24. Sierra
TWENTY-FOUR
Sierra
Yuri and I stare at his phone. It’s still displaying the message Nikolai had sent.
Don’t come back.
We’re sitting on a small bench outside of the university’s tech building. There’s a small poster on the nearby bulletin board with a black and white picture of James’s face, asking anyone with information on his disappearance to come forward. The first time I’d seen the poster I’d felt a small thrill, mixed in with the panic.
Now, I’m more concerned about this single line Nikolai had texted.
“You think it’s about…” I motion vaguely in the direction of the bulletin board.
“No,” Yuri answers, still scowling. “He wouldn’t?—”
His phone buzzes, and a new text from Nikolai appears.
It’s safe. Come home.
I frown at it. It’s only been half an hour since the first one, and something just doesn’t feel right. I glance at Yuri, whose expression of confusion and wariness mirrors my own.
“Call him,” I suggest to Yuri.
Yuri bites his lip and shakes his head. “No. This isn’t how he’d do things.” He gets up and extends his hand to me. “We need to get out of here. If I am paranoid, that’s fine.”
I let him help me up and nod. “Better safe than sorry. But where should we go?”
Yuri’s phone buzzes again, this time with a call from somebody with a Cyrillic name. Stepan , I think it says.
He answers it warily. “Yes?” His eyes widen after he hears the responding voice. “Kotya! What happened?” he asks in Russian.
Before I can react, he continues to speak in rapid Russian that I can’t understand—but this time, I don’t particularly care even though the feeling of dread I’d felt is racing down my spine.
Yuri leads me in the direction of the parking lot, and his expression darkens as he’s on the phone.
Fuck.
We stop at his car and he motions for me to get inside. As soon as he starts the car, Yuri connects the call to the car’s speakers.
“I put you on speaker. We can meet you somewhere,” Yuri says in English. “The one restaurant, or?—”
“No,” Konstantin answers. “Nowhere my father would know. We need to lay low. But…” he curses. “He has all of our safe houses. Between him and Nikolai’s father, and the computers at the house…”
His father? I’m missing half the conversation, but it’s clear whatever’s going on, it’s dire.
“My laptop is with me,” I say, already rummaging around in my bag to pull it out. “Okay, I have a list of my father’s safe houses. These aren’t on that piece of shit laptop you gave me to work on, and the encrypted drive with that info is somewhere safe, right?”
“In Kotya’s safe,” Nikolai confirms, and his voice is strange.
“Okay, then…” I work through my own layers of passwords, and there’s something incredibly rewarding about being able to offer something. “My father’s office? Or one of his other safe houses.”
“His office,” Yuri says as he pulls onto the highway. “The one with the secret code on the back of the photo.”
I give him a confused look. “What? There was no…Oh. You’re joking.”
Konstantin curses. “No joking. Just get there. And figure out how we get Nikolai medical treatment.”
He hangs up on us.
I look at Yuri, putting the pieces together. My heart is racing from fear and adrenaline, and I stare down at my laptop screen as I realize I have no idea what else I’m going to be useful for.
No. That’s not true.
“I hacked into the cameras at the house,” I admit to Yuri with a small wince. “A while back. I can see what’s going on from my laptop once I get internet access.”
Yuri lets out a small laugh. “Of course you did. Okay. That will help. But first… we need a doctor. Nikolai took a bullet in his arm.”
“Fuck,” I say. “I helped patch Kyran up a few times, but never from a gunshot. Don’t you have someone on pay—” I shake my head. “Never mind. Kotya’s dad probably knows about any doctors on payroll.” I hate the thought of it, but I say reluctantly, “Silvano probably has a doctor he can recommend.”
Yuri’s hands tighten on the wheel. “Yeah. That’s… that’s a good idea.” He takes another steadying breath, then says. “Call your brother. On speaker.”
It’s not really a good idea, but I can’t think of any other option. I call Kyran, waiting impatiently. If he ignores my call again…
Thankfully, he picks it up on the second ring, and I put the phone onto speaker. “Sierra? What’s wrong?”
