia first.”
“Obviously.” Luke passes a hand over his face, and I realize how exhausted he looks, then remember what Dimitry told me in Paris. Suddenly I have a glimmer of understanding into his newfound protective instincts.