Chapter 40 Lidiya
Lidiya
Rain wets my cheeks. My hood is up, my mouth tastes of coffee and old fear, and this man says my name like a prayer he kept hidden for twenty-eight years. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe your DNA report,” I say stiffly. “It could be falsified.”
“True,” he says, and places it in his pocket. “It’s not. But I understand your hesitation.”
“It’s not hesitation. It’s a lack of trust for someone who tried to buy me at an auction instead of talking to me.”
His gaze lands on Damien with a look of amusement. “Oh, the irony of that statement is fun.”
“Fun for who?” I snap. “None of this is fun for me! I have been treated like the goose that laid the golden egg by all of you. If what you say is true about Orlov, she is the worst,” I spit out.
Stanislav’s eyes go hard at the mention of Orlov. “She will pay.”
“Then why are we standing out here in the rain when we are in agreement with that?” Damien asks.
“Good question,” I mutter.
Damien’s hand firms at my arm. “Inside.”
Stanislav gives his men a curt nod. They fall into formation, not touching me, but close enough that the rain feels crowded.
We cross to the awning. The doormen stiffen and step into Damien’s path.
He doesn’t slow. The first one plants a palm on his chest. A mistake.
Damien’s knuckles flash silver; there’s a sick crunch, and the man folds, breath leaving him in a gasp.
The second reaches for a radio. Damien takes his wrist and twists before punching the man under the chin.
The radio clatters to the pavement and skids into the rain as I wince.
His jaw goes slack, and I think it’s broken or dislocated.
Damien drops the man and steps over him, grabbing my hand and leading me into the spider’s web.
I glance over my shoulder at Stanislav. He is taking in his surroundings as if he has never been here, finding wonder in them.
He is an odd man. I have no doubt he would kill me where I stand without giving it a second thought, but I also get the look in his eye when it catches mine, and he smiles.
Genuine. Affectionate. Happy. He isn’t going to hurt me, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to hurt Damien to get to me.
The foyer swallows all sound. Crystal glints. A hostess appears with a smile that falters when she sees the blood dripping from Damien’s fist onto her perfect floor.
“Members only,” she says with only a slight wobble in her voice.
Damien breathes in once, but that appears to be all it takes for her to step aside.
“I see you have made acquaintance,” Regina Orlov says, appearing at the turn of the stairs, elegant in black, pearls at her throat like trophies. “A happy ending.”
“You bitch!” I snarl, pulling myself out of Damien’s grip and striding forward. “How dare you? This was all your fault!”
The switchblade is at my throat a heartbeat later. Regina produced it from somewhere, the silver glinting under the fancy lighting. “That’s close enough.”
A soft click behind me precedes Damien’s cold voice. “I suggest you move that,” Damien says, voice like a cut vein.
The point digs into my skin. A thin sting. I go still and keep my eyes on the woman who sold me like a piece of meat. Twice.
“Regina,” Stanislav says mildly behind me. “You are in no position to bargain. This ends with you dead, whichever way you look at it.”
“Empty threats,” she replies without looking at him.
A gunshot cracks the air.
Marble spits dust beside Regina’s head. She jolts. So do I. The blade scrapes, not deep. Heat trickles down my throat—blood, bright and humiliating.
“Next one goes between your eyes,” Damien says. “Drop it and give her answers before I let Stanislav off his leash.”
A snort from behind me almost makes me smile.
Almost. If I weren’t so fucking terrified.
A hush moves through the foyer like a held breath. Staff freeze. Somewhere, a door closes very quietly. Regina’s eyes flick to Damien’s gun, back to my face. She smiles. She lowers the knife to my sternum, almost tender.
“Your restraint impresses me,” she purrs at him. “Pity.”
I shift my weight, feel for the seam of my boot with the edge of my mind and the promise he tucked there. If I twitch for it, she’ll open my throat. So I don’t twitch. I talk.
“You sold children.”
