Chapter 18
18
DARYA
R oman doesn’t let go of my hand for the rest of the drive to the lab. I think we both need the physical reassurance. After my father’s bombshell, and with the gaping hole left by the girls’ absence, I want only to be as close to Roman as I can be. Going by the way his large hand covers my own, he feels the same way.
The lab comes into view as we crest a hill. It’s a gleaming white building of stone and glass, sleek and low against the mountain before us. I recognize it by the word HALE written in large silver letters across the wall.
“Wow.” I’m accustomed to the impressive Hale Property office building in central Malaga, but this is something different again.
Roman’s mouth curls in a smile I can’t quite read. “That’s just the icing on the cake. Wait until you see what lies underneath it.”
“Underground, you mean?”
When he nods I shake my head, repressing a wicked urge to laugh. He glances at me. “What?”
“I was just thinking that building bunkers underground must be in the Borovsky genes.”
Roman gives a surprised snort of laughter. “We’re joking about this now?”
“You just discovered your mother is alive. I just found out my father’s been lying to me my entire life. Our children are missing, and”— I’m pregnant with your baby— “we just had sex on the hood of your car in broad daylight. I think we’re both badly in need of as much humor as we can manage, don’t you?” I meet his eyes, grateful he doesn’t seem to have noticed the slight halt in the middle of my sentence.
“ Our children .” He squeezes my hand gently. “It’s nice to hear you call them that.”
“I know I’m not their mother, Roman. I’m not trying to replace anyone.”
“You’re more of a mother to the children than their own has ever been.” His eyes burn fiercely, mouth tightening. “I just wish—” He clamps his mouth shut. His hand grips mine tightly enough to cut off the blood supply.
“This isn’t your fault, Roman,” I say quietly. “It isn’t anyone’s fault except Vilnus Orlov’s. He’s the one who started all of this. He betrayed my father and killed yours, all because he wants whatever is inside that vault.”
He frowns as he glances at me. “What do you mean, whatever is inside it? Haven’t you ever seen what’s inside?”
“No.” I shake my head, and he huffs in surprise. “I never needed to. I knew there was a fortune in there. People talked about it all the time—or rather, whispered—even when I was in hearing distance. I know there are some Fabergé pieces in the vault, and jewelry that came out of imperial Russia. My earrings, for example. And once, when I was very young, my father showed us a Fabergé egg that his father left him. He explained that there is always a trick mechanism built inside the eggs. That one had a jeweled cocoon. When Papa pushed a button, the cocoon opened and a filigree gold butterfly emerged.”
Those days seem so long ago now. Another life. I glance at Roman. “From what you said, your father hid your key to the vault inside one of those eggs. Which reminds me,” I say as he turns up the long driveway leading to the Hale building. “How did you know how to get into the safety deposit box?”
“My father tattooed the code for it on the sole of my foot, over a year after my mother left. He made me memorize the name and address of the bank. I guess my mother must have told him where she hid it, despite his instructions. I know my father was getting increasingly paranoid. I think he knew his life was in danger.” Roman shakes his head. “He said that if anything should happen to him, I should go to the bank and that my mother would find me. He also warned me not to go there unless I was absolutely certain I wasn’t being followed.” He glances at me. “I had no way of getting there at first. Later, I wanted to be sure nobody was following me. I didn’t go until long after I’d left Miami, when I had a passport with the name Roman Stevanovsky. I hoped... I thought that perhaps my mother would magically appear when I opened the box. She didn’t, of course.”
His lips tighten. I squeeze his hand, and he forces a smile as he pulls into the underground garage. “Anyway. I used the Fabergé egg inside the box as collateral for a loan. Mikhail and I used some of the loan to build Hale. But more importantly, I used it to build what you’re about to see.” He gets out of the car and comes around to my door, helping me out. Expecting him to keep moving, I’m surprised when he stands still, holding both of my hands in his.
“The place I’m about to take you is what you’ve heard Mickey and I call ‘the lab.’ It’s not the software development center in the building above. That’s just for show, something to justify what lies below it, if anyone starts taking too much interest in us.”
I look at him curiously. “What does lie below it?”
He holds my eyes, his face entirely serious. “A project so secretive only a few dozen people know about it, including an elite board made up entirely of Russian businessmen—bratva, like us. A project I’ve killed to protect and paid countless millions to develop.” He takes a deep breath. “Under normal circumstances I would never involve you in this. But I don’t know how to bring you into the search for the children without bringing you here. And after hearing your father today...” He pauses as my hands grip his convulsively. “I guess I understand how painful it’s been to discover your father didn’t trust you,” he says quietly. “I saw your surprise earlier when I told you that I understood Sergei. What I meant is that I understand his desire to protect you, to shield you from anything that might possibly place you in danger.”
