Chapter 22
22
ROMAN
I turn to face the team in the secure room at the lab, my expression daring any man there to comment on my conversation with Darya.
They don’t.
Smart.
I hated leaving her this morning, before we’d even had a chance to talk, let alone anything else. And I need the anything else like air right now.
But she’s exhausted, bone weary from the way she’s been sleeping, and I can’t afford to lose a minute, even if that means leaving her naked body sprawled across my bed like a goddamn fantasy.
I pull my mind back to the room with an effort. I’m sitting in the secure room with Mak, Dimitry, Pavel, and Mickey.
Mickey was sitting outside the penthouse door when I opened it this morning, already at work on his laptop. No chance he was letting me drive away from the house without him, just like I never had a hope of coming into this meeting without him sitting in.
“Darya doesn’t know anything about the house in the Everglades,” I tell them.
Mickey scowls. “Who gives a fuck about the house in the Everglades? My sisters aren’t there. They’re in the compound.” He turns his laptop around accusingly. I wish I could rip it out of his hands. I’m pretty sure he spent all night in bed staring at the camera feeds, just so he could watch over his sisters. His eyes are bloodshot, his face pale and drawn. I feel like every day that passes adds a year to the boy he was only months ago.
“An operation is only as good as the intelligence behind it.” Mak addresses Mickey directly. Despite his courtesy, there’s a quiet reprimand in his voice that makes Mickey color slightly. Mak has only been in the room for a matter of minutes, but already it seems he might be the only person beside Pavel, Dimitry, and me to whom Mickey might actually listen.
It isn’t just Mak’s tall, rangy frame and clear military skill that lends him such an instant air of authority, but the calm, measured way he analyzes every piece of information and the speed with which he is able to assimilate it.
“The fact that we can’t locate that house is a concern,” he says now, “but I do have an idea.” He turns to Pavel. “See what you and Mickey can find on a Miami business called Fedorov Industries.”
Pavel, getting the hint, stands up and nods to Mickey, who of course looks at me.
“I’ll tell you everything we talk about, I promise.” I don’t know how many times he’s made me say it, the little prick.
Mickey gives me a hard glare to make sure I get the message, then leaves.
Mak raises a sardonic eyebrow. “You sure the two of you aren’t related?”
Dimitry almost chokes on his coffee.
“Fuck off.” I lean on the table. “What is Fedorov Industries?”
“It’s not so much what,” Mak says, “but rather who. I told you on the phone that there are things about Orlov you should know.”
I nod. Another thing I like about Mak is that he doesn’t fuck around when he has something to say.
“The Fedorovs were one of the early bratva clans in Europe. Came straight out of the Russian gulags, back in the fifties. Brutal fuckers. They set up camp in Paris and for decades ran everything there from girls to gambling. Even the local criminals didn’t mess with them, not after the bosses of three Paris families were found without their heads in one of their own bars.”
“Nice.” Dimitry refills his coffee and casually bites into an éclair.
Mak shakes his head. “You lot are just as twisted as any of my army boys. Anyway.” He turns back to me. “The Fedorovs weren’t just interested in owning the game. They were also dedicated to reclaiming all the treasures that had been smuggled out of imperial Russia by the aristocratic exiles during the revolution. Most of the pieces had been traded years ago. In the years after the revolution, Europe was awash with what is now seen as priceless art: Fabergé eggs, elaborate jewelry. Back in the early years, there was so much of it on the black market that the pieces were virtually worthless. People were trading Fabergé necklaces just for enough food to feed their families.”
I nod impatiently. “We don’t need a Russian history lesson, Mak. My father was a jeweler and a safe maker. I know all this.”
“It matters,” he says calmly. “Trust me. The Fedorovs didn’t give a fuck about history or the Russian aristocrats clinging to a faded past. They were a new generation, with no respect for the old traditions. By the time they ran Paris, it was forty years after the revolution. The imperial treasures hadn’t just regained their value—they’d become prizes sought by every collector in the world. The Fedorovs were ruthless in tracking them down, and they weren’t shy about the tactics they used to acquire what they wanted. They burned jewelry shops, robbed houses, and tortured families for information. Eventually their search led them to two old friends, one a jeweler and the other an art dealer. The two men were rumored to have escaped Russia with a stolen fortune: the Naryshkin treasure.”
