Chapter 17
Alina
I stand there lost in my thoughts until one of Dominik’s men clears his throat.
“What?” I turn around to ask.
“You may think you’ve won the battle, but Gavriil will always win the war,” Viktor remarks.
“Of course he will,” I mutter, as if I expected anything less.
“You’re playing with fire speaking to him in that way. Dominik wouldn’t approve,” Petrov adds.
I purse my lips at them, not liking how accurate their words are.
“Well, Dominik is temporarily out of commission right now. I wasn’t going to let Gavriil barge in and make him feel even worse—even if I was terrified while doing it.
And I would hope that you two have enough of a spine to do the same. ”
That makes them shut up and look visibly defeated.
After placing my mug in the sink, I walk back to the bedroom to check on Dominik, to see if our voices woke him.
Thankfully, he hasn’t moved. A frown, though, has creased the skin between his brows like whatever he’s dreaming is something he intends to obliterate when he wakes. His long black eyelashes lying on his cheeks make him look angelic in his sleep.
He’d hate if I said that to him.
My fingers twitch with the stupid impulse to caress his scruffy jaw. In a few more days, will it be as soft as Gavriil’s looks?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I mutter to myself. I sink into the chair beside the bed and fold my hands in my lap to keep them from making any bad decisions. The clock on the nightstand ticks with the rhythm of my heartbeat.
In the daylight, I finally notice that there’s a phone on the nightstand charging. Not mine, which I haven’t seen since I dropped it on the street, but Dominik’s. Face down, as if I won’t be as tempted to use it. I stare at it the way you look at cliffs, curious, terrified, but unable to step away.
If I call Archer, I could possibly make things worse. If I don’t call him, everything will definitely get worse for me and for Dominik.
Going over, I quietly slide the phone toward me with two fingers, like it might bite, until the plug pulls free. The glass is cool underneath my thumb. The screen wakes at my touch and throws up a numerical pad that feels like a dare.
“Shit,” I whisper, but my body doesn’t listen well when fear is shouting. I think of the elevator code, the quick sure press of Dominik’s fingers on the panel outside the penthouse door.
I try 0-3-1-7. The screen slides open. Of course he reused the code. Men like Dominik don’t expect anyone to touch their phones.
Relief floods me so fast my eyes sting. It isn’t just that I guessed right; it’s that for a moment, after confronting Gavriil, I feel capable, like I can take on any problem and succeed.
The second feeling that hits me is guilt, sharp and mean, because every secret on this phone belongs to a man who’s bled for me.
The home screen is as sparse as the rest of Dominik’s life. Messages pinned at the top with names that aren’t real names. A folder that probably isn’t photographs labeled “receipts.” I don’t touch anything else. I slide to the calls and there it is, Archer’s number in the recent message list.
I tap on the contact before I can make a better decision. The phone rings once. Twice. Three times. My pulse counts with it.
On the fourth, a voice breathes into my ear, raw and small. “Huh. You’re still alive, Morozov?”
I swallow so hard it hurts my throat almost as much as his smug words hurt my heart. “Archer.”
The sound he makes is half laugh, half sob. “Alina? Jesus. I thought—” A long pause stretches, thick with what sounds a lot like guilt. “I thought you were dead!”
“You almost made it happen at the warehouse,” I say, and hear the jagged edge in my own voice.
“You were there? Shit! I didn’t mean—”
“Stop.” I walk into the bathroom and close the door because I need to talk fast, before Dominik wakes up.
“Listen to me, Archer. There’s no more time for your excuses.
” I keep my voice low; my eyes keep flicking to the door, waiting, knowing he’ll come find me.
That’s what he does. “They gave him a week,” I say.
“Dominik promised he’d bring the money and the guns back to his brother in seven days.
There are five left. Less. He’s hurt, Archer. He was shot last night because of you.”
Silence hums in my ear, thick and aggravating. “How bad—”
“He’ll live,” I snap. “But he took a bullet because he put his body over mine. If he dies, it’s on you. If I die, it’s on you. Are you listening to me?”
“I hear you,” he whispers. “I hear you, Alina, I do, but you don’t—”
“Don’t tell me what I don’t know or don’t understand,” I bite out. “Tell me where the money is. Tell me where the guns are. Tell me how to fix this problem you made before it gets any worse for us both!”
“I can’t,” he says, and the two words go through me like a blade. “I don’t have the money. The guns aren’t mine. I sold them. They’ve probably been moved again. They’ll keep moving now.”
