Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Piper
“ H ow long does this stuff usually take?” I asked, interrupting a question that Elizabeth was in the middle of asking me.
It was incredibly rude, especially since they were gracious, if not slightly intimidating hosts.
Elizabeth was small, unassuming, even delicate at least upon first glance. But since I’d become somewhat of an amateur expert at spotting dangerous people, I had come to understand that she was one of them. The way she carried herself, the way she moved… She was powerful in a subtle way. Her husband was deadly in a much more obvious way, but I didn’t doubt she was just as fearsome if she needed to be.
I’d contemplated them as a couple. I couldn’t ask outright if they were some sort of super villain power couple, but I assumed it was likely. Would that be me and Knox if this all worked out? Living in the affluent suburbs, masquerading as normal people? Me baking cookies while Knox buried bodies in the backyard?
I didn’t have it in me to transform into the kind of partner Elizabeth most obviously was to Lukyan. Sure, I’d survived Knox, but most of that was on the luck of him falling in love with me.
I wasn’t a victim, but I sure as shit wasn’t a villain either. I was a kindergarten teacher, for goodness’ sakes. But the fact remained that I simply wasn’t okay with sitting there, playing the polite houseguest to two morally gray people who made great food.
Hence me interrupting Elizabeth with my question that was almost a shout across their dining table.
Luckily, Elizabeth wasn’t insulted by my lack of manners; she just smiled knowingly and looked to her husband.
He did not smile. He didn’t seem capable of such a gesture.
He sat as close to his wife as humanly possible, something I’d noted in my short time as their guest. The way he watched her, moved around her… It was familiar. It reminded me of the energy Knox had around me.
It wasn’t love.
It wasn’t that simple, that easy to define. Love was fallible. One could fall out of love. Love did not conquer all, lest what all popular culture said. But what these men felt, it could. It could conquer countries, take down regimes, raze the world.
Lukyan looked at his wife when he spoke.
“It takes as long as it takes.”
I drummed my fingernails on the table. My stomach turned at the food in front of me, even though it had smelled delicious moments ago. “Ballpark?” I pressed.
He considered me with rapt attention, holding a wine glass full of what I was sure was delicious and expensive wine. Not for the first time, I resented my biology and the fact that I wasn’t able to use substances in moderation to take the edge off.
Not that I thought a glass of expensive red would make me any less keyed up.
“I don’t think there is a ballpark amount of time for dismantling a hundred-year-old criminal enterprise,” he replied dryly.
He found me amusing, that much was clear. Which only served to piss me off further.
I knew that getting annoyed with him was dangerous, if not just impolite. I was his guest, after all. And not just the garden variety guest. I was technically on the run from a very powerful and dangerous man. It was a liability, having me under his roof. He was doing me a favor, a big one, by letting me stay. Yet I couldn’t swallow my tongue. “Well I’m not going to just sit here and wait.”“That’s exactly what you’re going to do,” he answered, sipping casually.
I didn’t miss the order in his tone.
Sure, I might’ve in my previous life, sat back and obeyed him, sitting on the sidelines, away from the peril, letting a man save me.
But not then.
This was my life. This was my future. And I wasn’t about to just sit there and let a man take care of it for me. Even if that man was Knox.
I didn’t lower my gaze. “What do you think his chance of success is?” I asked Lukyan. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”
He laughed. The sound was chilling. There was no warmth in it. No humanity. I was baffled that a man with such an obvious devotion to his wife was so cold in every other way. But that was the pot calling the kettle black, I guessed. “I’m not in the business of sugarcoating anything, Piper.” He looked once to his wife, as if he was taking cues from her. Interesting. She nodded almost imperceptibly before he looked back at me.
“Even knowing Knox and how … proficient he is at what he does, I would say without you in the mix, his chances would be zero.”
I swallowed sand at his answer, one I’d already suspected.
“And with me in the mix?” I probed.
I struggled to meet his arctic gaze. “Slightly higher than zero. But not by much.”
My heart fell to my toes. “And why do I change the situation?”
His eyes once again went to his wife, for longer this time, and when he spoke, he was still looking at her. “Because organizations like that, ones headed by men used to getting what they want, used to controlling, dominating people, see women as weak. They underestimate them. And that will be their downfall.”
He finally looked back at me with his steely gaze.
“That’s not to give you hope. Unfortunately, women still don’t win wars. They don’t prevail. Because men will always fear them. And weak men will always destroy what they fear. The world is run by weak men, Piper.”
I stared at him, surprised by the feminist tilt to the most words I’d heard him speak since I met him.
He didn’t offer me any hope. I didn’t think Lukyan was the kind of man to do that.
But he offered a chance.
A chance, a small chance, at life. The odds leaned toward death, but I was ever the optimist.
I pushed my chair back.
“I know you made all sorts of promises to Knox, but would you consider breaking them?”
Lukyan smiled, if you could call it that, the expression was sharp and thorny and intimidating.
“I think I can do that.”
There wasn’t a timeline on what Knox was doing, therefore, we needed to make a large plan in a small amount of time. I was apt to follow Lukyan’s lead when it came to the nuts and bolts of taking down an international criminal organization.
