Chapter 33
thirty-three
Nikolaj
Being down here makes me miss the simplicity of Isle Lucia.
The room beneath Saint Helena is old stone. There’s a steel table, one drain in the floor, two lights overhead, and enough silence in the walls to make screaming feel like a private hobby.
We keep it cold on purpose. Warmth makes people romantic about survival; cold strips that shit down faster.
The man in the chair is called Piotr Orlov, though he has given me three other names in the last hour, each one more desperate and less believable than the last.
He was stupid enough to pass through Smolensk using a courier route my people flagged weeks ago, and even stupider to think the false papers in his coat lining would matter once Tatiana got bored and started searching beneath the obvious pockets.
He sits slumped now, wrists bound to the chair arms, one eye swelling shut, blood drying in a messy line down his chin and dripping onto the front of his shirt.
He is not important in himself. Men like Piotr rarely are. He is a finger caught in a closing door. The usefulness comes from hearing who screams on the other side when pressure gets applied.
Tatiana is pouting in the corner because I told her she couldn’t cut him. She tries to pretend she isn’t pouting, which makes it worse. She stands against the far wall in black leather pants, a dark sweater, and boots she definitely wore because she thought she might get blood on them.
Her pale hair is twisted up with two pins that could double as weapons because Tatiana Dragovich has never trusted anything in her life that couldn’t also draw blood.
At twenty-one, she has already cultivated the sort of beauty that makes men say stupid things and the sort of stillness that makes them regret surviving long enough to finish. She is my head assassin because she earned it, not because she is my sister, and that distinction matters to both of us.
Right now, she looks personally insulted that I am doing the questioning while she has to stand there and behave.
Maksim is near the door, arms crossed, bored in the way he gets when violence becomes paperwork. Kai stands closer to the table with a tablet in one hand, face unreadable, waiting for Piotr to say something useful enough to justify the air he keeps stealing from the room.
I roll my shoulder once, flex my bloodied knuckles, and look at the man in the chair.
“Let’s try again,” I say in Russian, keeping my voice almost conversational. “Who told you Helena Byrne would pay for a successful hit?”
Piotr makes a wet sound in his throat, then spits blood onto the stone near his own shoe. It is a pathetic attempt at defiance. I admire it for half a second, then step close enough that he flinches before I touch him.
Tatiana makes a small, impatient sound from the corner, but I don’t look at her. “Use your words, Piotr.”
Piotr lifts his head with visible effort, his good eye tracking my face with the bleak awareness of a man who has started to understand that the story he came prepared to tell will not get him out of this room.
“I don’t know her,” Piotr says hoarsely. “I swear on my mother.”
“His mother’s dead,” Tatiana says. “I checked.”
Piotr’s mouth trembles, and I smile faintly. “That was unfortunate timing for your oath.”
Tatiana pushes away from the wall as if she can no longer bear the insult of not participating. “Let me have five minutes with him,” she says, voice sweet enough to worry anyone with survival instincts. “I’ll make him write her name in blood with his own finger.”
Piotr goes gray.
I glance toward her at last. “No.”
Her face falls into theatrical betrayal. “You never let me do anything fun anymore.”
“You cut open three men yesterday.”
“That was work,” Tatiana says, offended. “This is family bonding.”
“Your family bonding makes other families look emotionally stable,” Maksim mutters from the door.
Tatiana gives him a bright smile. “Say that again when I’m holding something sharp, Maks.”
Maksim lifts both hands lazily. “I withdraw.”
I point one finger at Tatiana without turning fully away from Piotr. “Corner. Pout quietly.”
“Fine,” Tatiana says with a disgusted little huff. “But if he dies of boredom, that’s on you.”
Her ridiculousness almost softens my mood.
Almost.
Then I look at Piotr again and remember why we’re here.
The bounty is no longer a rumor. Arseniy warned me first, then Kai confirmed movement through two independent channels.
Now Piotr is sitting in my cellar with pieces of the same story scattered through payment records, burner numbers, and courier whispers, all pointing toward a hit placed somewhere inside the Five Families.
Helena Byrne’s name surfaced twelve hours ago. That does not mean Helena ordered it. It could mean someone wants her name attached, or someone close to her has moved without understanding how loud footsteps sound in my world.
Either way, I have questions, and Piotr has an unfortunate proximity to answers.
