Chapter 32
EVGENY
By the time Luca ends the call, I can see the gates.
I leave the phone against my ear for another second. Antonella sounded smaller than she does beside me, every word taking effort. She sounded as though she needed to explain why she went before I’d help her. I’ll have to live with that once she’s out of this place.
Corbin stops at the entrance. The guard recognizes Ross and approaches his window with a phone in his hand. Behind him, pale walls and shaded windows welcome people who can afford to have their business conducted privately.
I watched Ruslan go through those front doors once, years before the meeting that killed him. Afterward, he complained about the portions. That ordinary memory reaches me now, when I need to think about the woman waiting somewhere behind the same walls.
Ross lowers the window. “You’ve received the notice.”
The guard looks at me. I keep my hands on my knees while he tells Ross he was instructed to admit us.
“Then you know whose instructions remain valid,” Ross says.
After a moment, the guard steps back and opens the gates.
Corbin drives around the building while Vasily pulls off the road outside.
I watch him through the rear window until the turn takes him out of sight.
He knows where to wait. Bringing him beside me won’t make the distance to Antonella shorter.
Two cars occupy the side courtyard, parked near planters with dry leaves gathered beneath them. The leaves scrape over the paving as I open my door. Heat reaches under my jacket after the cool car, and I have to resist the urge to cross the exposed space quickly.
I keep pace with Ross. Corbin follows us to the side door, where a man looks first at Ross, then at my jacket. He stays in the opening until Ross tells him we’re expected for the transfer.
Luca calls from farther inside. The man steps aside, admitting us to a hallway that smells like roasted meat. A serving cart stands against one wall with plates beneath a folded cloth. Someone prepared lunch here while Antonella was being brought in against her will.
My fingers curl, then open. I follow Ross while Corbin remains near the entrance, close enough to hear us. At the bend in the hall, another man stands with his right hand hidden behind his thigh. He has none of the uncertainty of the guard who admitted us.
Luca waits in the doorway beyond him. For the first time since the wedding, there’s no crowd between us.
“Where is she?”
He moves enough to let me see into the room. Antonella is beside a table set for lunch, her hair fallen across one cheek. She holds one shoulder higher than the other, with her left hand over her belly. Her lips part when she sees me.
I want to go straight to her. Luca watches me notice each thing that’s wrong, taking his time before he speaks.
“First we settle this.”
Ross stops at the doorway. “The creditors have withdrawn their backing. Your guarantees are no longer accepted. The terms have changed.”
“No, they haven’t.”
The man at the bend shifts. Behind me, Corbin speaks quietly to someone near the entrance, and I hear the outer door open again. I keep watching the hand I can’t see.
Ross takes the signed release from his folder. “The independent venues are free of both claims. Lebedev has executed his side, and the evidence about Ruslan’s death has been distributed. Holding his fiancée won’t restore the arrangement.”
Antonella looks from the paper to me. I can’t tell whether she understands what I’ve surrendered, and I don’t want her trying to work it out with Luca between us. She needs to get through the doorway. Everything I’ve signed is already done.
Dario appears behind Luca. “This wasn’t the agreement.”
“No,” Ross says. “It wasn’t.”
The color leaves Dario’s face. His attention goes to the corridor and the distance between us, as though he can find a way through by looking long enough. Luca steps backward into the dining room.
The man at the bend comes forward with a gun.
I draw as the first shot tears into the frame beside Ross. Moving toward the wall, I feel splinters strike my cheek, then fire before the man can bring his weapon around again. He falls against the serving cart. Plates scatter across the floor beneath him.
The noise fills the hall, leaving a thin ringing in my ears. Ross is crouched beside the doorway, one hand against the wall. Corbin reaches him from behind and pulls him clear while I keep my gun on the fallen man until I can see both his hands are empty.
Then Antonella screams.
Dario runs out of the dining room and almost collides with me. I catch his jacket and drive him against the wall, hard enough that his shoes slide on the broken plates. His mouth opens without a sound. Up close, he’s smaller than he ever seemed across a dinner table.
I could hold him here and make him hear Ruslan’s name with my gun beneath his chin. I’ve wanted that moment so long that my body begins it before I’ve chosen to. Then Antonella calls from inside the room, and I release his jacket.
Corbin catches him as he stumbles toward the entrance. My hand stays half closed after his jacket leaves it, holding on to the shape of what I wanted. I force my fingers open and leave Dario to Corbin, going through the doorway with Luca’s voice in my ears.
He’s behind Antonella’s chair, dragging her up against him. One arm crosses her upper body. His gun is beside her face, and her feet scrape at the carpet as she tries to find her balance.
I stop. Luca looks past me toward the hall, searching for the man I shot or for Dario, anyone who can turn this into the meeting he expected. Ross is on the far side of the corridor. Corbin has Dario in his grip.
“Put it down,” Luca says.
I hold my gun still. Antonella’s eyes are wet, wide with the effort of keeping her body quiet. Her left hand has caught Luca’s sleeve, and the ring flashes when he pulls her higher. Four days ago, she offered me the wrong hand because she was laughing too hard to think.
“Let her come to me.”
“You think those papers change anything?”
“They change who’ll help you leave.”
His arm tightens. Antonella makes a small sound through her teeth, and I stop myself moving toward it. The table is between us, its cloth crooked beneath a water glass lying on its side. A plate of food has been pushed away, leaving space I can see but can’t safely cross.
There’s a door behind Luca. As he begins to back toward it, I shift enough to keep them in view. My left shoulder pulls beneath my jacket, an ache I haven’t noticed in days. I leave the arm where it is, watching the small space between his face and hers.
