Chapter 53
CHAPTER
FIFTY-THREE
Sia
The guy guarding Andre, Val, and me didn’t take me to see Natan immediately. I was actually brought into a bedroom. The curtains and sheets were dark. The location unsettled me, but, gratefully, it turned out to be a temporary holding situation.
“Come on,” the guard grunted, his cadence as heavy as his accent. Natan had a similar one, and though I’d been searched for weapons before they’d taken me I was searched once more before being brought in to see Natan.
“Miss Novikov,” Natan said. He was pouring a brown liquid into a tumbler inside an office that appeared very similar to Maxim’s. All dark brick and handsome wood, it had a masculine aura about it. But not once had I felt intimidated in Maxim’s office.
I stayed by the door, but was guided forward by the guard with a grunt. I stepped forward, but only just, and was relieved when the door closed behind the guy.
Though I didn’t know why. I wasn’t safe in this room with Natan. No one else appeared to be in here with us, but he was in charge of a crime organization for a reason.
Natan showed stained teeth with a wide smile. “I hear you have a proposition for me. Please.”
He gestured for me to sit on a stone-colored sofa, and, though I did, I sat on the edge. Natan didn’t sit, and as he took a sip from his tumbler, he flashed what he packed behind his black suit jacket. I didn’t know much about guns, but he had at least that one.
I shifted. “Yes, I don’t think you should kill my brother and me.”
I had a feeling that was where this was all headed, considering the lengths he’d gone to kill not just my father, but my entire family. Even still, I wouldn’t just roll over and let him do it.
Natan’s smirk made him appear more intimidating, and he always did remind me of Professor Snape from Harry Potter. His dark hair was cinched just behind his head, and he was ghost-white. The chalky appearance of his skin tone only brought out all the faded tattoos sneaking out of his black shirt. He tilted his head. “It’s nice to know you don’t think so, but you’ve failed to tell me why I’d care about that.”
He sucked down his drink, and suddenly, I wished it was poison. He was poison, and though I didn’t know much about him, I did know that he brought up Maxim. I loved Maxim. I loved him so fucking much, but he had a darkness to him I knew came from only this man. Maxim’s darkness I embraced, but I was hard-pressed to ignore what that darkness did to him. He looked like he carried the weight of the world every day.
I had a feeling a fair share of that weight came from a man he’d called a father, and a man who played with his son as much as he did couldn’t possibly be a good person. He said he’d tested Maxim by sending him after my brother, and that was just sick, cruel. I braced my legs. “I think you’re better off working with us. Utilizing us.”
I followed Natan with my gaze, his eyes on the active fireplace in the corner of his office.
“Utilize you in what way?” he asked.
I swallowed. “I don’t know anything about your organization but the fact that my dad and my family came into power before yours.”
The very talk of it narrowed Natan’s eyes into slits, but he allowed me to continue.
“I’m sure there were allies for my family. People who had loyalty to the Novikovs, sympathizers.” I shifted in my seat again. “I’m not proposing my brother and I have any part in the inner workings of your organization, but we can work with you. Let people know we’re alive and you have our support with whatever you’re doing.”
This was a long shot, what I was proposing here, and as I watched Natan circulate the room, I slipped a hand under my shirt. I pulled out a small piece of wood. It sat just beneath the underwire of my bra and had been easily concealed from the man who searched me.
I’d been hoping for that.
My hand braced around the wood, and I tucked it beneath my legs as Natan turned around. I had a lot of time in that bedroom, and the bedpost proved to be helpful. There’d been a loose piece of wood I whittled quickly against a letter opener on the desk.
Thank you, Val.
She’d showed me more than how to use a knife, and I was grateful for those lessons now. Even still, I didn’t move. Natan had a gun, so I just sat quietly. I hoped for an opportunity.
Smart, the man kept his distance, his eyes cold, passive. He sighed. “You know you are so very much like your father,” he said, making my eyes narrow. He shook his head. “Always talking talking talking with not much to say.”
My lips parted, but I said nothing.
He grinned that ugly smirk again, but then suddenly, he was exchanging his glass for the gun in his jacket.
My hand braced the wood.
“He talked even when he didn’t need to,” he said eyeing his gun. He didn’t point it at me, simply studying it in the fireplace’s light. “Had too many plans. Too many ambitions. Too many things he wanted to change.”
He flicked something on his gun, and I flinched.
He grinned. “But he was also weak and incredibly na?ve. He actually believed that Maxim’s father was responsible for the death of his wife. Like anything could actually be done and she could have been saved while delivering Nikolai’s child. He so easily believed that. Like his doctor could have done anything at all for her to live.”
I blinked, but Natan didn’t. His grin merely stretched to sickening lengths.
He wet his lips. “My son is loyal to me,” Natan stated, his finger hugging the trigger. My heart raced. Especially when he pointed the gun in my direction. “And I don’t need you just like I didn’t need your father, little girl.”
The sound of the gun blasted through the room, and my heart stopped, the blood in my ears pounding. I saw Natan’s smile again as the bullet tore through my skin, and the force shot me back into the couch.
I slumped about the time my vision started clouding, my fist bracing a sharpened piece of wood.
I did it with some of the final few moments of my strength.