CHAPTER SIX
Raina
I n a Manhattan interrogation room, the lifeless, gray walls are met by a ceiling of harsh fluorescent lighting that buzzes like a swarm of angry wasps. After a medic stitches me up, I sit in the world’s most uncomfortable metal chair with my wounded arm in a sling against my chest.
I gaze at the two-way mirror. Somewhere behind it, Meyers is watching. Maybe jerking off. This is the third time I’ve been here this year. Questioned, reprimanded, and damn near fired, but sent away with a warning.
This time feels different. This time, someone got killed. I don’t have answers or a defense. Ambition only gets you so far. Being spirited and willing to take risks gets you noticed and assigned to high-reward, dangerous tasks. But zero understanding or sympathy when you fuck up.
The door creaks open, and I expect Meyers to walk in, smiling with sticky hands. Or maybe the department lawyer. I shit my pants last time when she walked in.
A man wearing a pitch-black fedora, sunglasses, and a sharp gray suit strides inside. If this is a new lawyer, I’m either in real trouble or stand a great chance. But without a briefcase and the butt of a Ruger sticking out from a waist holster, this guy isn’t law enforcement.
“Who the hell are you?” I bark, knowing I’m not talking to a boss.
The man shuts the door behind him and swipes off the Indiana Jones hat, revealing a flat top of ice-blond hair shorn on the sides.
“Hello, Raina.” He removes the shades, revealing the signature scar that splits his right eyebrow.
My world tilts. “Havok?”
I am so dead.
I don’t put it past Meyers to let a target take me out. Save him the trouble.
“Are you undercover from another team?” I ask, hoping that’s what his earlier message meant, all while counting what could be my last breaths on earth.
“No. My name is Valdrin Sokolov, and I know the right people around here to get you out of a boatload of trouble,” he says with a faint accent I didn’t notice when he had a gun pointed at my head.
I study his deep green eyes, feeling something familiar tighten my chest. Not his name. I never heard of him, and something tells me I should have. “I thought you sold drugs.”
“That is what I wanted you to think.” His stare pierces my soul with a connection I can’t deny.
But it’s nothing sexual. It’s stronger. Something I’ve never felt before.
“Why?” I relax and slouch back in the chair.
“To lure you in. Now, I got you.”
He faked a dealer identity to trap me. But trap me for what?
“What do you want?”
“You.” His one-word answer stills me.
“To kill me?” I wrap my fingers around the chair that I will lift and use as a weapon if I have to. “Go ahead. I doubt my boss will stop you.”
“Not to kill you.” He eyes my hands, staying one step ahead of me. “To take you away from this and tell you the truth.”
A shudder snakes down my spine.
The truth.
The envelope .
The letter from Mom that I never opened. Was I supposed to contact someone? Find someone?
I peek at this guy through my lashes. Or did that someone just find me?
Fuck.
Pulse ticking up, I force a bored expression to throw him off. “What truth? What the hell are you talking about?”
He pulls out a 4x6 worn matte photo with rounded edges and slides it across the table. I keep my eyes on him, waiting a few beats to pick it up. A woman in her early twenties with mouse-brown hair, tired eyes, and chaffed hands sits on a park bench and holds up a smiling toddler.
My mother and me.
A slow, creeping dread slithers through my gut. “Where did you get this?”
Valdrin Sokolov eyes me with steady scrutiny. “Your mother kept you hidden from us.”
Us. The word sends ice down my spine. Who in the hell is us? By the look of that spiderweb scar on his arm, he’s associated with people I try to put in jail.
Great.
“A nurse who works for us spotted her in Madison Hill Hospital during one of her treatments. I paid her a visit a week before her death.” Valdrin sits back.
Feeling like I want to vomit, I utter, “Did you threaten a dying woman?”
He leans forward. “I’ve killed many people. But aggravating a sick woman on her deathbed is not something I need on my conscience. I needed to know if she was indeed the woman who disappeared with our princess.”
“Wait.” I must not have heard right. Any of it. “What?”
“There is much to explain.” He glances around .
“That was a year ago. Why did you wait?”
“She promised to tell you about us. I’ve been waiting for you.”
The letter I never read. Christ.
“I, I didn’t know.” I lower my head. “Why are you here now?”
“I worked for your father. Levin Berisha was no ordinary man, Raina. He was kyre of the Albanian Brotherhood. The reason your mother hid you.”
My father ? The unanswered question I’ve asked my mother over and over. Two minutes into meeting this stranger, he tells me what I’ve wanted to know my whole life.
The Albanian Brotherhood is a fairly new mafia syndicate in the New York area, but my knowledge of them is limited.
Jesus Christ, it figures. And explains a lot about all these crazy, reckless instincts I fight every day.
No ordinary man.
No shit, if my father was the head of the Albanian fucking mafia.
Holy fuck, the long-lost princess fantasy is materializing before my eyes. For a moment, I worry this is a fever dream. Was I shot?
Shaking that away, I say, “You worked for him? He was no ordinary man?”
“Dirty Irish mobsters of the Lower East Side murdered your father. With his death, you, Raina Riatt, are the rightful heir. He had no other children. There is no one else. Just you.”
Disbelief clouds my thoughts before some deeper fantasy takes root in my pounding head. I grip the edge of the photo with white knuckles. He’d been in Mom’s apartment while she was in the hospital to find that photo.
“Bullshit. My mother was a tailor’s daughter in Montenegro. A guy at the beach got her pregnant. A nobody and—”
“Your mother lied to you,” he brusquely interrupts. “We don’t want to hurt you. We want you to take your place among us. Be appreciated for who you are. Not reprimanded in this hovel.”
“I’m good.” I shove the photo back at him. “I’ll grovel to my boss to keep my job.”
“A kyre’s daughter doesn’t grovel to anyone.” Valdrin grins mockingly, getting to his feet. “To slimy bureaucrats who don’t appreciate you, no less. This fight with the Irish will make or break the brotherhood. Your legacy.”
Valdrin takes out a sleek black business card with gold embossing from his pocket and places it on the table in front of me. Breaking my stare from him, I glance down to see that there’s just a telephone number. Nothing else.
“Call that number when you’re ready to hear the rest. It’s my direct line.
I answer it 24/7. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news.
” He waves around the room. “This life is over. DEA lawyers are drawing up your termination papers. They’ve washed their hands of you.
But with us, your life is on the cusp of a great beginning. Once you accept who you really are.”
The truth.
He saunters toward the gray steel door, pausing before exiting. “And Raina, the next man from my brotherhood that you see will drag you to the kyre in chains.”
With the hat back on his head, Valdrin Sokolov breezes out, leaving me bereft of air and rational thought.
The door softly clicks shut. But it’s a gong that knocks out my eardrums.
“Wake up!” I dig stubby nails into my injured arm. “This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. None of it.”
I stare down at Valdrin’s card and next to it, my mother’s face haunting me from that photograph.
Mom, why?
I feel so alone, even more since she died last year. Cancer stole her, and Valdrin just fucking stole my identity. Everything I believed about myself has been a lie.
I stand up when I realize no one else is coming into this room.
Valdrin, with his Albanian Brotherhood connections, got into this secure location and managed to make everyone disappear.
They’ve washed their hands of you.
Pissed off, I grab the metal chair with one hand and break the two-way smoky glass. The room on the other side is empty.
Once again, I’m alone.