“Stay there,” he tells me.
Antonella’s heel catches the chair leg. She lurches, and he jerks her upright with a curse. For an instant, his gun moves away from her face, but she’s still in front of him. I can’t take the shot.
“Easy,” I tell her.
Her gaze finds mine. I want to give her something she can believe, some sign that she’ll be beside me in a moment. All I can do is remain where she can see me without letting him draw me closer to his gun.
He looks toward the inner doorway, then back at me. The men who financed him have abandoned the arrangement, and I’ve offered no signature that can restore it. He presses the weapon nearer to her face.
I lower mine an inch.
His attention follows my hand. He changes his hold, turning Antonella sideways to put more of her between us while bringing his gun toward me. She flinches away from it, ducking her head and twisting her shoulder beneath his arm.
For half a step, she’s out of his hold.
I fire.
Luca falls backward against the inner door. His weapon hits the floor first. Antonella drops to her knees beside the chair with both hands over her head, and I cross the room before she looks up.
I push his gun out of reach with my foot. His body is folded beside the doorway. There’s no movement in his face, no attempt to breathe. The man who killed my brother is dead, and none of the feelings I expected has arrived.
Then Antonella lifts her head. I kneel and put my gun away before reaching toward her.
“It’s me.”
She catches my shirt with both hands, pulling the fabric tight against my throat. I let her hold it while I put an arm around her back. There’s no blood on her clothes, but her right arm is red where someone held her. She shakes from her shoulders to her knees.
When she tries to speak, she can’t get enough breath. I draw her closer, making myself slow down although my own breathing is still too fast.
“You’re out of his hands. Breathe with me.”
She presses her face against my neck. Her skin is damp and hot, with a faint trace of flowers in her hair beneath the smell of food and the sharpness left by the shots. I hold her there, where I can feel each attempt to breathe become a little less difficult.
Ross appears in the doorway. “Dario’s alive. Corbin has him outside. The other man is down, and the hall is clear. Medical help is coming.”
I lift Antonella’s face enough to look into her eyes. She glances past me toward Luca, then turns sharply away. I shift to keep him out of her sight before asking whether she can stand.
She nods. As I rise, her legs fold, and I take her weight before she can reach the floor again.
“I’ve got you.”
Her arms tighten around my neck when I lift her. I carry her through the doorway with her face against my shoulder, keeping her turned away from the man beside the serving cart. He hasn’t moved. Broken crockery cracks beneath my shoes as I step past him.
Daylight at the side entrance makes her close her eyes. Dario is beside Corbin with his hands secured behind his back. He says her name, and her body stiffens against mine.
I stop long enough to look at Corbin. He turns Dario away and takes him toward the other car before the man can speak again. I keep walking, giving Antonella no reason to look back at her father.
Vasily has reached the courtyard. He opens the rear door and moves aside while I lower her onto the seat. I climb in after her because she still hasn’t released my shirt, and I won’t make her let go so I can walk around a car.
Cool air from the vents reaches my face. I taste salt and realize sweat has run into my mouth. When I wipe my cheek, there’s a little blood on my fingers from the splinters. Antonella sees it and begins to reach toward me.
“It’s a small cut. Leave it.”
Her hand falls back to her lap. “Filipp was hurt. He was trying to reach me.”
“He’s at the hospital. They’re treating his arm, and Miron’s being checked too.”
“Edith?”
“Alive. She spoke to me.”
Antonella bows her head. She’s trying to make herself smaller, drawing one knee toward the other as her shoulders curl forward. I want to pull her against me until she stops shaking. Looking at the way she’s folded into the seat, I ask instead whether she wants the door left open for a moment.
She nods. Vasily stands beside it while she takes two breaths of outdoor air, looking at the courtyard stones. I stay still enough that she can use the space without having to move around me.
When she turns back, she rests her forehead against my shoulder. The weight almost undoes me. I cover her cold fingers and stare at the seam in the opposite seat until I trust my voice.
“You don’t have to go back inside. Never for him, Antonella.”
She shakes her head against me. I feel the first sob before I hear it, then the effort she makes to stop the next. Holding her closer, I let her cry into the shirt she’s been gripping since I reached her.
There’s nothing she needs to tell me before I can do this. I’ve spent weeks asking her to trust the protection I could arrange, and here she is trying to make herself fit into the corner of a car. I keep one arm around her, aware of how little that alone can put right.
Medical help arrives before Vasily moves us.
I stay beside her through the brief questions and the arrangements for an assessment beyond anything that can happen in the courtyard.
She says she’s pregnant, then has to explain how many babies there are.
I hear the effort it takes to give the number without beginning to cry again.
She answers clearly enough. I hold on to that without treating it as proof that everything is all right. When someone needs room beside her, I move, keeping close enough that she can still see me.
At last, we’re on our way. Antonella leans against the seat and closes her eyes. I rest my hand near hers, but for several blocks she doesn’t reach for it. I watch the road ahead, resisting every impulse to ask what she needs before she’s ready to speak.
Her fingers touch mine. “How long?”
I know what she means. There’s a date I can give her without making it easier on myself, and I say it while she’s looking at me.
“I found the messages on June eighteenth. Forty-eight days ago.”
Her gaze drops to the ring, then to our fingers beside each other on the seat. I wait for her to pull away. She doesn’t, but she makes no move to come closer either.
We continue to the hospital with my hand beneath hers. I keep it where she’s chosen to leave it.