Chapter 34 #3
Sophie’s eyes gleam with a dangerous light. “Will this meeting cause him to suffer?”
I nod. “Oh, yes. That much I can promise you.”
“And Simon? Will he suffer?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then yes.” She smiles coldly. “I feel good about it, Zin. In fact, I feel better than I’ve felt about anything in a long time.”
“You’ve been off the radar for two days, Sophie.” Bogdan Kozlov’s rough voice crackles through my earpiece. “Why is that?”
“Careful,” Luke murmurs into his comms. “He’s going to be highly suspicious.”
I tense beside him in the surveillance van, and he gives me a reassuring smile.
Oddly, despite the distance and unresolved emotional questions still lying between us, we work together as smoothly as ever.
It took Luke less than ten minutes to not only agree to this meeting, but to put everything in place to make it work.
I’m more aware than ever how safe I feel with his solid, capable bulk at my side, directing matters with his characteristic lethal precision.
“I know how you can get to Zinaida.”
There’s a hard, cold edge to Sophie’s voice that makes something inside me flinch in recognition.
I understand that edge.
It’s detachment, the kind I learned during my years in Oleg’s cage. It’s the emotional distance I needed to torture and murder my way to the top of the criminal food chain.
At the time, it felt like strength.
But now, hearing it in Sophie’s voice, I recognize it for what it is: fear.
Fear of being bested by men like Bogdan or Oleg. Fear of being too late to strike back, of losing the advantage to ruthless men who will not hesitate to kill what stands in their way.
All this time, I’ve seen only the victim inside Sophie—or rather, Eva—as I considered her.
But I know, better than anyone, that nobody survives what Sophie has endured without possessing that killer instinct.
She has lived her entire life enslaved by brutal men.
It’s not surprising that she’s learned to play their games.
What is surprising is that I no longer want to.
A year ago, I might have been impressed by Sophie’s coldness. Now it just makes me sad.
“Oh, you do, do you?” Kozlov’s tone is sneering. “I asked you for the Melikov bitch’s schedule. Not your fucking opinion. Do you have it or not?”
“I have something better.” On the screen, I watch Sophie hand him a piece of paper.
“It’s the access code for a private entrance to the Quartier, one that opens directly onto the royal box, which will be empty tonight.
There are no cameras in that box, and Zinaida will be onstage at midnight.
It’s the best chance you will ever have to take her out. ”
His eyes narrow. “How the fuck do you know all this? And what about her security? I thought that place was locked up tighter than a nunnery.”
Sophie shakes her head slowly. “For some reason, Zinaida has lost trust in her security detail. She’s planning to perform tonight, but she clearly doesn’t want them to know, because yesterday she asked me to pick up her costume and deliver it to her personally.
This entrance is the one I used. She told me that code is her private one, a master code that can override any security changes to that entrance.
She has it in case of emergencies, or for when she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s coming or going. ”
Kozlov’s mouth curls. “But she gave it to you? Why?”
Sophie’s smile is as cold and hard as any I’ve ever given. “Because I’ve spent the last two years convincing her that I’m a pathetic victim, desperately grateful for her rescuing me and willing to do anything at all that she asks without question.”
He gives a surprised cough of laughter. “You’ve turned into a hard little bitch, Sophie, you know that?”
She lifts a shoulder, her face a hard mask. “I am what you taught me to be, Bogdan.” She turns flat, dark eyes to meet his directly. “There’s more.”
“More?” Kozlov infuses the word with skepticism, but I can see the curiosity in his eyes.
“After I delivered the costume, I called Niamh O’Connell.”
“The NCA bitch?” He looks truly startled. “What the fuck, Sophie? Nobody told you to talk to her.”
“I took a chance.” Sophie’s smile is truly disturbing.
“The reason you couldn’t get ahold of me yesterday is because I met O’Connell in one of the apartments at Sophie’s House, where no phones are allowed.
I said it was an emergency, that I knew something I couldn’t keep secret anymore.
When she came, I told her that the person behind Minos, the person the NCA has been looking for all this time, is Zinaida herself.
I told Niamh Zinaida has been playing a double game all this time, pretending to rescue girls but in actual fact trafficking them herself and using Sophie’s House as a cover.
Exactly like the stories Simon has been planting about her in the papers. ”
Kozlov moves so swiftly there’s barely time to register what he’s doing before his fist slams into Sophie’s stomach. She doubles over, gasping for breath.
