Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
IGOR
PRESENT DAY
The road we take is familiar but instead of veering towards Misha’s property, we take a small track I know isn’t even on most maps.
Between tufts of trees and hidden on the outskirts of Misha’s territory, four massive trucks that look like luxury camping vans, painted in shades of green commando colours, come to view.
They’re barely visible in the dark. I’ve only ever seen things like this in documentaries about musicians on the road.
How are they even putting eighty soldiers in these things?
We park on the side, and the small commando that took over at the docks spreads out. Men and women assemble around the encampment, dressed for the cold, and gathering in what looks like smaller units. Grave faces meet some laughter. It seems so out of place on the day before their execution.
Not if I can prevent it.
I’m here because they need my insider knowledge of the compound. I could help them. If my brain has finally left the building and I’m dreaming all this, I’ll still make sure I give them all I have. Even in my nightmares, I’ve never stopped protecting Julian.
The man who shouldn’t be here guides me towards one of the living quarters. He keeps glancing over his shoulder at me, like he can’t believe I’m here. I can barely believe it myself.
The door of the camping truck—by lack of a better word—opens, a few steps above the ground, and reveals a lithe woman in cargo pants, weapons strapped around her thighs and shoulders. Her long black hair is tied in a high ponytail.
I freeze. I thought I was prepared.
The last time I saw my friend, she was shivering and naked, so vulnerable I wondered if she’d ever get up again.
But get up, she did. She looks regal, and fierce.
Ready for war. It makes the three years I spent trying to protect her and Julian by staying away seem so insignificant.
I doubted her. I doubted she could help me. I doubted she could rescue me.
You aren’t worthy, my brain murmurs but her voice croaks, and all I hear is my heart pulling me towards the first person I considered family besides the man who used to be my brother.
“Fratellu.”
“Kotik.”
She launches herself out of the vehicle and onto the snow-covered grass before hitting my chest as she jumps into my arms. Julian releases me just in time to catch my friend.
Her embrace is as violent to my system as Julian’s was.
Fear has been Misha’s most powerful tool for years, and having them here, so close to where my brother lives, has a snake coiling at my throat and entrails.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I tell her, whispering the same words I gave Julian into her hair.
She smells like home, the spicy Immortelle flower entwined with sweet clementines, igniting a longing I thought I had curbed and destroyed long ago.
Even now, I can’t let it rage. Just because they’re here, solid against my chest, their scent of home in my nose, doesn’t mean the man who owns me isn’t waiting for me a few kilometres away.
It doesn’t erase the fact that I’ve watched him destroy lives for years and don’t deserve the embrace they’re offering.
They think they want me back in their lives. I know the truth.
Bullets are unnecessary. My emotions will kill me just as well. Because I’m the only one who knows what I deserve. Death.
“Of course we should. I’m sorry it took us so long to find you.”
I withdraw from her embrace, hardening my expression. “I didn’t want to be found.”
If Misha captures them, what he did to all the poor humans he’s abducted before will be nothing compared to what he’ll do to them.
Julian sighs. “We’re here now, and without your help, war goes on. Help us end this, Igor. What has your brother given you but pain and misery?”
He did. But in another life, he protected me from my father’s blows.
I swallow, throat dried and constricted with battling desires and needs. Maybe this is my penance. I can help the Moretti win the war before it begins. And end the Petrov line forever. We both disappear into the ashes of his fallen empire.
“Show me what you got,” I tell Lana who guides me inside the truck.
The equipment inside is modern, with an equipped kitchen and a large table with papers and puppets, and a set up of monitors.
Giulia and her husband, Andrea Capaldi, the most notorious cyber security expert—and criminal— are looking at screens that seem to show all the CCTV in a ten mile radius.
Her hand rests on his shoulder in an affectionate touch.
I thought they hated each other. At least, last time I saw her, she hated him.
I’ve missed so much. It’s better I don’t find out more about what happened over the three years I was gone.
I can’t get pulled back into the Moretti orbit. I’d taint them.
When we enter, Giulia lifts her head and gasps.
Rounding the table, she approaches me like I’m a cornered animal, opening her arms but letting me decide if I’m ready to accept her welcome.
I hesitate, my lower lip twitching, and shake my head, refusing her.
