“You don’t work there anymore.”
I balk. “What? I—”
“It’s been taken care of.”
Tears prick unexpectedly at the backs of my eyes. I knew I’d be forced to take some kind of absence from the gallery—my first since I started it up during college—but to think I’m never going back?
This small, mundane detail makes the horror of my situation feel suddenly, inescapably real. Some disillusioned part of me really thought I’d find a way out of this, or Nik would, or it would prove to all be some sick test for my father that Anton would overwrite with the flick of a pen.
But this is really my life now.My whole life.
Nik looks up. His rigid expression softens a little when he sees my face. “Zane,” he says, running a hand over his face. “It’s been over a week since…”
“Since I was kidnapped.” Saying it makes it feel unreal all over again. But itwasreal. A nightmare come to life. One minute I was walking to my car from the gallery, the next there was a bag over my head and a meaty fist muffling my screams.
“Yeah. It’s just—this shit isn’t going to change. I know you’ve been out of this world for a while. But this is how it is. Constant unease. Looking over your shoulder. I can’t have you wandering all over town unsupervised.”
The knot of dread in my stomach tightens. I sink onto a desk chair beside him, not sure my legs will continue to hold me up. “This is impossible.”
“Yeah. I know.”
A tear slides from the corner of my eye. Embarrassed, I quickly brush it away. “So. WhatcanI do?”
I feel the weight of his gaze as he studies me, but I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes. “Look. Zane. I—I didn’t want to tell you this. I wouldn’t, if I could spare you. But you’re safer knowing.” He takes a deep breath. “Your dad was working for Yvan Lebedev—that’s who he sold my father out to.”
A jolt goes through me. Yvan Lebedev—an old name. An old family. With deep, thorny ties to Russia. “Jesus,” is all I can manage. “But why?”
“I don’t know. Money. Protection. Power. Could have been anything. But it doesn’t matter. Lebedev will be looking for ways to get back at your father, or even kill him to protect his own secrets. Now that he’s in my father’s custody, he’s safe. From Lebedev, at least. But you…”
“I’m vulnerable.” I hesitate. “But… not really. I mean, I have you.”
His expression is inscrutable. “Yeah,” he says, after a minute, running a hand through his curls. “You have me.”
Beneath the man he’s become, I see traces of the boy I grew up with. The young man who still knew how to laugh and live a normal life and want for more. In those traces, I search carefully for answers.
“Your father is trying to lure them out,” I say, realizing. “He’s trying to use me as bait, somehow. He doesn’t know who’s on Lebedev’s side or where to strike, right? Yvan has always been a tricky one. Hiding in the shadows.”
Nik looks at me like I’ve spoken fluent Russian. “You’ve been paying attention.”
“I left the mafia world. But I didn’t leave my dad.” He couldn’t get out, even if he wanted to. But he did everything in his power to help me be free. Still, I kept my ear to the ground. I listened when he spoke. He’d instilled in me that information is power. I guess I never quite broke the habit. “When will your father stop?”
Nik studies me. “Stop?”
“What’s his goal? Revenge? To destroy Lebedev? To leverage the betrayal and form an alliance of some kind?”
“He wants him dead.” Nik’s expression tells me, openly, that this mission his father has given him could cost him his life—and that it will most likely cost mine. “Lebedev—like you said, he’s a shadow.”
I lean back. This information, in a way, sedates me. It runs cool through my veins, icing the fever of fear, pain, and anxiety this last week has wrought. In place of that fear, a kind of diamond-hard, cold resolve rises.
Lebedev—the ax leveled above mine and my father’s necks—could be an exit strategy. If I can use my own vulnerability and Nik’s resources to kill him, can I save my father? Can I win his freedom, like he won mine? Can I mend the damages of his betraying Nik’s father?
“No one is a shadow,” I say thoughtfully.
Even when I cut myself out of this life, traces of me were left behind. In my father. In Nik. In Maya.Maya. If Lebedev is rising up from the dark, if he’s seeking to dismantle the Sokolov family, could he be involved in her disappearance? Could this all be tied up together, in blood, and treachery, and history?
I look Nik in the eye. “I want to help.”
He doesn’t answer me immediately. Instead he sits back, arms crossed, brow furrowed. He looks beautiful, powerful, touched by darkness. For the first time since our unceremonious reunion, I feel like we’re speaking like we used to. Like equals.
