Chapter 20
Emily
No.
This cannot be happening. What I’m seeing is impossible. I recognize that I’ve only known her for a few weeks, but deep down in my soul, I know that Alice would never go back to her father.
She told me so. On that cliff, under the bright, low-hanging moon. She all but said she’d rather die than reconcile. She doesn’t value a life trapped, with no choice.
But here she is, kissing a man who will never love her, who will only use her for connection to Konstantin’s power.
Opening her mouth against his, letting his tongue sweep inside and erase every last trace of me.
Letting him kiss her when I never was allowed to cement the memory of feeling her lips on mine.
When he pulls away, Ilya’s gaze isn’t hazy, his pupils aren’t blown, his expression isn’t adoring or even lust-ridden. He looks like he won. Like he’s pinned and captured the prey he’s been hunting.
My stomach clenches at that look. This is so much worse than the worst-case-scenario I imagined possible.
Not only has Ilya found Alice and me together, overwhelmed me physically so I couldn’t protect her, and gotten me into a position that will most certainly end in my death, he also convinced her to turn back to her father.
I’ve lost everything. My life. My family.
The only woman who has made me want anything for myself.
And simultaneously, I’ve endangered the mission my family is dedicated to, putting Lucia and Clara and everyone who has loved me in far more danger than they ever have been, and I can’t even warn them.
I’ll be dead within the hour. And if I know Konstantin, he won’t be the only one to see my head. He’ll place it on my father and mother’s doorstep, payback for Lev and all the other henchmen we’ve deposited in the forests surrounding his stronghold.
“Since this is your first kill, I’ll make it easy for you,” Ilya instructs patronizingly, reaching for his blade again.
He cuts Alice’s feet free first, keeping a hand on her body to hold her to the chair.
He’s strong—stronger than me—but I’m certain it’s the threat of the violence his hand brings that keeps her in place.
When Ilya stands to start on her wrists he coughs once, his balance wavering for a moment. He swallows hard, steadying himself, and my eyes flicker to Alice. She’s watching him carefully, that neutral, protective expression on her face again. Not nearly as afraid as she seemed moments ago.
“I’ll put this gun in your hand, but don’t think for a moment you can—” his monologue is cut off by another round of coughing. The hand holding the knife presses into his stomach, and he nearly doubles over.
I don’t understand what’s happening, but Alice seems to.
Far in the distance, I hear a creak, almost completely covered by the sound of Ilya’s hacking.
Neither he nor Alice turn toward the sound, and I desperately pray it’s not some wayward landlord or security guard coming to check out all the ruckus.
I do not have the bandwidth for more innocent lives to protect.
“What did you do?” Ilya asks, brandishing his knife at Alice.
I’d be worried for her safety, but Ilya looks like he’s about to pass out, sweat dotting his forehead as he stumbles a few steps backwards.
Alice maintains that carefully neutral expression, surveying his every twitch like I would a research subject in my lab back in Boston. What did she do?
“Me?” she asks, adopting the patronizing, sardonic tone Ilya was using on her. “How could I do anything, Ilya? I’m nothing but a tool at your disposal.”
He sways on his feet again, reaching for the small of his back but missing his gun. I fear he’s going to start shooting wildly, or lunging at us with that very sharp blade. He may be inexplicably disoriented, but I’m still bound, no matter how hard I try to slip my wrists from the snare.
A struggle Alice apparently does not share, because she’s standing in front of him now, hands completely free from the rope that lays on the ground behind her chair.
Ilya swipes wildly toward her, but she dodges easily.
He stumbles over the empty bucket he used to rouse me, the clanging of metal on concrete so unnaturally loud as it echoes through this empty warehouse.
I hear steps to my nine o’clock, and I pray to all the saints my father ever told me of that a friendly—or at least, familiar—face is here.
Alice spits on Ilya’s face, and he turns to vomit on the floor next to him.
“You spoiled…deranged little…bitch,” Ilya curses through heaves and gags, the stench of bile and rotten food permeating the room. I hold back a gag, but Alice seems completely unaffected.
