Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
LUKA
I stared at the phone resting on the table. It was new like the other parts of my life. There weren’t many numbers saved in contacts. One in particular I had made sure not to add. It was better this way. She was better off not hearing from me. False hope was a dangerous poison. I’d done enough to her.
I had been in Europe for two weeks.
Two weeks while Lorenzo Amato still walked and breathed. Maksim had begun to worry he wasn’t as sick as I reported. I told him to keep surveilling. I knew the man wasn’t well.
I moved into the family castle in France. Did it matter where I lived? My baby grand was delivered last week. I hadn’t had the stomach to open the keyboard yet. Every time I looked at it, I thought of Amara and nothing else. How was I supposed to play the fucking thing with that kind of memory haunting it? Her legs. Her whimpers. Her lips. I’d almost torched it the first night it arrived. I sat on one side of the room with a bottle of bourbon, the piano on the other. Even if I burned the instrument into a pile of ash, I wouldn’t be able to erase the memories of what I had done to Amara. Those images were seared in my mind permanently.
I used the underground portion of the castle for sparring training. The Novikovs had a new line of recruits interested in joining one of our Bratva crews. Nikoli was interested in expanding his team from five to six.
The training was supposed to be a distraction.
I took the train into town at night for dinner. A woman pranced past my patio table in red high heels speaking impeccable French. She smiled casually as she ducked into the café. Her lipstick matched the shoes.
I lit another cigarette. Nothing about my decisions in New Orleans made a difference now. I should have enjoyed the freedom. Instead, it felt as if I was imprisoned in someone else’s life. A life I didn’t sign up for.
I checked the time on my phone. I had thirty minutes before the train left for Epernay. I paid my server and stepped away from the café. There were fifty more just like it on the way to the station. I dodged waiters straightening chairs back into long rows. I decided to walk around the block to kill time.
As soon as I turned the corner, I saw a flower cart. It happened before I could stop the onslaught in my head. I knew which ones to buy Amara. The ones that would make the corners of her lips turn upward. Make her eyes sparkle. She could carry them while we walked the crooked streets and ate croissants, drank red wine, and talked about where to make ten o’clock dinner reservations. I’d look for a hole in the wall. She’d want something elegant. I saw the entire scene play out in less than a second. It happened that fleetingly.
Fuck. I glowered at the flower cart worker while I snuffed out the cigarette only a few feet from the wheels. I quickly moved on, trying to forget that in an instant I had fallen off the wagon again.
When would she move out of my head? Maybe I needed to burn the piano after all. It was the only way to save myself from the constant torture.
I jogged down the steps to the train platform. A gust blew through the tunnel with the arrival of another train. I hopped onboard and found a seat near the window. It wasn’t long before I was headed to Epernay. The city walls whizzed past, transforming into the French countryside. There was something restorative about seeing the vineyards, the abundance of grapes, and the green and brown vines twisted together in long chains. During my first trip through the champagne fields, all I thought about was how to move more bottles. How to maximize production. How to fill the time I had that didn’t involve weapons training and hand-to-hand combat drills.
The new recruits were eager, but no one was ready to be sent to Nikoli.
So I invested time in the family vineyard. It gave us a leg in European markets that was a stronghold for shipping nearly anything we wanted. I could fit a shit ton of weapons in champagne crates.
Within an hour I arrived at the small station. There were occasionally a few women selling postcards outside. Sometimes, a man asked to shine my shoes. But it wasn’t busy. It was quiet, almost eerie. The Novikov vineyard was ten minutes beyond the village. I paid a cab to take me to the main entrance, asking to be dropped off at the front gate. I needed the walk to the castle.
The moonbeams cast silver light on the path as I swung my jacket over my shoulder and rolled up my sleeves for the walk. I didn’t mind the dust or the dark. Maybe I was numb to my surroundings. I existed, that was it.
My phone rang. “Maksim, tell me you have something.”
“Amato hasn’t been out lately. But his daughter has.”
My chest seized up at the mention of her.
“Are you saying you’re close?” I demanded. I wanted him to be fucking dead and buried in his family plot in Philly.
Maksim sighed. “Nik is prepared to take the girl at any moment. She’s at the Vieux Carre now with her bodyguard. He’s going to be a problem.”
“Remember the assignment. The one who killed Ivan goes with his boss.”
Maksim chuckled. “That shouldn’t be so hard. He stays with the old man. But her bodyguard? Fuck. He’s a walking fortress. I don’t know what Nik will do to get around him.”
I gritted my teeth together. They could not fuck this up. I wouldn’t risk Amara getting hurt. It was the entire reason I had left. Why I had taken on the assassination plot.
“Nik needs to find a way. If she is harmed in any way, you both will go back to Bratva training. Do you fucking hear me?”
