Chapter 8
NIKOLAI
The safe house had a small office on the first floor. Nothing fancy, just a desk, two leather chairs that had seen better days, and a cabinet stocked with the essentials. Meaning shot glasses, pure vodka, ammo, and guns to go with it.
Adrik had already claimed one of the chairs and was pouring vodka into two glasses when I walked in.
I needed this. We both did. He almost lost his sister today. And if I was on the verge of a rage fit about it, I could only imagine how much it had impacted him.
We needed the burn of alcohol and the cloud of nicotine to wash away the taste of gunpowder and the memory of an ambush that luckily didn’t end as badly as it could have.
I lit a cigarette and took the glass Adrik offered, downing it in one gulp before settling into the other chair. The vodka burned its way down my gullet, but it was welcomed. Unlike the burn on my arm, the wound still slowly dripping blood.
“How’s Sasha?” I asked, refilling my glass to the brim.
“Sleeping. It’s a clean wound. No fragments of the bullet. It just hit muscle, thank fuck. She’ll be fine in a few weeks. And we both know how much she’ll enjoy exaggerating the tale of last night.” Adrik studied my face intently when I didn’t laugh at his light joke. “How’s our guest?”
“Alive.” I barked the answer. The mere mention of her had my body erupting into irrational rage.
“That’s it? Just alive?”
I took a long drag of my cigarette, mustering the patience to have this conversation, but it never came. “She’s breathing. That’s all that matters. What else do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Maybe why you looked like you wanted to murder everyone in that room when she walked in? Or why you lost your fucking mind when you saw her wearing your clothes?”
My eyes caught the whirl of the clear liquid as I spun the glass on the table, choosing to ignore Adrik’s question altogether, but the fucker wasn’t about done picking that bone.
“She did what anyone would do, Nikolai.” Adrik leaned forward, his voice taking on that reasonable tone that always annoyed the fuck out of me. “She was kidnapped. She tried to escape. She sent a message to someone she trusted. That’s Survival 101.”
“I know what she did.” My tone was low and gravely, scraping on the last of my restraint as I replayed tonight’s events for the hundredth time.
“Then why are you so pissed off about it? Why are you acting like she personally betrayed you?”
I drained my second glass and slammed the tumbler onto the table, the words leaving my mouth as if they had a mind of their own. “Because the stupid devka threw herself in front of a bullet for me.” Girl.
Adrik blinked, leaning in even further while I poured another drink, vodka sloshing over the edge of the small glass and spreading over the table.
“Blyat!” Fuck. I cursed for wasting perfectly good booze, which I needed to set my mind back on track.
“She what?”
“You heard me.” I tossed the drink down my throat, sucking my fingers clean, and fuck me if that didn’t bring back yet another dark memory of the fragile little moth that plagued my conscience.
“Tonight. During the gunfight. I had a sniper’s dot on my chest, and she tackled me out of the way.
That’s why I took the hit in my arm instead of in the heart. ”
“She… saved you?” Adrik asked, refilling my glass.
“Da.” The admittance tasted just as bitter as the vodka. “She saved me.”
I took a large gulp out of my glass, drowning the damn butterflies that fluttered at the memory.
Adrik was quiet for a long moment, processing the information. “And that pisses you off because…?”
“Because who the fuck does that?” I shot up abruptly, my body no longer controlling the fury that coursed through my veins.
I walked over to the other side of the room, feeling the need to punch the fucking wall.
“Who throws themselves in front of a bullet for the man who kidnapped them? Who humiliated them? For the man who’s about to hand them over to a monster far worse than me? ”
I stopped in front of the blacked-out window, the small gaps in the tint making the city lights shine through like a beacon of hope that was just a step too far to reach.
“She should hate me, Adrik. She should want me dead. Instead, she…” I trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
“Instead, she saved your life.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to make sense.” Adrik’s voice was cautious, like he was talking to a cornered animal that would turn on its trainer if triggered. He wasn’t exactly wrong to tread that line with extreme caution, if I were to be honest. “Maybe she just did what felt right in the moment.”
I turned to face him, incredulous. “Since when would kidnapping victims risk their lives for their captors?”
“Since when do captors burn their own clothes because their hostage wore them?”
“How do you know about that?”
“I had to make sure you didn’t rip her to shreds like I had the sense you wanted to. I’m glad you took it out on the shirt instead.”
