50. Ares
Ares
We travel four floors below the rooftop to the Aurelian’s command center. Lourdes follows me inside with Daria on her six.
Seeing them both inside, I yank off my ridiculous bow tie and say, “Daria, lock everything down until fresh guards arrive.”
“Fresh?” Lourdes asks on a breathless whisper.
Daria responds, “We go through a lot of guards. That’s why we give them code names. I keep a dozen trained at all times to replace the ones who…don’t make it out of a situation.”
“What is happening?” Lourdes asks through clenched teeth like she’s at the end of her sanity.
“Here.” I hand her the letter that’s got my hackles raised. “It had this thumb drive taped to it.”
With shaking hands, she reads the note and gasps.
It’s on letterhead from Kirill Volkov.
Just four words: Give her to me.
“Her? Who is her?” Lourdes asks.
“You.” I drill her with a stare.
“Me?” Lourdes staggers back. “What’s on that thumb drive?”
“We’re going to find out.” I hand it to Daria. “Go through this, right here, right now.”
She sits at a terminal and pops it into a drive. After a few clicks, she announces, “It’s a video.”
When Lourdes tries to look at it, I pull her into my chest. If a video came from Kirill Volkov, something gruesome is on it. Someone is being killed. Maybe her father. I can see Yuri Volkov gutting her father and putting him into a car with the brake lines cut.
Lourdes shakes in my arms. I’m about to kiss her when Daria interrupts me.
“Ares, you need to look at this.” The alarm in her voice sends chills through me. “Just you.”
I hold Lourdes’s chin. “Stay right here. Do not move from this spot.”
When she nods, I kiss her on the forehead. I move to the terminal, braced for blood and gore. Not…
“What the hell is that?” I say to Daria, not believing what I’m seeing.
“That’s exactly what it looks like.” Daria exhales.
“What?” Lourdes cries out. “I’m tired of being left in the dark.”
Fury racing through me, I look up at her. “Why didn’t you tell me your sister was engaged to Kirill Volkov?”
Her face goes absolutely white. “What?”
“Is Sandrine secure?” I ask Daria.
“Yes, Ares,” she answers, holding her phone. “I just checked the team over there. They say nothing’s been breached. I’m sending more men to watch the building.”
“Someone talk to me,” Lourdes grinds out. “What is on that thumb drive?
“A video of them,” I say softly.
She looks like her stomach dropped. “What kind of video?”
“Not what you’re thinking,” I say quickly. “Come look.”
I hold out my hand to her. She takes shaky steps and then faces the monitor.
Kirill Volkov and Lourdes’s sister Sandrine are in a park somewhere in Chicago, Lake Michigan behind them.
She’s showing off an engagement ring. He’s smiling, holding her, and kissing her.
This has to be at least five years old. Christ, I can see the difference in Kirill.
He’s only thirty-five now, but the man has aged with weathered lines in his face that I never want to see when I look in the mirror.
“Ares!” Lourdes snaps me back to the video.
“Sandrine and Kirill were in a relationship,” I say as more things begin to add up in my head.
“That’s who he meant in his letter. Sandrine.
Not you. It’s always been about Sandrine.
It was never about you or any missing money.
Kirill lied to David and only wanted to abduct you in order to tell him where your sister is. ”
“No, this has to be fake. Or she was faking it.” Lourdes looks from me to Daria, shaking her head.
I would agree this was fake, only I don’t think I’ve ever seen Kirill smile.
“Your father was a high-level employee for Yuri,” I say evenly. “It’s entirely possible that his son Kirill met your sister at some point.”
“I was away at school for two years,” Lourdes admits with guilt in her voice that her absence let her sister get near a monster. “I came back after her accident. She was already in an adult home with no memory. Her name had already been changed.”
I hold her, and she’s shaking. I’d forgotten that she’d gone away to school and then dropped out after Sandrine’s accident.
“Why didn’t she ever tell me about Kirill when they were dating?” Lourdes stares at the video of Kirill pushing Sandrine on a swing, looking like a happy couple. “We spoke all the time before her accident.”