“Yes, sir.” He wouldn’t argue with me any further.
I looked toward the moon hovering overhead. The phone pressed to my ear .
The first swirl looked like a wisp of clouds, hanging too low to the barn closest to the vineyard. I squinted to study the odd formation. Shit. It wasn’t a cloud. It was smoke. Plumes of gray. Thickening by the second. Covering the horizon and the roofline of the cottage up ahead.
“Fuck. Maks, I have to go. Now.” I shoved my phone in my pocket.
I dropped my jacket and began to sprint. I passed the second gate to the side path that circled the north vineyard. I choked as I ran into a low cloud. Where was it coming from?
“Monsieur Novikov!”
Peter waved his arms wildly. I changed course and met him on the path. He was as out of breath as I was. He gasped several times before I could get him to focus.
“What the hell is happening?” I screamed. “Where did it start? Did you call the fire department?” I tried to intersperse French with my Russian and English, but I couldn’t catch up to the words.
His face was covered in black streaks of ash.
“Peter.” I shook his shoulders.
“Oui. Pompiers.” The firefighters. That was something, but I didn’t hear the engines. The only thing I heard was the roaring fire.
“Where are my men?” I raged. The Bratva cadets should be here helping.
I dropped my grip on him and turned toward the building that was now engulfed in flames.
“The champagne, Peter! The grapes!” I rushed forward but was immediately shoved backward. I hit the gravel drive roughly. I reached for the knife tucked in my boot. “What the fuck,” I snarled. “That’s my office. This is my vineyard.”
It wasn’t Peter standing over me, it was a man in a dark blue uniform. The baton in his fists explained how he had knocked me on my back. I spotted a motorbike leaning on its side. He was the first to arrive on the scene from the local emergency dispatch.
“Stay.” He eyed me.
I dusted myself off as the truck pulled into view and the pompiers dismounted and started pulling the hoses over their shoulders. The man barked orders at the team. They began to surround the stone cottage.
Peter and I watched from a distance while they began to line up.
“What happened?” I asked the vineyard manager. “How did the fire start?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I was in the cellars and when I came back up, there was smoke. I grabbed my phone and ran outside.”
“How long ago?” I pressed.
The Frenchman shrugged. “Twenty minutes?”
“Twenty minutes.” I sighed.
“Oui.”
“The tunnels?” I glanced at him. “Do you think it spread in the tunnels?” Beneath the offices were twenty-five connecting tunnels that spanned almost fifteen miles. If they had been breached by the flames, the entire vineyard would have been lost. I’d never be able to recuperate that kind of production.
“I don’t know, Monsieur Novikov.”
“Was there anyone else here?” I still wondered where the cadets were. I turned to see them running from the castle gate.
“No,” he answered. “Only me.”
“About time,” I growled when the ten men gathered around me.
By now, the men who worked in the grape fields had begun to gather close to us. I saw their eyes. The fear and uncertainty the fire brought. Every time a spark launched off the roof I watched to see if it would hit one of the vines. What then? I was about to lose all of it. Was I going to lose the grapes too?
“Monsieur Novikov?” The man in uniform approached. He had returned the baton to his holster. I glared at him, my arms folded over my chest.
“Yes.” I stepped forward.
“The fire is contained.”
“Did it spread to the tunnels?” I asked. “How much damage is there? Have you checked the castle?”
“Come with me.” He led me away from the vineyard workers. We stopped on the other side of the rescue engine. “I’m sorry, but the offices are a total loss. The castle is far enough from the original fire that it is safe.”
“What about the casks? The wine and champagne? I have a million bottles under our feet.”
“I sent a team to the first level. I think you might have some heat damage, but there was no fire.”
I exhaled. I could rebuild a cottage. I could rebuild a tasting venue and a gazebo for weddings. I couldn’t reproduce a hundred years’ worth of priceless grapes, let alone let my shipping mechanism disintegrate. Without those bottles, I had no way of getting through customs. Fuck.
“Thank you.” I nodded at the report.
“I will begin an investigation as soon as I’m able to set foot in there. It’s still too hot.”
“You think someone started the fire?”
“We will find out if that’s what happened.”
My brow furrowed. The officer walked away. I rubbed the back of my head, trying to make sense of what happened. I had to catch my breath and figure out what I was going to do next. When I glanced at the workers, I noticed their families had started to join them. One man put his arm around his wife’s shoulder. She leaned into him as they watched the weeping smoke curl in tendrils over the roof.
The vineyard was going to require all my attention now. Were the burning embers the escape I needed? Salvation in disguise. I wasn’t religious. Barely spiritual, but maybe God had tossed me a line. I needed to grab on and take hold before I drowned.