31. Cassie
CASSIE
Aloha was alone in the metal box inside the old factory building. He saw us without an appointment, likely because Bram was with us, and we explained the code name found in the phone he’d decoded from the paper mill.
“I told you, I got everything I could off that thing.” It was cool in the room, probably necessary because of all the computer equipment, but Aloha’s Barbarians jacket was still hanging on the back of his chair, his meaty physique on full display in an Incubus T-shirt.
“Can’t do shit about those encrypted texts. ”
Bram explained about the code name and its possible tie to Dimitri.
“You want me to see if I can find someone who goes by the name PrincessA?” Aloha pulled on his beard. “I’m good, but I’m not a magician. Actually I am a magician, but I’m not a wizard. Actually— ”
“We’re not looking for the name,” I said. “We want to know if Dimitri Kaprolov has a wife or a daughter.”
“Don’t need me for that,” he said. “Should be easy enough to find online.”
“We tried,” Bram said.
Aloha’s forehead wrinkled in surprise. “Nothing?”
Bram shook his head.
“Give me a few, will you?” Aloha turned to face one of the computers in front of him.
“Sure thing,” Vigo said.
Aloha paused, then glared at us over his shoulder.
“Oh… you mean leave,” Vigo said.
“Now you’re catching on.” Aloha started typing. “Come back in an hour.”
We filed out of the metal box and crossed the concrete floor of the old factory building.
“Now what?” Vigo asked.
“We’ll just hang out here,” Bram said, leaning against the brick facade of the building where Aloha worked.
Poe joined him, his dark hair as black as Hawk’s even under the street lights.
The loft Bram shared with Maeve, Poe, and Remy was right down the street, but I guessed Bram wasn’t ready to invite the Hawks over to hang out.
Baby steps.
Vigo started parkouring off the building, because god forbid Vigo stood still for five minutes, and Hawk and Jagger paced a few feet away before turning around and pacing back.
Halloween was only a week away and the businesses in Southside had gone all out for the holiday, decorating their windows with skeletons and pumpkins, cobwebs and spiders.
It was almost cold, and I folded my arms to keep warm until Hawk came over to drape his jacket over my shoulders.
Bram looked away, like he wasn’t ready to see it, but Poe studied Hawk like a key he couldn’t unlock.
“I ask you a question?” Poe asked him.
“Sure.”
“Why do you guys make those fucking sounds when in the Hunt?” Poe asked.
Hawk furrowed his brow. “What sounds?”
“Those fucking… war cries. The yelling when you run through the tunnels.”
Hawk looked relieved, like he’d expected Poe to ask something more personal. “It’s fun.”
Poe scowled. “Yeah, well it’s a dick move.”
“Why is it a dick move?” Vigo asked, walking over to join the conversation.
He wasn’t even out of breath.
“Because those are the kinds of sounds my ancestors made when they went hunting for real, the kind of sounds we still make during ceremonies that celebrate our traditions. It’s not a game to us. It matters and it’s not for you.”
I stood straighter, half expecting Hawk to pop off, glad all over again that Vigo had left his bat in the car.
“Shit, man…” Hawk rubbed at his jaw. “I didn’t think about it like that.”
“Same,” Vigo said. “Sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” Poe said, his expression still dark.
I was still on alert. Maeve wasn’t here to keep Bram and Poe in line, and I was still testing may own sway over the Hawks.
And I wasn’t the only one. Bram was watching too, probably hoping for a reason to beat the shit out of the Hawks.
“Are you saying you want us to stop doing it?” Hawk cut a glance at me. “Not that we’ll be hunting again.”
My cheeks flushed, and my heart pounded in my chest. It was the first time he’d said something to indicate that our relationship might be permanent and I felt the warmth of it through my whole body.
“Yeah,” Poe said, “I want you to stop doing it. In the Hunt and everywhere else.”
Hawk nodded slowly. “No problem, man. Sorry to offend.”
