1. Kirill Volkov – Chicago – Present Day
Kirill Volkov – Chicago – Present Day
Find the paintings. Find Sandrine.
I lean against a metal file cabinet that contains God-knows how many secrets. Gloved hands tucked under my armpits, I try to contain myself because this one is personal.
Hell, it’s beyond personal. It’s about family. My family. The family I lost five years ago.
The lawyer is pinned to his desk chair by the sheer power of my enforcer’s attention. Drago doesn’t rush these interrogations. My brother-in-law has the patience of a saint.
I’m a sinner.
“Where did you get the painting?” I ask Lew Jagger, my voice calm.
“What painting?” A broken reply rattles from the lawyer’s chest, but he has no idea how miserable I can make his life.
In the dingy law office with windows clouded by years of grime, the dull thud of Drago’s fist against the scumbag’s flesh punctuates the eerie quiet at measured intervals. Each impact is placed where it will hurt the most.
But the metallic tang of blood is starting to overpower the waft of Jagger’s cheap cologne. It burned the back of my throat the moment I stepped into this hellhole.
The lawyer’s eyes dart toward me, searching. He doesn’t know who I am because I’m wearing a mask. This sad piece of garbage thinks I’m the reasonable one in this room. That I might call this off.
He doesn’t realize yet that he crossed the Bratva. And rarely does a man survive that mistake.
Outside, my army, my bratoks, line up in the stairwell. Waiting for my signal to strike, they are a silent presence. Until they’re lethal. Then nothing will survive. That’s how we train them in the Volkov Brotherhood.
“Answer the question,” I sneer to the lawyer through clenched teeth.
Find the paintings. Find Sandrine.
“Please, I told you. I don’t know anything.” The stench of Jagger’s sweat escapes his wrinkled shirt.
Drago’s hand wraps around his throat, fingers digging in just enough to make the man wince before the next strike lands. There’s a rhythm to my enforcer’s violence that strips away lies layer by layer until only truth remains.
But it’s taking too fucking long tonight.
“Try again,” Drago says, his voice low, terrifying. “You received a wire from Bedell Auctions three months ago. Where did you get that painting you gave them to sell?”
“I—” Jagger’s voice breaks. “I handle a lot of transactions.”
I push away from the file cabinet and cross the room like a polar bear closing in on his prey in the ice and snow.
When I reach him, I take hold of his collar to pull him forward. Up close, I see the fear etched into every line of his smashed-up face, and I can smell the panic sweating out of his pores.
“Let me make this perfectly clear to you,” I say calmly and remove my mask. “That was my money.”
“Oh shit.” Jagger coughs up blood that spills down the front of his cheap shirt.
Yeah, he recognizes me.
“Please… I just do what clients ask of me.”
“And where did you get that painting?” I grind my thumb into the bruise forming along his cheekbone.
“From an estate,” the lawyer blurts out on a sharp cry. “I was selling it to provide for the client, that’s all. That’s what I was told to do.”
Provide? For my Sandrine?
The room tilts, the present slipping just enough for my memory to bleed through. Her hands stained with color, the way she would step back from a canvas with a dull satisfaction that never quite reached her eyes. She always chased perfection.
Missing Sandrine twists my stomach with a sharp, unwelcome ache. I ignore it, the way I’ve ignored every other inconvenient emotion that has tried to surface since she disappeared.
My jaw tightens, dark rage threading through me. Possession and violence and betrayal compete with the cold anger I’ve carried in my heart for five years.
“There’s only one way for you to survive this,” I warn, ready to lose it. “Who is your client?”
Jagger isn’t leaving here alive. I don’t mind lying to a snake.
“Thomas De la Vega,” he rasps, desperate now that he knows he’s crossed a Volkov.
The name drops a lighted match into a puddle of gasoline. I knew Sandrine’s bastard father had a hand in this. Dragging me back into the rot of what he did is enough to make my vision go black.
Her sister is untouchable, conveniently married to Ares fucking Zervas. And Sandrine doesn’t need providing for. Zervas has her under his protection. I didn’t see the ten million dollars I paid for that painting going to him.
I should kill the head of the Greek Mafia for keeping Sandrine from me, but I don’t need a war with another syndicate.
I have more Bratva to slaughter. And as soon as my father dies, I need Sandrine home in order to take my place as pakhan.
Only, my wife is missing.
“Did you talk to Thomas?” the lawyer plays dumb.
“He’s dead.” Glancing around the skeevy office, I ask, “Where is the ten million dollars?”
Jagger turns white, caught in his web of lies. “That’s my business.”
Those paintings weren’t just a payday for this prick.
They were hers. Fragments of her life, of her mind.
Jagger might as well have been selling her.
Other paintings I bought from private sales were leads that went cold.
But Bedell Auction House has unhappy employees willing to talk.
Willing to please the Bratva and cash in.
I got fucking lucky to have discovered the auction in the first place. But luck is just another word for good timing.
Find the paintings. Find Sandrine.
I stare again at the lawyer in front of me, and whatever restraint I’d been holding on to slips away.
