26. Taylor
TAYLOR
Tears blur the city outside the window as I imagine my death over and over.
There’s no saving me. My mother and father will never know what happened to me.
Petyr will gloat at my funeral, as he should, and no one will know that I wouldn’t even want him there.
I think of the man’s rotten teeth and the excitement jumping in his throat at the prospect that Mikhail would have his way with me before killing me.
I drop my forehead to the window and write a pointless ‘help’ into the fog of my breath. He’s seen my face. He knows I know who he is. He’s taking me to a second location. A second location I know. He’s fucked, which means I’m fucked.
The car stops beneath the covered entrance. Mikhail opens his door. I don’t move. He steps out and looks back at me. “Taylor.”
“No.”
“You are coming inside.”
“So you can kill me somewhere comfortable?”
Pavel’s shoulders stiffen. Mikhail’s expression doesn’t change, but something flickers behind it. “If I intended to kill you, you would not have left the warehouse.”
“Second locations aren’t usually promising.”
“How do you have the energy for this? You are not in the position to be sarcastic right now.”
“I’m not being fucking sarcastic, Mikhail. You’re reading it that way because you’re a fucking monster, I guess.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” He reaches for me.
I kick wildly, my heels spears. “Don’t touch me.”
He steps backward, his hands up and annoyance across his face. “Then get out.”
Humiliation burns through the fear. I hate that he has done this. I hate that Pavel knows. I hate the image of myself fighting in the snow, screaming for help from men who would never choose me over him. I shift awkwardly across the seat and step out myself, my skirt riding up against the leather.
My heel slips on the icy pavement. He catches my arm. I jerk away so hard I nearly fall again. “Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Acting like you’re helping me.”
His face goes still. “I am helping you, Taylor.”
I scoff, but when he places one hand against my back and one on my elbow, I let him. I need him for the ice patches.
The entrance hall looks exactly as I remember it. Polished stone. Dark wood. High ceilings. I said it looked like a mausoleum. How right I was.
No staff is visible tonight. That feels intentional.
Mikhail leads me into the same sitting room where I once drank his vodka and mocked his furniture. He closes the door. The sound of the latch makes my breath catch.
He unties me and pours himself a drink, his eyes glued to me. “So tell me, what were you thinking when you followed me tonight? Rather, let us start with this—how did you follow me?” He gestures with a little nod to sit down.
I decline, aware suddenly that I could make a run for the door, unlock it, and be out of here. No tie around my wrists. His eyes flick to the latch, and he wags his finger like I’m a schoolgirl.
I sigh. “Taxi.”
“Taxi,” he repeats, swirling his drink and pouting his lips, considering. His eyes narrow and he taps the top of his desk with the fingertips of his other hand. “And you did not think for a moment that maybe following a politician into a remote part of town at night was a mistake?”
His voice is rising slightly as he riles himself up, and my heart rate spikes as the image of that man on his hands and knees flashes through my mind.
Blood. And then his body slinking to the ground.
His eyes milky. And Mikhail looking at me with so much concern like he hadn’t killed someone a moment ago.
I clench my fingers together to ground myself. “I didn’t know you were…” I trail off, then look him in the eyes, take a deep breath, and say, “Dirty.”
“Yes, you did,” he says simply.
“I—” My brain goes completely empty, shocked at the accusation.
“You see more than most, Taylor Hayes. You know what politicians make, Taylor. No politician has this.”
“Many politicians are wealthy.”
“Not like this.”
“I know very little about wealth. Maybe you invest well. I’ve been trying to understand.”
“You should not have been trying. But you were. You got lucky when you walked in on me and Arkady talking. You saw the photographs, and then you started doing research. You did not let it go, I know that. I have been paying attention. You have been looking into Orlov.”
My blood runs cold. I’ve been inconvenient all this time. All this time, I thought he was acting strangely around me because I saw his mask slip. He was acting that way because he knew what I was doing.
“Yes, I knew,” he continues, his eyebrow lifting. “So, when you followed me, you knew full well that that was a dangerous choice, and you did it anyway, and—”
“I didn’t know you were—” I start angrily, my voice high, walking up to him quickly.
He puts the hand holding his drink up to silence me, not losing a drop.
I stop talking immediately, pressing my lips in and swallowing.
There is a flutter inside my stomach that I’ll ignore for now.
I’ve come close enough that I have to tilt my head back to look at him, though I didn’t realize how far I had crossed the room until there was barely any space left between us.
“—Violent?” he asks. “Spare me. You knew that too. AND—” His jaw is set, face red. “When you saw the drugs, you did not leave. When you saw the first punch, you did not leave. Tell me, Taylor, when do you think is the right time to leave a scene like that?”
He’s seriously yelling at me right now. He’s angry at me.
A combination of terror, anger, and humiliation has been blanketing me all night, and now I can add in confusion because this makes no sense.
Something about the way he’s staring into my eyes compels honesty out of me, and I say, “I was too afraid to leave. I couldn’t move. ”
His voice drops. “I could have lost you tonight.”
His words stop me in my tracks, and that fluttering in my stomach and the pounding in my heart seem to be dancing together.
“You could have—” I swallow, tilting my head. I whisper, “Lost me?”
“If someone other than one of my men had found you outside that warehouse…” He trails off, shaking his head and taking a swig of his drink.
“He offered to kill me in front of you.”
“He will never make that mistake again.”
Cold moves down my spine. “What does that mean?”
Mikhail looks away. It’s the first time I have seen him do it during this conversation. The answer arrives without words.
I take a step back. “Oh my God. He will be killed?”
“He touched you.”
“He thought that was what you wanted.”
“It was not,” he grunts. “And he thought that I wanted to…” He bristles, his lip curling in disgust. He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to. I know what Vladimir thought Mikhail wanted from me.
I whisper, “That’s the part that I still don’t understand.”
His eyes darken. He’s angry that I’m still trying to understand anything at all. “What?”
“People like Vladimir. People lower their voices when you enter rooms. They wait for you to tell them where to stand.”
“That is called authority.”
“No. It’s called fear.” His expression changes. There. Small, but unmistakable. I have struck something true. “You don’t have security. You have soldiers.”
“They are not soldiers.”
“That’s what you object to?”
He says nothing. I feel the pieces shifting into place. I think of Petyr’s warning. There are men for whom wealth and power are only the visible portion. My throat tightens. “This isn’t just corruption. You’re not just…dirty. That’s not quite the right word,” I say.
Mikhail’s face remains still. If I were wrong, he would laugh. If I were wrong, he would call me dramatic, tell me I had misunderstood, explain the drugs, the blood, the dead man at his feet. He does none of those things.
My pulse thunders in my ears. “You’re not just taking bribes or trafficking drugs. You’re not just a criminal.”
“No.”
The answer is almost gentle. That frightens me more than everything else.
I stare at him. The truth has been in front of me since the first night.
In the guards. In the obedience. In the way violence sits so naturally beneath his skin.
I had been trying to make him into a dishonest politician because dishonesty has rules.
Scandals have evidence. Careers end. People go to prison.
This is something older. Something that owns the prison. I look toward the closed door. “Are you going to let me leave?” I ask. Mikhail does not answer. “So no.”
The truth is not that Mikhail works with criminals. The truth is that they work for him. I’ve heard of men like him. Men who use politics like a suit. Mafia.
Pakhan. Crime boss.