Before all of this, I’d have teased him about assuming something’s wrong. I don’t have time for that, though, and the dire situation doesn’t make me any less pissed at him. “We need a doctor,” I say without preamble. “Nikolai got shot, Kotya’s dad is in town, and things are really, really bad. I wouldn’t ask if I had any other options.”
“Kotya?” Kyran repeats.
I make a frustrated sound. “Konstantin. You know, Voronkov?”
“You—” Whatever he’s about to say is cut off as Silvano’s voice comes over the line.
“Of course we’ll help,” Silvano says in his irritatingly calm voice. “I know a doctor. Where should we send her to?”
“No,” I say. “Give me her contact info and I’ll reach out to her myself.”
There’s no fucking way I’m telling them where we’re going.
“Sierra, don’t get stubborn,” Kyran rumbles, irritation in his voice already. “If things are that bad, you need help. We—” He cuts himself off, and I hear him mumbling something I can’t make out to Silvano.
“Anything you need.” Silvano’s voice gets muffled, then my phone buzzes. “I’ve texted you her contact information. Tell her Silvano Cresci would consider certain debts paid if she does this.”
Great, more veiled information. But I’m not going to argue.
“Sierra, please, let me—” Kyran starts, but I hang up on him.
The doctor’s information is there, as promised, and I make a quick call to her. She sounds wary at first, but as soon as I mention Silvano’s name and message, she’s suddenly falling over herself to help.
When we arrive at my father’s old office, Konstantin, Nikolai, and one of the guards are already there. Nikolai is sitting in one of the office chairs, clutching his arm while staring up at the ceiling.
“Are you okay?” I ask Nikolai immediately.
He glances at me, and I see how pale his face is. “Never better. I couldn’t let you be the only one to get shot this year,” he jokes.
I roll my eyes at him. “A doctor is on her way,” I tell them. Before Konstantin asks, I supply, “It’s Silvano Cresci’s doctor. I didn’t know who else to call. They said they’ll help however we need, but… that’s up to you, obviously.”
Konstantin starts opening up drawers. “Did the feds leave anything behind? A gun, a knife, a fucking fork?”
“I’ve got two guns in the car,” Yuri says. “And my knives.”
The guard says something in Russian. All I catch is in the car , but I guess that means there’s a few more weapons.
“Not enough to take on my father,” Konstantin mutters. “We need more men, too. How many on the inside are still loyal?”
The guard looks between me and Konstantin, then answers, in halting English, “A few. But Voronkov… I mean, Igor and Roman Voronkov will question all. They killed at least five men that I saw.”
The situation sounds bleak. “Only a few?” I ask, hating that my voice is shaky. “Kotya…”
“It’ll be fine,” Nikolai says.
I set my laptop down on the desk, opening it up again and quickly connecting my phone to it as a hotspot. “I have access to the cameras at the house,” I tell Konstantin, shrugging. I don’t feel sorry about it at all, so I don’t apologize.
“We need weapons, and we need allies,” Konstantin mutters. “I would rather destroy it all than let my father and Roman have it.”
Whatever else he’s going to say, it’s interrupted by a knock at the door. Warily, the guard goes to it, peering outside before opening it for the doctor. She’s an older Latina woman with graying hair, and she’s dressed like she’s about to go jogging. But she’s also carrying a medical kit, and her expression is grim. “Where’s the patient?”
I direct her toward Nikolai. We’re all holding our breath as she undoes the gauze and reveals his wound.
“Am I going to die?” Nikolai asks, but there’s a slight smirk on his lips.
She looks like she wants to smack him—and I honestly wouldn’t blame her—but she says, “Let me wash my hands and get gloves on, then I’ll have a look. How much blood have you lost?”
His shirt looks saturated with it, but I have no idea how to judge.
“I don’t think any more than they’d take at a blood bank,” Nikolai says.
I eye him doubtfully, but I don’t know anything about gunshot wounds—not beyond how much they fucking hurt, anyway.
I pull up the cameras at the house, scanning over them as I leave the doctor to deal with Nikolai and his wound. “Okay, so… Wow. He brought a lot of men, didn’t he?”
“He takes no chances,” Konstantin answers. He steps up behind me to look at the laptop. “Some are my men. But I don’t know who is being smart like Stepan and who is simply opportunistic.”
