9. Kirill
CHAPTER NINE
KIRILL
I didn’t tell Yaroslav about me leaving Moscow.
He knew the score. Same way he knew my place in the Volkov organization—at the bottom of the ladder with all the other foot soldiers but a rung above the traitors. Traitors like Pavel Sergerov.
I tried to do as he said, though. I went back to London with a brand-new box in my head, one with a latch that I kept locked at all times. It made things strangely easy when Volkov sat me down to ask me about my trip.
“Artem passed your message along,” I said as if I hadn’t broken down in front of his son less than twenty-four hours earlier.
“Good,” Volkov replied.
And that was that.
Good meant that I was given more responsibilities.
Good meant that I was trusted.
Good did not mean that I was suddenly a member of the family. That was a lesson I’d already learned the hard way. I was not Kirill, and I would never be a Volkov. Maybe Petr would take pity on me since he’d forced me to kill the one person who had cared about my welfare, but there was no doubt in my mind that any mercy he extended my way would only go so far.
After all, I might live in their home, but I was still just a soldier.
Like a stray brought in from the cold, but only when it suited them. One that they paraded about like a prized bull, lauded when the situation called for it, and then abandoned on the front stoop as soon as their guests departed for the night. Always on the outside looking in with my hand pressed to the icy window, wondering if I’d ever be lucky enough to be invited inside to thaw out in front of the fire.
I wasn’t holding my breath.
Two weeks after I got back, Artem pressed a mobile into the palm of my hand, the look on his face suggesting that he’d smelled something rotten.
“What’s this for?” I asked.
“A fucking gift,” he snapped back before stalking off down the hall.
I turned it over in my hand, then scrubbed my thumb across the cracked screen. It wasn’t anything like the newer models I’d seen Volkov with, and there was a suspicious dent in one corner that said it’d made contact with a hard surface or two, but it was . . . Well, it was mine now, wasn’t it? Nothing had ever been just mine before, and I found myself clutching it to my chest like it was priceless.
When it vibrated a few hours later, I pulled it from my pocket to find a new notification winking at me. An unknown number. The text consisted of just two words, but they turned my world upside down:
It’s Yarik.