Chapter 31
GAVAN
Fuck twenty-four hours. The second I come to, still slumped in the back seat of the Range Rover, I call Korol and have him grab the pieces of the egg and—curiously—the old wood and brass banded base it once sat on, and immediately fly over to meet me in Pisa, Italy.
The location Drazen texted me is a palazzo on the island of Elba, off the coast of Tuscany. He also included a reminder not to bring anyone else, not even my number two.
Normally, I’d tell anyone giving me orders like that to go fuck themselves. But he has Eilish. That’s actually the very first thing I did when I woke up, even before calling Korol: bolt up the stairs to the plane to look for her, where I found both pilots and both stewards just waking up as well.
But no Eilish.
Roughly twelve hours after waking up, I’m glaring down at the lavish cliffside palazzo as the helicopter I just took from a private airfield on the mainland descends onto a stretch of manicured grass.
The Mediterranean air whips around me as the chopper rises back into the sky after depositing me on the lawn, leaving me grim-faced and brimming with fury as I stand there holding a metal carrying case containing what Drazen wants.
Okay, now what, you fucking psycho.
As if reading my black thoughts, the ornate front door of the palazzo overlooking the circular driveway and grassy yard where I was dropped off opens. Four heavily tattooed men in suits, carrying semi-automatic weapons, quickly surround me with barrels pointed right at me.
One of them takes the case from my hands. Another frisks me and then uses a wand to check me over for metal. When they confirm that I’m not carrying any weapons, the one holding the case steps forward.
“Follow me.”
I trail behind him, flanked by the others as we file into the gorgeous, sprawling old Italian manor. They lead me through various sitting rooms and libraries, past enormous windows with staggering views of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Finally, we step into a stunning inner courtyard filled with leafy plants, lounge chairs and couches, and a burbling marble fountain.
I look right past all of that at the man sitting sprawled in a huge wood and upholstery chair, like a smug king.
Drazen.
“Welcome to my home, Mr. Tsa—”
“ You fucking— ”
Four semi-automatics instantly level at me, stopping me cold. Drazen’s brows knit and he stiffens, but then he sighs, waving his men off. They instantly lower their guns as he stands and ambles toward us.
“She is fine , Mr. Tsarenko. I assume you are wondering.”
“Where the fuck is she,” I spit viciously.
Drazen smiles, dipping his chin. “As I said, she is fine. And you will see her in a moment.” He gestures for me to sit on one of the couches. When I don’t move to do so, one of his men prods me in the back with a gun barrel.
“Sit, please.”
“Is that a request or a directive?”
“ That is just good manners, Mr. Tsarenko. Please, sit.”
Drazen sprawls back in his chair. He’s wearing cream dress pants and a crisp white dress shirt, open at the neck with the sleeves rolled up: his numerous tattoos are on display on his muscled forearms and his chest. He smiles a toothy grin, dazzlingly white against his bronze, sun-kissed face.
“Too hot for tweed?” I growl as I sit stiffly on the couch.
Drazen chuckles. “I do apologize for misrepresenting myself like that.” He clears his throat. “Have you been to Elba before?”
“No.”
He nods. “You know, this is where Napoleon was first exiled.”
“I’m not here for a fucking history lesson.”
He smiles, dipping his head again. “No, of course not.”
“Are you working with Svetlana?”
Drazen’s face sours. “Your au… Sorry, your not- aunt?” He shakes his head dismissively.
“No, not in the slightest. Svetlana is…” he twists his fingers in the air next to his head.
“Merely a blunt tool. A useful idiot, as they say.” He nods as one of his men sets the metal case on the low wooden coffee table between us.
“She wanted that egg almost as much as I did. So I used that to get close to you. I hope you don’t take that personally. ”
“I take you abducting Eilish pretty fucking personally.”
He nods. “That’s more than fair. And again, I apologize for my means to an end. Taking her was not meant to hurt her or punish you, merely to motivate you.” He turns and barks something in what might actually be Serbian, now that I think about it.
Seconds later, my face lights up when Eilish walks out of the house and into the courtyard.
My heart surges as I leap to my feet.
“A moment, Mr. Tsarenko.”
Drazen is still smiling cordially at me. But he’s also pointing a Beretta right at me.