Dimitry and I exchange a look. “Okay,” I say. “You’ve got my attention now.”
“The Fedorovs went in with their usual brutality. When they didn’t get the results they wanted, they tortured the men’s families. Killed them, in the end. Wives, children—all of them, brutally tortured to death. Then the Fedorovs locked the bodies inside the men’s businesses and set the buildings on fire. There was nothing left of their families but ash.
“It wasn’t the first time they’d pulled this trick. It was an effective deterrent for anyone else who might feel inclined to hold out on them.
“Only this time, the Fedorovs had picked on the wrong two men.
“Why the men escaped death that night, nobody knows. But the hell they unleashed after the death of their families is still whispered about in some circles today. These men didn’t just go to war, Roman. They went on a rampage that was nothing short of a bloodbath.
“They didn’t just take revenge on the Fedorovs.
“They annihilated them.
“And they didn’t just take back what had been stolen from their own shops. They also reclaimed every last valuable piece the Fedorovs had acquired from impoverished Russians. A literal fortune. And they did it all without anyone knowing their real names. They were like ghosts, whispered about but never named. People were either too scared or too admiring to risk pissing them off. They were known simply in Russian as Golova , the Head, and Ruki , the Hands. People said the Head did the killing and the Hands did the stealing.
“By the time the war was done, the Fedorov clan was destroyed. The Head and the Hands didn’t try to take over the Fedorov organization. They simply annihilated it, then vanished, seemingly into thin air.
“Along with a reputed fortune, of course.
“One of the Fedorov clan killed during that war, along with two of his sons, was a man named Victor Orlov.”
Oh, shit.
“And let me guess,” I say slowly. “Victor had a son who survived. Named Vilnus.”
Mak nods. “Yup. There were also a few surviving Fedorovs and Orlovs. People who’d been smart enough to run when the blood began to flow. Most of them moved to the United States. Russian clans are loyal, you know that as well as I do. One of them must have paid Vilnus Orlov’s fare, because some years later, he turned up in Miami.”
I frown. “How the fuck did he wind up allied to Petrovsky, with that kind of past?”
His mouth twitches. “I take it you are aware that Sergei Petrovsky is indeed the legendary Head of my story?”
If there’s one thing I know about Mak, it’s that his intelligence is second to none. “Let’s not fuck about, Mak. You know who I am. You know who Petrovsky is. You probably know the fucking brand of toilet paper Putin uses. So just get on with it, da? ”
He tilts his head to one side, a smile lurking at the corner of his mouth. “You do take all the fun out of life, Roman. But out of courtesy for your situation, I’ll answer.
“Orlov, or whoever paid his fare and was pulling his strings, had done his homework. He knew who Petrovsky really was, knew about the Naryshkin legacy. By that time, Petrovsky had built himself a fearsome reputation in Miami. He was known for being old-school: honor, tradition. The Head might have been a ruthless fuck, but he played by the rules of an earlier, more honorable time.
“So Orlov didn’t lie to him or pretend to be anyone other than who he was. He came to Petrovsky with his hat in his hand, claiming the Fedorovs had disowned him back in Paris despite his father dying for them. He said that they’d left his sisters to be raped and killed, and him to starve. He claimed that he and the Orlovs were in a blood feud with the remaining members of the Fedorov clan. He asked Petrovsky for his help in avenging his family.”
Dimitry rocks back in his chair and gives a low whistle. “Jesus. Smart.”
“It worked.” Mak shrugs. “Petrovsky helped Vilnus take his revenge, though he was careful to make sure it was Vilnus who pulled every trigger. Rumor has it that Orlov even killed Fedorov women and children, something Petrovsky never approved, but which he probably took as proof of the depth of Orlov’s rage. By the time it was done, I guess Petrovsky thought that Orlov had proved his loyalty.”
“Only Orlov was just biding his time,” I say softly, my hands clenched on the tabletop. “The slimy fucker used Petrovsky’s support to eliminate his competition for him.”
Mak points a finger at me. “Exactly.”
I sit for a moment, mulling this all over. “So tell me why you have Pavel and Mickey looking up Fedorovs, if they’re supposedly all dead?”
