CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Nothing prepared me for the nightmares that followed touring the grounds of the fortified mansionPetrov jokingly referred to as his humble saklya. We’d broken bread for a late lunch in a dining hall big enough to host a ball. There, I’d been informed that Leo’s boss had taken off after our arrival at the private Crimean airport, but he would be returning the instant he’d handled whatever “task” Leo grew cagey about under questioning.
Somehow, despite blacking out the entirety of the trip here and the early afternoon hour according to local time, I’d wanted nothing more than to curl up in a bed somewhere and sleep the next several days.
My plan to do so had been going splendidly, being lulled into a deep slumber by the beating of Jace’s heart directly beneath my ear, and I only squinted open a bleary eye when his brother, CJ, joined us after a few hours. They’d even carried on a murmured conversation that I’d only paid attention to long enough to enjoy the buzzing vibrations in Jace’s chest, which enticed my return to a restful doze.
All that changed, though, hours later. Maybe I’d gotten too much sleep, so my mind had kicked in with some entertainment, but I wished it’d consulted me on what genre I was interested in watching before rolling out the monstrosity of a horror show it’d warped my recent life into.
Paride, with a deadened expression and callous attitude, peered over my shoulder as I tried hacking into the CIA database to erase any incriminating connection I shared with the guys. Every time Paride opened his mouth, though, CIA Director Madam Rollins’ voice came out, clinically cold and terrifying as it whispered awful things about prison life at Gitmo.
No matter how fast I typed, I couldn’t stay ahead of an encroaching malicious search and destroy bot that physically manifested and chased after the stolen airplane the vacant Paride’s shade had supplied. The twin engines weighing down the rusted wings kept sputtering out, making me mistype and need to restart while the malware bot gained on the slow aircraft.
Just when everything seemed perfect, ready to unleash a weapon that would destroy the chaser bot once and for all, the computer flashed an error message. Red lights blinked in warning across the cabin, the seatbelt signs fritzed, and the computer’s lid slammed itself shut, nearly chopping my fingers off to the knuckles.
Tarasovich’s laugh echoed throughout the empty rows of seating, but it was my dad who stepped into view. He yanked the computer from my lap and crumbled it to pieces with his bare hands. “You won’t hurt my daughter, my real daughter.”
His form glitched out, and then the bot caught up to us, ripping off one of the wings and sending the CIA’s plane into a downward spiral, all while Tarasovich’s evil laugh rent the air with a whisper of a warning. “Back off, Callie, if you don’t want to lose your loved ones.”
The nose of the plane crashed into the ground, and bright orange blossomed out in a hungry inferno, ready to devour me.
My eyes flew open.
The twins snoozed on either side of me, and I thanked the heavens that my erratic breathing hadn’t disturbed them. Running my fingers through my hair and attempting to regulate my oxygen intake, I tried to slow the racing tempo of my heart but wrote the task off as a fruitless endeavor.
I’d slept too much, and with the thoughts circulating through my overcrowded brain, I couldn’t keep burying my head in the sand as a coping mechanism.
CJ rolled, his hand stretched for the spot I’d vacated, but other than that, the two slumbered on, worn from the long trip yesterday.
Not everyone had the luxury of sleeping through it.
I padded across the chilled stone tiles to the settee we’d tossed our outer layers on before crawling in bed. When I donned both socks and shoes, and Aleks’s hoodie surrounded me like one of his infamous bear hugs, I realized what my body had planned before my consciousness caught onto the idea.
Outside, the long hallway hit me with a cooler gust of wind, making me huddle farther into the sweater’s warm cocoon. I likened the Crimean’s southern weather to a subtropical Mediterranean climate with mild winters and hot, dry summers, which meant to a purely Russian Vasily Petrov, the area was downright balmy.
He’d veered in the opposite spectrum of the “hunkered down for winter” design typical of Russian houses—sparse windows, thick drapes, and stretching fireplaces. Instead, the architecture here boasted open breezeways and columned walkways interconnecting the separate buildings.
I headed for one of those now, attempting to recall the steps from my half dazed tour. After ten minutes of wandering, I failed to locate a clear view of the glittering Black Sea, but I did find a spot with a railing that let me prop my elbows up between the colonnades, where I tried to eke out the megalithic foot of the Crimean Mountain range Petrov dug the more secure locations of his stronghold into. However, the world was engulfed in darkness, concealing the hillside for the time being.
As big as the mountains’ foothills had been in the daylight, I knew they were there, looming nearby. Much like Tarasovich, they were unseen, but I felt their presence.
“Lisichka? Is that you?” a voice called.
I turned, spotting Petrov striding my way with a dressing robe flapping around him, looking more unkempt than I’d ever seen him before. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
That was an ingrained response burned into my brain after I’d begun sleeping with the guys and my nightmares made an appearance. Had I been more alert, I would have realized how stupid the question was. He slept in a different wing from us.
“The night shift saw you wandering around and alerted me.”
My mouth popped open because I really had woken him up. “Oh, sorry. There’s a lot on my mind. I didn’t mean to cause any alarm.”
