Chapter 46
forty-six
“I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”
A snort escapes my lips at the insinuation. “I never said you were,” I placate. “I simply want to be sure that the pretty brunette at the service desk won’t be a distraction for you.”
Dima blows out his lips in frustration, and I can’t help the chuckle I release.
Here I am sitting like a fucking creeper in the middle of a blacked-out apartment stalking my fucking target.
It is long past midnight, and the fucker still hasn’t shown his face.
We came here for Kirill, but he isn’t the only one I am after.
My backup man is currently pouting outside in the car like a dejected puppy.
I made sure to crack a window for him. Maksim has been the holder of Dima’s leash for as long as I can remember.
I would say it is something kinky but while my young associate might flex and bend with gender, Maksim has no such flexibility.
“I know when to take my balls out of the game.”
It isn’t quite how the American phrase goes, but I let it slide.
For now.
“Then prove it,” I command him. “Prove that you can be a reliable asset, brat and maybe I will think about allowing more freedom in the future.”
Should have brought fucking Leon or Romano with me.
Problem is that both are easily recognizable as being associated with me.
Dima is my ghost man. My thief in the shadows.
“Got him,” Dima informs me what he is seeing on his video feed. Hacking into the hotel’s Wi-Fi was horrifyingly easy. “He’s heading into the elevator with two security guards.”
My hand clenches on the gun in my lap.
“Security got off on the floor below him.”
Rookie mistake. I smirk darkly. Never leave yourself open without easily accessible backup.
I wait patiently, the soft pad of footsteps my reward some minutes later.
Rolling my shoulders back, I tilt my head up and prepare.
The door beeps, the telltale sign of being unlocked, and the door handle clicks.
Moments later the door closes, and the snick of the lock sounds.
Time for business.
“Privet, dvoyurodnaya brat,” I greet my cousin coldly, the muzzle of my baretta aimed at his chest. Ivan, the man who paraded himself as Jonathon Archer, freezes in his tracks.
Flipping on the lamp, I expect to see fear creeping into his silver eyes.
Instead, his own gun is aimed at my head, a smarmy smirk goading his lips.
Pizdets.
“Matthias.” I want to punch that smirk off his face and watch that smug glint in his eye fade to nothing as I choke the life from him.
“Archer,” I nod my head at him, my eyes never leaving his face. “Or should I call you Ivan?”
“Took you long enough.” Again, the man shows no fear, only expectancy. “I thought you would have found me sooner, honestly.”
I sneer.
“Know me so well, do you?”
Ivan grins broadly, showcasing pearly white teeth and a more youthful face.
The graying edges of his hair are gone, and he is clean shaven, making him look years younger than the man he portrayed.
Hell, even his eye color is different. Gone are the hazel contacts, replaced by the familiar silver glint.
There are very little traces of Jonathon Archer left. He hid behind his facade so well that I barely recognize the man standing in front of me.
“I know more about you than you think.” He lowers his gun as a show of good faith, tucking it into his waistband.
“Well,” I tip the muzzle of my gun back and forth. “Not surprising with your stalker tendencies.” The man looks like he wants to smile, but he keeps his face somewhat neutral.
“You should tell your man downstairs to come on up for a drink,” Ivan informs me. He gives my gun a quick glance before walking to the bar that sits to one side of me. Dima curses over the comms line. I wince at the volume. “He’s good.” Ivan smirks. “My men are just better.”
“Indeed,” I grumble and bark at Dima to stand by in the lobby. “How long have you known?”
Ivan chuckles darkly. “Since the minute you stepped off the plane.”
I swear.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right now, then?”
That fucking smirk. I want to wipe it off his face.
“I want Kirill dead.”
That isn’t what I expect.
“He’s your uncle. Why would you want that?”
Ivan turns toward me, jaw clenched, the muscles in his throat tightening around his pulsing carotid. The man is angry, eyes burning with uncontrolled hatred.
“Antony Tkachenko was my brother.”
I shake my head slightly, gun lowering. Brother. That is impossible. He called me brother before he died. Antony was a Kasyanov.
Right?
“Impossible,” I murmur and take the glass of scotch he offers.
Ivan scoffs. “I think I would know my own brother.”
I think back to that fateful night. The one where we fought, and I killed him.
“I’m sorry, brat.”
Those are the words he said to me.
Unless they weren’t meant for me. Maybe they are meant for Ivan?
