Chapter 8 #2
“The narrow one. Brass knob.”
The handle turned through the earpiece.
“Locked.”
“Lift, then turn. The latch drops.”
A scrape. A click.
Tonio moved. The door closed softly behind him.
“Where am I?”
“My mother’s flower room.”
A faint rustle followed.
“Your mother had many flowers.”
“The wedding arrangements will have been put there after the ceremony was canceled. Get behind them.”
“I’m hiding behind roses.”
“They’re peonies.”
“I don’t care what they’re called—they’re flowers.”
The guard entered the passage.
I knew from the gait he was one of my father’s older men. The younger ones walked faster. They wanted people to hear how important they were. The older men understood that importance did not need noise.
His steps stopped outside the flower room.
My hand flattened on the plan. Sal’s little finger touched mine. Not a hold. Barely contact.
I heard the doorknob move. I heard resistance.
My lungs stopped.
The guard tried again. Then muttered something in muffled Russian.
The steps faded.
Tonio breathed out. “Well I have decided I fucking hate peonies.”
“You may insult them after you get Kiryl.”
“Yes, boss.”
He left the flower room.
From there, the route was faster. East passage. Servants’ stair. Ground floor. The guard station’s radio muttered beyond one wall.
“Blue room ahead,” Tonio said.
“How many outside?”
“No one.”
“That’s wrong.”
“Everything tonight seems to be wrong.”
“Move quickly.”
I heard his knuckles touch wood.
“Kiryl,” he called softly. “My name is Tonio Scordato. Your sister sent me.”
Nothing.
He knocked again.
“Kiryl. We need to leave.”
A muffled voice came through the door.
“No.”
My throat closed.
“Kiryusha,” I said, though he could not hear me directly. “Put me through.”
Angela answered. “Tonio, hold the earpiece against the door.”
Fabric moved. Then Tonio said, louder, “She’s here. She can hear you.”
“Lena?” Kiryl’s voice was thin behind the wood.
“I’m here,” I said.
“He still can’t hear you,” Angela reminded me.
Of course. My mind was moving too fast.
“Tell him,” I said to Tonio, “that I said to open the door.”
Tonio repeated it.
“No,” Kiryl said. “She’d know I wouldn’t believe that.”
Smart boy. Terrified boy. My eyes burned.
Sal’s hand remained beside mine, not touching now.
I searched through twenty years of private language. Nursery jokes. Books. The chocolate Kiryl made too sweet. The sugar flowers stolen from birthday cakes when we were children.
Pink roses.
My mother’s cake.
Kiryl had bitten one and immediately spat it into my hand.
“Tell him the pink ones taste like soap.”
Tonio went quiet.
Then he repeated it through the door.
There was a pause.
A lock turned. Then another. The door opened. I heard the door open.
Kiryl’s first breath through Tonio’s microphone sounded like the nursery door opening after a nightmare.
Quick. Shallow. Trying not to make trouble.
“Put on the jacket,” Tonio told him. “Arms in. Good. Hat too.”
“I look ridiculous.”
“You look employed—obviously you’re workshy.”
“Where’s Lena?”
“Chicago.”
A pause.
“That seems like a long way away.”
“It is not far enough for your sister. She is currently inside my skull.”
“I heard that,” I said.
Tonio’s soft laugh came through the line.
I bent over the plan.
“Leave the blue room and turn left,” I said. “Do not return by the flower room. The guard passed that way. Take the east servants’ hall to the kitchen.”
Tonio relayed each instruction to Kiryl, then followed it.
Two sets of footsteps moved now. Tonio’s controlled pace. Kiryl’s lighter, less certain one.
“Slow down,” I told them. “A frightened man hurries. A tired worker doesn’t.”
“Cool it, Kiryl. Nice and slow,” Tonio murmured. “Try to look a little exploited.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Think about taxes?”
Even I nearly laughed.
Then a radio chirped in the corridor. Everything stopped. A man spoke in accented English. “Who is that?”
Kiryl inhaled sharply.
Tonio said something in Italian under his breath.
The man’s voice sharpened. “Kiryl Lvovich?”
“His hand is going to his radio,” Kiryl whispered.
Then sound exploded through my earpiece.
A body struck a wall. The radio clattered. Tonio grunted. Someone yelped in Russian. Shoes scraped hard over stone.
“Tonio?” I stood so quickly my chair fell backward. “Tonio.”
The struggle filled my ear.
A fist landing. A sharp exhale. Then static screamed once. The connection died.
“Tonio!”
Nothing.
“Angela, restore it.”
“I’m trying.”
“Tonio, answer me.”
Silence.
I pulled the earpiece out and shoved it back as if that could repair anything.
“Pietro?” Sal demanded.
“I’m moving,” Pietro said through the table speaker. Engine noise rose behind him. “Two minutes from the service road.”
“That’s too long.” My hands had begun to shake. “The guard will call the station. They’ll lock the gates. Kiryl is in the corridor. He can’t fight. He doesn’t know how.”