“She will be freed in a moment. Please, sit.”
I stare at him lethally. “You have what you asked for. Release her, now .”
“Patience, please. All in good time. Sit down.”
When I just keep glaring, his smile fades a little.
“ Sit down , Mr. Tsarenko.”
My eyes drag from him to Eilish. She’s being led out by an older woman—without a weapon, thank God—who’s dressed in a housekeeper’s uniform.
Eilish’s hands are bound behind her, and there’s a gag over her mouth.
But I can see she’s smiling at me through it as our eyes lock.
Her head nods almost imperceptibly, as if to tell me she’s okay.
When the woman leads her to a chair across the table from me and lowers her into it, I sit as well. Drazen sighs.
“ So much better, yes?” He nods to the woman who brought Eilish in, and then to his men. “Leave us.” Without question, they all file out of the courtyard. When we’re alone together, Drazen cracks his neck and smiles. “Good. Now we can talk like civilized people.”
I glare at him, but Drazen ignores me as he taps his fingers on the top of the metal case.
“You see, it’s not just that I desire this egg. It’s that it belongs to me. It’s in my blood, Mr. Tsarenko. It’s my birthright.”
“You have an astonishing sense of entitlement,” I hiss quietly.
Drazen chuckles. “I know you didn’t come for one, but let me give you a brief history lesson anyway.
” He taps the top of the case again. “This was commissioned by Tsarina Alexandra herself, the last empress of Russia. Imperskaya Gvardiya , or in English the Imperial Shield Fabergé Egg. It was a gift for her favorite bodyguard, Ioaan Vasilyev. When the Bolsheviks were marching on the royal palace, Alexandra sent Ioann away with orders to flee the country with the egg and to meet up with her and her family in Paris. He did as he was told. Obviously, the Romanovs never got to France, since they were killed by the mob. And while he was waiting for news from Russia, Ioaan was murdered in his sleep, and the egg was lost.”
Drazen’s face darkens. “Ioaan Vasilyev was my great-great-grandfather.”
My jaw tightens.
Fuck me .
If this is true, the fucking thing really is his birthright. Which doesn’t change the fact that it’s smashed into forty-odd pieces right now.
“The men of my family have bled and died trying to reclaim this,” he growls. “My family should have been wealthy beyond measure, living as kings.”
“You seem to be doing okay,” I mutter.
Drazen smirks, lifting his gaze to the gorgeous palazzo around us. “Yes. I seem to have a penchant for the world of the Bratva.”
I glare at him. “Running around committing crimes and trying to murder the heads of other Bratva families does not make you Bratva,” I hiss.
“No, but I believe this does.”
He undoes two buttons of his shirt, pulling it open to reveal a swath of tattoos clearly marking him as Bratva on his firm chest.
“Before you suggest I merely had these done for show, my grandfather started the Krylov Bratva family, modeled in the old ways, when he had nothing to his name. And that?” He stabs a finger at the box.
“That birthright of mine is how I will build my modest kingdom into an empire , and how I will ascend to my rightful seat at the table of the Bratva High Council.”
I smile coldly. “You certainly have a vivid imagination.”
He chuckles. “We’ll see.”
Drazen stands and opens the metal case. He pulls out the Tupperware I’ve put the shattered pieces of the egg in and sets it aside before pulling out the weathered, grubby, wood and brass base it once sat upon.
I drag my gaze to Eilish, my eyes locking with hers. When Drazen deftly dumps the pieces of egg out onto the table, we both turn to look on in confusion.
Suddenly, Drazen raises his gun.
And starts to smash .
“What the fuck !” I hiss, staring at him like he’s a crazy person as he uses the butt of his Beretta to start pounding the pieces of egg into nothing but dust.
…Except…not quite.
When he smashes one of the large chunks, a piece of black metal suddenly appears and clatters away across the table. Drazen smiles, his eyes glinting as he reaches over and holds it up to the light triumphantly.
I blink.
It’s a key .
Drazen turns to the old wooden base, and rips the black metal stand out of the wood, revealing a hole in the box beneath it.
Holy shit. Not a hole.
A keyhole .
Eilish and I lock eyes before we both stare at Drazen, who is slowly inserting the key into the lock and twisting it with a small metallic clicking sound.
