CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN #2
He pulls Lachlan down around him like a cloak. Lachlan drops a kiss to Jules’ shoulder, eyes closed for one indulgent moment, but no more.
‘Danny, bring Zaitsev here.’
He gives a brisk nod. ‘Heard.’
They have several hours before dawn.
Lachlan needs to get things straight in his head.
Jules almost finishes his soup. Lachlan sits beside him. The boy looks so tired, but he taps his ring finger to Lachlan’s bruised knuckle three times.
Lachlan looks at him for a beat and then whispers, ‘I love you too.’
Zaitsev arrives with Nina Belova who stands guard outside after speaking briefly with Danya. He tracks the bare bones of their conversation, surprised to learn she knew about Roman because she uses the word brother.
It reminds Lachlan of what Sorrenko said to Penhalyx.
I have seen enough, mladshiy brat.
Lachlan looks at Zaitsev, makes a motion with two fingers circling. Wraparound. Zaitsev compresses the buttons of his handset, and his eyes go a little unfocused. He gives the signal for clear.
‘Sorrenko told me,’ Lachlan informs Danya without preamble.
‘What did he tell you?’
‘That you’re his son.’
Jules looks at Lachlan sharply. ‘Whose son?’
Danya exhales slowly, seems a little unwilling but ultimately resigned.
‘I was Mikhail’s firstborn outside of marriage.
He kept my connection to him a secret, but he looked in on me.
Helped escalate my training, got me into private sector.
I came to work for him a few years ago. Outer circle, of course.
It is not uncommon. I never spoke to the boys.
It was forbidden and anyway, I didn’t want to upset them. ’
‘Sorrenko didn’t just send you here to help me, did he?’
Danya rubs his eyes. ‘He did send me for that.’
‘But not only that.’
‘We were sent to protect Vasily. Mikhail knew his days were numbered.’
‘Why were his days numbered?’
‘You’re asking the wrong man. I truly never knew him and now I never will, but I believe he was trying to protect the boys. I know he trusted you greatly because he placed Vasily here.’
‘Here, with Penhalyx?’
‘With you, Lachlan,’ Danya says. ‘He told me you were a good man. I’ve never heard him say that about anyone.’
‘What about the boys’ mother?’
‘She died giving birth to Vasily,’ Blaire mutters darkly, ‘as seems to be tradition in the upper echelons. Vasily has no one now. Penhalyx will claim him, I expect, given that Vasily is the heir to all.’
‘Including the Moroz Front?’
‘What?’ Jules looks between them. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
Lachlan holds Danya’s gaze. ‘Including the Moroz Front, right?’
Blaire asks, ‘Are you saying they attacked you on Mikhail’s orders?’
‘It wasn’t the Front who attacked us,’ Lachlan states plainly. ‘The Front, whatever else, are professionals. This was a PMC, and a sloppy one at that.’
Jules asks, ‘What’s a PMC?’
‘Private military company. Guns for hire.’
‘Carrigan told us it was the Moroz Front,’ Blaire says.
‘It wasn’t.’ Lachlan hasn’t looked away from Danya once. ‘Did you know Mikhail ran the Front?’
‘I know nothing of that. Mikhail was little more than an employer to me. Who commands the Front has always been unknown. If it was Mikhail, I was not informed. But,’ Danya allows, inclining his head, ‘the mission objectives to extract the children would make sense.’
Lachlan casts back. The most serious breach happened before Danya arrived. Lachlan and his teams steamrolled the next attack by the Front, no one even got close. If Danya was helping them from the inside, that’s not how it would have gone down.
‘Swear to me.’
‘I swear it, Lachlan.’
He has to trust it for now.
‘Mikhail Sorrenko was running the Moroz Front,’ Jules utters quietly, line between his eyes. ‘My father never knew?’
‘He must have suspected towards the end, but I don’t know why Mikhail was going up against Penhalyx in the first place.
’ Lachlan thinks back to the night of the attack.
Sorrenko had said so much, but it’s all jumbled now.
Broken pieces, some lost, and Lachlan can’t put it all together.
‘If he wanted to kidnap Savannah, then… God, I don’t know.
’ He rubs between his eyes, headache not budging.
‘I don’t know why he did what he did. If he wanted to fuck with Alistair, why shoot Savannah and not Jules?
’ He looks at Blaire. ‘How’s she doing, by the way? Is she…?’
Blaire puts her hand atop his, gives a gentle squeeze. ‘The surgeons told me she’s expected to recover well. No signs of lasting damage.’
Lachlan stares.
On one hand, the relief is a welcome reprieve from the overwhelming maelstrom of bad things inside him, but he can’t help the small degree of scepticism her news elicits. ‘She was shot in the heart.’
‘The Estate has the best medical teams in the world.’
‘I don’t even know what they were doing to her.’
‘Doing?’