“I wouldn’t hurt her.” There was resentment in my tone, as if Adrik implying that I would lay a finger on her was hurtful.
“Hmm.”
“What? After everything we’ve gone through, how could you think that I’d hurt her?”
“You don’t have to touch her to hurt her, Nikolai. And if you’re that noble, I’m sure you’ve called off the meeting with your father tomorrow. You’ve told him the deal is off, right?”
“Are you insane? Of course not. I’ve worked over twenty fucking years to get what I want, and this is the last step to getting it. I don’t care if we have the wrong girl, I’m getting them back.”
Dead blood is poison in the veins.
His words came back into my brain like a fucking plague.
“The graves.”
“Yes, the fucking graves!”
I knew what he was doing, but it wasn’t going to work.
I couldn’t shield this girl more than I could’ve saved my mother and my sister.
More than I could even guarantee that they got a respectable burial.
After all this time, all it took was this delivery, and they’d be back to their eternal and deserving resting places, and I would finally fulfill the promise I made to my mother while she bled out on that marble floor.
“So what’s the plan?”
“I drive her down, alone.”
Another silence. Another glass of vodka.
“Nikolai…”
“Don’t.”
“I’m just saying…”
“Don’t.” I stubbed out my cigarette on the puddle of vodka that covered the table, half expecting it to catch fire. “She’s a job, Adrik. A means to an end. Nothing more.”
“If you say so.” His voice was as flat as my conviction.
“I do say so.”
The next morning came too soon and not soon enough.
I’d barely slept, spending most of the night staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about the woman locked in the room upstairs. Trying not to wonder if she’d slept, if she’d dreamed, if she’d thought I was the monster bedtime fables are made of.
If she’d touched her throat where my hand had been.
By seven A.M., we were loading the cars. One for me and Adrianne, one for Adrik and Kirill to follow behind at a distance. Precautionary measures Adrik had insisted on, and by now, I knew him well enough to be sure he’d follow behind even if I pulled my gun on him and told him not to.
The drive to D.C. would take about four hours, meaning we’d get to Vladimir’s estate right around lunchtime.
Perfect timing for a family reunion.
I was checking the GPS when Adrik appeared with our passenger. She was wearing jeans and a plain black sweater. They were true to her size and didn’t suit her as well as the oversized shirt that had driven me to arson the night before.
I clenched my jaw, tearing my gaze away from them as they neared the car.
Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup and blood. She looked younger like this. More vulnerable. More breakable.
Innocent enough to throw herself in front of a bullet to save the man who was about to ruin her.
“Ready?” Adrik asked.
I nodded toward the backseat. “Get in.”
She stood there for another moment, and I could see her mind working. But the fire I’d seen in her eyes before had died. As if she’d resigned to the fate I was about to shove down her throat. She didn’t even protest, didn’t even fight.
She got into the backseat, sliding all the way to the other side, locking her eyes on a horizon of nothingness. Adrik slammed the door shut behind her while his eyes bore into mine with a judgment that bothered me, and yet, I couldn’t admit to the fact.
He took a step closer, lowering his voice as if the empty space around us had no business listening to what he was about to say. “Think about what you’re doing. Are the dead really worth another life?”
“I’ll see you at the meeting point by midnight,” I said instead, choosing to ignore him and his audacity to question me.
I slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine, not even sparing a glance towards my silent passenger.
The first hour passed in torturous silence. My damn thoughts were too loud in the quietness of this car. I focused on the road, stealing an occasional glimpse through the rearview mirror. Adrianne kept to the same spot, immobile, her gaze on the window, but not seeing a damn thing, I was sure.
One of those glimpses turned into a stare, and before I could swerve my eyes back to the road, Adrianne’s eyes locked with mine through the reflection.
“So this is it,” she said finally. “The end of the line.”
“Da.”
She paused, sighing in defeat.
“Your father… What’s he like?”
“Why do you want to know?”
She shrugged, as if it didn’t make a difference if I answered her or not. “Because I’d like to know what kind of monster raised a monster.”
The words should have stung. Instead, they made me smile grimly. She got us both right.
“Vladimir Volkov is everything you’d expect from a man who’s spent his life taking what he wants and destroying anyone who gets in his way.”
“Including his own son?”
“Especially his own son.”