Chapter 2
Kirill
Towering over the journalist’s daughter, I survey the room. If you could even call this a room. More like a closet with delusions of grandeur.
Except closets usually have clothes or old boxes. This place doesn’t even have furniture aside from a worn couch and the two cots tied together and topped with a futon mattress. Not a chair or a dust bunny. Everything appears old, beaten, used, and cleaned to within an inch of its life.
The air tastes of desperation and dollar-store incense. With the laptop snapped shut, almost all the light comes from weak, scattered sources. Three salt lamps cast an amber glow on aluminum foil on the wall. Perfect for atmosphere. Useless for actual visibility.
It’s like I’ve stepped into a bizarre alternate reality.
I glance down at her.
Jordan Elizabeth Thorne. Alistair Thorne’s legacy, whether she realizes that or not. Her investigative journalist father sniffed out secrets on organized crime families until his death on Isla de Huesos fifteen years ago.
And we didn’t pull that trigger.
But new evidence, retrieved from a resin ball filled with diamonds also lost on the island, suggests Alistair left behind a cache of evidence that could burn down the Kozlov family.
And this thin woman currently sitting on the floor, smiling at a laptop stacked on top of cardboard apple crates, is his only living blood relative.
Which makes her dangerous. Even if she doesn’t look it.
The Kozlov Bratva once mistakenly thought the same thing about Alistair. Just a man with a pen and a legal pad.
I shift, balancing my weight so the old wooden floor doesn’t squeal. The past several months flicker through my brain.
When MJ Kozlov, the nephew of our Pakhan, wound up dead, everyone assumed suicide.
Alexei, MJ’s brother, dug into things he wasn’t supposed to and discovered it wasn’t.
Gio Falcone decided to attack us, despite the recently signed truce between his family and ours.
After Chloe Davidson showed up in MJ’s notes, Roman sent Kolya Ilyin to investigate her.
Then they found diamonds in Chloe’s house, diamonds thought lost for over a decade and sent anonymously to a kindergarten teacher whose only connection to our family was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now Alistair and Jordan Thorne are the next two leads in this hunt.
Our Pakhan is a target. Roman Kozlov may be a powerful man, but even the one at the top can tumble down with enough force.
Or one well-placed stick of dynamite.
With every secret brought into the open, Roman grows more suspicious, more hungry, and more unstable. And he’s not wrong. The pattern’s become obvious now.
Someone investigated this before MJ caught wind and set up an elaborate treasure hunt for us.
This job is my part.
Determine what “Safety-237” means. What the “Insurance” is. And address any problems.
Jordan’s the first step on that path.
Her dark hair’s a mess, half-tamed in a knot, strands floating down to catch the light. Wide green eyes fix on mine, the pupils bottomless in the gloom and staring out with curiosity rather than terror.
It’s almost like I’m the answer to a question she’s never dared to say out loud rather than a very real threat.
People don’t regard me like that. Especially when I’ve just broken into their homes.
My chest tightens. Not with fear. I haven’t known true fear since they left me to freeze outside my own front door all those years ago. But this clenching ache sends my heart racing before I force myself to calm down.
Jordan backs up, her fingertips grazing the makeshift desk. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
I don’t answer. What I say doesn’t matter. She won’t be able to tell anyone later. Once I get my answers from her, she’ll switch from being a lead to a loose end.
And Roman may not have ordered a kill, but I don’t leave loose ends.
With wide eyes, she catches her breath and covers her mouth. “Oh my god. You’re my manifestation.”
I blink in confusion. “I’m what?”
She twists and points to a square of cardboard with pictures plastered all over like a dollar store travel brochure. “I put ‘powerful, decisive energy’ on my vision board, like, a week ago, and you showed up. Walking, breathing…” She trails off, cocking her head.
Ah. An act.
Everyone has an angle. This is hers.
A distraction. Spiritual nonsense.
I keep my face expressionless and let her play her game. I’ve broken hardened killers twice her size.
Yet, for some inexplicable reason, this strange woman captivates me. Her eyes bore into mine, and a deep, repressed part of me feels compelled to step closer, to reach out and see if what lingers in the air is just as potent in the flesh.
I crush the thought. Focus on the mission.
I’m empty inside save for the ice that formed the night my mother died.
From my pocket, I extract the key we found mixed in with the diamonds in Chloe’s house. The one with “Safety-237” and “Insurance” scrawled on the tag. I hold it up between gloved fingers, hiding the sight of her father’s name written on the other side. “What does this open?”
She leans forward, her eyes narrowing in the dim, hazy light. “A key. Wow. Yeah, no idea about that specific one.” Her gaze floats back to my face, her lips curling in amusement. “Definitely feeling this intense energy coming from you, though. The real question is, what does this key mean to you?”
She’s deflecting.
And not even well. No polish, no practice, just an endless stream of words that tumble out and construct a wall of noise.
I put the key back in my pocket.
No more games.
My arm sweeps across her desk, pushing aside the laptop and messy stacks of paper filled with wild loops of handwriting. Nothing stashed in the crates beneath.
“Hey! Just because it’s junk doesn’t mean you can just throw it around.” She glares at me and grabs her computer, checking the corners for damage.
