Chapter 26
Vanya
Paige takes her empty mug and pads barefoot to the coffee maker for her third cup.
She’s spent all morning chatting. Her voice went hoarse toward the end as, at my request, she recited every fairy tale from that damned collection.
That memory of hers might as well be a teleprompter.
Two stories involve the title character, a girl created from snow who lived a happy life until she abandoned her safe routines.
She set aside what made her happy and as a result, turned into steam.
I listened extra hard to those ones. No violence, no fighting, no pain. Just snow melting in the heat.
The tale that Paige recited that included the pertinent quote meant nothing to me.
The other stories help even less.
The oversize t-shirt hangs to her mid-thigh, and the thin red welts on her wrists stand out. She’s wearing my handiwork like jewelry.
A heady emotion twists in my chest.
Pride. Possession? Obsession, that’s for sure.
Things I have no right to feel.
I told myself I’d start pushing her back starting today, and I meant it.
When I woke up this morning and she’d offered to talk about the book, I hadn’t been able to stop the little ember of hope from brewing in my chest. With her photographic memory, I was sure the relevant story would give us what we needed.
Once I had that information, I believed I’d have no reason to stay away from Paige anymore.
She’d understand my intentions were true.
Hell, Kirill and Kolya both managed to get themselves assigned as permanent guards to the women they met during missions.
My coffee goes cold while I sit here for twenty minutes, pondering all those damn stories.
No name, no moral, nothing in any of these tales links back to what the Bratva’s been going through or the event that started this all fifteen years ago.
We don’t even have anything that connects to the beginning of this damn runaround…
MJ Kozlov learning things in prison that led him to information about the unmarked diamonds that went missing on the island.
“That’s it.” Paige sinks into her seat again, the refilled cup steaming in front of her. She takes her coffee black just like me. “That’s every word from the book you wanted. And that’s the only collection in our inventory with the specific quote you gave me.”
Nothing. How is this possible?
I must be missing some clue. Chloe and Kolya found the diamonds hidden in a globe bar. Kirill and Jordan uncovered another piece of the puzzle locked in a safe. “What about the illustrations?”
“Oh. Yes. Lots of them.” Her eyes go distant again.
“The cover’s calfskin, faded to a pale blue, but you can see the original royal blue under the stitching.
It’s tooled and gilded with patterns of snowflakes along the top.
In the center is a girl, white-haired, tiny, wearing a cloak with fur trimming.
Along the bottom are foxes, crows, and a swarm of snowflake filigree.
The first page has the same girl, this time painted in bold colors.
Pink lips, blue eyes, red dress, black fur that stands out against her white skin. ”
She continues, detailing every picture on the first five pages, even explaining where each is located on said page.
I lift up a hand, frustration simmering in my chest. “Stop. That’s not going to help.
If the answer is in the artwork itself, I’ll need the actual book.
A description won’t cut it.” Spinning my mug on the table, I try to think of anything else I could ask.
“Did anything stand out? Anything that seemed off or didn’t match the book? ”
She sips more coffee and studies me for a beat, nonplussed. “No. Everything meshed well. The illustrations fit the stories they accompanied. I inspected the drawings, and they’re clearly antique. At least a hundred years old, based on the paper quality and printing style.”
Of course she’d noticed details like that. Checking for forgeries or repairs is part of her job as the senior archivist.
The greedy tsar tale keeps nagging at me. “Tell me the last story again.”
Her eyebrows rise. “I just told you—”
“I know. Humor me.” I close my eyes so I can concentrate on her every word.
She shifts, her clothes rustling. “Once there lived a tsar who loved gold and jewels above all else, even his children. His treasury overflowed with riches, but still he wanted more. He sent his men across the land to bring him anything that glittered. Diamonds from mines. Gold from rivers. Even fireflies in jars, because they shone in the dark. His wife begged him to stop. His children pleaded. But he couldn’t. The wanting had become a sickness.”
She pauses for a breath.
I’m barely breathing myself.
“One day, the tsar looked out his window and saw a shimmer on a distant mountain peak. Brighter than anything in his treasury. He convinced himself it was the world’s biggest diamond.
So, he gathered his strongest men, his fastest horses, even brought his family along to witness his greatest triumph.
They climbed for days. Men died from the cold.
Horses broke their legs on ice.” She stops talking for a few seconds.
I keep my eyes shut as I hunt for a connection.
Paige swallows, and her mug clinks on the table.
“His wife fell from a narrow path. His children froze in the night. Even so, the tsar pressed on, his eyes fixed on that gleaming prize. When he finally reached the summit, alone, everyone else dead or abandoned below, he grasped the shining thing with both hands.”
And here, we come to the part with the relevant quote. I lean closer, fisting my hands in my lap.
“The greedy tsar found only ice in his hands. Still captivated by the sparkle and shine, he held it to his chest, treasuring it. There was no love left, nothing to keep him warm. And so, the tsar died while ignoring the sun that made the ice glisten in the first place.”
The story—short like all the rest—ends there. I open my eyes.
If a clue’s lurking somewhere in that tale, I’m missing it. What does any of this have to do with us? The tsar…
Roman?
The man who lost everything on Chaos Island fifteen years ago. Wife dead. Daughter dead. Pakhan rebuilt himself from that grief and channeled it into strengthening the Bratva, into keeping what remained of his family safe.
Is it because he’s the opposite of the tsar? After losing his loved ones, he devoted himself to his “kingdom,” the Bratva, and his extended family.
Until this past spring, when those diamonds resurfaced.
