Chapter 16
PAVEL
I didn't want to leave her, but I couldn't stay.
I had obligations that required my attention.
My brothers were already here, ready to discuss what they had found.
Neither one of them were staying in the hotel our family owned. They both preferred houses and seclusion for their wives. Maybe they were worried their wives would try to run away again.
I laughed to myself.
Normally, I would've been annoyed that Kostya and Artem just showed up and let themselves into my penthouse. But they had been with me when we found Alina's apartment.
They stayed behind while I hunted her down to find her at that fucking strip club.
They had gathered the fragments of her life, ready to piece together who she was and what they wanted to do with her. A lot of it depended on what they found in her apartment.
Was she spying on us? Did someone send her? Was that why she was at the office when everyone else was told not to come in?
I closed and locked the door behind me.
Alina would be safe in the bedroom.
My brothers wouldn't touch her.
They wouldn't even go to the bedroom.
They had found out the hard way what was in my bed was none of their business. A naked girl chained to the headboard wearing a sensory deprivation hood would be a new level of what they found waiting for me…but not by much.
Whatever we discovered about her life, her motivations, she was my problem to deal with. If they decided she had to go, getting rid of her would be my responsibility.
I also knew there was no way she was getting out of those handcuffs, and she could scream all she wanted. That hood would muffle the sound.
Still, whatever we were about to uncover, I wanted that extra layer of protection between her and the rest of the world.
Kostya and Artem had been waiting a while.
As I passed through the penthouse's dining room, the air was still thick with smoke and the tangy, salty scent of caviar. The remnants of an earlier conversation still lingering, I wondered how much they had brought with them.
I strolled across the open living space, past the dining room table that hadn't been cleaned. I made a mental note to myself to have the hotel housekeepers come and straighten up while I was here to ensure they didn't go into the master bedroom.
Or maybe I could put Alina in a closet with the hood on while the maid changed the sheets and scrubbed the bathroom. The last thing I needed was some nosy maid looking for shit to pawn to stumble across a naked woman in a sex dungeon hood.
That would cause more problems.
Hell, a maid seeing something she wasn't supposed to was what landed me in this mess in the first place.
I joined Artem and Kostya in the lounge, where the low hum of classical music played in the background, and the sunlight flowed in from the floor to ceiling windows, bathing the room in light.
Both of them were seated on leather couches, wearing custom fitted Brooks Brothers' suits and sipping from dainty porcelain cups, with a full English high tea set up on a cart next to them. They drank their tea while looking over the folders piled on the coffee table in front of them.
Just dignified businessmen having refreshments while looking over a new business proposal.
Fuck that shit.
Before sitting down and joining them in their oh-so-dignified display, I moved to the bar cart and poured myself a drink—vodka, Russian, smuggled, because fuck those tariffs—served neat.
I downed the first glass, the bite of it settling deep in my chest. I closed my eyes and savored the smooth burn, letting the familiar warmth settle me, before pouring a second glass and gesturing toward the boxes on the coffee table. "Are these from Alina's apartment?"
Kostya nodded, his sharp blue eyes flicking up from the documents he was already sifting through. He drank the rest of his tea in a single pull and held out the delicate porcelain cup for me to fill with vodka.
I grabbed a few of the tea sandwiches from the tiered silver tray and brought the bottle of vodka to the table with me.
I hoped Marina knew she was never going to completely civilize Kostya, no matter what she tried. After spending a little time with my sister-in-law, I was starting to think she preferred him a little rough around the edges.
"The boys cleaned it out earlier." His tone was casual, but I knew better. If Kostya had taken an interest, it meant there was something worth finding. They were only supposed to gather everything and make me sift through it.
Part punishment, part responsibility.
The fact that they were still here meant something had caught their attention.
Artem, ever methodical, thumbed through a thick accordion file that seemed to contain financial documents, old receipts, and some legal paperwork, W-2s and the like.
His brows furrowed, his signature frustrated look.