“It’s fine.” Poe relaxed a little. “Thanks.”
“Sure thing.” Hawk held out his hand. “We good?”
Poe hesitated, then shook Hawk’s hand. “Yeah, fine. Whatever. We’re good.”
“Cool.”
I held my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it really was that easy: Poe asking for something, Hawk hearing him out, taking accountability.
As Reva would say, knock me down and steal my teeth (I had no idea what it meant, it was just something she said when she was shocked).
By the time we headed back into Aloha’s lab, the tension in the air had dissipated.
My brother and Poe weren’t exactly friendly with the Hawks, but the open animosity had subsided and for the first time I could almost see a future where it might work: a future with the Hawks, my relationship with Bram intact.
Aloha was typing away when we returned to the lab, his focus on one of the three monitors in front of him,
“Found her,” he said without turning around.
“You found her?” I didn’t dare believe it. “In an hour?”
The six of us had combed the internet and come up empty while we’d finished our burgers at Syd’s.
He stopped typing and swiveled his chair to face us. “Wasn’t that hard. You can scrub the internet but it’s a lot harder to scrub official records, even when you’re an oligarch.”
“So who is she?” Hawk asked.
Aloha turned his chair around to face his computer, then tabbed to an open window behind the one he’d been working on when we entered the metal box. “Alina Volkova, daughter of Dimitri Kaprolov and Tatiana Volkova. Alina is twenty-four, mother died when she was ten.”
Like me, I thought.
“Any siblings?” Jagger asked.
“Only child,” Aloha said. “And you were right, she uses PrincessA as a social media handle or Princess AV to be exact.”
He tabbed to a different screen and an Instagram page popped up.
I scanned it over his shoulder and saw picture after picture of a young blonde woman with a perfect figure posed on a yacht and rooftops, dressed in bathing suits and cocktail dresses.
Sometimes she was alone, but just as often she was with a group of similarly hot, young rich kids doing rich kid things while they laughed, smiled, and drank.
I looked for pictures of Dimitri Kaprolov and didn’t find any, but every now and then Alina appeared in a cropped photo, an older man’s arm around her or on the table next to her, an expensive watch on his wrist.
I read one of the captions: Happy Birthday, Papa.
“She’s a fucking trust fund baby,” Bram said.
“An oligarch baby,” Aloha said. “But same difference.”
“And her mom’s last name is the one listed as Alina’s even on the birth records?” Poe asked.
“Yep,” Aloha said. “As far as I can tell, she’s never used Kaprolov a day in her life.”
“That’s weird for a Russian family.” Vigo reached for one of the buttons on a keyboard of another monitor.
I shook my head and was relieved when he pulled back his hand.
“Why do you say that?” Jagger asked.
“Russian surnames are derived from their ancestors, their patriarchy to be exact. Sometimes from a name, other times from an occupation or region.” Vigo sounded almost bored as he scanned the equipment, obviously itching for something to touch.
“Kaprolov’s name probably originated from an ancestor in the military since a капрал is a corporal.
It would be a big deal to pass it on to his descendants, especially if he didn’t have a son, although in that case it wouldn’t have been Kaprolov but Kaprolova. ”
Aloha stared at him like he was a freak of nature. “What the fuck, dude?”
“What?” Vigo asked.
Aloha shook his head in disbelief.
“He knew,” Bram said. “Kaprolov knew his dirt could hurt his daughter — or himself — from the beginning, so he gave Alina his wife’s last name.”
“But now we know for sure,” I said. “Dimitri is the one who sent the men at the paper mill.”
The texts on the dead guy’s phone made perfect sense if he’d been part of the Kaprolov family security detail.
“And now we know how to find him,” Jagger said.
I stared at the screen, at the beautiful life of Dimitri’s daughter, one she lived while Dimitri stole girls from their homes, sold them to be used by other men.
“Find Alina, find Dimitri.”