Suddenly, the top pops open.
“You see, Mr. Tsarenko,” Drazen says quietly, picking the box up and staring into it with a dreamy, meditative look on his face. “It’s not the egg that was my birthright. It was these .”
My eyes bulge in disbelief as he turns the base of the stand over, and proceeds to dump a fucking river of gleaming, glittering jewels out onto the table.
What. The. Fuck .
Drazen smiles widely, gesturing with the gun in his hand.
“A pity that the egg needs to be destroyed to open the box. But that is what a shield does, no? Much like my great-great-grandfather. A shield protects the…” he reaches into the box and grunts as he wrestles something heavy free before pulling out his hand and revealing a gleaming, glittering, diamond-encrusted royal crown.
He glances at me and smirks. “A shield protects the crown, does it not?” Drazen glances at Eilish, then back to me. He nods. “I have what is mine. Thank you. Now you may take what is yours.”
He’s barely finished his sentence before I bolt around the table and grab Eilish.
I tear off the ropes binding her arms, then her gag.
With a choked sob, she wraps her arms around me so fucking tight I almost can’t breathe, clinging to me as she buries her face in my chest. I close my eyes, sucking in air shakily as I stroke her hair, before pulling back.
Our eyes lock, and a half second later, my mouth is searing to hers.
But before any more of that, there’s something I have to do.
“ This is how I’ll be ascending to the High Council, Mr. Tsarenko. Perhaps we’ll see each other—”
I whirl and launch myself at Drazen, catching him off guard as my fist slams into his face. He groans, staggering backward with me on top of him as I pummel his face again and again before grabbing him by the collar.
Drazen groans, gritting his teeth. “Yes, I deserve that, for taking your woman. But ask her,” he hisses. “I never once touched her.”
My lips curl as I glance to the side, to Eilish. She nods.
“He didn’t. Not a single one of this men did, either. There was that one woman who helped me around and fed me, that was it.”
“Yaelle is strong,” Drazen grunts. “She is the one who helped Ms. Kildare off of the plane, too.”
I turn back to level an icy look at him. “If you’re looking for mercy…”
I hit him once more before whirling and grabbing one of the last large shards of the egg from the table. I spin back and snarl as I press the sharp, jagged edge of it against Drazen’s throat.
“You’ll find none with me.”
Drazen grunts, spitting out blood before smiling a bloody grin at me. “I’m not looking for mercy, Gavan,” he growls. “I’m looking for allies .”
I bark a cold laugh. “You’re insane.”
“It’s been suggested before.” He shrugs. “You can kill me if you like. But I have a counter-offer.”
“Which is?”
Drazen smiles thinly. “Definitive evidence of Abram Diduch falsely using my name to declare war on your precious Council. And I do mean definitive .”
My eyes draw to slits. “I’ve seen your calling cards from the attacks in New York. And I know for a fact that you’ve used those before in other wars with your enemies.”
He nods. “Yes, but so does Abram. My flare for the theatrics at times is not a secret. And unless I’m mistaken, I don’t imagine it’s hard to get your hands on a deck of cards in New York City,” he says with a smirk.
I glare at him. He glares right back.
“You can kill me and accuse Abram, and go nowhere with those accusations. Or you can let me up, we can shake hands like men, and I will give you everything you need to stop him.”
“That’s it?”
“Not quite.” He smirks. “I will be making a play to sit at that table. I am confident you will have a free seat soon enough. I don’t imagine Abram will be staying much longer, not after you prove to the other Council chairs that he was behind the attacks on Marko Kalishnik and Viktor Komarov.
” His lips curl. “I want your vote , Gavan. And I want your support getting others to vote for me as well.”
I eye him warily. “That won’t be easy.”
“You’re a very persuasive man, or so I’ve heard.” He smiles. “Oh, and I can also prove that Abram is bankrolling your father’s sister’s legal crusade against you, if that tips the scales at all.”
My jaw grinds as a flash of rage explodes through my system.
Yeah, it just might.
“What do you say, Gavan?” He smirks. “The King of Diamonds would be a powerful friend. And I’m only half the monster I’m rumored to be.”
“ Which half ,” I mutter.
Drazen grins. “Why don’t we find out? It’s your call.”