Chapter Nineteen
Kirill paled.
I relished the look of fear on his face as it slowly dawned on him that he wouldn’t be walking away unscathed. Not this time. At my sides, my hands clenched and unclenched rhythmically. It was hard not to sink my fist into his pug little face.
“Your grandfather murdered your mother while she was pregnant,” Andrei insisted. He was blind to the truth. The love he had for his brother was strong, but I could sense his doubt. See it lurking behind his steel-cut eyes. “He had proof.”
“He lied.” Striding into the room, hands in my pockets, I kept my gaze on the man who had raised me. The man who had abandoned me without a second thought. He tore my family apart. Murdered my mother and left me to the wolves.
“Khristos,” Andrei murmured under his breath. Lips slightly parted. Eyes wide. He stared at me as if he was seeing a ghost. The ghost of my mother. There was very little of Andrei Tkachenko in me besides the color of my eyes and the mark I bore on my wrist. Otherwise, I was a spitting image of the woman who bore me.
“Impossible.” Kirill stared at me in abject horror, his face paling even further. “You’re dead.”
My gray eyes darted to his. “You should have realized by now how hard that really is.” I reminded him. “After all, you are the one who sent assassin after assassin to kill me since I was a child. Father.”
Andrei’s gaze swept to his brother. “You said he was dead.”
“He…he was,” Kirill stammered. “Father killed them both. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“The lies of a snake are the sweetest,” I sneered at Kirill. “Aren’t they?”
“He killed Antony, Andrei,” Kirill spat, straightening himself up. He would not go down lightly. Not without trying to take me with him. “I have proof of that.”
Lifting my chin, I eyed my birth father. “He is right,” I admitted honestly. “I was thirteen, living in the shadow of the Bolsheokhtinsky bridge, when Antony attacked me in the dead of night. I defended myself. It wasn’t until his last breath that I realized who he was. When he asked me to forgive him and called me brother.”
Andrei’s darkened gaze turned to his brother. “You told me Antony was killed by the Fedorovs.” Kirill audibly swallowed, the fat of his neck tightening, his pulse thumping, his pupils pinpoints as his fight-or-flight instinct took over. He was sweating, his eyes wild as he took all three of us in.
“Why don’t you tell him what really happened, Kirill?” The utter disdain I had for this man rolled off me in waves. This would be his last stand. He wouldn’t escape this room. Not alive. “Tell him how you are the one who stole our mother. Forced her to be your whore after you got her addicted to drugs. And then, when Andrei called you up to take part in his regime, you overdosed her with those very drugs. Kicked me out on the streets.
“Tell the brother who trusted you how you sent Antony to kill me. Whispering in his ear that I was the bad guy. That he needed to prove himself by killing me. How you set Ivan up so that his own father would lose faith in him. Why don’t you tell him the truth for once? That all you wanted was the power the Tkachenko name gave you so you could move your human cargo without worry. That you are nothing more than an ugly, fat traitor to your blood. You are nothing more than dirt beneath his shoes. A coward. A loser. A—”
“Enough!” Kirill roared, standing, silver cross cane gripped tightly in one hand. His knuckles were turning white, his face the color of dark beet juice. This was the man I knew growing up. The one who easily lost control, and when he lost control, he made mistakes. Just like he was now. “You know nothing, boy,” he spat. “Nothing about being the outcast. The bastard child. I worked just as hard as Andrei and was given nothing for it. Nothing. While Andrei got everything. So, I made my little side business and built my army.”
“I treated you like a true brother.” Andrei shook his head, disappointed. “Never once did I treat you as anything less than pure blood.”
Kirill sneered. “Please.” He rolled his eyes. “Father was right. You are weak. Allowing yourself to draw lines and enforce values. You were so drowned by your grief after the loss of that whore and her child. You made our father look weak when you married her. She was nothing. Her children are nothing.”
“I should have seen this sooner.” Andrei sighed deeply. There was a flash of anger behind his stormy eyes, but he was the picture of calm as his brother ripped him apart with his words. “His influence over you was greater than I imagined. I thought…” He shook his head lightly, never taking his eyes off Kirill. You never give the enemy a chance to catch you unaware, and Kirill was now his enemy. “I was a fool to believe you were a better man than him.”
Kirill scoffed. “You only saw what I wanted you to see.” He jabbed, his dark smile triumphant. “And now.” He lifted the gold embossed lighter from his desk and flicked the spark wheel. The flint ignited, and I surged forward, ready to sacrifice myself for the father I’d never had a chance to know. We tumbled to the floor, my body shielding his.
