Chapter 14
v-man who must not be named near phones
LEXI
Because I am an idiot and evidently didn’t like being kissed and cradled in Nicolai’s arms, I shoved at his chest, pushing Nicolai away from myself.
He stumbled backward, his arms dropping to his sides.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded. “I told you that I’m not leaving you to deal with this alone. I saw the video.”
“Not all of it.”
“It doesn’t matter. I told you I won’t leave you in this situation.”
I let myself believe that I desperately wanted to stay with him just for the money, that it was only because I desperately needed his money that he’d promised me to change my life.
I knew it wasn’t the money, but I didn’t let myself believe I’d been a sucker for a man, for anyone really, again and so soon.
“The incident that happened while you and Clementine were down in the lobby—”
“Yeah, there were threats. You told me that your life was one threat after another. I believe you. I understand that it happened again. It doesn’t change anything for me.”
“This is different, my angel. Terrible people threatened me. Professional people who believe killing me might be necessary to achieve their goals. They want power, and they are ruthless. They will kill you if I don’t do as they say, and then they’ll kill me so that Kostya will be their puppet.
And if he won’t dance on the ends of their strings, they’ll kill him and go on to Ryan.
They won’t stop killing people I love until they get what they want. ”
Stop killing people he—what? No, not right now. “I don’t care what kind of threat it was. It was a threat. I get that. We don’t need to quibble about the exact nature of yet another threat that we both understood was part of your situation.”
“Lexi, listen to me. This was different. The man who was waiting in my suite when you and Clementine left—”
Shock jolted me. “Someone was waiting for you in here?”
“A man. An SVR officer.”
“I don’t know what those letters mean.”
“Russian intelligence services. It’s the modern name for the KGB, but if anything, they’re worse.”
“How did a secret agent from Russia get into your hotel suite without anybody seeing him?” I asked because, dang, that seemed unlikely.
“We don’t know. He said they had hacked the video feeds. Ueli confirmed that the security footage showed no one slipping in or out of the suite.”
“To heck with the security cameras. Ueli and Dusha were in the living room when we got up this morning. You said that your guys were standing out in the hallway all night long, guarding the door.”
“It doesn’t matter how he got in, only that he did.”
“It kind of matters. What, did he come in those windows, the ones that don’t open and that’s why it’s always so moist in here? Clementine is right. Billionaire Sanctuary is a case of sick building syndrome just waiting to happen.”
“Immaterial.”
“But there’s no balcony or railings or stairs outside the windows. Your guys were guarding the doors all night. How the heck did he get in here?”
Nicolai paused, and his gaze drifted to the side like he was turning over my questions in his mind, but then he drew a breath and straightened. “However he got in here, and I’m going to look into that, he was an emissary from the Russian government.”
“You mean Vladimir Poo—”
“Supposedly, we shouldn’t say that name around electronics. I’m not sure how paranoid we should be, but let’s err on the side of caution for a few hours at least.”
“That is paranoid.”
“Yes, but it’s the way of the world, or at least the way of spyware on our phones and thermostats.”
“So the V-man-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Near-Phones said you had to divorce me, too? That we had to get divorced and annulled immediately?”
Nicolai paused.
He paused for a lot longer than I would have expected, considering his snappy answers to all my arguments.
He finally muttered, “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, not exactly? What exactly did he say?”
Nicolai scowled a real eyebrow-clenched scowl. “He said that we must stay married because I was absolutely not to become involved with the Volkov organized crime family and especially shouldn’t marry Demyan’s daughter.”
Surely, I could not have heard him right. “Wait, that’s the opposite of what that other guy said.”
“Yes.”
“Or else he’ll do what?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, come on. We may not have known each other that long, but I can tell when you’re evading the question. What was the threat this time? Me? You?”
“Yes.”
“Yes? The Russian government’s hit man threatened both of us if we didn’t stay married?”
“It seems that way.”
“Shouldn’t we do what the entire Russian government and all their spies and assassins and secret agent killers want us to do, rather than worry about one pissant mafia boss dude?”
“It doesn’t matter which one we’re more concerned about.
” He encroached on me and grabbed my hands, holding my knuckles against his chest. “I want you to be safe. And if I have to break my own heart and send you away, then I’ll be very glad each day that I know you’re safe.
” Desperation choked his voice. He bowed his head.
“I’ll find a way to survive. I always have.
My family has always survived when no one else did.
Maybe I can find my way back to you if it’s ever safe, for you.
But this is my fight, not yours. You aren’t expendable.
You are rare, and precious, and kind, and I cannot envision the world without you in it. I can’t risk you.”
At least Nicolai thought I was rare and precious and kind, a string of words that I had never applied to myself.
And I’d rather be with him, who was strong and thoughtful and who looked at me like I was somebody important to him, not just another nuisance.
“Nicolai, I won’t leave you to face this alone.”
“I made a terrible mistake when I drunkenly married you and brought you into this dangerous situation. I must rectify this mistake. I cannot, I will not, I must not allow you to come to harm because of what I did.”
“Except that now you’re not allowing me to make my own decisions. You should respect the decisions I make for myself, and I said that I will not leave you to face this alone.”
“You don’t understand the magnitude of this danger. I can navigate it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I can navigate it because I must.” His fingers tightened around mine. “I won’t allow you to die. I won’t allow my brother to become the next in line to die. I will do whatever it takes to keep the two of you alive.”
“But these people are threatening me if I don’t stay with you.”
“Back when my family ruled Russia, it was tacitly understood that the tsars would sacrifice whatever was necessary for the country. Yes, we ruled with an iron fist. Yes, we taxed peasants and bought stupid baubles like diamond Fabergé eggs. But we sacrificed ourselves. We sacrificed our daughters for treaties to keep Russia out of wars. We sacrificed our sons to the military.”