Sal stepped in front of me, close enough to block the floor plan but not close enough to touch.
“Yelena.”
“I sent him into that corridor.”
“You gave him the safest route.”
“It wasn’t safe. No route in that house is safe.”
“No.”
The answer tore through me.
My breath shortened. The room narrowed to Sal’s dark shirt and the pale closures on his cheek.
“Do you want my hand?” he asked.
I stared at him.
His right hand hung open beside his thigh. Palm visible. Waiting.
Not taking.
I grabbed it.
Hard.
My nails bit into his skin. His fingers closed around mine only after I had chosen the contact.
“Hold on,” he said.
“I can’t hear him.”
“I know, honey, I’m with you.”
Honey. He called me honey. No time to process it. No time to take it in.
“I can’t—”
“Breathe out.”
I dragged air out of my chest.
“Again.”
I squeezed his hand until the bones should have hurt. He gave no sign of it.
“Longer,” he said. “Good. Again.”
The speaker crackled.
A burst of sound returned. Not speech. An alarm.
Loud. Repeating.
Then Angela’s voice. “I have Tonio’s signal. Audio damaged, telemetry moving.”
“Moving where?” Sal asked.
“Southwest through the house.”
“Toward the loading bay,” I said.
Pietro’s engine roared through the speaker. “I’m at the outer lane. Gate traffic is moving toward the front.”
The fire alarm continued.
“Who pulled it?” I asked.
No answer came.
Later, Tonio told us what happened.
The guard had got one hand around his radio before Tonio drove him into the wall. The earpiece broke when the man’s elbow struck Tonio’s jaw.
They went down together.
The guard was broad and trained. Tonio was broader, better trained, and furious, but he was trying not to kill anyone. That made the fight take longer.
Kiryl stood against the wall for three seconds.
Then my gentle brother took the fire extinguisher from its bracket and swung it into the backs of the guard’s knees.
The man collapsed.
Tonio finished restraining him with a catering tie and a length of electrical cord.
Then Kiryl pulled the alarm.
Staff and guards moved toward the front exits, exactly as fire protocols required. Tonio and Kiryl took a linen cart through the kitchen and walked out behind two confused collection workers while water began pouring from one sprinkler head near the east corridor.
I knew none of this then.
I had only silence, alarms, and Sal’s hand in mine.
Minutes passed.
Each was longer than the flight from Brooklyn to Chicago.
“Van moving,” Angela said. “Signal has left the property.”
“Which signal?”
“Tonio’s.”
“Kiryl?”
“No tracker on him.”
Of course not. I dug my nails deeper into Sal’s hand. He turned it slightly, giving me more to hold.
Pietro’s voice came through. “I see the van. Following.”
“Can you see inside?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then you don’t know? If they’re safe.”
“No,” Pietro said. “I don’t.”
Honest men were terrible for panic.
Another minute passed. Then Sal’s phone rang.
Tonio.
He answered on speaker.
Road noise filled the room. Someone was laughing and coughing at the same time.
“We are out,” Tonio announced. “Nobody is shot. Although I was struck in the jaw by a criminally ugly Russian.”
“Kiryl?” I said.
A scuffle sounded.
Then my brother’s voice came through, breathless and painfully alive.
“Lena, I hit somebody. I mean I really hit them. There was a fire extinguisher. It was insane!” Then, a pause, before: “I’m very sorry.”
My knees gave way.
Sal caught my elbow with his free hand, but I was already laughing.
It came out broken. Half sob. Half something wild.
“Kiryusha,” I said. “You pulled the alarm?”
“I panicked.”
“You did perfectly.”
“I think I damaged his knees. With the extinguisher.”
“Good.”
“I hope he’ll walk again.”
“I’m sure he will,” I reassured.
Tonio laughed loudly in the background.
Freedom did not feel like flying.
It felt like my legs failing under a dining table at three in the morning.
Pietro followed the catering van to a private airfield outside the city. He stayed on the line as Tonio drove through the gate. He confirmed the aircraft. The Caruso men. The false documents waiting for Kiryl.
Then he said the words I had not permitted myself to imagine.
“He’s aboard. Door secured. They’re moving him beyond Lev’s reach.”
Beyond my father’s reach.
The leash broke. I laughed. A terrible sound. Too high, too sharp. It caught in my throat and turned into a sob before I could stop it.
I pressed both hands over my face.
My father could not use Kiryl to bring me home.
Gianni could not threaten him to make me sign.
Arkady could not explain duty while my brother sat under guard in the next room. Daniil could not arrive angry and frightened and make everything worse.
For the first time in my life, loving Kiryl was not a weapon somebody else held.
My body did not know how to contain that fact.
I cried into my hands. Shoulders shaking. Breath breaking. Years of control came apart without elegance.
Sal knelt beside my chair. I saw him through my fingers, waiting at eye level, one knee on the carpet, his injured cheek turned toward the lamp.
I reached for him.
That was all it took.