26. Maxim
MAXIM
Lev and I are three hours from the pier and deep in the arrangement of it when my phone lights with Thea’s name. But we nearly have this done, and if I lose my train of thought now, it could be a matter of my life or my death.
“The river team sets before dawn,” I tell Lev, reaching for the phone. “Two boats, and I want the second one dark until—”
The ringing stops before I accept the call. Missed. Her name sits on the screen above the words no voicemail.
Odd. She always leaves a voicemail.
A missed call from Thea with no message behind it has never once happened. I dial her. “Give me a moment, Lev.”
The silence has reasons, and I want them. It rings four times and goes to her voicemail. I end the call and dial again. Voicemail. Again. Voicemail.
“Maxim.” Lev cocks his head. “What’s wrong?”
I hold up one finger. I call Pasha, and it rings into nothing. Only his voicemail message of careful English asking me to please leave a message after the tone.
Galina does not carry a phone out of any love for the thing, but she carries the one I gave her because I asked her to. It rings. And rings. No voicemail this time. She wouldn’t know how to access it in the first place, so she never set it up.
Something is disturbing our lines. A cell tower? Weather? I try the house landline. Busy signal.
That’s not possible. No one uses it, and there are multiple lines that route to it. A cold has started low in me, in a place I had forgotten could feel cold.
“The satellite phone,” I say aloud, and I dial it.
Pasha carries it clipped inside his jacket at all hours, on my standing order. It works when nothing else works. It is the one phone in my world that cannot fail to connect.
It rings. And rings. And no one on the far end answers it.
I set the phone down on the desk with a care that costs me everything I’ have, because the alternative is to throw it through the window. “Home. Now.”
Lev is already speaking into his own phone, summoning the car and the two men from the outer room. He does not waste breath on “Are you certain,” or other inane questions. He moves.
Yuri at the wheel, we haul ass through the city as carefully as we can to avoid attention. He’s a wizard at it—not once do I worry about getting pulled over.
My worry is with Thea.
Lev sits beside me, opposite two mostly identical men facing us with their coats open over what they carry.
They share the same dark brown hair, but one wears it tied back, while the other sports a buzzcut.
Skin so pale white that they could be mistaken for ghosts.
All black clothes, the signature of their trade.
Sergei and Chaucer are ready and silent, always.
Lev calls them his big guns. The ones he calls in when shit goes sideways.
The city smears past the glass in ribbons of light. I’ve made this drive a thousand times and never this fast. Still, it is not fast enough.
Nothing is.
I could have taken my helicopter, but they don’t arrive silently, and I mean to take this enemy by surprise. It’s the only leg up I’ll have. I see all of it while the bridge cables strobe past.
Klaus knows the estate. He grew up there, insofar as he was ever home.
He knows which windows stick and which cameras sweep wide.
My people are good, but inside information is priceless, and he has it in spades.
I moved every gun I own to a waterfront three hours from my own front door because I’m a fool who fell for his trick.
He made me believe he was just a disgruntled son. One who sided with the man who wants me dead. Seemed a clear enough message. It was personal—me versus Alexei and Klaus. Fine. I can handle that.
But I didn’t see this coming.
“I never once thought my son had slipped so far into hatred that he would move on Thea like this.”
Lev blinks at me. “We don’t know—”
“We do, Lev. You said I wasn’t na?ve. Don’t you start.”
He exhales loudly. Not a sigh. More a release valve, steaming out. “Alright. This is an attack on the mansion. What do we know?”
“No one’s answering their phones. Not even the landline or the satellite phone.”
“What else?”
That’s the part I don’t have an answer for. “Klaus hates me. His offer from Alexei was either give Alexei the piers, or give Thea to Klaus. He—”
Chaucer asks, “That is odd, don’t you think?”
I’m unaccustomed to him or Sergei speaking. About anything. They show up, and problems are solved with violence, not words. I never knew how thick their accents were until now. “How so?”
“Why would Alexei agree to help Klaus get his woman back? Why would he accept her in place of the piers he wants so badly?”
My insides twist. “I’d not considered such a thing.”
“Neither had I,” Lev admits. His mind runs with it. “There is no reason Alexei would take Thea for the piers, Maxim. Do you think Klaus is working Alexei, too? Massaging the deals until he gets what he wants out of them?”
“One more consideration to add to the fucking pile.” I sit back, trying for a breath that never comes. I’ve been afraid perhaps four times as an adult, and each time I turned it into motion, because fear that cannot become action is a luxury item.
This fear is something else. It sits in my chest like swallowed ice and refuses to move. Fear sits alongside rage.
At Sokolov. At my son.
I offered him the path back to our family. He answered with a threat against Thea, and even then, fool that I am, I told myself some door remained ajar. No door remains now. Not if he truly is involved in whatever this is.
Strange. I have an urge I’ve not felt in years. To bargain. With Alexei. Klaus. Or God himself. So, I pray.
In my mind, I beg, “Not her. Not them. Not this. Take the ports. Take the company, the name, the years I’ve left, spend them however you like. I don’t care about any of that. Save them.”
Lev’s hand closes on my forearm, once, hard, then nods. He says nothing. There is nothing to say. We drive, and the early morning light pours toward us, and I do my best not to vomit.
That’s strange, too. I’ve gone and worried myself sick. Can’t even remember the last time that happened. Childhood, perhaps.
The last miles are the estate road unlit. In the bare dawn light, it might as well be night with the trees closing overhead.
Our headlights find it first. My gate is wrong.
Twelve feet of iron that takes a motor to budge, hangs slack and canted on a ruined hinge. It stands crooked and half open, one leaf sagging into the gravel.
Whoever is here did not pick the lock. They did not try to be subtle or sneak in. A bold statement of no fear.
“Turn off the headlights, Yuri.”
He does, and the world goes black, but then our vision catches up. Beyond the gate sit two black SUVs, nose to tail. A single figure stands between them, a rifle held loose across his body.
He is Sokolov’s. He’s standing as if he never thought he’d be tapped in this fight, since my guards and I would be gone.
Yuri does not slow. The man raises his weapon a fraction too late, and the front of the car takes him at full speed. The thump of tires on a body roils my gut. And then Yuri backs over him for good measure.
We come to rest in the gravel a few feet from his struggling, wailing body, and I’m through the door before the car settles. I plug him once between what’s left of his eyes.
Lev is out with the twins behind him, weapons up, fanning to the angles without needing to be told.
The house stands black against a dawn-gray sky.
I walk toward my home with my men at my back, up the drive I’ve walked ten thousand times.
Whatever questions I find on the other side of this door, there’s only one answer.
At the edge of the drive, I stop and turn to them. My voice comes out level and quiet. “You know what to do.”