“Ah.” Mak’s twisted smile makes another brief appearance. “Well, it seems Vilnus wasn’t quite the outcast he claimed. For several years before he turned up on Petrovsky’s doorstep as a poor lonely orphan, he had in fact attended an elite boarding school in New York. Under an assumed name, of course.” He takes a photograph out of the manila folder on the table in front of him and slides it across to me. An adolescent Vilnus Orlov stares back at me from a school photo taken in the late sixties.
Red-hot rage seizes every cell of my body. I don’t trust myself to pick the photograph up; I’m certain I’d tear it to pieces.
“His school fees were paid by one Andras Peretz, supposedly a Jewish refugee from Poland.” Mak takes another photograph out of the folder. The face on it sends shivers down my spine, though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it before. It’s the man’s eyes. I’ve seen eyes like that before, on men who have killed too much. Dead, entirely devoid of any kind of emotion. The man staring back at me is no refugee. He’s a stone-cold killer.
“Andras Peretz disappeared about six years ago. Nothing dramatic, he just faded from sight. Around the same time, Vilnus Orlov registered a business name: Fedorov Industries.” Mak looks at his watch. “And any moment now, we’re about to find out what Andras Peretz is calling himself these days.”
He just finishes speaking when Mickey bursts back in the door, waving his laptop excitedly. Mak sits back in his chair, lacing his hands behind his head with an air of quiet satisfaction.
Smug bastard.
“Surely you could have done this yourself,” I mutter. “Since you’re fucking encyclopedic about the rest of it.”
“Why should I do all the work?” He arches a lazy eyebrow. “It’s your shit show.”
Dimitry explodes again, sending éclair across the table. I glare at them both, but neither look in the least repentant.
I suppress the urge to smile. Despite the shit storm circumstances, it’s good to work with Mak again.
“Fedorov Industries.” Mickey is stammering in his haste to get his words out. “The registered CEO is a man named Ilyan Fedorov. I had to trawl the dark web to get a picture, but this is his company ID.” The same dead eyes of the man who recently called himself Andras Peretz stare back at me from the plastic card on the screen. “And Ilyan doesn’t just own a house in the Everglades. He owns an entire fucking compound—or rather, his company does.” He clicks, and another image appears, an enormous house with a long driveway set just back from the swamp.
“Ah. Ilyan.” Mak reaches into the manila folder and withdraws an old newspaper cutting, yellow and faded. “I did suspect as much.”
The cutting he hands me is a French article about two cases of suspected arson: fires in a Paris jewelry shop and at an adjoining art dealership, which claimed the lives of two Russian men and their entire families, women and children included.
Ilyan Fedorov is named as the prime suspect.
The photo of him is grainy and indistinct, but even though it’s a much younger man, there’s no mistaking the brutal, dead eyes are the same as those of Andras Peretz, and of the man on the Fedorov ID card.
I stare at the photograph for a long time.
This man is the reason my father and Sergei parted ways when they reached America. He’s the reason for the secrets my father kept his whole life. Ilyan Fedorov is why Darya’s parents and mine didn’t have Sunday lunch together, tell stories about Russia like my friends’ parents used to do.
Ilyan Fedorov is the reason Sergei and my father wouldn’t risk anyone knowing they were connected.
They wouldn’t risk losing their families a second time. They knew that Fedorov would take revenge the first chance he got.
I hear my father’s voice, that long-ago night when I sat on the landing: “We both know what happens to those who wait to long to act, Sergei. I will not make that mistake again.”
It was Ilyan Fedorov who told the Colombians where to find my mother. I’m as sure of it as I am that he was responsible for my father’s death—even if it was Orlov who wielded the knife. My father’s house, too, had been burned to the ground after they killed him. It’s too macabrely similar to what happened in France to be a fucking coincidence.
When I look back up, the entire table is watching me expectantly. I stab the Everglades compound on Mickey’s screen with one finger.
“Fedorov is pulling Orlov’s strings. Get rid of him, and we weaken Orlov. We take that house first. We take Fedorov. Then we come for the rest of the fuckers.”
Mak inclines his head. His smile is almost as cold as Fedorov’s. “That, my friend, will be a pleasure.”