Nothing came.
No pain.
No blood.
Chest heaving, I drew up, eyes scanning and alert.
Kirill growled and ignited the lighter again and again, but nothing happened.
“Fucking—” Glass shattered, raining down around me. I swept my arm up to protect my face, the rest of my body still shielding the man beneath me.
“Boss? Are you okay?” Dima’s voice was panicked in my ear. “Boss?”
Growling, I stood up, offering Andrei my hand. He took it, and I helped him to his feet.
“We’re good, Dima,” I told him. “Looks like we’ve got a guardian angel out there.”
“Well.” A soft voice filtered in from the doorway. I turned to see Kenzi leaning lazily against the frame, her brown hair in a tight bun, clad in black from head to toe. “I wouldn’t say I’m an angel.” She shrugged. “But I definitely feel guardian-like right now.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Ivan spat as he drew his gun. Kenzi eyed it wearily, a perfectly stenciled eyebrow raised at the man.
“Really?” She scoffed. “I’m pretty sure I just blew my cover for your ass.” Before Ivan could utter another word, Kenzi shifted. Her moves were swift and precise as she shot forward, wrenching the gun from my brother’s hand, and disassembling it within a matter of seconds. “A thank you would be appreciated.”
Andrei barked a laugh from behind me.
“Leave it to Kirill to hire an assassin.” He shook his head. “Man can’t even get his hands dirty to kill his own brother.” He spat at Kirill’s body. It laid slumped against the bookcases; head lolled to the side with a giant bullet hole straight between his eyebrows. “Could have merely injured him, though. Would have been useful to interrogate him.”
Kenzi groaned. “Everyone’s a critic,” she muttered. “You’re fucking welcome.”
Andrei smirked. “Thank you, malen’kiy ubiytsa.” Little assassin. It was fitting.
“I hope that wasn’t an insult.” She winked at him. “Because it sounds sexy.”
Andrei laughed, full and deep.
“He is right, though,” I sighed. “Whoever is running the Chameleon Agency, maybe even the Dollhouse, he knew who she was.”
“She?” Kenzi tipped her head to the side. “That’s disgusting. A woman trafficking and using other women? Definitely gonna need to revoke her chick card.”
Ivan snorted. “We’ll help you revoke her life card, if that helps.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
“We still need to figure out who she is.” I walked to the other side of Kirill’s desk.
“He might not have known who she was,” Ivan pointed out. “They never called each other by their real names.”
“True,” I said as I pulled out one of the desk drawers. “But she knew about Andrei and about me. Which means she knew who he was.”
“If Kirill didn’t know who she was, he was certainly searching into it,” Andrei spoke up. “My brother wouldn’t stand for having someone being able to hold things over his head without the ability to reciprocate.”
“So somewhere, he has a file with his own research on every member,” Kenzi mused. She turned to Andrei. “He’s a paranoid narcissist. Where would he hide his most valuable intel?”
Andrei cringed, casting a disgusted look at his brother’s dead body.
“Not it,” Kenzi shook her head emphatically. “Count me out of that one.”
Ivan chuckled. “I doubt he hid it there.”
Andrei shrugged. “Never know.”
Kenzi grunted, unamused. “Imma say it’s not.”
“Most likely it’s in his safe.” Andrei smiled at Kenzi and winked. “Where could it be—”
“Got it,” Kenzi sing-songed from the other side of the room. Ivan shook his head, bewildered.
“How do you move that fast?”
Kenzi shrugged. “Superpowers.” She winked.
Of course the man would hide his safe behind his own self portrait.
Narcissist.
Kenzi hummed while she fiddled with the dial, her eyes closed as it spun on its axis. It took a few tries, but several moments later, locks clicked into place, and the door swung open.
“Voilà.” Kenzi dipped a dramatic, flourishing bow, her arm swinging out in a grand gesture.
We all chuckled. “Very well done,” I praised her. She beamed up at me like a kid who’d just received her favorite toy on Christmas. Fuck. I forgot how little love the Ward women had grown up with. Ava had told me that there was no doubt in her mind that Kendra loved her daughters. But it wasn’t a mother’s love. Not the love she received growing up from her own mother prior to her death.
Kendra’s love was obsession. Obsession with perfection. Her daughters were a chance for her to relive everything she no longer could be. Young, with pure, untainted beauty. Hope for the future. Now one was dead, and the other was slowly working her way to becoming the next Harley Quinn. When I’d spoken to Vas last, he’d confirmed my suspicion that the twins weren’t Ward’s biological daughters. They belonged to his brother, Dante.