“Great,” I mutter. “Okay. What first?” I’m proud of myself for steadying my voice.
Konstantin runs a hand through his beard. “We figure out our current assets. Allies, weapons, money. If we can gather a large enough force…”
A knock on the door interrupts us. We all turn to it, tensing up.
Yuri puts his finger to his lips and sneaks over to the window. He pries the blinds apart, then grimaces. “It’s Cresci,” he whispers.
I let out an exasperated huff. “For fuck’s sake,” I mutter. “Of course it is.” But I’m not stupid enough to think it would be a good idea to turn away the help, no matter how unwelcome the source of it is.
I look to Konstantin, though, because in the end, the call is his to make.
Nikolai winces, then says, “You sold us out, doc?”
She shrugs. “He called and asked where I was going. I wasn’t going to refuse to answer.”
The knocking starts again, and this time Kyran shouts, “Sierra! Open up!”
Konstantin growls and goes to the door, pulling it open. “You want to tell everybody we are here?”
“He’s such a caveman sometimes,” I mumble, but I stop talking as Silvano and Kyran walk in with two men I don’t recognize in tow. They’re both large, one of them even rivaling Kyran in size. He’s Middle Eastern, with a thick, black beard, as well as a nasty scowl. The other man is more put together, but he’d still be intimidating if I wasn’t already surrounded by mafia men.
Silvano looks around the room. “Now, why on earth did William Winters rent this little shack?”
Kyran rubs the back of his neck. “Because…” he stops himself and eyes Konstantin. “Because it was close to, y’know. The warehouses.”
For some reason, that makes Silvano pale. “Ah, yes.” He meets my gaze and smiles at me. “The old slaughterhouse, a few miles down the road.”
A slaughterhouse.
It finally clicks into place. “Of fucking course,” I mutter. “ That’s why we’re way out here.” I shake my head. I should’ve done a better job researching the buildings nearby. “How far is it? What other buildings are nearby? Have you done a sweep since Pa died?” I ask Silvano, pulling up a map of the area.
“No,” Kyran growls. “Leave that place alone.” He glances at the two men they’d brought. “Knives, Maddox, this is my sister Sierra. And the others…”
Everybody does a cursory introduction, and in the course of things all the Russians end up on one side while Silvano and Kyran are on the other side of the room.
I’m with Konstantin, Yuri, and Nikolai.
I look through all the information I’ve gathered, everything I know about my father’s operations. I pause, and carefully ask, “Did you bring Pa’s phone, Kyran?”
Kyran glares at me. “You don’t need that.”
“That’s not what I asked,” I tell him.
He’s not used to me snapping at him, especially like this, and he looks briefly taken aback before he sighs. “Yeah, I brought it. But if I give it to you, Sierra, you’ve got to finish this and get out. You can’t…” His expression softens, and he takes a step toward me. “You can’t be in the middle of shit like this.”
“I’m not a baby,” I shoot back. “And you don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t be in the middle of. This is my life, all right? I chose this over… over…”
Whatever I’d had before.
Konstantin wraps his arm around me from behind. “She is not yours,” he says fiercely. “Sierrochka is clever. She knows what she’s doing.”
Yuri steps closer too. “We’ll protect her.”
Kyran scowls at the two of them. “Yeah. You’ve done a great job of protecting her so far,” he snaps, his eyes going to where the brand on my chest is covered. We all know what’s there, though—just like we know there’s a bullet wound not too far from it.
I shift uncomfortably, but Konstantin squeezes me more tightly against him. “Okay. We don’t have time for this,” I say, my gaze going to Silvano. If anyone can rein my brother in, I guess it’s him.
“We don’t,” Silvano agrees. He squeezes Kyran’s shoulder. “Give her the phone. We’ll figure out where to go from there.”
“Thank you,” I tell Silvano.
I might hate him, but this is the quickest path through this.
Kyran’s cheeks are flushed with anger, but as anticipated, he doesn’t argue.
If it wasn’t what I needed right now, I’d probably call him out on being Silvano’s bitch, but I need him to fall into line.
Kyran stalks forward, handing me the phone, and I take it from him.
“Okay,” I say, taking a steadying breath. “I need some time.” I grab one of the few chairs left in the room and sit down properly at the desk.
