Chapter 31
Nika
My mind can’t accept what I’m seeing. Just keeps slamming into a wall of, “Dima is my right-hand man. He wouldn’t do anything without my say so,” and bouncing off.
How long? Months? Years? Since I was…
No. I can’t think about that. I can’t stand Max’s pitying look either.
“I found one in here.” He points to the plastic mount by my door, where the smoke alarm should be. The one Dimitri changes the batteries in every three months. The one that didn’t go off when smoke filled the room. “And one in your shower stall door.”
My what?
I clench my hands in the sheets, nausea swirling in my stomach.
Dimitri would never. No.
He raised me, trained me, protected me. Dimitri is my mentor. My friend.
In the shower?
A shudder creeps through my shoulders as I stare at the little black boxes in Max’s hand.
The shower, one in my bedroom, and…
I swallow down bile. “That’s not possible. He listens to me. And I insisted on no cameras in the safe house.” I also told him no guns, and that clearly wasn’t obeyed. My chest seizes. “He devoted his life to helping me get my mother’s locket back!”
“I find that highly unlikely.” Max tosses the pile of cameras to the bed, his proof trumping my denials. “There must be something else he wants. No one does all this for someone else’s necklace, not even your precious Dimitri. But they might do it for what the necklace can get them.”
What the locket can get him?
My mind races as I try to piece together memories and facts to form a solid picture.
Nothing fits.
Dimitri was a young man who found a strange child on an island after a disaster. Knew her family was alive and still took her in. Trained her to get revenge on her father. Spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to mold her into a killer.
Why? He’s never explained, and I’ve never asked.
I reach for the cameras, their cold plastic digging into my palm.
What else have I been blind to?
“You know the combination?” When Max enters the main room, I know what he’s looking at.
The wall safe.
I scramble out of bed naked to stand next to him by the safe.
I suck in a breath. “Zero. Four. One. Five.”
Max punches the code in. “Your birthday. Not very secure.”
“How—”
“Everyone in the Bratva knows your birthday. It’s one of four days never to approach Roman.” Once the safe beeps, Max swings the door open. “Your birthday, Lilia’s birthday, their anniversary, and the day you both died.”
He says it as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. A fact that everyone knows.
My mind spins, lost in a storm of uncertainty as I drown in new information.
Max pulls a laptop out of the safe, but I worry he’ll waste hours on the couch trying to hack into it.
I touch his arm. “That’s a decoy. This is what we’re really after.” Reaching past him, I grab a handful of leather-bound notebooks under the safe’s false bottom, each one identical save for the numbers on the spine.
Dimitri’s journals.
“He knows computers can be compromised remotely. That’s why he never trusts them. He records everything important on paper.” That’s also why I’m supposed to torch the safe if there’s ever a breach here.
I didn’t do that.
And now…
My hands shake as I carry a stack to the couch, weighed down by years of unread entries. When I was a child, Dimitri warned me not to touch his journals. They were the only bit of privacy he ever asked for. I never questioned the instruction, never even considered violating that trust.
After all, he’d devoted the rest of his existence to my grudge, my mission. Giving him this one thing didn’t seem like a sacrifice at all.
As Max drops the remaining books on the table, I know these weren’t the only things Dimitri kept hidden. Or lied about.
Each journal has a date range scribbled on the front cover in Dimitri’s precise hand. The oldest one goes back seventeen years. Almost three years before my mother died…before he ever met me.
Why would he—
Max slides a journal off my lap and waits, holding the tome in his hand. I glance at the dates. The most recent addition.
Unable to speak, I nod.
Max settles in beside me, opens the cover, and starts to read.
That leaves me with a decision. Should I choose the one that covers the night Mom died or the one from seventeen years ago?
Fingers trembling, I grab the journal from that fateful summer.
“It’s just like I thought.” Max continues leafing through pages.
“Dimitri’s the one who gave Detective Colvin that anonymous tip.
He also sent info connecting the library to the reopened cold case of Chaos Island.
Which he also teased evidence about to get Colvin to dig into things.
He muddied the waters and set up Sasha as a traitor, knowing we’d kill him. ”
Sasha.
My heart sinks as I flip open my own journal, afraid of what I might find.
“Shit.” Max scrubs a hand down his face, turning a shade paler. “The fucker killed MJ, Roman’s nephew.”
Dimitri murdered my cousin.
Oh my god.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a few seconds, summoning a hazy image of the young man everyone in the family loved and respected.
“Anything else?” As if that isn’t already bad enough, but I need to know everything.
When I peer at Max again, the numbness settling across his features mirrors my own hollowness.
“Well, not to poke a wound, but he also gloats about how he made you think this was all your idea. That he’s good at giving gentle suggestions until you take the bait and think it’s your plan, or he just does what he wants behind your back.
” He offers me the journal so I can see the proof for myself.
I push it aside. I don’t need to confirm what I already know is true.
Besides, I have my own passage to read to him.
Each word shatters my heart a little more.
“‘I’m back from the island. Had the best luck.’” My voice wobbles.
“‘I grabbed Roman’s daughter and brought her home with me. Roman will never heal from the wound of losing both his wife and daughter in the same night. She’ll become my perfect weapon if I raise her right. ’”
The poison seeps through every word.
I thought I knew myself, my purpose. Thought I was choosing my own path.
Max simply stares, his expression pinched with pity and resignation.
I never chose my path or led anyone else.
According to Dimitri’s own admissions, I was obeying him, playing the role he built me for.
To be a weapon aimed at my own father’s heart.
Max
Nika reads in silence, pouring over every word in the journals.
Every now and then, she repeats a few lines out loud. Her heart audibly breaks a little more each time.
I definitely can’t kill her now. Not because of how I feel, but because she’s not our enemy.
Dimitri is.
Instead, I’ll protect her. From everyone. Even Roman, if necessary. He’ll surely forgive me for disobeying orders.
My gut twists at the thin possibility that he won’t. He could declare me a traitor. I’m banking on his love for his daughter winning out, but that’s going to be a tough conversation to have.
Nika’s still invested in her reading, so I get up to feed the fire and gaze into the flames.
The decision to become her protector settles in my bones.
I head to the kitchen, grab two frozen meals, and pop them in the microwave. While that’s whirring, I reach into the back of the freezer and pull out the satellite phone I found and hid there.
I punch in a memorized number and wait.
“Hello.” No hint of emotion laces Alexei Kozlov’s tone. No accent. Nothing gives him away to whoever might be dialing this unknown number. As the head of the enforcers, he gets calls like this all the time.
“It’s me.” I don’t bother to alter my voice. He’ll recognize it. “I know it’s been a while since I checked in, but I have her. It’s complicated. Going dark.”
Alexei grunts on the other end of the line. “Understood. You have free reign. He only wants his daughter safe, so don’t hurt her if you can help it. Update when you can.”
The absolute faith in his words sets me back on my heels. From Roman, I could understand, but Alexei… I didn’t think I’d earned that from him yet. I don’t have the bandwidth to tell him I know who killed his brother. That’s an in-person conversation.
“Khorosho.” I end the call and pocket the phone.
Only then do I realize Roman is trusting me with the one thing he loves most in the world. The shattered remains of his family. So why allow me to make the decisions?
Because he doesn’t trust himself after everything he’s done for the last year?
Free reign means I have no lead. And after telling Alexei I’m going dark, no one will try to reach out.
I’m no longer Roman’s dog. No longer the weapon that doesn’t question or hesitate.
Now I’m Nika’s shield.