Chapter 35
DMITRI
“Boss.”
The voice on the other end of the phone is one of the men guarding Clara at the hotel. My heart stopped as soon as I saw his number. And from the sound of his voice, the news isn't good.
“What's happened?”
“It's the woman. She's gone.”
“What do you mean, 'gone'?” I snap, but only to cover the panic welling inside of me.
It's been a tense twenty-four hours since the bombing.
Twenty-four hours of planning a war strategy focused on hitting Andrey and the Mikhailov Bratva where it will hurt the most. I haven't allowed myself to think of Clara because she is too much of a distraction—all my attention needs to be on this.
But I was only able to push her from my mind because I knew she was safe.
That is no longer the case.
Is it the baby? Did something happen from the trauma of the bombing? Did Andrey make a move on the hotel? I was positive he wouldn't be able to find it.
“She was shouting and yelling. You know Feodor and I don’t understand English well, but she sounded upset, angry, something about a fire.”
“A fire?”
“Like I said, we couldn’t understand much. But then one of the guys on the security team alerted that she was trying to get out through the service entrance. Used a hairpin to unlock the door. We managed to find her and trail her.”
“Good. You have her? You know where she is?”
My driver waits by the door of my black SUV, opening it as I approach so I can slip inside. The rush of the city falls silent as he closes it after me.
“No, boss. We followed her to someplace in Brooklyn. Some random alleyway. She met with a guy there.”
“A guy?”
“Yeah. Big, tall, looks like a cop. I think he's that cop you told us to look out for.”
My blood boils before my hand tightens around my phone so tight, I’m afraid it might break.
What the hell was she doing there?
“Don't know, boss. But they had words, she got in his car, and they left.”
I don’t believe it. Is Clara working with Dean to take me down after she swore she wasn't? I’m angry, but my intuition tells me something is off.
“You are sure she got into the car willingly?”
“Yeah, boss. It was dark, but I'm pretty sure that's what I saw. Sorry, boss.”
I hang up without saying anything else. My gaze fixes out the window on a theater marquee bright with multiple colors.
“Where are we going, sir?” My driver looks back over his shoulder.
It takes a moment to put the words together because I'm too lost in my thoughts. Instead of my original destination, I give him Clara's address.
The windows of Clara's apartment are dark when I arrive. I tell my guards to wait in the lobby and head up the stairs by myself. I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I'm following a hunch.
My instincts are telling me that something isn’t right.
I cannot bring myself to believe Clara betrayed me.
Even if the words came from my own man's lips.
I made that mistake once; I'm not going to make it again.
I chose to trust her, made the promise to trust her, and it's a promise I'm going to keep.
Something feels off and wrong about this entire thing.
Why would she leave when she knows what kind of danger she's in?
If not for herself, then for the baby. Not only that, but as bright as she is, there is no way Clara would've been able to make it past my security.
Certainly not with a hairpin and going down the service elevator; my team would have stopped her before she got anywhere near the street.
I stop short when I get to the door, my senses tingling. It looks secure, but when I twist the knob, it swings open without having to jimmy the lock.
Somebody else has already done that.
I slip into the dark apartment, unholstering my weapon as I do. The lights from the hallway allow me to see that the place has been systematically tossed. Ripped couch cushions lay in their filling on the floor, every cabinet and drawer pulled open and emptied.
Every nerve ending goes on high alert. I pull out my gun and click off the safety. Every shadow is suspect, every sound a danger.
I nearly miss the kick that comes from a shadowed corner. I twist at the last second, and the boot hits my wrist. My gun flies out of my hand as pain shoots up my arm and my fingers go numb.
I manage to dodge a swinging fist, block a blow from his other arm, and land a punch in the gut.
I hear a grunt and a wheeze as my fist comes into contact with solid flesh, but the triumph is short-lived, as the back of a hand smashes across my cheek, pain exploding as white light in front of my eyes.
My adversary takes the moment to crash into me, and we go flying.
A lamp crashes to the ground, and there’s another grunt as my fist comes into contact with ribs.
We end up on what’s left of the couch. A fist lands against my jaw, and I jerk out of the way of a second hit, using the leverage of the sofa to roll us onto the ground so I’m on top.
I slam my attacker back against the floor, his head hitting the hardwood with a dull thump. I pull my punch at the last second when I realize I'm kneeling over Pavel.
“What the fuck? Where the fuck have you been?”
“What are you doing here?” He growls, his lip and eye already starting to swell.
“I’ll ask you the same question, motherfucker. You disappeared for days without any contact, right when I needed you the most. Where the fucking hell have you been?”
I don't let him up yet because it's all too suspicious, the timing too strange, too perfect. Pavel is the one man I trusted not to betray me.
“I was following Dean Johnson, just like you ordered me to. I had to go dark because I don't know who's in on this.”
“What do you mean 'this'?”
“They’ve been listening, Dima,” Pavel says. “In the office. In our cars. Most of them found in the places Clara works.”
It's how they knew where she was going.
“I found these here.” Pavel reaches into his pocket and pulls out several bugs. “It's why I had to tear the place apart.”
“Fuck!” It’s the only word I have in the moment and for the revelation Pavel just dumped in my lap.
“Why are you here?” Pavel's eyes narrow because he knows I wouldn't be there unless something dire happened.
“Clara's gone. Andrey sent a bomb to kill us. I took her to the SoHo property, but they still found her. They set it up to look like she escaped and betrayed me.”
All of it makes sense now that I know they bugged her. Clara didn’t betray me, but some of the guards did, all of whom will suffer greatly before I kill them.
“But that still leaves a question of who set the bugs—Andrey or Dean? They made it sound like Clara willingly went with Dean, most likely to make me assume she told him everything.”
“It was both, Dima.” Pavel's voice is husky, and he looks like he hasn’t slept for days. “They are working together. Andrey is not getting his information from some unknown source. Dean is working with Andrey.”
The knowledge is like a lightning strike, and suddenly, everything becomes clear.
Clara is in a tremendous amount of danger.
“Dean has Clara. That's why I'm here, trying to figure out where he took her.”
Pavel’s eyes narrow into an angry scowl.
I turn on my heel and stride toward the door. “I'll tell you everything in the car. Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“The only place we can. To Natasha.”