“Fuck,” Luke mutters into the comms. “Hold,” he adds warningly to the listening men.
“Fuck this,” snarls a Scottish voice in my ear.
“I said hold, Bryan.” Luke’s voice is calm but authoritative.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Kozlov snarls.
“Have you been so long around the Melikov bitch that you’ve begun to think like her?
You don’t make decisions here, Sophie. You forget who you are.
What you are. And now you’ve likely fucked up any chance we’ve ever had to get to that bitch.
How long do you think it took O’Connell to go straight to Melikov with your little story? ”
Sophie straightens up. Her face is pale but set, and she doesn’t shy away from Kozlov’s eyes.
“Because,” she says coldly, “I showed her this.” Pulling down her sweater, she shows him the Minos brand burned into her shoulder.
“And then I showed her the bruises you left me with at our last meeting and told her they came from Luke Macarthur, acting on Zinaida’s orders.
I told Niamh that the brand is a permanent reminder of who owns me—and the bruises are a warning of what happens to anyone who dares speak out. ”
Kozlov’s astonishment is almost comical. “You’re saying she actually swallowed that shit?”
“Of course she did.” Once again, Sophie gives him the psychopathic smile that breaks my heart, not least because it’s so familiar.
“Women like O’Connell have bleeding hearts and a savior complex.
I should know—I’ve been working with them for two years now.
And no matter how much they might pretend to like Zinaida Melikov, deep down they fucking despise her.
All O’Connell ever needed was an excuse, and I just gave her one. ”
“Christ,” Paddy says quietly in my ear. “She’s fucking good at this.”
Too good.
There’s something hideously unsettling about hearing Sophie’s cold recital and knowing that, had circumstances been only slightly different, I might be listening to a genuine conversation.
This is what she came to Sophie’s House to do, I think.
Despite the warmth in the van, a gnawing sense of sadness and loneliness creeps like ice through my belly.
Will it always be like this? The thought comes unbidden into my mind, bringing with it a bleakness colder than any winter chill.
Will I spend the rest of my days living in fear that those I want to trust might, at any moment, betray me?
To my utter horror, unexpected tears blur my vision, hot and uncomfortable. I blink frantically, desperately trying to rid my face of them before anyone notices.
A large, warm hand slides over my clenched one.
Luke’s fingers gently pry my fist open, then interlink with my own.
The ball of his thumb strokes the back of my hand reassuringly.
I stare down at our joined hands, two lone tears tracking down my face, feeling the strength of his slow, steady pulse flow into mine.
I can’t look at him.
Neither of us speaks.
But the silent understanding that has always joined us is suddenly there, as real and undeniable as it has been from the first day I ever saw him.
I cling to his hand, and something inside me knows that no matter what I might have told myself, I don’t ever want to let it go.
“Bryan,” Luke says quietly into his comms. “Get ready.”
There’s a long silence before Kozlov speaks again. “You’re suggesting I just walk in there tonight and shoot the bitch myself?”
I take some thin comfort from the uncertainty in his voice.
“No.”
Kozlov spins around, his face darkening as he sees Rhys Stewart standing behind him.
“What the fuck?” He goes for the gun inside his jacket as a ring of grim-faced men emerging silently from cover on his other side
Bryan disarms him with the ease of a parent taking a toy from a child, then restrains him just as easily.
Sophie shrieks, extremely convincingly, and struggles briefly against the man holding her before sullenly slumping.
“Who the fuck are they?” Kozlov snarls at Rhys.
“They’re here to help,” Rhys Stewart says calmly. “Not harm.” He nods around at the small group of Luke’s troop, minus Paddy, since Luke felt his presence might rouse suspicion. “Last night,” Stewart says, “Luke Macarthur murdered Major Ian Welch.”
Kozlov’s eyes widen, then narrow cunningly as Rhys Stewart gives him a hard look. Stay silent, says that look, and work with me.
“Jaysus,” mutters Paddy contemptuously in my ear. “No wonder Stewart didn’t last in the foreign service. He’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer.”
“Ian Welch was our brother,” Bryan says in his broad Scots accent. “And Luke Macarthur, along with Paddy O’Hara, murdered him in cold blood. We know it was done on the orders of Zinaida Melikov. If you’re planning to kill that bitch, then we want in.”
“These boys are ex–special forces,” Rhys Stewart explains to Kozlov. “They’re good men, all of them.”