I tense instinctively, and Roman half smiles.
“Then I realized how damaging that secrecy has been. You were right in what you said to him. After all those years of hardship, all you endured to keep both of you alive, you deserve much better than being lied to.”
He interlinks his fingers with mine, drawing me against his body. “I don’t like the idea of involving you in business,” he says roughly. “In fact, I fucking hate it.” His mouth twitches at the corners, although the dark humor doesn’t reach his eyes. “But this is about the children. I want you here, beside me. I need you here, Darya. And whether it kills me to admit it or not, we need your help.” He gives me a wry smile. “Don’t ever fucking remind me I said that.”
I stand on tiptoes and touch my lips to his. “Show me this project of yours.”
“This is incredible.” I stare around at the vast expanse of the Mercura server center from the fishbowl window of the operations room, trying to take it all in.
When we first got here, Roman tried to steer me straight into a private room, but after I saw Mickey inside this one, there was no chance that was happening. “And you’re just about to launch this cryptocurrency? Mac—Mer—”
“Mercura. We were.” Roman might be six and a half feet of solid criminal muscle, but he seems strangely at home here. For all that he snaps at the motley crew of employees he refers to as tech heads, it’s clear how much they admire him. Hearing my fierce man spout digital terms I don’t even begin to understand, rapping out orders and moving from one screen to another, is a revelation. The scope of his vision is breathtaking, so far beyond anything I could have imagined as to verge on the genius. I’m awestruck by what he’s attempting and by what he’s already achieved. I feel like I knew only a fraction of him before now.
If I’m honest, it’s seriously hot.
“Now everything is on hold, obviously.” Roman’s voice drags me back from the gutter, though when he sees the flush on my cheeks, his lips curl in a knowing smile.
“I see.” I spin around, avoiding his scrutiny and focusing on Mickey. “And you!” I point an accusing finger at him, and he grins back at me. It’s the first time I’ve seen him even remotely lighthearted since we met in Granada. “ This is what you’ve been working on all these months?”
“Yup.” Mickey tilts his head at Roman. “It’s his fault. He’s a really bad influence, Darya. You should probably take him in hand.”
Oh, I already have.
What is wrong with me today? I swallow. I need to get a grip on myself and stop thinking about what just happened on the hood of Roman’s Maybach, or the fact that he still has my panties balled up in the pocket of his suit pants.
“Fuck off.” Roman throws one of Pavel’s stress balls at Mickey’s head, then shoots me an apologetic glance. “Sorry.” He’s clearly not used to moderating his language in here.
I bite back a smile. “I think I’ll cope.” My gaze shifts to the screens in front of Mickey, and my insides shift uncomfortably, all thought of lighthearted banter or car sex driven instantly from my mind.
A bank of square video windows shows my family’s Coconut Grove compound from different perspectives.
It’s the first time I’ve seen the inside of my childhood home since I ran. The images hit me in a bittersweet rush of emotion.
The best memories of my childhood took place running through those marble corridors.
The worst stuff of my nightmares happened in the rooms below them.
“Mickey.” I fight for an even tone. “Can I look through the camera feeds?”
“Of course.” He moves to make room for me, and Roman rolls a chair into place so I can sit beside him. The other tech kids gather around, shooting me surreptitious glances. Since Roman explained that most of them have been staring nonstop at my photograph for the past few days, I guess I can understand the fascination of seeing me in the flesh.
Roman clearly doesn’t appreciate their interest, however. He narrows his eyes at one of the more avid starers, and the poor kid scurries back to his desk like the demons from hell are behind him, burying his head in his laptop. Roman glares at his red neck hard enough to bore holes in it, then eyeballs the rest of the room with a death stare savage enough to make his meaning perfectly clear. The tech kids, clearly utterly terrified, all turn hurriedly back to their screens. I suppress an extremely inappropriate urge to laugh.
I move the mouse, scrolling through the camera feeds from the different rooms, breathing deeply to calm the sudden rush of emotion that accompanies certain images.
There’s my bedroom, untouched since the day I left it. I zoom in to the door. The camera feed is crystal sharp, clear enough to see every mark in the wood.
“What’s that?” Mickey points to a dark hole in the door.
“It’s where the door handle was. Vilnus removed it right after the coup. He... didn’t like it when Alexei or I closed our doors.”
“That was your bedroom?” Roman’s voice is chilling.
I nod. When I glance sideways, his hands are clenched into hard fists. The tech kids exchange nervous glances. I scroll on hastily, slightly surprised at how little the compound has changed, even down to the places the guards are stationed. Looking at it through the video feed is like taking a museum tour, peering in at a place frozen in time. It’s unsettling.