I move to the table behind her. Crystals scatter, rattling to the floor. A quick yank at the cloth reveals another stack of cardboard boxes. I kick them over, listening for any noises that might come from objects inside.
No secret compartments.
Jordan scrambles over to pick up the mess. “What’s wrong with you? There’s nothing worth stealing in here.”
I upend the bookshelf. It’s all New Age clutter. Manifestation manuals. Self-help. Grabbing each by the cover, I shake them out to check for secrets between the pages.
She finally snaps, her voice sharp and wounded as I continue stripping books from the shelf, flipping them open, and letting them fall where they may. “What are you doing? That’s my sacred space!”
Sacred space. As if “sacred” could mean anything in my world.
I don’t even spare her a glance. Instead, I wade through the room in a slow circle. Dropping to one knee, I run my fingers along the baseboards, searching for weakness, a fault line, or some disguised seam in the cheap drywall that might indicate a hidden place.
“Want a rag? You can clean while you’re down there.”
I ignore her.
Not a damn thing here.
The room is too small, too exposed. No real space for the secret safe this key might open. No locked door obscuring what I need. Which means she stashed whatever her dad gave her somewhere else. Or the evidence doesn’t exist.
Or she really doesn’t know anything.
But I don’t buy that. Not yet. She’s Alistair Thorne’s daughter and the key to finding what I need.
I spin around to face her and pin her against the wall with my stare. “Tell me about your father.”
She stiffens, and the mask drops. The calm, guru composure evaporates, stripping her bare. Her face loses every trace of color, causing her freckles to contrast with her too-pale skin. “What about him? Why? He’s been dead for fifteen years. I…I don’t understand—”
“His work.” I close the distance between us and force my presence into her space. “Where is the evidence cache he kept? His notes. His contacts.”
“Evidence? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” In her desperate attempt to regain control, her expression shifts. She’s slipping back into her comfortable role. “The only evidence I have is that your aura is—”
“I’m not here for my aura.” What the fuck is an aura anyway?
She flinches and rears back a single step. “I don’t—”
“I’m here for the evidence cache. And you’re going to tell me where it is. Now.”
She gapes, her fingers trembling at her sides. “I…don’t know.”
I press close enough to smell the citrus on her breath. To see the pulse hammering in her throat. “Try again.”
She shakes her head while backing herself against the cardboard desk. “I can’t help you. Except with your chakras. They’re a mess.”
Fine. The hard way, then.
I ignore her protests and stride into the kitchen.
It’s as sparse as a monk’s cell. Three cabinets hang slightly crooked on their hinges, revealing a sad collection of mismatched plates and mugs. A shapeless, handmade bag sits on the counter. The fridge runs with an extended death rattle.
When I pull open the door, I see nothing but half a grapefruit wrapped in plastic and a crinkled bottle of water. Deli condiment packs sit haphazardly in the shelves.
On the outside of the refrigerator, a cheap photo strip hangs by a sun-shaped magnet. Four black-and-white images of Jordan and another woman with dark skin and tight curls hangs by a sun-shaped magnet. In the pictures, the two women make progressively sillier faces.
The final frame shows them laughing, their heads thrown back in a moment of unguarded joy captured in low resolution. Underneath, a bright pink “Me and Ashley” sits in the white space, a heart drawn at the end.
Above the photo strip, another magnet holds a little business card with an illustration of a tooth to the top of the fridge. The date and time of a dentist appointment is handwritten on the reminder, along with “Jordan Bennett.” Not Thorne.
After noting the last name, I refocus on the task at hand.
I head toward the bedroom area of the tiny studio. Jordan hesitates before following, trailing me instead of fleeing like a sane woman.
Makes things easier for me, but I’m not sure what she’s doing. Why hasn’t she tried to escape?
A colorful quilt that’s seen better days covers the thin, lumpy futon. Stacked milk crates filled with neat piles of clothes sit against the wall. I run my hand along the underside of each crate, checking for taped documents or anything amiss.
Nothing.
Just more crystals placed in patterns that probably have meaning to her. Not resin holding more hints, but actual rocks someone picked up off the ground. Random clutter.
I find no hidden compartments, loose floorboards, or wall safe here.
Grabbing the frame of the wobbly, tied-together cots that serve as a bed, I lift enough to peek underneath. Empty except for a library book with a cracked spine and a pile of paperbacks. Mysteries and crime novels, not spiritual guidance.
“What are you searching for?” While she’s standing far enough away that I can’t reach her, she doesn’t move for the door or a phone. Interesting. “I told you, I don’t have anything. Those books might get you a dollar for the whole stack at the used bookstore, but even that’s optimistic.”
A slow sweep of the room confirms what I’m beginning to realize.
This isn’t a home. It’s a waystation, a place to temporarily exist while waiting for time to pass or for an event to happen. No permanence. No roots. I could pack the entire apartment into a single suitcase, minus the appliances.
Her secrets live somewhere else.
I reach for her laptop and shapeless bag, crushing its soft, worn, velvety fabric in my fingers.
“Hey, wait a second. You can’t just—”
I point to the door, wordlessly issuing my non-negotiable command.
“Where…are we going?” She remains frozen against the wall like prey, clearly hoping stillness will save her.
Nothing will.
“You’re going to help me find what I’m looking for.”