I rolled my eyes at how much his extended ancestral family had sacrificed while living in their gold-plated palaces. “Sounds like you sacrificed everybody but yourselves.”
He dropped my hands from his. “We sacrificed ourselves in war. Tsar Nicolai the Second, despite his many, many faults and sins and crimes that ended with his fall from power, led the Russian army from the front lines during World War I.”
“So? I don’t understand why that matters now, for me.”
“Kostya is my responsibility, but you are my empire. You are my loyalty. You are the entire world to me, and I will sacrifice anything I must to keep you safe. I will do whatever the Russian president and Volkov want, and you will be safe.”
“That’s ridiculous. What those two guys want is mutually exclusive. There’s obviously no way you could do both of them at once. You were planning to use your influence to keep me safe from Volkov before. That’s still the plan now. By staying with you, I’ll be safe from—Vlad the Impaler.”
His hand gestures were becoming jerkier with frustration, and he pointed toward the door. “I’m paying every one of those lawyers out there. If I tell them to negotiate a separation settlement, they will, no matter what you say.”
“You made promises to me. You made oaths to me in your church, in your religion, which you said made it binding.”
He ran one hand through his hair, practically jerking on the black strands. “It’s a social contract, not a bond forged in Heaven.”
“That’s now what your priest said, and it’s not what you said.”
“Ensnaring me in a theological conundrum isn’t going to win you debate points. I’m trying to save your life!”
“And no one else in the world cares if I live or die!”
Nicolai sucked in a breath like he’d been punched in the gut, and he hung his head. “Lexi.”
“So I want to stay, don’t you see? I don’t have anywhere else to go, and no one else cares that I don’t.”
He lifted his head, a terrible understanding in his eyes. “And nothing matters.”
“Yes! Finally, you get it! Nothing matters. I don’t have anyone else, and no one cares. So I want to stay with you. Just let me stay for a little while longer. Let me pretend that I matter to you.”
“You do matter to me, Lexi. You are everything to me. I would run away with you, but they would find us. Instead, let me save you.”
“This is impossible, Nicolai. This is just impossible.”
“The lawyers are outside. Doubtlessly, they have been arriving as we are speaking. I’ll tell them I’m divorcing you and have them file the paperwork.”
“You told them to draw up a post-nuptial contract. That’s what they’re going to be expecting you to sign. Doubtlessly, they’ll be holding that paperwork, ready for your signature.”
“They’re my lawyers. They’ll do what I say.”
“Victoria is my lawyer. I signed up on her app with her. And I am paying her, for all intents and purposes. Sort of. She won’t let you take advantage of me.”
“Then I won’t sign the contract.”
“We didn’t sign a pre-nup before the wedding. I can tie this up in court for years. I can tie up your whole life with the annulment priests or whatever you called them, forever.”
“The ecclesiastical court.”
“Whatever. I can make your life hell, but no matter what, I can remain married to you for quite a long time. Or, you can let me help you see this through. And then we’ll separate, when we’re both safe.”
Nicolai’s shoulders drooped. “I’ll be damned. It turns out that you’re a very good negotiator.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said. “My mom always said I could argue the leg off a cow.”
Nicolai paused, probably picturing that situation. “That does seem like a lot of arguing. But, it’s on one condition.”
“Oh, my gosh. What now?” I sighed.
“At the very least, if I say run, you run. If I tell you to leave me in a situation, you leave. No questions. No arguing. If there is danger, you save yourself.”
“Don’t be a heroine, huh?” I snarked.
“Stay alive, or I will die not having forgiven myself. I swear to God, there could be no worse Hell for me.”
“Okay, that sounds suitably awful,” I admitted. “If you tell me to go, I’ll go. But I might try to send people to rescue you, too.”
“But you don’t come back. You don’t put yourself in danger.”
“Okay,” I said. “Deal.”
“Deal,” he sighed.
Cool. I’d successfully negotiated with someone who could have been the Emperor of All the Russias, if history had been different, and I’d sort of won.
Neat.
I stalked away from him and hunted through the shopping bags that had been delivered from the cars while Clementine and I had been at the Lazuli spa until I found the burnt orange bags with the horse and buggy and a dude printed on them.
There were boxes of shoes matching the dresses, too.
Peeking inside the Hermès boxes, I found the one containing the dark red leather purse.
Okay, the oxblood was pretty. I could see why Victoria liked it.
“And now, I need to talk to my lawyer in private, Nicolai. Skedaddle, and ask Victoria to come in here and confer with me.”
Nicolai shook his head and started to walk out of the room, but he paused with his hand on the doorknob and then turned back.
I lifted my head. “Nico?”
He strolled across the room and grabbed me with one arm around my waist and the other digging into my freshly dyed curls. “What the hell is this?”
“I thought you said it was okay if I went back to my real color?” Panic rose. He didn’t like it. He wouldn’t like me. “Is it not okay?”
He kissed the dark brown curls wrapping around his finger. “It’s fucking fantastic. Do you like it?”
“I wanted to try it to see if I like it. I think I like it. I think I like that I look more like I should instead of trying to be something else.”
“Good. You’ll be the most beautiful woman at the ball tonight. I won’t be able to take my eyes off you.”
He dropped my hair and my body and strode away, and I had to catch myself because my flippin’ knees had given out.
“Wait’ll you see the dresses Clementine picked out,” I yelled after him. “I should have waited to have this argument until I was all dressed up.”
“You would have had me on my knees,” Nicolai said as he walked out of the room.