I realize, with a faint sense of surprise, that I don’t want to go back there. Somehow I always thought that when we finally defeated the Orlovs—something I never allowed myself to doubt would happen—I would go back to the compound, pick up the reins of my old life. I never thought much past that, it’s true. But looking at the lush gardens and vast marble spaces now, empty but for the familiar guards stationed at every corner, I suddenly realize I don’t ever want to live that life again. The girl who once tried to slam her bedroom door in Vilnus’s face, who changed her clothes beneath the bed covers to avoid the camera’s ever-present eye, who obediently wore the dresses he laid out for her when he decided to parade her for the paparazzi—that girl died somewhere on the long trek to Argentina. I don’t want to be her again. I’ve come too far, survived too much.
When I think of home now, I think of Roman’s penthouse. Of the children’s apartment. Of the finca in the mountains, which I suddenly miss with a fierce ache.
I don’t miss Miami. Whatever happens after this, that life is over for me.
None of the cameras show any faces I know. Not Alexei’s or Orlov’s or Inger’s. There’s no sign of the girls anywhere.
Then again , I think, there wouldn’t be. Vilnus would never keep them in the upper rooms, where they might be easily taken in an attack.
Even so, the compound seems remarkably lightly guarded. Even before my family went to war, we had more security watching us than this.
“How do I switch to the underground feed?”
“There’s nothing there.” Mickey is clearly unimpressed by this development. He hits a key. “The rooms are bare, except for when the guards do a security pass every half hour.”
“We think Orlov is holding the girls somewhere else, or hiding them, just as you said he would.” Roman’s voice is tense. “But we have no idea where.”
I flick through the different cameras again, this time more slowly. I halt the camera on one point and zoom in, my heart sticking in my chest.
“What is it?” Mickey’s watching me.
“This isn’t right.” I point at what used to be Vilnus’s torture room. I remember every dip in the concrete floor, every old mark on the walls. I spent so many hours face down in that room I can remember the cold, musty stench of it even now. “The darkened glass on the far wall. See that crack in it?” I zoom in further, tracing my finger down the hairline fracture, right at the edge of the glass. It’s barely visible, only clear on a tight zoom. “That happened when Vilnus lost his temper one day. He threw a knife at the window.”
“Tell me how to get into the vault, and all this will stop, Darya...”
I suppress a shudder at the echo of memory. “That crack was fixed a few months later. This is an old feed.”
I turn to find Roman staring at the screen, his face hard. “You’re certain?”
I nod. “I... spent a lot of time looking at that window.”
His knuckles tighten on my chair back, hard enough to bend the plastic. The room is silent, every eye warily watching Roman.
Only Mickey seems unperturbed. He hits a few keys, frowning. “If there was another feed, I would have found it. This is it.”
“Ha.” The collective eyes in the room all swing to me. “Can I have a go?”
He raises a skeptical brow. “Do you have some inner tech genius you’ve been keeping under wraps?”
“Not me.” I smile faintly. “But my brother does. His best friend, to be exact.”
“Lars Andersson.” Mickey breathes the name with an almost religious reverence, and a ripple of interest travels through the room.
I glance around curiously. “You guys know him?”
“ Everyone knows him.” He throws Roman a rather challenging look. “We’ve been playing a bit of online hide-and-seek with him these past few weeks.”
By the way Roman is glaring at Mickey, I suspect this is one part of the story he’d rather have kept to himself. “We think Lars might be working with your brother,” he says tersely. “But we’re not sure how.”
“Well, I’m not sure either, but if you’ve found a connection between them, then I can almost guarantee they’re working together. Lars and Alexei have been best friends from the day they met at some gaming convention when Alexei was eight. Alexei pestered our father to let him go to boarding school in London just so they could room together.”
I half smile, remembering the two boys at the dining table, spouting digital terms until my father roared at them both to get outside and kick a ball, for God’s sake.
“The summer before... everything happened, Lars and Alexei were trying to build some computer game together. My parents were worried about how much screen time the two were having, so they put a limit on the amount of hours the boys were allowed to work in Alexei’s room.”
The mutinous muttering from the tech kids gives me a fair idea of their collective opinion on that particular ruling.