“How much do you know about Kirill?” he asks me. Ivan sits across from me in one of the other chairs, making himself comfortable as he sips on his vodka.
“Seeing as how he is my father,” I sneer at the term. “A lot.”
And out comes the smirk again.
“Is he though?”
This mudak is playing with fire.
“You think I don’t know my own father?” I growl.
My hand tightens on the glass in my hand.
“The pig of a man who got my mother addicted to drugs. The scum of the earth who kicked me out on my ass when I was eleven. The scourge of my life who sent one assassin after another for years until they were too afraid to come after me. That man? I know that man.”
There is sadness and regret in Ivan’s eyes. His gaze is fixed on me. The tension in his shoulders releases and he seems at ease. Off guard. I could kill him now for everything he has done, and he would be unprepared.
Except I don’t want to.
The longer I study him the more I notice the similarities beyond the familial platinum eyes and dark hair.
They were hidden before, purposely altered beneath the carefully crafted face of Jonathon Archer.
We bear the same sharp angular jawline and high cheekbones.
His voice, when not altered, is deep and gravelly.
At one point I thought he was my brother, not my cousin.
My first instinct when I saw the mark on his arm flash across the video feed from the Ward stables was accurate.
The revelation that I spent my entire life hating someone who is absolutely nothing to me is startling.
The rug is pulled out from under me. The wool falling from my eyes.
“You say Antony was your brother as well.” Suspicion laces my voice. Things just don’t seem to be adding up, but I don’t raise my gun again. I keep the peace that settles between us.
For now.
“Yes,” Ivan affirms. “He and I are born two years before you. When they first were married. Mom was eighteen and working at a diner in America when he met her. Seduced her. Married her. It was a whirlwind romance, he says.”
“I assume Malik didn’t take too kindly to that.”
Ivan snarls. “I do not believe our senile old grandfather had anything to do with it, at least not completely.”
Now I am puzzled. “Why else would Kirill take her?” None of what he is saying makes any sense, but at the same time, it does.
The pieces of the puzzle are blurry, but slowly, as I shift everything I think I know aside and focus on the facts he is giving me and the ones I have begun to dig up myself—everything is beginning to fit together.
“Her name was Amalia,” Ivan tells me, a wistfulness to his voice as he remembers her.
“I was only two when she was stolen in the dead of night with you still in her belly. Antony and I put our ear to her stomach to listen. It put a smile on our face whenever we could feel you shift. She sang to us your favorite lullaby. Her voice soft and sweet.”
Tears swim in his eyes as he tells me the only things he remembers about her. The memories of a two-year-old are so fleeting. Finite.
“Bayu Bayushki,” I chuckle. “The lullaby about a wolf dragging a child from bed for sleeping on the edge. She sang that to me as well. I remember the first time I was able to properly understand the words—I was too scared to sleep for days.”
Ivan laughs. “Father tried to sing it to us, but his voice sounded too much like a dying koshka. Antony begged him to stop but he just hammered on anyway, louder, if that is possible.”
The two of us laugh, the jovial sound fading away as sorrow and regret cinch our hearts and soul. I grew up without the love of a father. My only glimpse of what one was truly supposed to be like came from the kindness and compassion Tomas had showed me many years later. Many years too late.
Ivan and Antony were forced to live without the tender care of a mother. Their memories just wistful dreams. Even in her worst times, when Kirill had her hopped up on drugs, she never stopped being the loving mother I knew when she was sober.
“Her favorite color was green,” I tell him, the lump in my throat growing as I dredge up memories I buried long ago. “And not like the forest or the grass. It was lime green. The kind you find on walls of homes built in the seventies.”
Ivan’s eyes light up as I tell him about our mother. Her favorite foods and how she liked to settle down and read to me in the evenings. She was fierce and protective. Loving and kind even in her darkest times.
Gradually, over time, the happiness of my tale melts into anger, then rage. Now that I have all the pieces, I can see the proper flow of time.
But there are a few questions that remain unanswered.
“If Malik wasn’t behind the plan to take our mother,” I question, thinking back to everything I know. “Who did? Kirill? There is no way he was smart enough to pull it off on his own.”
Ivan shakes his head softly.
“Have you heard of a man by the name of Pavel Kasyanov?”
I nod.
“He is the man I grow up believing to be my uncle,” I tell him. “Died a few years ago.”