In the end, the plan was simple.
And it was not thought up by Lukyan, who I was kind of suspecting to be some evil genius in his own right.
The plan was thought up by Elizabeth, her husband immediately deferring to her. The dynamic between the two could be studied. And if I wasn’t wrapped up in the terror of the only man I’d ever loved potentially dying and petrified at what I would have to do to save us both, I would’ve been a lot more curious.
As it was, my mind was focused on the almost impossible task at hand.
We were in Elizabeth’s closet. The space was as large as my bedroom in my apartment, opulent and decorated in creams and whites with plush carpets and rows of exquisite clothing organized on hangers. It looked like I was in a designer store.
The wealth they both obviously had was vast. Crime paid. And despite my reaction to Lukyan, I couldn’t convince myself that they were bad people.
I was trying on clothes. Not something I would have expected to do when preparing to go to battle. When men went to battle, they wore armor, or bulletproof vests in this generation. When women went to battle, they wore couture and cashmere. Soft. Pliable. No protection from bullets, knives or fists.
After laying out the plan, we had spoken little. Lukyan had retreated to his office to make arrangements, and Elizabeth and I had gone to assemble my wardrobe.
Once that was done, she sat me down in front of a large vanity to do my makeup.
“Lukyan and I were up against some pretty terrible odds,” Elizabeth said, her voice soft and sweet as she applied bronzer to my cheeks. “We began our relationship in a manner that was not dissimilar to yours.”
I snorted, looking at her in the mirror. “Doubtful. Was he hired to kidnap you as well?” She didn’t deserve the snark in my tone, and I wasn’t usually a person to direct it at someone who had been nothing but kind to me but, I was feeling prickly.
And I needed to be prickly in order to pull off my plan.
“He wasn’t hired to kidnap me, no,” she smiled at me, brushing blush onto my cheeks. “He was hired to kill me.”
I gaped at her slack jawed, shocked by the offhand way in which she said it. No, it wasn’t offhand. It was tender. As if the memory was somewhat warm. Like recounting how you met your husband at a wedding or by accidentally getting in the wrong taxi.
Not a meet-cute that would do well in mixed company.
I let out a half-hysterical laugh.
“It’s ironic,” she nodded. “That we’d meet these men in such ways. But that’s the only way you come across them, if they think you’re their prey.”
I agreed, my stomach swirling with unease.
“And the odds you were up against?” I questioned.
She was quiet for a moment, her nostrils flaring, brackets forming around her mouth. “We had a criminal organization of our own to take down. And we did.”
I rolled my lips together. “I doubt it was that simple.”
She smiled again. “It definitely wasn’t. But we don’t have time for the details right now, and you don’t need them. You just need to know it’s possible. And I think you can do this.” She squeezed my hand reassuringly.
“Why do you think that?” I asked, staring at the foreign person she was turning me into in the mirror. But underneath it all, I was still me. A kindergarten teacher who liked Tarot and fantasy books. “You don’t even know me.”
Her brows pinched as she focused on her eyelash curler for a beat, presumably thinking. “I know what kind of person it takes to love a man who thinks he’s monstrous,” she countered. “And I know how feral, dark and deadly that love is. You’ll go outside of your characters, your morals, your ethics … just to keep hold of it.”
She finished my makeup then stepped back, raking her fingers through the hair she’d already curled and sprayed.
“You’ll do anything to keep hold of him,” she continued. “Even if it costs you your humanity.”
Her words were not reassuring. Not in the traditional sense, at least. But I held on to them for dear life.
Because I would do anything to keep hold of Knox, of us.
If my humanity was the cost, I’d pay it. Consequences be damned.
Elizabeth had left me in the bathroom of the guest bedroom to take care of my basic needs in preparation for our trip. The plan was for us to get on a plane first—a private jet—then they’d be driving me to where I needed to go.
After that, I was on my own.
I stared at myself in the mirror. My hair was shiny and tamed into loose curls trailing down my back. The bruise on my eye was almost invisible. Elizabeth had glued fake lashes onto my eyes, making them feel heavy and uncomfortable, but they made my eyes pop and made me look more feminine. Feline, almost. The blush high on my cheekbones was a baby pink, making me look like I was flushed from sunshine.
The gloss on my lips was that same baby pink, and I wore all white. White sheath dress, clinging to my body and curves, finishing just below my knees. A light cashmere cardigan was on top of it, and sky-high, pink heels were already making my feet hurt. How I was going to run in those was anyone’s guess. But that was the point, wasn’t it? I was going into the wolf’s den dressed as a lamb.
I was as prepared as I was ever going to be. Dressed to the nines in foreign, expensive clothing that melded to my body and made me look like a completely different person. Made me look how I supposed a mafia wife might look.
Which was the point. I was playing a part. I couldn’t look like me. Couldn’t feel like me.
On unsteady feet, I left the bathroom, barely seeing anything while making my way through the decadently decorated home, my heart in my throat.
“You ready?” Lukyan’s rough voice filtered through the foyer of the house.
I thought he was talking to me, which was weird since his voice, though rough, was full of an intimate tenderness that was not for me.
And it wasn’t.