It explained how Elias so easily gave up one daughter and Christian so callously had the other killed.
“Well,” Ivan held up the large, unorganized file that was overflowing with handwritten notes and crumpled papers, “this might take you a while.”
“We have one thing going for us, though.” Taking the file from him, I flipped through it, giving the contents a cursory glance. “The woman who calls herself Caesar is in Seattle, and whoever this Sulla is, they have to have people they know in common.”
“The canes are one way we know how to identify them,” Dima said. He’d joined us in the office after he’d secured the perimeter. “However, that style of cane is popular.”
“What is with these names?” Andrei asked. “Caesar? Sulla? Are they cosplaying as Romans?”
“Two points to grandpa for knowing what cosplay is,” Kenzi cackled.
Andrei shot her a glare, which just made her crack up more.
“We think they’re code names.” Ivan rolled his eyes. “So far, they seem to all be Roman generals. Caesar appears to be the one pulling the strings.”
“Who we know is a woman.”
Ivan nodded. “Yes. We know that Kirill is Marius. We still need to identify the one who calls himself Sulla, and who knows how many others there are.”
I turned to Kenzi. “The woman who trained you,” I asked. “Madam Therese. She has a cane as well. Did you ever hear her called by another name?”
Kenzi took a deep breath and thought about it for a moment. “Maybe. I didn’t recognize it as a name, though. Agricola or something. Thought it was some kind of salad mix.”
“That’s arugula.” Dima laughed. Kenzi punched him in the arm and muttered at him to shut it. Laughing, my enforcer rubbed at his arm, pretending to be hurt.
“Well, they sure are a narcissistic bunch.” Andrei snorted. “Caesar, I’m assuming, is after the great Julius Caesar. Funnily enough, Sulla was a large influence on Caesar’s reign as dictator of Rome. I’d imagine whoever this Sulla is, they know one another outside of the circuit they are running.”
“We know the Dollhouse is a separate entity from the Chameleon Agency,” Dima mused. “It’s been around longer. So, the question is, did Kirill start the Chameleon Agency first and become a member of the Dollhouse, or was it the other way around?”
“Does it matter?” Ivan wondered.
Andrei nodded. “Your grandfather used to talk about a secret society that called themselves the Potestas Omnis. Which translates to—”
“Power Over All,” I murmured. Andrei’s lips tilted into a proud smile as his gaze swept to me.
“That’s a horrible name for a secret society.” Kenzi scrunched her nose. “Might as well call themselves Impotus Omnis.”
Ivan snorted a laugh while Dima cackled loudly and fist bumped her.
Children.
But it was good to see them laughing through hard and uncertain times.
“As I was saying before I was unjustly interrupted,” Andrei winked at Kenzi to soften his words, “what if my brother inherited the position after proving himself? When did this Chameleon Agency pop up?”
“The FBI has been tracking them for several years. Interpol even longer,” Ivan informed us. “From what I dug up as Agent Archer, the earliest account goes back to the mid-1980s in St. Petersburg.”
“Around the time my father banished Kirill and the war began.”
Ivan nodded. “According to the Interpol database, there was a significant uptick in missing and solicited women during that time. Some of the solicited women they found, usually dead with their throats cut, bore the mark of a Chameleon. That’s why they started calling it the Chameleon Agency. The name stuck.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t choose a snake,” Andrei snarled. “Better suited, if you ask me.”
“Snakes can’t hide in plain sight.” I coughed, clearing my throat at the thought of what a true chameleon the man was. “Chameleons were made to blend into every environment around them. A mirror effect.”
“And I let him.” Andrei leaned his head back and huffed out a frustrated breath.
“Everyone did,” Ivan placated his father. Our father. It was hard to see the man before me and call him father when the man I had always known to be him was lying dead just a few feet away. Was this how Ava felt when she discovered the truth about Elias?
“He didn’t fool you.” Andrei placed his hand on his son’s shoulder and leaned in until their foreheads were touching. “Forgive me, my son, for being so blind.”
Ivan closed his eyes and breathed. The breath was slow as he let years of anger and resentment toward his father fade away. “I will always forgive you, Papa. All that matters is that we are here now.”
“Yes, we are.” Andrei smiled and then fully embraced Ivan. “And I will never let someone create distance between us again. I swear it to you.” Ivan nodded, and I could see him struggling to hold back the tears of relief and joy that clung to his eyes like droplets of water on the leaves after a rainstorm.
Everything was washed anew.
Clean.
A fresh beginning.
But who knew what would come next.