My hand leaves his collar only long enough to draw the knife from inside my jacket. The blade glints off the faint glow of light in the office. The clean, cold line of steel reflects a fury in my eyes I don’t bother to hide.
I can’t survive if this is another dead end after all this time. Zervas can’t be the only person who knows where my wife is.
The tip of the blade presses against the hollow of Jagger’s throat, not enough to break the skin, but enough to promise I could. “Where is Thomas’s daughter Sandrine?”
I can give a shit about the money at this point.
Jagger shakes his head. “He made me swear to never tell where she was. She’s hidden.”
“Hidden where?” I roar. When Jagger says nothing, I bark at Drago, “Go through those files. Now.”
My enforcer crosses the room to that file cabinet of sins and secrets, wrenching a drawer open with the sharp screech of metal. He searches files and pulls out something.
“I got Thomas’s will here,” he says, putting a folder on Jagger’s desk. “Instructions for funds and… Fuck, Kirill. It’s all here.”
“You had your chance, Jagger.” I raise the knife.
“Thomas warned me about you.” He jerks his chin upward in a last attempt at bravery. “Said you were a monster who raped his daughter and kept her against her will in that penthouse of yours.”
I freeze at that particularly damning accusation. De la Vega told those lies to earn sympathy for himself and to justify keeping her from me after she went missing. I did no such thing. I loved Sandrine, and she loved me.
“You need to look at this, Kirill.” Drago points to a printout in the folder.
I look down and scan an amendment to Thomas De la Vega’s will. His instructions are jumbled and chaotic. All I can make out are words underlined:
Sell the paintings.
Provide for Sandrine.
Maintain discretion.
Provide. The word grates on my nerves again, but I push past it, my focus narrowing to the only thing that matters.
“Where is she?” I slash Jagger’s arm. “I’m only going to ask you one more time.”
“I don’t know,” Jagger admits, his voice trembling.
“You were warned about me, were you?” I slash the other arm. “You know who I am. Heir to the Bratva. I would have paid twice what you got for that painting.”
I never should have paid ten million dollars at all, but Ares fucking Zervas showed up at the auction to threaten me and stayed to drive up the bid to be a dick. But he had no idea I was there to buy one of Sandrine’s paintings.
He has her. Somewhere.
It was just a hunch this scumbag would know. Now it’s clear he’s just selling her paintings and keeping the money. For that, he deserves to die.
I drop the knife and beat Jagger with my fists. His head snaps back, the chair tipping and crashing to the floor with him still bound to it. I follow, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and hauling him up.
“And I’m not a rapist,” I growl into his bloodied face. “I’m a murderer.”
I drive my fist into his ribs. Each impact reverberates up my arm, grounding me in its physicality.
“Kirill.” Drago’s voice cuts through my rage haze. “He’s dead.”
Looking down at the crumpled figure in my grasp, I curse, my chest rising and falling. He isn’t moving. A thin line of blood trails from the corner of his mouth.
I shove the man away, letting his body drop onto the dusty wooden floor with a dull, final thud.
“Fuck.” The word tears out of me, laced with frustration at being here again.
The sight of Jagger pulls me back in time to another interrogation. Another man bloody and broken in my warehouse after hours of demanding answers and getting nowhere. Then the only lead I had to find Sandrine ended up wrapped around a tree before I got the truth.
“We have De la Vega’s papers,” Drago says, already moving back to the desk, gathering all the files. “We’ll find her.”
“I paid the best firms in the world to find her,” I snap, energy coiling tight beneath my skin. “I’m going to kill them all, too.”
“Wait.” Drago flips through the documents again and holds up a single sheet. “It looks like Jagger also processed a name change.”
My heart stutters. “What?”
Drago’s eyes flick to mine. “Looks like De la Vega paid Jagger to legally change Sandrine’s name.”
That stops my fucking heart. “Changed it? To what?”
He glances back down at the paper. “Jessica Parker.”
The name means nothing. No significance. It’s just a taunting clue I missed. Now it means everything.
A slow, cold understanding rattles me. That’s why every fucking trail went dead. Every dollar I spent was wasted. Chasing a ghost. She stayed away. On purpose.
Under a different fucking name.
If it weren’t for this lowlife Jagger, I could have found her years ago. Every lead I chased, every sleepless night spent tearing apart cities looking for her was for nothing.
I grab the papers and mutter, “I found you.”
She didn’t just leave. She erased herself. From me. From…us.
My chest heaves at that one. I stifle it away. I’ve been living on the border of love and hate for this woman for five fucking years.
Today, I’m back in Hate Town. I’m going to make her pay for this. She told Ares to keep her hidden. From me.
The betrayal settles in my bones, feeding the anger that has kept me from moving on for five years.
“Let’s go.” I look at Drago and grab the file in his hand, the only solid lead I’ve had since the day she disappeared.
Drago nods, already talking to someone about disposing Jagger’s body.
“Jessica Parker,” I say the name in this bullshit document, my voice steady again, controlled. “Now I’ll find you.”