He waved me off. “Think nothing of it. I ordered them to keep me apprised of the situation.” After a beat, his attention settled on my face, and I wondered what he saw with a lack of moonlight to provide any illumination. Were my emotions a question mark like the distant sloping mountainside, or could he read me like a book?
He proved his night vision was far superior to mine when he commented, “You’re shivering. Come, let’s move somewhere warmer, or at least fully indoors, and you can share what’s troubling you.”
At the end of the breezeway, a thick oaken door spilled us into a square antechamber that split into hallways heading in three directions. Petrov nudged my elbow to the middle.
At the end, and through tall French doors, an opulent office greeted me, and a niggling sense of déjà vu struck. Sculpted figurines sat atop marble pedestals scattered about, and shelves of ancient books lined the distant wall to the left of the colossal windows, most of the books’ spines adorned with gold filigree, boasting their value to all onlookers. Near the shelves rested a gathering of plush leather armchairs nestled in a loose circle to divide the generous space into office and sitting areas. A giant desk, hand carved from mahogany or cherry and shiny enough to see your own reflection, dominated the room, bigger than Corbin’s bed—a custom job, no doubt since Corbin’s bed was larger than any standard sizes I’d run across.
“Bring back memories?” Petrov questioned. “It should. I modeled it after the one you broke into at my previous home.”
I winced, my synapses finally firing after the reminder. “Oh, right. It’s been a minute. Uh, sorry?”
“Don’t be. I was operating under the mistaken assumption on who killed my daughter. You set the record straight.”
I repressed the flinch that wanted to stir up, but he noted some errant twitch or other that crossed my features, because he leaned against his gigantic desk and studied me long enough that I realized how stupid it might have been to follow the new Russian criminal overlord somewhere private in the dead of night.
“Why do you look guilty?” Petrov questioned at length. “I hold no grudges against you for breaking and entering. Your team highlighted some weaknesses in my security, and the message you sent me—a nice touch, doing so from my own email account and personal device—dislodged me from the destructive path I began treading, pitting myself against your government’s boogeymen. I also have you to thank for no longer keeping a computer in the same place as my important documents. Too many low-hanging fruits in one location.”
“But you watched the video and heard the audio! How can you not blame me for getting your daughter tangled in my mess?”
Silence resonated after my outburst.
Petrov’s ice-cold stare studied the tears trailing down my cheeks but lingered on the platinum blonde locks I’d had to retouch recently. “Lisichka,” he murmured, “is this why you dye your hair, child? You hold guilt for Natasia’s death?” When I didn’t answer, observing him through tear-filled eyes, he added, “I watched the evidence. Did you? Ivanov killed my Natasia because of the rising threat I posed to his empire. Our power struggles long predated you. He jumped on the opportunity to kill her and make the CIA take the fall, assuring my self-destruction. I don’t blame you in the least.”
A wounded sound escaped my throat as agony closed my windpipe on the grief fighting to escape. Petrov strode over, a stern expression on his face, and he pushed aside my hands as I wiped under my eyes. He cupped my cheeks between his calloused palms, using his thumbs to brush away the tears for me. “Lisichka, you are not responsible for Natasia’s death.”
He pulled me into his shoulder when I tried to reply but only released a garbled blubber. He petted my hair, swaying us side to side as he crooned some Russian lullaby until I calmed. “Did you know your father sent you an edited version to protect you from reliving certain parts of that day? I think he feared for your safety, assuming I would eventually come around to your line of thinking and blame you. Ask me what I saw in the videos he sent me, lisichka?”
I shook my head, probably staining his dressing robe with tears, but it was so thick, I doubted he’d feel it.
He lifted my chin, holding me at arm’s length. “I saw a young girl, who’d never killed anyone, shoot her own stepfather to save a woman she hadn’t known a full year. Your grief as you ran to my Natasia, only to have her stolen away in the explosion… I witnessed someone so distraught that they charged headfirst into the deadly inferno to the point of needing sedation.”
I hadn’t realized the entire warehouse had been wired with cameras. If Ivanov had intended to blame the CIA for Natasia’s death, it didn’t seem wise to have evidence to the contrary—or perhaps my dad had installed surveillance on the down low because he overheard Ivanov’s intentions.
The reminder of how Callum had protected me then, but still turned around and betrayed me to my sister, sent a fresh cascade of tears spilling over.
After a beat, Petrov said, “Come, lisichka, I want to show you something.”
As we walked, my sniffles subsided and the tear tracks dried. I realized we were heading near my team’s rooms when I recognized the courtyard and three-tiered fountain. Until he zigged when he needed to zag, I assumed he was returning me to be consoled by my boyfriends. He guided us down a long hallway wide enough to fit ten men abreast of each other. Tapestries and paintings lined the walls, and he stopped us in front of one in particular.
“I had this painting commissioned by an English artist because the local ones cast the Battle of Balaklava in favor of the Crimeans—understandably, of course.”
A group of men rode atop horses, their arms raised in the air as they charged forward under heavy fire and loss with scripted quotes written in the slanted perfection of calligraphy.
“Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!” he read.
“Into the valley of death, rode the six hundred,” I finished.
Petrov nodded. “The beginning of Lord Tennyson’s famous poem. You heard what I mentioned to your boyfriend in the car ride. Da?”