“You really shouldn’t have used a knot my father taught you,” she chides, stepping on his hand until he lets go of the blade clutched in it with a cry. She kicks it away, though far from where I’m still bound, which is both annoying and informative. She doesn’t want me free.
Reasonable.
“I hope this death is slow and painful,” she whispers at him, using her bare foot to push his hip up.
He tries to grab at her leg, but she easily shakes him off, flipping him over on his stomach with a hard kick.
“I hope your organs fail inside your body slowly, so you can taste the blood that will drown you. I hope you beg for death, like you made so many others do without mercy. And I hope you feel every ounce of the fear and pain I did when you told me I’d die just like my mother—used until worthless. ”
Ilya’s shallow, gasping breaths, broken only by gagging and coughing, fill the warehouse and echo off the walls as Alice leans down and pulls the handgun from his waistband.
I wonder what the fuck our shadowed visitor is waiting for as Alice rolls her shoulders, cracks her neck, and turns the gun on me.
“Explain.”
Despite my confusion, fear, nausea, pain, and a thousand other feelings rolling around in my chest, I can’t help but notice how good Alice looks with a gun in her hand.
“I don’t think I’m the only one who has some explaining to do,” I accuse, raising my eyebrows at Ilya’s twitching, writhing frame. Alice looks unaffected.
“I think I’m the only one with a gun,” she replies cooly, disengaging the safety to make her point. Kinda hot.
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
Oh thank god, it’s Bea.
Alice swivels in place, aiming her weapon right where Bea is emerging from the shadows. I look over my shoulder and throw her a grin that’s meant to convey oops, sorry, fucked up pretty bad here, please don’t kill her.
“Who the hell are you?” Alice demands, her aim unwavering and not an ounce of fear in her eyes as she faces the barrel of Bea’s gun. I’m starting to think the quivering, helpless act was all for Ilya’s benefit.
“My cousin,” I say, before Bea shoots back some half-answer that will only piss Alice off more. I think we’re past subterfuge at this point.
“I suppose I don’t have to ask if what he said was true, then,” she bites, glaring at me like she’d kill me with the look if she could.
“He left some key details out, which I’d like to explain, if possible,” I plead, watching Bea out of the corner of my eye. I don’t exactly trust her not to kill Alice on the spot, utility to our mission be damned.
“She gets her explanation when we get ours,” Bea says with finality, raising Alice’s hackles. Which, of course, was Bea’s goal. Ever the instigator.
“I think I’m owed a bit more than that, seeing as I’ve apparently been used as a disposable pawn between your family and my father for the last few weeks,” she argues, keeping her aim true, right at Bea’s forehead.
I wonder how much weapons training her father provided her.
Apparently he taught her to escape having her wrists bound, which redirects my mind to quite inappropriate and unlikely possibilities.
“You’re actually quite a useful pawn, if that makes you feel better.” I’m going to kill Bea.
“Okay, okay, let’s calm the verbal sparring,” I ask as Alice takes a step closer to my cousin.
I don’t doubt that Bea is quicker to the trigger than Alice is, but rage will do a lot for a woman, including making her impulsive.
And I really don’t need either of them to shed blood today.
“Bea, let me explain. Ilya told her about The Syndicate, so there’s no point in keeping secrets now. ”
Bea’s glance toward me tells me she thinks there are plenty of reasons for secrets, but I ignore her, turning back to Alice and hoping neither of them choose to shoot me instead.
“Ilya was right,” I start, another round of vomiting from the man himself punctuating my confession.
“The Costas, my family, are the central core of an enterprise known as The Syndicate of Fate. We work within and through other criminal enterprises to carry out our mission. It’s a complicated family history, but we currently are trying to cut off some of the larger international human trafficking operations.
We don’t work within existing legal channels, but I feel sanctimonious was a little harsh. ”
Neither Alice nor Bea laughs at my joke, which hangs in the air like the heavy stench of puke. Brilliant.
“I assume my father was on your hit list,” she guesses, not seeming particularly perturbed by the concept.
