Chapter 22 - Mikhail
The cold reception Mikhail received when he returned home with Sarah was a far cry from what he had expected, especially after he had dodged what seemed like a trap.
Dostoevsky’s men had been stationed at the entrances. Luckily, Mira’s map of the place had shown a small secret door, and when Mikhail and his men had used the place to enter, it had led them straight down to a tiny corridor that passed by the dungeons.
He grimaced now, recalling how the dungeons had stank so much that even his men had struggled not to choke. When they’d passed a particular dungeon, they had seen Sam’s unmistakable rotting remains hanging from the ceiling.
Vlad had been so close to Sam that most of the men had been somewhat jealous of their friendship. When he saw Sam, his toughness had vanished.
He stood staring for a few seconds, until Mikhail had prodded him gently to move along. And even when they had found and rescued Sarah, Vlad still had a crazy look in his eyes.
He’d asked to be left behind to find and kill Dostoevsky or die trying.
Mikhail had been seriously tempted to let him, but after all, Dostoevsky had done to him over the years, he was sure of one thing—Dostoevsky was his to kill and no one else’s.
He had denied Vlad’s request and watched the light go out in the other man’s eyes.
Vlad was his most trusted of all his men, and had been with him for years. He had never asked Mikhail for anything, so denying him this one thing had been difficult for him, but he had to do it because Mira had looked at him with so much trust and hope in her eyes when she’d asked him to rescue her friend. If they started up a ruckus, they would be outnumbered in a heartbeat, and saving the girl would be that much harder. He didn’t want to disappoint Mira.
When they returned to his villa, Mira was sitting in the living room working on a laptop. As soon as she saw them, she crossed the room at a run to catapult into Sarah’s arms.
“Sarah,” Mira breathed in relief, engulfing the girl in a very tight hug as she burst into tears.
They hugged tightly, tears streaming down both their cheeks. When they fell apart, Mikhail started to mention that Sarah had already been in the dungeon when he rescued her, but his wife wouldn’t let him say a word. She launched into a monologue about how she’d missed Sarah and how she’d been beside herself with loneliness with no one to talk to.
That last part stung. Mikhail had been more than available and on hand to try to keep her entertained since she came to his house; he’d suspended his business dealings and even his trips. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t stepped one toe out of Chicago since she came, because…
Well, because he had come to care for her so much that he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone or anything hurting her, he admitted to himself. He couldn’t stand to let her out of his sight for very long. Every time, even when he was working elsewhere, he felt the urge to keep an eye on her.
And why wouldn’t she look at him now when he and his men had almost died saving her friend? Why wouldn’t she even meet his gaze?
“Sarah is fine. She just needs to be fed and given some clean clothes,” he said, testing his theory that Mira was avoiding him.
This time she did look at him, offering him a wan smile that didn’t reach her eyes. But she said nothing else. She threaded her hand with Sarah’s and whisked her upstairs.
With a frown, Mikhail went to her laptop to check what she had been working on. He was very computer savvy because his line of work meant he had to be.
She had been creating a code to enable someone to send secret alerts to one organization from another. He looked toward the now-empty staircase. What secret alert was she planning on sending? And to whom? Could she be working with her father?
With a frown, he walked into this office and sent for Vlad. “Did anything strike you as odd when we were over at Dostoevsky’s?”
“Plenty,” Vlad fumed. “Sam’s dead body left hanging disrespectfully out there in the open for the elements to get him, that was mighty odd.”
Mikhail refrained from rolling his eyes. Vlad was still so fixated on the fact that Sam had died, and the how of it. “Apart from Sam? The environment, did you see anything you thought was strange?”
Vlad frowned. “Yes, I seem to remember a pair of eyes peering at us from over a banister as we crept by. But no one raised an alarm.”
Mikhail nodded. “And no one was guarding the dungeons even though all the other doors were guarded.”
“And Dostoevsky was nowhere to be found,” Vlad added.
A memory niggled, and Mikhail asked a question that had been bothering him. “How was Sarah able to send voice notes if she was already in the dungeons? Any self-respecting captor would take away her phone first.”
Vlad thought about it for a bit, then said, “Unless her phone was taken away after she had sent the voice notes?”
Mikhail shook his head. “Dostoevsky wanted us to find her. He must have planted something on her. Maybe a chip, a tracker, or something dangerous like an explosive. Come on,” he ordered briskly as he got to his feet and dashed toward Mira’s room.
When he reached her room, she was giggling with Sarah as though they were two little girls. The two women looked up in stunned silence when Mikhail and Vlad barged into the room.
Mira’s face went cold and blank as a doll’s when she looked at him. Something was definitely wrong. He wasn’t sure what, but in the time it had taken him to go get Sarah and return, the dynamics of his relationship with Mira had changed.
Before, when he walked into a room, she either lit up like a Christmas tree or had to hide a blush. Now, she was stone-faced, like one of the statues in Central Park.
“Sarah, you need to come with us right now.”
“What’s this, Mikhail? You didn’t even knock, and you came in with Vlad. What if I was changing clothes?” Mira demanded.
“You’re right. My sincere apologies,” he said automatically. “I still need to speak with Sarah now,” he added in a voice that brooked no argument.
Sarah got up immediately and walked out with Vlad. As they descended the stairs, Mikhail watched Sarah trail after Vlad as he led her to where Mikhail knew she would be scanned for chips, drugs, or other implants and then interrogated.
“You have no right to treat Sarah like a common criminal,” Mira accused, rising fluidly to her feet to plant herself in front of him.
Mikhail could feel animosity coming from her in waves with even more intensity than when they’d first met. He cocked an eyebrow. “I risked my life going personally into my enemy’s den to fetch your friend and servant. I’m yet to hear you utter a word of thanks, and you want to take me to task for merely trying to ensure that saving her wasn’t part of Dostoevsky’s grand plan to destroy me and everyone else in this villa?”
“You should be thanked, Mikhail. Thank you for all you have done to me,” she said in a voice laden with heavy irony.
Her eyes were bright with unshed tears and he couldn’t help noticing that she hadn’t thanked him for what he’d done for her, but what he’d done to her.
What had he done to her? What the fuck was going on?