I bit my lip. “Yes. You told Bryce that people don’t possess that amount of loyalty these days.”
“Or valor.” He turned to me. “Callie, you reminded me of this cavalry when you took on Nikolai Ivanov against insurmountable odds. You showed unwavering valor, and to my daughter, equally unwavering loyalty. For that, you’ve earned mine. I can’t speak to why your father did what he did. Fathers tend to act irrationally for their children.”
Then why did he abandon one for the other? my mind bit out.
“But remember this.” Petrov touched my platinum locks, lost sadness swirling in eyes that reminded me so much of Natasia. “You can count on me to help you above all else because you are like a daughter to me, blonde hair or not. You taught me that family is not always dictated by blood.”
That settled my torn heart some, but I was too blown away by his confession to respond.
He chuckled at my expression. “We’re close to your team. Would you prefer I escort you back?”
“Uh, n-no.” I had to clear my throat after picking my jaw up off the floor. “No, thank you. I recognized the hallway, and I think I need to think, if that’s alright, Petrov?”
He nodded, further throwing my world off its axis by laying a kiss on my forehead. “Goodnight, lisichka, and please, call me Vasily.”
I studied the painting, appreciating the brush strokes and skill of the artist who captured such raw emotion in the soldiers’ expressions as they waged on.
“Are you a fan of this artist’s work? You’ve been staring at this painting for quite a while,” a voice called, startling me, but not scaring me as much as it would have before Petrov’s confession. I felt safer here, and part of me wondered if I should worry about my increasing loyalty to yet another criminal father-figure after the disastrous roller coaster of Tarik Veseli.
Vasily had even kidnapped me with less than noble intentions like Tarik had.
The other half of me didn’t care.
I’d disappeared inside my inner monologue. The man in front of me was tall, but the dim lighting, black apart from the overhead spotlights aimed at the artworks, made it difficult to determine much else. “I’m sorry. Dinner had quite the turn out earlier, and I can’t seem to recall your name.”
Was he the night guard who reported my wanderings to Petrov?
The man stepped close enough that I could see a curl to his lips. Was he amused?
“My apologies then.” He proffered his hand, and his smile grew more pronounced when I accepted and returned the handshake. “My name’s Odysseus Papatonis.”
That still didn’t tell me if he’d been at dinner or not, so I figured a safe bet would be to reintroduce myself.
“Callie King,” I replied, cocking my head to the side. “Papatonis, you said? Your name’s Greek. You’re not the person on duty who alerted Petrov about me wandering around, are you?”
Even as I asked, the answer presented itself. From this close, more of the spotlight’s beams reflected off the mural’s oily surface, lighting his skin enough to detect golden olive tones.
“No, I’d say not,” he confirmed, finally releasing my hand and looking all the more amused.
“So you’re one of Leo’s boss’s men.”
A brow arched on his forehead. “Leo’s boss?”
My mouth opened and closed, but I realized I didn’t actually know the man’s name. “Sorry, they’ve only referenced Ares or the god of wrath, and it seems silly to call a grown man a fabled nickname, even if they claim he earned the title.”
I looked at the painting, unable to handle the man’s intense scrutiny.
“Claim? Do you not believe them?”
My eyes trailed over the various bullets piercing the air and to the downed horses. The artist even captured the wide-eyed terror of a fallen beast, a ring of white surrounding their normally solid-colored irises.
“I suppose I do, but… I’ve met a lot of monsters in my time. Doesn’t mean I’d name any of them after mythological gods.”
“Fair enough.”
I reverted to my current dilemma now that Petrov had eased some of the pang in my heart left by my blood relatives.
I was beginning to trust Petrov, but he’d killed agents, the people I worked for, in his grief. Was it wrong of me to sympathize with him and justify his actions that cost eight men their lives?
Perhaps, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to side with Rollins when her agents continued persecuting my loved ones.
“Papatonis, may I ask you a rather personal question?”
He’d been studying the painting as well, but he turned when I addressed him. “Go ahead.”
“From the way Leo tells it, you work for a very violent man. How do you reconcile the things you might have to do when they conflict with your principles?”
Petrov had warned us about getting our hands dirty to bring down Tarasovich.
Papatonis took my inquiry seriously, scratching his chin as he thought. A full minute passed before he supplied an answer. “I asked myself that question often when I was younger. The things I was doing, the choices I was making, they were driving a wedge between my family and me, but I always justified my decisions. The consequences caught up to me, and things ended quite tragically. With the reflection of time, even though it caused indescribable heartache, I would make those same decisions because I was protecting the ones I love. You need to ask yourself the lengths you’re willing to go to achieve the same.”
I pondered that. What would I do to protect my team?
Anything.
“He’s right, you know,” Papatonis added after a moment.
I blinked. “Who, Petrov? About what?”
Papatonis began walking away. “About fathers and their daughters. Can’t say we react all that rationally.”
I frowned. Apparently, he hadn’t happened upon me while I was spaced out in my thoughts. He’d eavesdropped on our conversation. “Just how long were you lurking in the shadows?”
He laughed. “Goodnight, Miss King.”