The others confer behind me, but my entire focus is on the phone and the computer as I finally put the rest of the pieces into place. My father really had been paranoid, but he hadn’t expected anyone to have access to both his files and his phone.
He definitely hadn’t expected it to be me.
A wave of sadness washes over me, and I can’t help but think of the last time I’d seen him. I catch myself; there hasn’t been time to accept what happened, let alone mourn, but that will have to wait, too.
So much is being pushed aside that I’m not sure how long I can keep that going before it all collapses onto me.
I don’t have time to think about that, either.
I use his phone to get past the two-factor authentication and passwords that had been on my father’s files. Along with the files I’d stolen from Don Marino, I’m able to see patterns I wasn’t before. If ever I had a doubt that the two of them had been working together…
I inhale sharply when I find detailed trade networks. Not only the guns, but the drugs, too. Don Marino had a whole operation for selling stolen identities, even, and that’s something to look into later .
I focus on the guns. Even if we can’t sell them, we can use them.
That missing cache that I’d been searching for all these weeks is within grasp.
“There’s a stash at the old slaughterhouse,” I whisper. “In a…” I stare at the blueprints and compare them with my father’s notes. “A basement. They’re somewhere in the basement.”
Kyran grunts. “That’s wrong. The slaughterhouse doesn’t have a basement.”
“The blueprints say otherwise,” I retort. “Just because you couldn’t find it doesn’t mean it’s not there.” I have a headache, but it’s offset by the triumph I feel at finally having solved this puzzle. “So I guess we go there, find them, then…” I glance at Konstantin. “Then what? We have to figure out what to do about your dad.”
“We call allies.” Konstantin turns to Kyran and Silvano. “Will you fight with us?”
Kyran glares at him. “Why should we? Seriously? If we let you fall, I get my sister back. Because if you care about her, you’ll send her to me and Silvano instead of letting her get caught up in this mess.”
“I’m not some pretty little princess to be sent away at the first sign of danger,” I tell Kyran hotly.
Silvano coughs into his hand. “Last I checked, I was still the head of the organization, Kyran.”
“And Kyran’s your bitch,” I mutter bitterly.
I didn’t really expect him to hear me, but from the way he turns his glower on me, he obviously did. I shrug, unrepentant.
“So? Mr. head-of-the-organization, what will you do?” Yuri asks Silvano. “We are not giving Sierra to you.”
Silvano nods, smiling sadly. “I know. So I agree to working together, if Sierra will allow it.”
No .
I stare at his fake nice expression, the overly elegant clothes, the air of being above it all, and I can imagine sawing his limbs off the way we’d done to James. We could do it, right here. There’s four of them, sure, but Kyran wouldn’t touch me—hell, none of them would touch me. If I get my hands on a gun, I could blow Silvano’s brains out and finally get revenge for how he’d utterly destroyed my family.
My hands clench. Even if they don’t touch me, they’ll kill Konstantin, Yuri, and Nikolai. Any hope of retaking Konstantin’s empire will go down the drain even if we manage to survive.
“Only if you rally more people,” I say through gritted teeth. “You’ve got contacts.”
Silvano nods. “I do. Although I suspect many of them are the same as you have.” He walks over to the nearest chair and sits down. “I can supply a few men of my own, too. How many do we need?”
“At least thirty,” Konstantin says immediately. “My father will have brought many men from Russia, and there are the defectors from my crew as well.”
Yuri nods. “The mansion is well protected, but we know it better than he does. On the other hand…”
“They have inside men,” Nikolai mutters. “Okay. Weapons, allies. Let’s—” He winces when the doctor grabs his arm.
“You are staying put,” she says. “And I’m leaving, because I don’t need to hear more of this.”
“Two teams,” Silvano says. “Kyran, Sierra, and Yuri will go to the slaughterhouse. Knives, you can go with them too. Maddox, Konstantin, Nikolai and I will start calling around.”
One of the men who had come with them nods. “Got it.”
“Sierra doesn’t—” Kyran starts, but he sighs, seeming to realize at long last that he’s not going to win this argument.
“Yes,” I say firmly. “I do need to.”
One way or another, I have to see this through.