Chapter 22
Daria
Kira is still asleep in her room, finally recovered from the fever earlier this week. Pyotr is in the kitchen making coffee, and I’m standing by the window watching the street below when the blocked number flashes across my screen.
I don’t want to answer, but not answering has never made Bogdan go away.
“Hello?”
“Good morning, darling.” His voice is silk over broken glass. “I trust Kira is feeling better? Fevers can be so frightening for a mother.”
I squeeze the phone tighter and tell myself to breathe. “What do you want, Bogdan?”
“What I’ve always wanted. What you’ve failed to give me.” Ice clinks in a glass on his end, even though it’s barely past dawn. “My patience has run out, Daria. I gave you a week. You gave me nothing.”
“I told you, I can’t get the information you’re asking for. Pyotr doesn’t—”
“I don’t care about your excuses. Remember the custody petition I sent you? Judge Kuznetsov has agreed to expedite the hearing. He owes me several favors, and he’s very sympathetic to fathers who’ve been denied access to their children by unstable mothers.”
My knees threaten to buckle. “You can’t do this.”
“I can. I am.” He pauses, and I hear him take a sip. “You had your chance to cooperate, and you chose to play house with Dmitri’s guard dog instead. Now, you’ll learn what happens when you defy me.”
“Bogdan, please—”
“You’ll be notified of the hearing date. I suggest you use what time you have left wisely. Either give me what I asked for or start packing Kira’s things. She’ll be coming home to her father, where she belongs.”
The line clicks, and I stand there staring at the phone in my hand, unable to move. He’s taking my daughter, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him.
Pyotr appears in the doorway, and when he sees my state, his face falls. “What happened?”
“He has the judge in his pocket. They expedited the hearing. They’re going to—”
Pyotr rushes across the room and takes the phone from my trembling hand. “We knew this was coming. We have a plan.”
“The plan requires evidence we don’t have. The plan requires Dmitri to—”
“Daria.” He gathers my face in his hands and forces me to look at him. “We’re going to figure this out. I will not let him take Kira.”
His forehead drops to mine. We stand there, breathing the same air, and I let myself lean into him.
“I've got you,” he promises quietly. “Both of you. That’s not changing.”
I want to believe him. I want to trust that he can fix this, but I’ve spent three years learning that Bogdan always wins, and the terror clawing at my insides won’t let me forget it.
Before I can respond, Pyotr’s attention snaps toward the window, and he tenses.
“Get Kira,” he orders. “Now.”
His hand closes on my shoulder, and he guides me backward, calm and unmovable.
“What—”
“Black car just pulled up. Get Kira and go to the back bedroom. Lock the door and don’t come out until I tell you.”
I run down the hallway and scoop Kira out of bed, ignoring her sleepy protests as I carry her to my bedroom. She’s still half-asleep, confused, and cranky.
“Mama, what’s happening?”
“Nothing, baby. We’re just going to play a quiet game in Mama’s room for a little while.”
“I don’t want to play a quiet game. I want breakfast.”
“Soon.” I lock the bedroom door and set her on the bed. “Stay here, okay? Don’t make any noise.”
“But—”
“Kira.” I kneel in front of her and take her small hands in mine. “This is very important. I need you to be brave and quiet like the bunny in your storybook. Can you do that for Mama?”
Her lower lip trembles, but she nods.
I pull her into my arms and hold her close, straining to hear what’s happening in the other room. The front door opens, and then there are footsteps and voices.
One of them is Pyotr’s.
The other makes my blood run cold.
Alexei Kozlov.
I’ve only met my cousin Alexei a handful of times, but his voice is unmistakable. It has a certain edge to it. He’s the enforcer of the family. The one they send when diplomacy fails.
We knew he was coming. Dmitri warned us days ago that Alexei was pushing to make the trip. But knowing it was coming and hearing his voice in my living room are two very different things.
Today is day twenty-one. The deadline. And Alexei has arrived to collect.
“—appreciate you making the trip,” Pyotr says. His voice is calm, but I can hear the strain underneath.
“Save the pleasantries,” Alexei snaps. “You’ve had three weeks. Where’s my evidence?”
“We’re close. Another forty-eight hours, and we’ll have everything we need to—”
“Close isn’t what Dmitri sent you here for.” Footsteps move deeper into the apartment. “Where is she?”
“Safe.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“Alexei, I need you to hear me out.”
A pause. When Alexei speaks again, his voice is steely.
“I’m here because Dmitri sent an operative to investigate a suspected traitor three weeks ago, and the deadline has arrived with nothing to show for it.
Dmitri has always been too soft when it comes to family, and someone needs to make the hard calls he won’t. ”
“Daria isn’t a traitor.”
“Then why hasn’t she been cleared? Why hasn’t the evidence been compiled? Why are you asking for more time instead of handing me a completed file?”
“Because the situation is more complicated than a simple verdict.”
Alexei barks out a laugh. “That’s one word for it. Here’s another: compromised. You’ve been in this apartment for three weeks with a beautiful woman, and suddenly, the investigation is ‘complicated.’ Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Of course not, but you’re making assumptions without all the facts.”
“Then give me the facts. Right now. Explain to me why Dmitri’s best operative has spent three weeks protecting a suspected traitor instead of eliminating her, family or not.”
I press my hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound. He’s talking about killing me like it’s a routine business decision. His own cousin. I knew the Kozlovs were ruthless, but I had no idea they were this cold.
Kira tugs on my sleeve. “Mama, why are they yelling?”
“They’re not yelling, baby. They’re just having a grownup conversation.”
“It sounds like yelling.”
I pull her onto my lap and wrap my arms around her. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
But nothing about this is okay.
Through the thin walls, I hear Pyotr’s defense.
“Daria was coerced. Her ex-husband has blackmailed her for years, using their daughter as leverage. We have discussed this with Dmitri. Bogdan Lebedev set everything up without her knowledge to fund his operations. He’s been running a network that moves money to organizations on Yevgeny’s blacklist, using Daria’s Kozlov connection as cover while he builds his own power base. ”
“Dmitri might be sold on that theory, but I’m not. I want proof. Do you have it?”
“We’re close.”
“You keep saying that, but ‘close’ doesn’t protect the family from federal investigators or explain why you’ve been sharing a bed with the woman you were sent to investigate.”
Heat floods my cheeks. Of course, he knows. Men like Alexei make it their business to know everything.
“My personal relationship with Daria doesn’t change the facts of the case,” Pyotr replies evenly.
“It changes your objectivity and your judgment, and it sure as shit changes whether I can trust a word in your reports.” Alexei’s footsteps move closer to the hallway, closer to the bedroom where Kira and I are hiding. “Bring her out. I want to hear her side of this.”
“No.”
“No?” Alexei repeats, danger creeping into his voice.
“Not until you agree to hear the full case. Not until you give us the time we need to get the evidence to clear her name and expose Bogdan. I’m not going to drag her out like a suspect when she’s the victim.”
“She’s a victim when I say she is. Until then, she’s a liability. And liabilities get dealt with.”
“You’ll have to go through me first.”
I hold my breath, waiting for an explosion, violence, or whatever comes next when two dangerous men reach an impasse.