I crouch in front of him, resting my forearms on my knees. “You don’t have to know Helena Byrne personally,” I tell him. “You only have to tell me who told you to use her channel.”
His gaze darts toward Tatiana.
I sigh. “Looking at my sister for help is brave, but deeply fucking stupid.”
Tatiana beams from the corner. “Thank you.”
Piotr swallows. “I heard a name.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kai look up from the tablet.
I keep my face still. “Say it.”
Piotr’s lips move once without sound. His fear is becoming inconvenient.
I reach up and gently pat his bloodied cheek. He shudders. “Piotr,” I say, almost kindly, “I’m in a bad mood, and you are not a charming enough man to improve it. Say the name.”
My phone rings, and the sound slices through the room with obscene timing. Every head turns except mine.
I close my eyes for half a second because there are very few people whose calls come through that number, and fewer still whose timing can make irritation and something warmer move through me at the same time.
Kai glances down at the screen on the table beside my coat. His brows lift a fraction before he looks at me. “Vieri,” Kai says.
The room changes—not visibly for anyone else, maybe. But I feel it. Tatiana’s posture shifts with interest. Maksim’s gaze sharpens despite his boredom. Piotr is too scared to grasp the significance, which is the only reason he continues to breathe without irritating me further.
I stand and take the phone from Kai’s hand. Vincenzo’s name glows across the screen.
My body responds before my pride can call it pathetic. It has been six days since Isle Lucia. Six days since the villa. Six days since I put him on a plane and watched him leave with the kind of calm expression that fooled everyone except me.
Six days is not long enough to miss someone this much. Apparently, my heart disagrees.
I answer the call and turn slightly away from the man in the chair, though I do not leave the room.
“You have terrible timing,” I say in Italian, because hearing his language in my mouth still does stupid things to him, and I like annoying him with it.
There is no greeting from Vincenzo. No warmth. No soft thread of amusement.
“Tell me you are not in public,” Vincenzo says.
I glance around the cellar, at the bleeding man in the chair, my pouting assassin sister, my right hands, and the drain in the floor. “Define public.”
Vincenzo exhales hard on the other end. “Nikolaj.”
The way he says my name makes every other sound in the room dim for half a second. Even pissed off, especially pissed off, he still has that effect. I lean my hip against the edge of the table and watch Piotr try not to bleed on himself too loudly.
“I’m not in public,” I say. “What’s wrong?”
Vincenzo pauses for one beat, and in that beat, I hear enough to know he is not calling for pleasure, not calling because he misses me. This is business.
“There’s a bounty on your head,” Vincenzo says.
I go still—not because of the news, but his voice. He has wrapped it in ice, but the fear is there beneath, quiet and carefully leashed. It reaches through the phone and settles somewhere under my sternum before I can defend against it.
Across the room, Tatiana catches the shift in me immediately and stops pouting.
I say nothing fast enough. Vincenzo hears that too.
“Nikolaj,” he says slowly. “Why do you not sound surprised?”
Fuck.
I drag my tongue over my teeth and look toward the ceiling for half a second. This is exactly the sort of conversation that should happen somewhere quiet, preferably not in front of a bloodied informant, my sister, and two men who already know too much about the shape of my personal disasters.
But life has never been considerate, and Vincenzo has never cared much for timing once he has decided something needs to be said.
“Because I’ve heard whispers,” I say.
“Whispers,” Vincenzo repeats, voice going colder.
I can practically see him standing straighter on the other end, that elegant fury pulling him tight. It makes me want to kiss him, shake him, and tell him to stop caring so loudly that other people might hear it.
“Yes,” I say. “Whispers.”
“How long have you known?” Vincenzo asks.
I do not answer immediately.
Tatiana’s eyes widen in the corner with the unholy delight of a woman realizing she is about to witness domestic violence by cellphone.
I glare at her.
She mouths, “You’re in trouble.”
I turn away from her before I do something unbrotherly. “A month, give or take,” I say.
The silence on the other end is worse than shouting.
Then Vincenzo speaks very softly. “A month. Give or take.”
“It wasn’t confirmed.”
“It is confirmed now,” Vincenzo says. “Helena Byrne’s name is moving through the channel, and one of my remaining clean sources flagged a payment trail tied to a bounty structure. I called you immediately because that is what one does when someone has put a price on the head of the man they love.”
The words man they love land in the room like a match dropped into oil.