Now, he’s obsessed, ordering men to track down leads and rumors.
But that’s where the story breaks down, since he’s nothing like that tsar.
“Roman didn’t let his men die chasing diamonds.” I scrub my hands over my face, the stubble scratching my palms. “He’s always protected his people. Always put the Bratva first.”
Paige regards me carefully. “You think the story’s about your boss?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I drag a hand through my hair while puffing out hot air.
“Roman lost his wife fifteen years ago. His daughter Anika too. The same night you lost your mom. He never remarried. Never even showed the slightest interest in another woman. He’s stayed faithful to a dead woman for a decade and a half. ”
“But the diamonds?” She taps her finger on the table. “You said he became obsessed.”
“He did, but it’s not the same.” Or maybe it is.
Perhaps loyalty’s just a hard habit to break.
If I don’t defend him, though, everything I risk my life for every day becomes a lie.
“The diamonds are linked to what happened on the island. To his family. It’s not greed.
It’s like he’s finally seeking justice. Or maybe revenge.
I know for sure he’s searching for answers we never had back then. ”
She leans forward to rest her elbows on the table. The neckline of her shirt gapes open, revealing the curve of her breast. “Okay. If you want my help, walk me through what’s happened. Everything you know that’s connected to this book.”
I force my eyes back to her face. “That’s a long story.”
Lifting her mug, she waves to the house around us. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”
So I recount the entire tale from the very beginning, explaining how Alexei got busted and his brother MJ took the fall for him.
As I talk, she asks a few clarifying questions, which draws out the explanation. About halfway through, she gets up and rummages around in the fridge to fix us sandwiches, rounding them out with chips she got from the convenience store. She sits again, handing me a plate.
By the time we’re done eating, I’ve finished the saga that started years ago but only got convoluted in the last twelve months.
“Vanya.” She wipes the salt from her fingers. “What about Sasha? I heard you mention him before.”
Of course she didn’t forget about that. “What about him?”
“You said he was exiled for being a traitor. What’d he do?” She keeps her eyes down, looking everywhere but at me.
Not a story I want to go into, but… “He got caught talking to a detective.”
She’s quiet for a beat, and I realize she’s waiting for me to continue even though there’s nothing else to say. “That’s all it takes to get kicked out? Literally just talking to a cop?”
I open my mouth, then close it. While it sucks to admit, she’s right.
Roman overreacted.
Sasha was loyal. Before that day, he never gave anyone reason to doubt him.
He’d done everything asked of him, even stepped up repeatedly during the Falcone attacks in order to prove himself.
Regardless of whether working with the police is one of our cardinal sins, simply speaking to an officer on the street doesn’t automatically mean you’re working with them.
And the evidence against Sasha was…admittedly thin.
He claimed that, when Detective Colvin approached him, he told the man to fuck off.
Roman, not wanting to hear any excuses, declared Sasha a traitor. Pakhan did, however, refrain from ordering any of us to hunt Sasha down after he fled. Small mercies, I suppose.
“It’s complicated.”
“How?”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard her speak in such a flat tone, not even when I pestered her at work.
I shift, picking at my cuticle. “Because talking to cops can get people killed. Information leaks. Operations get compromised. Roman couldn’t risk it. We’ve wondered if Sasha’s the reason Detective Colvin talked to you and your boss at the library.”
“But you don’t think Sasha is actually a traitor.” She sees straight through my justifications. “Let’s face it, if that’s all it took to get you declared traitors and place a bounty on your heads, the cops would interrogate people nonstop. Then you’d all be kicked out or killed.”
I don’t answer because acknowledging the truth out loud feels like betrayal.
Hell, I spoke with a cop the other day, even shook his hand. The fact that she’s right fucking stings.
Mercifully, Paige drops that point. “You asked earlier how the book got to the library. It was part of the Petrov collection, a single-person donation. Not part of an estate, which is where we get most of our books. It seems to me, if you’re after someone who’s been sending you on wild goose chases, learning who that person is will help more than having the book itself. ”
I latch onto the distraction like an anchor.
“We can work on that while waiting on word that Gio’s men have lost our trail.
” Even more importantly, maybe we can finally discover who’s been pulling our strings and cut them.
Maybe then Roman will calm down, and we can convince him to reconsider Sasha’s exile. “Yes, okay. Walk me through it.”
“A third-party firm processes the paperwork. We never know the actual donors, just the name of the collection. We use a trust company that handles the real names, tax information, and legal contracts. We just get the items and, if we’re lucky, a catalogue list.” She’s shaking her head the whole time, as if she knows it’s a dead end.
Or so she thinks.
“So the library doesn’t know who donated it.” There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and more ways to obtain information. But my beautiful little archivist’s still accustomed to following rules. “Then we break into the firm.”
Paige aims a look at me that’s an equal blend of fear and excitement.
She’s hooked. She just doesn’t want to admit it yet.
I let a ghost of a smile curve my mouth. “All we need to do is get you inside during work hours. You watch someone sign in. Get a view of their login credentials. Then we leave, come back when the place is closed, and take what we need.”
“How are we going to get in in the first place?” Her voice pitches higher. “Act like delivery drivers? Pretend to be clients?”
I cross my arms. “Believe it or not, excluding your inexplicable immunity, I can generally charm my way into just about anywhere.”
She purses her lips before finishing off her coffee.
I laugh at her unease. “Trust me. Once I get us inside, you’ll see exactly what I’m capable of.”
Maybe I need to prove it to myself too.