11. Nikolai
NIKOLAI
I let my temper get the better of me.
By the time I’ve finished cleaning up the mess of my own making, and gotten myself permanently banished from the shopping mall premises in the process, Sierra is gone.
“What in the hell did you say to her?” Lilia asks during the car ride back to the Orlov compound. Red Rock looms in the distance. Cacti and scrub brush dot the roadside.
“I asked if she was a spy.”
“Wasn’t the time to figure that out before you married her?”
“Don’t be a brat.”
“I’m not. I’m the only logical person in this family. Frankly, none of you men should be allowed to lead Orlov Enterprises. All of you are far too testerical to be trusted.”
“Testerical isn’t a word, and I am really not in the mood for my little sister’s snark.
” My wife—my possibly pregnant wife—is missing.
Someone is trying to kill off members of my family, and I can’t protect her if I can’t find her.
Sierra doesn’t know the kind of danger she’s in.
She is too trusting, too sweet…and I fucked up.
My mother was testing me. I failed. I didn’t stand up for my wife. I see it now, the trap she set for her sons. This scheme of hers to get us all married as quickly as possible will expose our deepest flaws along the way. Goddamn, she’s brilliant.
Irina Orlov is undeniably a genius.
“Where would Sierra have gone?” I change the subject before Lilia can bang on about what a stupid brute I am.
I already sent the cleaning service car back to its owner.
She left my credit card behind, but she took the things she’d purchased.
She doesn’t have login credentials for her new bank account yet, which suggests to me that she’s not going far, only taking some time and space to cool off.
“Does she have family here?” Lilia asks. I shake my head, staring morosely out the window. I have to find my wife. Worry gnaws at my bones.
“A sister in Los Angeles. That’s all I know of.”
“Then let’s try contacting the sister,” my own sister says, logically enough.
“They’re estranged.”
“Hm.” Lilia taps her lower lip, thinking. “Have you asked the twins to check airlines?”
“Yeah. They’re working on it.”
“Then there’s nothing to do except wait. Either she’ll check into a hotel here, or she’ll take a plane home. Or…rent a car? Did you tell them to check—”
“They’re on it, Lil,” I grit out. “Any possible way to leave the city, short of hitchhiking, they’ll find her.”
“Is her phone being traced?”
I grit my teeth. I have her number, but tracing it from that alone will take time. I’m not the tech guru of the family. That’s Rion’s wheelhouse. He can hack into any system. But now he’s disappeared, too.
Twelve hours later, well past midnight, there still isn’t any sign of Sierra. Anywhere. Not in a hotel. Not on a plane. No record of a car rental. She’s simply vanished into thin air—and that frightens me more than I want to admit.
Sierra
It’s nearly eleven when the bus lumbers into the Los Angeles bus station. I jerk my head up from where it’s resting against the window, with the memory of my body pressed against glass a different way still fresh. My heart aches.
Maybe I shouldn’t have left.
What do I have here in Los Angeles, anyway? A shitty apartment with plumbing that hardly functions. A dead-end job that barely pays my bills—oh, wait, no, I’ve been fired, or quit, it’s not really clear which. A sister who barely speaks to me.
A buzzing against my side reminds me my phone is limping along on life support.
It died ten minutes into the trip from Las Vegas.
As it happened, the shopping mall was only a short drive from the local bus station.
Day trips between the two cities are popular enough that coaches depart every half-hour.
I snagged a ticket, killed a little time picking up a cheap suitcase and consolidating my belongings, and changed out of the red playsuit into clothes more comfortable for travel.
Glad I bought those jeans after all.
Inexplicably, tears spring to my eyes at the thought. I’ll miss Lilia. I knew her for less than a day, but for a while, Lilia filled the hole in my heart created when Rae stormed out of my life. My phone buzzes again. It’s my sister. With a heavy sigh, I blink my tears away and open the connection.
“Where in the hell are you, Sierra?” she starts in without saying hello.
“Pulling into the Los Angeles bus station.”
“Your boss called looking for you. She said a man answered your phone and said you’d gotten married and weren’t coming back to work. That isn’t like you. You are the one who harped on me for dropping out of college, after all.”
There’s no missing her snippiness. I’m too tired and heartsick to deal with her shit right now. “I did quit. I’m just coming home for a couple of days to get my stuff.”
“Don’t bother,” Rae snaps.
“What do you mean?”
“Men came and cleared your place out. They said you were breaking the lease. The landlord has already listed it for rent at fifty percent higher.” She laughs. “Good luck getting that much money for that dump.”
I suck in a breath. I didn’t think Nik had completely upended my entire life so quickly. “I have to get off the bus now.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. A hotel?” I say hesitantly. All I have left in the world is a suitcase of designer clothes and an overdrawn bank account. Until I get access to the ten million dollars Nik promised me, I’m broke.
“Come to my house,” Rae says grumpily. “You can sleep on the sofa until we figure this mess out.”
Ugh. She’ll gloat about what a mistake I’ve made. But what else can I do? I spent the last of my money getting home. I don’t even have enough change for the vending machine.
“Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I, uh, might need to borrow money for the cab.” I wince. Outside on the concrete floor, I wait for the driver to unload the suitcase with all my worldly possessions.
“I’ll cover you,” Rae says. “But you have to pay me back. We’re not exactly flush, either.”
“I know.”
“So who is he?”
“Who’s who?” I play dumb. I really don’t want to answer this question.
“The guy you married. You never said anything about having a boyfriend.”
I wince. “It was a whirlwind romance.”
“Let me guess. He’s the kind of man you’d have grounded me for looking at?
Tattoos, maybe a beard?” A hint of teasing creeps into her tone.
I guess, looking back, I was a little overbearing.
I just wanted my sister to do better in life than I could.
But maybe I wasn’t quite as self-sacrificing and upstanding as I thought I was at the time.
A reluctant smile tugs at my lips. I depress the handle on my suitcase and let the driver put it into his trunk.
In the back seat of the cab, a miniature television screen plays a rotating set of ads in between news headlines.
“Pretty much.”
“Really?” Rae says excitedly. “You married a bad boy on a whim? What’s his name?”
“Nikolai Orlov. He’s from Las Vegas.” The screen shifts to a new story.
Ice floods my veins when the anchor cuts away to a familiar face.
It’s not Nik’s but a very close resemblance.
Same square jaw, straight nose, and piercing blue eyes.
The chyron reads Konstantin Orlov laid to rest yesterday morning in Las Vegas…
“Holy shit,” my sister says, stunned. “You married into the bratva?”