Right. Everyone who knew about the blue room is dead.
Lachlan wants to explain but doesn’t know where to begin.
‘How was she in the safe room?’ he asks Jules instead.
The boy looks down, worrying the inside of his cheek. ‘I don’t know, it was weird sometimes. Whenever my father woke her to drink water and eat, it seemed like there was something wrong with her. She wasn’t herself.’
‘How so?’
‘I don’t know. It was…’ Jules shudders. ‘My father kept her asleep mostly, said it was safer. He told me Ariadne was sick and that Savannah offered to do a blood transfusion but that it was interrupted by an attack. He said she was weak, so we should let her rest. It felt like years down there,’ he adds quietly.
‘They cut everything off within minutes, but we had water in the bathroom and in these boxes. That’s all that kept us alive, I think.
’ Lachlan’s heart clenches hard. Jules shakes his head, looks angry at himself.
‘It’s nothing to what you went through, though. ’
‘Don’t diminish it,’ Lachlan tells him, kissing his hair. ‘You suffered too.’
Zaitsev motions at them to fall quiet while he releases the wraparound, to check in with Rook who confirms, ‘Eight bells, eyes on Shimmer.’ He then resumes the wraparound. ‘Can only do another minute.’
Blaire eats a little soup and then sits back, expression grim.
‘The fallout from this will be tremendous. Penhalyx has lost his two closest people. I cannot imagine how things will be going forward.’ Her gaze lands on Lachlan’s hand, currently intertwined with Jules’ own. ‘I think it’s time to start making plans,’ she says. ‘Sooner than later.’
‘What plans?’ Jules asks, sounds so tired it breaks Lachlan’s heart.
Lachlan taps Jules’ knuckle with his ring finger.
Zaitsev counts down with his fingers. Five seconds more.
Blaire says, ‘To get you and Mimi out of here.’
?
Grief settles like poison in the air and refuses to leave, even after sleep, even after food, even when he’s reunited with Mimi who won’t let go of him for hours once she’s in his arms again.
Just being with her breaks Lachlan open all the more, for love is weakness in many ways.
Love is the water that crafts failures to cascade, wrecking manmade constructs of denial, repression and stilted functionality.
He holds her in his arms, and she pats his hair, tells him, ‘It’s all right, Daddy. You’re safe now.’
‘I missed you so much,’ he whispers, kissing her curls and carrying her while he makes rounds. She’s calm and practical, seems to sense his grief instinctively.
‘I missed you moon much.’
‘That’s the biggest much.’
‘Bee and Danny were worried. They talked about you lots. I was very good Shadow Sneak.’
‘I bet you were, baby.’
‘They said you were in danger and trapped. I told my friends to help. Did they help, Daddy?’
‘Yes, baby, all the birds and the worms and the foxes.’
‘And the fishies.’
‘What else did Bee and Danny say?’
‘They said you might not come home, but I knew you’d be safe because you’re my Daddy and nothing can ever hurt you.’
‘You’re right. It’s other people that got hurt.’
‘Silly’s brother died, didn’t he?’
‘He did,’ he tells her while walking the black and green corridors of this vast prison that feels like home. ‘It was my fault.’
Mimi hugs him. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Daddy. All faults are Farfars. I promise. Next time take Mari. He’s very good bodygarden fox, the best.’
‘I will, don’t you worry.’
‘Or even better, take me. I kill anyone who makes you sad.’
Lachlan kisses her cheek. ‘Love you, babygirl.’
‘I love you, Daddy.’
Jules spends a lot of time with Vasily in his room.
The youngest Sorrenko boy stays in there over the next few weeks, doesn’t want to come out, doesn’t want to see anyone who isn’t Mimi or Jules. Lachlan would like to talk to him, but Jules gently says he’s not ready.
Lachlan understands.
He wonders if Vasily would want to be with Danya if he knew. It’s ultimately not his place but over the course of the next few days, he learns more and more about how Danya was raised, who his mother was, and it makes Lachlan realise he’s never once asked about Jules or Mimi’s mother.
Any mothers, in fact.
His own casts a shadow he much prefers to ignore.
When it comes to Mimi, he assumes her mother was someone bought and paid for. A surrogate who signed an NDA and took Penhalyx’s money is the most likely scenario, but Jules’ mother… where is she? He never sees photographs around the Estate. He’s never heard Jules mention her once.
Unsurprisingly, summer rain moves in to stay for the next few weeks.
Lachlan is not completely convinced that Jules is a Brightling at this point, but he strongly suspects he is.
Zaitsev was only mildly helpful when Lachlan spoke to him before.
There are bigger things to worry about here, always are, but it’s in the back of Lachlan’s mind for now, simmering on low.
He goes to see Savannah three days after they’re back in the Estate although he’d asked twice a day every day and been denied often, told she needed rest.