“Only recently,” Bea cuts in, still aiming her gun at Alice.
“Years ago, we tried to form a partnership. He’s a savvy and charismatic man, and we knew he would climb the ranks and find a following in the world of weapons trade and transfer.
We’d hoped he could be persuaded to use his expanding network to help monitor human trafficking operations through the ports he had influence over, and in exchange, we would ensure he faced little competition regionally from other gun runners. ”
“What superheroes,” Alice says sarcastically, her cutting gaze flicking to me before returning to Bea and the threat she wields.
“I told you, we’re not altruistic. We have a goal, and we use whatever avenues are open to us to achieve it,” I argue, earning an eye roll, which is rich coming from the girl who used to wear diamonds bought with blood-soaked rubles.
“Konstantin was uninterested in such a partnership,” Bea continues, like there was no interruption at all.
“He wanted more out of The Syndicate than we were willing to offer, and saw better opportunities for increasing his power and influence by joining the forces we were trying to fight. Negotiations fell apart pretty quickly.”
“So he tried to kill your leader.” It’s not a question. Alice says it like it's a predictable outcome of interacting with her father.
“Not until about two years ago,” I say, earning a glare from Bea.
But I no longer care. I refuse to lie to Alice about anything anymore.
“You had already been assumed dead for almost three years, and your father had expanded his operations significantly in that time. Our Matriarch focused more pointedly on curtailing his influence, turning his operatives to our side or killing the ones who refused.”
We’re all quiet for a moment as Alice processes what she’s learning, her brow furrowed over the horizon of the metal in her hand.
“How did you know I was alive?” she asks, more curious than accusatory.
“We’re very good at our jobs,” Bea says, cryptic as fuck for no reason.
“We learned that Konstantin had Mikhail killed, and followed Ilya’s movements for a few weeks before realizing what he was looking for,” I explain more thoroughly. “Bea had heard the rumors that you had been smuggled out, and we put the pieces together until we found you.”
“And what exactly were you going to do with me, after you stalked me and fucked me and kidnapped me?” Alice demands, her voice much less neutral than it was a moment ago. Bea’s lips twitch into the shadow of a smile before she covers it.
“Emily will answer that question when you explain that,” Bea negotiates, waving her gun at Ilya’s frame. His back is still rising and falling, and every once in a while a muffled groan slips from his lips, so he’s still alive.
“Rattlesnake venom,” Alice responds with a shrug, opening her mouth wide in our direction. “A capsule hidden in a loose cap.”
“And why aren’t you half dead on the ground?” I ask, stupified by the fact that Alice just happened to have a capsule of fucking snake venom in her mouth when—
“Mithridatism,” Bea answers on her behalf, clearly and begrudgingly impressed. “Clever, if unpredictable."
“Wait a minute, is that why you wouldn’t let me kiss you?
You had that fucking thing in your mouth the whole time?
” I whip my head back and forth between Alice and my cousin, slightly annoyed that they seem to be sizing each other up while I’m tied to the ground next to the nearly-dead guy.
“You planned this. You knew he was coming and you prepared!”
“Oh, I think you’ll find that Alice did more than predict Ilya’s arrival. She ensured it.”
Now Bea seems unabashedly impressed. And I’m thoroughly irritated.
“It wasn’t enough to kill him quickly,” Alice explains, glancing over her shoulder at Ilya’s limp, curled up frame. “But I’d prefer he die slowly, if possible.”
“I’d prefer to be cut free from this fucking rope, if possible,” I grumble, especiallly perturbed when Bea and Alice both reply no at the same time.
“So what comes next?”
I'm surprised the question comes from Bea, not Alice. It’s like my cousin is testing her, seeing if she is able to move her own pieces on this chessboard, rather than be a pawn in the game.
Alice stares at me like she wishes she could ask a hundred questions at once. She doesn’t lie to me anymore either, and the pain and betrayal I see in her eyes makes me feel worse than I would if I were in Ilya’s shoes right now.
“I suppose it’s time to figure out how valuable I am to you.”