Her smile doesn’t move. “I sold outcomes.”
“You stole me.”
“I did no such thing.”
I hiss. I know she is lying, and not just because Stanislav told me what she did. “You profited from it,” I say. “You called it curation. It was theft.”
Her eyes cool. “I curated survival,” she says. “You were never meant to make it past Moscow. Your parents were already in someone else’s account. I intercepted. You’re welcome.”
“Don’t you dare,” I breathe. “Don’t you dare dress it up as kindness because you liked the fees.”
A pulse flutters at her throat. The knife pricks harder, enough to warn, not enough to end me. Damien doesn’t breathe loud enough to hear, but I feel the coil of him at my back like a heat source. Stanislav is a cold star in my peripheral vision. I have one chance to turn the board.
“You intercepted,” I say evenly. “So name them. Who took me? Who forged the passport? Who moved me through Heathrow? Give me names, and maybe I won’t help him string you up on your own pearl necklace.”
Something sharp glints in her gaze. Pride. “You wouldn’t—”
Damien fires.
The second shot blows a spray of marble dust across her hair. She flinches; the blade lifts off my skin. My hand drops, quick as thought. I whip the stiletto up from my boot and drive it into the soft meat of her forearm.
She hisses. Her knife clatters. Damien is there before it hits the floor. I stumble back into his chest as he kicks her blade away and grips her wrist, twisting until the tendons scream under his fingers.
“Names,” he says, voice flat. “Now.”
Regina’s men start to move. Stanislav’s men do too, smooth and silent, a wall that grows from nowhere. The foyer bristles, no one quite ready to commit to the first corpse. I keep the stiletto in my hand, red on bright silver.
“You won’t do it here,” she pants. “You’re not that foolish.”
“Try me,” Damien says, pressing the muzzle into the line above her ear.
“Inside,” Stanislav says, almost bored. “Away from the door.”
Regina laughs once, a brittle snap. “Of course.”
We walk, if you can call it that. Damien keeps her trapped against him, one hand on her wrist, gun steady.
I pace at his side with my little blade, pulse a drum under my skin.
Stanislav takes us up the stairs at a measured pace like a man crossing a stage he built himself.
Staff move out of our way. A door opens on the first landing, and we go through into a drawing room that smells of old money and new panic.
Damien flicks the lock; one of Stanislav’s men slides a chair from under a lacquered table and plants it in the centre of the rug.
“Sit,” I say.
She sits, spine straight, arm streaking red down to her hand.
Damien crouches and pats her down with brutal efficiency, laying out a second knife, a tiny pistol, and three hairpins that aren’t hairpins. He pockets what he likes and tosses the rest under the sofa.
“You took my yacht,” he says conversationally, eyes never leaving hers. “You’ll return it.”
She smiles. “You’re speaking of that? Such taste. It’s quite safe.”
“Location,” he says.
She tilts her head. “First, we discuss fees. I have paid dearly to keep this girl invisible.”
I step closer until my knees touch the chair. The stiletto rests against the fine silk at her clavicle. “Not another word about what you did as if you were paying my school fees.”
“Truth is inelegant,” she says. “But it remains the truth. Names are irrelevant. They are all dead.”
“Including the people who raised me.”
“That was a coincidence,” she says. “A fortunate one.”
“Fortunate?” I splutter, horrified that she is so casual about all of this.
Stanislav, who appears to have had about enough of this, moves into view, still with that casual stroll that is hiding the anger underneath.
“I should’ve known it was you, all those years ago,” he says.
“You have played me, Regina, and my patience has run out. You kept this girl from me, displaying her at an auction for me to beg at.”
He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. Regina’s chin lifts a fraction, proud to the last.
A second passes, and then a flash of steel is under her throat. She flinches as he digs it in. A commotion outside the door causes a momentary distraction of the guards, as the door bursts open, but not for Stanislav. He keeps his gaze on Regina and drags the blade across her throat.