When I looked in his direction, all of his attention was focused on his wife. She was standing in front of the door, a tight look on her face. Her eyes were faraway, and her hands were fisted at her sides.
She no longer radiated a subtly strong demeanor. Suddenly, she looked smaller, much more vulnerable than I ever thought she could be, staring at the front door.
The way he spoke to her, looked at her, betrayed a gentleness that mixed with his rough exterior.
You could feel it. The way his existence was tied to hers, how he was wrapped up in her, dedicated to her in a way that wasn’t healthy but in a way I coveted.
Elizabeth took a deep breath and looked to her husband, her expression relaxing as a small smile lit up her lovely face.
“I’m ready,” she nodded.
He stroked her neck. “This is not required of you, you’ve done enough, izyubov moya .”
The endearment struck me with its tenderness and the smooth way in which Lukyan spoke it, betraying a heritage that I guessed was eastern European.
Elizabeth looked back up at him, her expression sharp. “It is something I would hope someone would do for me if it was you,” she returned in a low voice.
He stared at her for a long while before leaning in to kiss her lightly on the lips in a gesture of tenderness that felt illegal for me to see. I crept backward then made purposefully loud steps on the marble floor to announce my arrival.
By then, they had their masks in place. But they were still close to each other, as if it were impossible to stand farther apart, connected by an invisible string. One made of titanium.
A team.
“Ready?” Elizabeth asked, directing her question at me. None of the vulnerability, fear I thought I’d glimpsed, remained.
I nodded.
“Ready,” I lied.
I’d never been on a private jet before. The level of wealth was beyond my comprehension. The actual flight was beyond my comprehension. I listened intently to Lukyan offering me advice on how to play my hand, what to do, what not to do. I’d nodded and replied at the appropriate times, but I could not, for the life of me, remember the majority of what he said.
And it was my very life that depended on survival tips from a hitman.
The absolute absurdity that was my life would’ve been funny if, well, if it were happening on a movie screen instead.
I had watched New York City underneath us, trying to prepare myself for it to be my battleground. My entire future, or lack thereof, would be decided there in just a few hours.
My fingers had clutched the arm of the seat as we landed, then I’d gotten into the black SUV waiting for us on the tarmac without speaking. Elizabeth and Lukyan stayed close together, the latter almost never taking his eyes off his wife.
I couldn’t watch them for too long. They were the image of what I might have if I was lucky enough to be successful. They were also the image of what I might’ve already lost.
It was only when we were almost at our destination that I spoke.
“This could go bad,” I said, wringing my hands.
“It likely will,” Lukyan agreed.
Not comforting.
“You can still pull out,” he remarked. The offer was given in a tone free of judgment, yet I still felt the label of coward hovering in the air, waiting to be plastered on my forehead if I took him up on it.
We could turn around, go back to the expensive house with the no doubt comfortable bed I could safely toss and turn in all night while Knox did … whatever he did.
“No.” I straightened my shoulders.
“No, I can do this,” I repeated. Who was I talking to? Lukyan? Myself?
Lukyan nodded then didn’t say anything else. Nor did Elizabeth, though I locked eyes with her, and she gave a smile that wasn’t just warm. It was dark, cold, knowing. A flash of feminine power that communicated that she had faith in me to do women’s work.
Not the work of cooking, cleaning, bearing children, but bringing down the men who sought to control us.
I had tried to live up to that, hadn’t I? I talked the talk, walked in women’s marches?
Now it was time to walk the walk. In shoes I could barely march in, that speared my feet with searing pain with every step I took, the pain reminding me how a man could never walk in these shoes.
The pain. I held on to that.
I smiled back at Elizabeth, feeling nauseous as my lips stretched.
Yes, it was time to do women’s work.
Lukyan’s ‘intel’ had told him that Stone was at Rosso.
Ironic, for us to end it all where it began. He could not gather any intel as to Knox’s whereabouts. I didn’t know if that was a blessing or a curse. Surely, if he had come in guns blazing, going all Scarface , Lukyan would’ve heard about that.
Then again, that wasn’t Knox’s style. He was more subtle. He’d watch, make plans first. That’s what I was counting on, at least. Him being measured and patient, paving the way for me to be impulsive and reckless.
“You’re on your own from here,” Lukyan said. “We won’t be waiting in the wings to save the day. It’s not my job.”
It was uniquely terrifying to know I was on my own and that Lukyan wasn’t fashioning himself into some kind of hero. It was me. Only me.
“Thank you,” I nodded. “For taking me this far.” I looked at Elizabeth. “For everything.”
She smiled and reached over to squeeze my hand. “You can do this.” Her words expressed a faith she shouldn’t have had, barely knowing me. “Do whatever it takes to hold on to what is yours.” Her gaze touched Lukyan before traveling back to me. “It’s worth it. And humanity is overrated.”
That was it. That was my invitation to leave and go forth with no one at my back. I stayed frozen for just a second before I opened the door and hopped out onto the New York street.
The car quickly left the curb, the noises of the city creating a muted roar in my ears, before going completely quiet, as if I were in the center of a tornado. My brain went still too.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped out of the calm and into the storm—wearing wildly-impractical shoes.