"Not much here. Standard shit. Rent payments, bills, some past-due notices…" He flipped to another section, his expression darkening slightly. "But there's something interesting. "
"Student loan debt from Georgetown," Kostya said, inspecting a printed-out schedule. "But she dropped out."
He pulled out a financial aid document, and I snatched it from his fingers.
He kicked a worn-looking bag toward me. Textbooks spilled from the opening.
I picked up the pile of well-used textbooks, skimming their broken and taped covers.
Law and economics.
I started pushing them back in the bag when I spotted something more personal—a stack of photographs wrapped in an elastic band.
Something twisted in my gut.
Personal items always revealed more than financial records ever could.
I tore off the rubber band and flipped through the photos. There was no reason for me to care about these pictures, but something kept me going.
Some nagging sensation in the back of my throat and in my gut told me there were answers here. Answers that I needed.
The first few were innocent enough—Alina as a child, standing uneasily beside an older man with sharp features.
He had the same sharp nose she did, the same eyes.
Her father, perhaps? He had a large, cheesy grin for the camera and he looked like he would be a normal, caring father. But something was off.
The way Alina positioned herself told a different story.
She was shrinking away from him, like his hand on her shoulder physically hurt her. Even as a child who couldn't have been older than seven, maybe eight, Alina was afraid of him.
The next few photos painted a different story. Her father wasn't in them. In his place was an elderly woman. Alina's grandmother, most likely.
The woman's eyes were kind, her arm wrapped protectively around Alina's shoulders in almost every picture, and Alina looked…content in the first few.
But then her smile widened, and she looked happy.
The transformation was remarkable. Under her grandmother's care, the timid child blossomed.
If I were to guess, I would say the love and attention her grandmother gave her was what she needed to come out of her shell. But as I went deeper into the stack, the images grew…unsettling.
Her father was in more photos, same cheesy smile, but in each photo he was in, Alina's and her grandmother's smiles were tight and didn't quite reach their eyes.
In more than a few, the grandmother and Alina wore long-sleeve shirts even though they were outside, while the father wore a T-shirt and shorts.
My jaw clenched as the pattern became clear.
Then there was the one that stood out and made my teeth clench.
Alina looked like she was maybe fourteen. There were banners all around them for the Fourth of July. Some kind of cookout. Her father wore that same stupid grin and a T-shirt.
The grandmother was looking off-camera, unable to smile, and Alina was wearing a long-sleeve shirt with a high neck and her hair down, in front of her eye. I could just see the outlines of a bruise under her hair.
Rage, pure and vicious, surged through me.
If I ever got my hands on the son of a bitch, I was going to kill him.
The pictures got happier again. Alina as an older teenager, in weather appropriate clothing. No bruises and a genuine smile. The grandmother's face looked serene, at peace, but there were shadows in her eyes, and in each picture, she seemed to age faster and faster.
The old woman had sacrificed everything to protect Alina. The toll was written in every line of her face.
I wrapped the rubber band around the pictures again and set them aside, removing more things from the backpack.
My fingers stilled when I found an envelope marked “Evidence.” The word was scrawled in bold, jagged handwriting across the front.
My blood turned cold, and instincts screamed at me as I slid my thumb beneath the flap and began to pull out some of its contents.
Did she work for the feds? She wouldn't have been the first one of our civilian employees to get into trouble with the feds and turned into an informant.
Several years ago, Artem had a gardener that got pulled over for drunk driving, and the police had tried threatening him with everything to turn against the family.
Thankfully, he was smart enough to come to us, and it was dealt with accordingly.
The gardener never saw the inside of a cell, and the police got absolutely nothing .
The few who tried working with the government did not fare as well.
If Alina was working for them…I wasn't sure I could protect her.
Sucking in a deep breath, I held it until my lungs burned, making a silent wish that it wouldn't come to that.
Then I focused my attention on the first photo.
The image made my blood run cold.
Alina stood beside her grandmother again—but parts of the grandmother's face had been burned away in perfect circles. A cigarette had been placed on the photo, blackened holes where the old woman's eyes should have been.
I flipped it over, and my stomach twisted at the words scrawled in red ink.
"Do as you're told, or she's next."