She nods and lets her arms fall to her sides, smiling tensely.
It’s almost worse than a hug, this quiet acceptance.
“Welcome back, Igor. I wasn’t sure they’d get to you.”
Andrea nods in my direction, and so do Dante Ventura, Aleksei Dobrev and his sister, Irina.
“The Dobrev-Ventura have been instrumental in kicking Petrov out of the UK,” Giulia chimes in with the history I’ve missed.
The usually boisterous woman watches me with restraint, glancing at Julian and Lana, probably to gauge if I’m really on their side.
She’s right to be weary. “Aleksei’s dad used to be a close ally to Misha until two years ago.
Now they’re independent. They brought fifty men, and ten elite soldiers from Croatia. The rest are ours.”
Then, it’s Lisandru who explains how he and Andrea have taken over all the cameras surrounding Misha’s property but can’t get inside the house or the compound itself.
“That’s because he’s using analog feeds,” I offer.
“Of course,” Andrea swears under his breath. “And his network?”
“Private. The servers are on the property itself. Misha doesn’t trust anyone and barely uses any internet services. No cloud, no IP, only military-grade, untraceable phones, no computers. Everything is recorded by hand, handled in cash.”
“So, we’re going in blind?” Aleksei asks.
“No,” Julian interjects as he links our fingers together. “Igor knows the place. He’ll be our guide.”
His trust makes me feel even more dirty. I did nothing. All these years, I never called him. I never called Lana. I thought I was protecting them. Maybe I was wrong all along, and all these people died for nothing. They suffered for nothing.
It cements my decision.
When the coalition in front of me storms Misha’s compound in the dead of night tomorrow, I’ll die.
And I’ll take Misha with me. It’s the only way to right all the wrongs the Petrov name did over the years.
A sacrifice I’m more than willing to make.
Despite the man I used to love holding my hand, his calloused skin against mine like we were never separated, I know he’ll understand.
I can’t live with this shame. And he deserves better.
Strategising goes well into the night. The truck mostly features bunker beds, as I’ve discovered.
Twenty soldiers can sleep here, in two rows of five on each side of the truck.
Two small bedrooms for couples—or throuple in the case of the Ventura-Dobrev— are also available.
When I step into one of them, Julian on my heels, it’s like all the air has been sucked out of the minuscule room.
The queen-sized bed is tightly made and almost touches the walls on both sides. As the door closes behind Julian, the sounds of soldiers getting ready for a restless night are still loud.
Nothing I could imagine remotely looked like this. Him, his face emaciated yet alive and ready to take on the world. Me, a shell in a functioning body, ready to end it all.
I don’t believe in Hell or heaven or resurrection, but if it does exist, I hope we’ll find each other where we go next, and it’ll be more peaceful. Maybe we can grow wine and have an easy life with screaming kids and a dog. Something mundane. I think I’d like that.
“You’re not wearing your ring,” Julian whispers.
The room may be small but his words carry. There’s something raw in his voice, more than vulnerability.
I look down at his own hands, and back up. “You aren’t either.”
From underneath his wool sweater, he lifts a chain. The simple silver band I gave him before I left for London, which I used again to claim him as mine in the sunflower field, glints in the artificial overhead light.
I hid my wedding band. First I carried it in my pocket, but after Amsterdam, I couldn't bear the thought of maybe losing it. It resides in a place no one would care to look for. A place I never showed anyone else but him.
It was a reminder that pleasure exists, at his hands only. Somehow, the moment brings me back to when we just started dating. When everything was new and every touch was an inferno of desire. Maybe that’s what makes me want to lean into his warmth. One last time.
I’m not the man I used to be. Pleasure is too tied to pain. To abuse. But one last time, I want to remember what it was to live. Before I do what I should have done years ago, and end my brother’s crimes.
It’s despicable and selfish of me. Putting my dirtied hands on a soul so pure will be my last crime.
I can’t take Julian down with me. I’m too rotten for him.
He deserves so much better than me. But as I watch him dangle the wedding band I placed on his finger what feels like a lifetime ago, I make a selfish choice.
If this is my last night on earth, I don’t want to waste it.
“I’m still wearing mine, too,” I say.
Julian frowns.