“Yuri expects Kirill to marry for strategic advantage,” I say bluntly.
“It’s possible he instructed Sandrine to keep it secret.
Right now, your sister is protected. I will meet with Kirill and tell him that you and I are to be married and that Sandrine is part of my family now. He will never see her again.”
“No,” Lourdes cries, pulling back.
“Trust me.” I hold her face. “Forewarned is forearmed. Now that we know he is looking for her, we can monitor him instead of guessing what the hell he really wants.”
“My father went to extraordinary lengths to hide her,” she says, pacing. “He must have known Kirill would…kill to get to her.”
She’s right, he killed seven of my guards.
I gather Lourdes against my chest again, my voice dropping into something almost savage.
“Listen to me. Now that we know what Kirill really wants, I’ll go through your father’s journals and see what I can trade for your sister’s freedom.
Before, I thought Kirill wanted you because of your father, and I had to play defense.
Now I play offense. He’s been in New York all this time to find you, but only so you’ll tell him what happened to your sister.
He killed seven of my men. I have what he is willing to kill for.
That just strengthens my leverage against him.
He will never go near her. Once he realizes that, he will give up. No one wins against me.”
“It’s been five years,” Lourdes says slowly. “Surely he’s moved on, dated others?”
I don’t answer him, I just look at Daria, who shakes her head.
Lourdes grabs the lapel of my coat and shakes me lightly. “Ares?”
“I’ve never seen Kirill with another woman. But I haven’t been monitoring his love life.” I stroke her chin. “We can’t risk him following you to find her. You will have to limit your visits with her for now.”
Anger flares, hot and bright in her eyes. “It’s all a game to you,” she says, breaking out of my arms. “Board seats. Unveilings. Wars. People’s lives.”
“If he’s telling us to hand her over, that means he doesn’t know where she is.”
“Ares is right.” Daria backs me up. “He would just take her. If she agreed to marry him, he thinks she still belongs to him.”
“No, no, no,” Lourdes mutters, standing by herself.
Gently, I pull her back into my arms and sigh in relief when she lets me. “When will the new guards be here, Daria?”
“A few hours,” she answers.
“I’m taking Lourdes back to the penthouse.”
“I suggest you let your brother-in-law help.” Daria gets in my face. “He’s got his enforcer and that assassin at the party. His eight empire guards are downstairs.”
The last thing I want is eight Quinlan Empire guards right now. But mine are dead, and I have to protect my future wife.
Nodding, I say, “Okay. For her.”
Daria bows her head and leaves to arrange for our protection.
I go to sit at one of the security monitors, but Lourdes pulls on my jacket.
“Ares…” Her voice gets low and sad. “Why not just hand us over?”
I open my mouth, but she cuts me off.
“Think of what you can get for us? The world. Instead of a war.”
“I am the God of War. This time I’m going to fight. For you. For your sister.”
“But you hold all the cards. You can hand us over in exchange for him never stepping foot in New York again.”
For a moment, I say nothing. Because the answer rises too quickly, too clearly.
I could end this tonight. Deliver her and Sandrine on those exact terms. And walk away with my position strengthened and my hands clean of the coming conflict. It would be the logical decision.
But the thought of handing Lourdes to anyone strikes something inside me that feels dangerously close to lethal fury.
That’s the problem.
Somewhere between the moment I first touched her at Winterhall and now, this woman has complicated my belief system.
It’s not protection.
It’s not just possession.
It’s something far more permanent than I ever imagined I’d want.
It might be love.
But love has no place in a life like mine. Men who rule through fear and blood do not indulge in love. The moment someone owns your heart, they also own the knife that can destroy you.
I learned that lesson long ago. From my mother.
Whatever this pull toward Lourdes is, it will pass. It’s nothing more than my need for power. She’s the inevitable consequence embodied in a beautiful woman thrown into my orbit at a time when I needed an arrangement.
I meet her gaze because she deserves an answer.
“No. I’m not handing you over to the Bratva with your disabled sister in tow.” I hold her face, making her look into my eyes. “Kirill thinks he’s claiming his missing fiancée. He will think twice about taking my wife’s sister.”