I turn from the gore, horrified, but Damien is there to shield me as Regina gurgles.
“You have played me for the last time, Regina. You have played everyone for the last time.”
“Oh God,” I mutter, squeezing my eyes shut.
“It’s over,” Damien murmurs, raising his arm and firing off a shot that I feel recoil through his body. I slam my hands over my ears, a basket case in the face of the bloodbath I was supposedly expecting.
Little did I know what a bloodbath actually entailed.
“Move,” Damien says, and I let him push me behind a sofa. “Stay low. Don’t move.”
I nod, in shock as I drop to my knees, hearing gunfire, punches and groans.
Polished shoes move into my line of sight, and I look up to see Stanislav standing over me.
He pulls out a small, clean knife and slices it through his palm. He places it in a plastic, sealable bag and holds it out to me. “Get Voronov to test it.”
I stare at it for a few moments while the fight dies down around me. Then I reach out and take it with a shaky hand. “You trust him?”
“He has no skin in the game.”
I nod because that’s true enough. “Thank you for giving this to me. I can only imagine what it costs you, seeing as you are supposed to be dead.”
He chuckles. “Don’t worry about me, myshka. You need to be sure so you can make an informed decision about what you want to do next.”
He steps back, and his men whisk him away, leaving Damien wrestling with a man twice his size while another one tries to shoot him.
I crawl to the edge of the sofa, heart pounding against my ribs like it’s trying to break free.
Damien grunts—short, vicious—body angled over a bigger man who is trying to choke him out.
Another man lifts a gun. He’s on Damien’s right.
I’m still clutching the stiletto in my right hand, even as my left holds the bagged one.
I shove the bag into my coat pocket and launch forward.
My hand grabs a marble paperweight from the coffee table as I duck under the gunman’s arm.
I slam the weight into his wrist. Bone yields with a crack.
The gun clatters. I kick it under the sofa and jam the stiletto into the meat above his knee. He screams and drops.
“Down, Lidiya!” Damien snaps.
I drop. His gun barks over my head. The big man convulses and goes limp.
The one with my blade in his leg tries to drag me.
I wrench it free, stomp his instep, and drive the point of the stiletto into his palm as he reaches.
He howls and folds sideways, swearing in Russian that sounds like a curse thrown at God.
Damien is on his feet in a blink, eyes gone winter-cold. He shoves the last standing man into a bookcase, and the knuckleduster flashes once, twice, three times. Teeth hit the carpet. Blood hits the silk of the rug in dark spatters.
Silence settles in fits and starts. A groan. A wet gurgle that fizzles out. The rain is a distant roar beyond heavy windows. Regina is slumped in the chair, pearls dulled with red. My stomach heaves, but I swallow it back. I asked for this. I told him to be who he is.
“Solnyshko.” Damien’s voice cuts through. I turn. He’s scanning me, scanning the room, and somehow holding it all inside that iron frame of his. “You hurt?”
“Just… cut.” My throat stings. I press two fingers to the line where her blade kissed me. My hand shakes. The stiletto is still in my other fist. I’m not sure I know how to let it go.
He closes the space and cups my jaw with his free hand, thumb tilting my face.
His eyes flicker with dangerous relief when he sees the shallow line.
“Surface.” He tips his forehead to mine for a second—one stolen heartbeat—and then pulls back, violence locked down again.
He pulls out his phone and dials a number.
“Seize it. She’s down.” He hangs up.
“Seize what?” I ask, getting to my feet.
“Babushka’s yacht,” he says with a smirk. “Back where it belongs.”
“Babushka will be happy.” I pat the pocket where the knife sits in the plastic bag, then pull it out and hold it up for Damien to see. “Stanislav’s blood. He drew it in front of me. He said to get you to test it.”
His gaze drops to the bag before he looks at me again. “Is that what you want?”
I think about it for a long moment, maybe too long, but eventually, with a sigh, I say, “Yes. I want to know.”