“You sold them to those bikers,” I say, and try to keep my voice from shaking. “The ones who came yesterday. They almost killed us all.”
“Not them,” he says too fast, then backtracks.
“Some of them. Not all. I—look, it’s bigger than I thought, okay?
I thought I could flip the inventory, make a cut, pay the debt I owed someone else, and be done.
But once I moved the first batch, they wanted more, and the second buyer wasn’t who I thought, and the cash I got was short because they skimmed and threatened, and I—”
“You gambled,” I say flatly. “With guns and men and with my life.”
“I didn’t know you’d get dragged into this!” he pleads. “I never wanted that. And when you did… I saw the photos, then the messages stopped. I thought they had already killed you. If I’d known you were alive, I would have—”
“You would have what?” I ask, because cruelty seems easier than hurt. “Not sent a gang of bikers to shoot at me?”
Archer goes quiet. When he speaks again, he sounds older than he is, like this ordeal has put years on him. “I thought you were dead,” he says again, very softly. “I thought I’d already killed you. And I didn’t send them! They made me tell them—”
“Did they make you stay away too?” I ask. “Is it easier being a coward if you think the worst has already happened?”
He sucks in a breath, as if my words landed like a sucker punch. Good. I want them to hurt now that he’s upended my life. “Where are you, Alina?”
I look toward the bedroom and the man sleeping in it. “Somewhere that keeps me unharmed for now,” I say. “That won’t last if you don’t fix the mess you made.”
“What do they want me to do, Alina?” he asks, with that frantic edge I remember from when we were kids, and he’d broken something and needed me to help him lie about it. “I can’t conjure money that’s been paid out of thin air. I can’t steal guns back from men who shove them in my face.”
“You can give the Bratva names. Places the guns have been. You can bring them a piece of the problem big enough to feel like it’s a partial fix.”
“That’s like giving them a noose and asking them to hang me with it!”
“They already have the rope, Archer!” I snap at him, my chest growing tight. Does he not care about my safety at all? It’s all about him! “They chased me down and kidnapped me off the fucking street because of you!”
He’s silent, breathing loudly down the line.
I press fingers hard into my closed eyes and forbid them to water.
“Archer,” I say, and then words I didn’t plan come rushing out.
“Listen to me. They are going to kill me or…do something worse to me if you don’t fix this soon.
” The lie scrapes my throat raw on the way out, but I don’t stop it.
If fear is the only language Archer listens to, then I’ll weaponize it.
“Dominik’s brother… he’s running out of patience. ”
A panicked, hiccupping sound comes from my brother. “No. No, Alina, no. I—God, I never meant—”
“Then prove it!” I say, and surprise myself with how cold I sound. “Prove that I still matter to you. Bring the money you can get back. Tell me where the guns are. Give me something that stops the ticking clock hanging over my head.”
“I don’t know where the guns are now!” he says. “I don’t, I swear. The buyer’s not talking to me anymore. They used me to set up the Russians and moved on.”
“Then find out,” I order him. “You always know a guy who knows a guy. Call in whatever favors you haven’t ruined yet.”
“I’ve burned a lot of bridges,” he whispers.
“Find new ones,” I urge him. “Do not make me call you again and tell you how the countdown ended.”
He goes very quiet. Then, very softly: “Are you with him? Right now?”
I close my eyes. “Yes. I’m doing what I can for Dominik while he’s recovering.”
“Morozov saves you, and you… you become his nurse?” Archer asks, and there’s something ugly in it—childish jealousy. “He’s using you, Alina. He’s putting you between him and the guns so his brother doesn’t point one at his face.”
“Shut up,” I whisper, because the room tilts and I can’t handle it. “Just shut up and do what needs to be done.”
He doesn’t get to shame me for the actions that I’m taking to survive when he’s the one who loaded the gun that’s pointed at my head right now. All he gets to do is prove that he actually gives a damn about me and fix this!
“Is he telling you what to say right now?”
“No, Archer, he’s not telling me what to say. These are my words, okay?” My voice cracks. “I would die for you if you made me. Please don’t make me.”
“Don’t say that, Alina.” He sounds like he might throw up. “Don’t—God, don’t…”
“Then give me something,” I say. “Money. Information about the location of the guns. Both. I don’t care which first. But you have to call or text me back in two hours with proof you’re moving. If you don’t, I may end up in Gavriil’s hands very soon. Did you know he keeps women in cages?”
“Fuck.” Archer’s breathing hard, a staccato scrape against the speaker. “I’ll try,” he says, sounding like a child again.