“Well, obviously they didn’t like being told what to do. So Lars rigged up a kill switch on the camera feed for the underground bunker and replaced it with a looped video.” I grin around at the captive faces. “Alexei and Lars spent the rest of that summer hunkered down in one of the underground rooms, geeking out to their heart’s content. Sorry,” I say, realizing that the term geek is probably a bit undiplomatic in present company. But going by the avid expressions of the tech kids, any comparison to their hero is clearly a good thing. “Anyway, my father discovered their secret at the end of the summer. He told the boys that if they were so clever, they could damned well use their skills for something useful. He got them to hack all the security camera feeds so he knew where the weaknesses were. Then he got them to design a new system and set up kill switches and alternate feeds on all of them. It was a good idea. After the Orlovs’ coup, Alexei and I took advantage of it to have conversations in private. Until Vilnus caught us trying to escape with Papa.” I can’t help an involuntary shiver. “Papa was still unable to move or talk then. Alexei rigged the cameras, and we managed to get Papa out of his hospital bed. We took one of the hidden tunnels out beyond the walls to the clearing behind the compound, but Vilnus caught us before we’d even made it to the tree line.”
“Do you know what happens to little Russian blyats who think they can fly away? Do you?” Vilnus’s scarred, brutal face is only inches from mine. He hits my cheek, hard, with his open palm. “They have their wings cut off.”
My smile fades, the scars on my shoulder tingling at the memory of his knife on my flesh.
The tech kids shift uncomfortably. I don’t have to look at Roman to know how deadly his expression must be, from the way they’re all avoiding looking at him.
“Anyway.” I strive for a lighter tone. “After that, Vilnus made Alexei give him access to the feeds. He took away anything we could use to access the internet: phones, tablets, laptops. Fortunately, Alexei managed to steal a phone and message Lars, who then hacked the system from Sweden. He sent Alexei a code that we could use to mask the feed to all the underground rooms, including Papa’s hospital bed.” I lift a shoulder. “It didn’t help, really. The Orlovs found our only phone, and Alexei couldn’t contact Lars for updates. But going by what you’ve told me, Alexei and Lars are definitely back in contact. Alexei knows we’ll be looking through the feeds. If he’s trying to help us, his code might still work.”
I pretend not to see the cynical look that passes between Roman and Pavel. I know they believe it’s wishful thinking to hope Alexei actually has good intentions.
I’m not going to lie. After everything that’s happened with Papa, I’m worried it’s wishful thinking, too.
I pull the keyboard closer, my heart tripping like I’ve run a marathon as I enter the code.
For a terrible moment the screens go blank.
Oh, God. I’ve ruined all Mickey’s hard work.
And Alexei really is working with the Orlovs.
I close my eyes.
Then Roman’s hand grips my shoulder so hard it makes me wince. “Look,” he says hoarsely.
I open my eyes, and there they are. Ofelia and Masha, in crystal clear, devastating real time.
The tech kids whoop and cheer, but I don’t hear them. I’m frozen in my chair, staring at Ofelia and Masha’s white, terrified faces.
Worse, I’m staring at a vivid, savage line marking the side of Ofelia’s face. At her torn dress—and the dark purple blood stains all over it.
Roman’s fingers are digging like pincers into my shoulder. The room has fallen entirely silent, but for the whirring of machinery. I don’t need to look around to know that everyone is covertly watching Roman.
I reach up and cover his hand with my own. His is cold and iron hard, and terribly, frighteningly still. I try to communicate comfort, to head off the dangerous rage emanating from his every pore, but I’m struggling to contain my own.
The feed might have been old, but that fucking room is exactly the same as I remember it.
The stillness of the air, the horrible deathly fear that permeates the very walls. The light gleaming from the wall of darkened glass feels as evil and insidious as I remember it.
I’m still staring at Ofelia when Dimitry whistles behind me, finally breaking the terrible silence. “Jesus. There’s a fucking army down there.”
For the first time, I drag my eyes away from the girls and take in the horde of security patrolling the corridors.
“He’s got every inch of the place covered, not to mention booby-trapped.” Roman’s voice is hoarse, barely controlled, his knuckles white on the chair back beside my face. “We’d have walked into a fucking death trap without this feed. Mickey, get the view on the door outside the girls’ room.”
I’m hardly breathing, my stomach churning. I know that Roman is dealing with the horrendous sight of Ofelia by focusing on logistics.
I also know he’s close to losing it completely.
“Fuck.” Dimitry hisses an intake of breath and shoots Roman a look that does nothing to settle my stomach. “That room is wired to blow. There’s no way we’re getting in there by force without putting the girls in serious danger.”
“We’ll find a fucking way.” Roman’s voice is cold and deadly. “Mickey—give me a clear feed on the guard in that corner.” His fingers touch my shoulder. “Maybe you should get a coffee, Darya.”
I shake his hand off, my eyes locked to the screen. “Not a fucking chance.”
I know why he wants a clear feed.
I already know what it’s going to show.
And I won’t look away.
Stationed directly inside the girls’ door, rifle across his chest and sparrow tattoo glaringly visible on his hand, is my brother.