“Oh? What about Maxim? Do you fight for him? Or his bastard brother? Tell me, how is little Alexei Volkov? Still drooling in some Moscow hospital?”
My breath catches at the sheer carelessness in my father’s voice. His words. How did I ever love or look up to this man? How did I ever trust him with my life, my future?
He is a monster.
“Oh, come now, Annika. Don’t look at me like that. I’m sure by now you know the boy was smuggling my cargo without my knowledge. Valuable cargo.” His eyes glitter—he knows that I know he’s been trafficking human beings. He wants to see me snap. “It’s never been done on this scale in Russia before, you know. I am the first. You and your man Maxim should know—I am building an empire that will last. One that cannot be defeated or overthrown. If that’s your plan, Annika, abandon it now, and pledge fealty to me.”
I stare at him. He knows. Of course he knows. It isn’t a far cry, is it, that the man who fathered my children would win me to his cause? My father knows I’ve come to dismantle or kill him. To convince him to surrender to Maxim.
But we all knew, deep down, that that was never a possibility.
My choice is simple: my children or Maxim. If I pledge loyalty to my father, I will be his. I will be empowering him to destroy Maxim. I’ll be empowering him to continue his ascension, no matter the human cost.
But if I refuse or betray him, my children will fall into his care, just like I did. If I choose this side, at least they will have me for as long as I can survive. They’ll have a loving mother to show them the way, to one day liberate them from the vile clutches of Viktor Desyatov.
My choice is already made. Maybe I knew that when I came here today. Maybe Maxim knew too, and he let me go anyway.
I take a long breath, and I let myself become the girl I was three long years ago. A girl made of steel and blood, a girl who doesn’t care about anything but herself—and now, her children.
“It’s over,” I say. “Isn’t it?”
My father regards me with cool black eyes. He nods once.
I unhook the necklace around my neck and let the chain pool on the desk. “That’s a tracker.”
The woman picks it up and examines it. When my father looks to her in question, she gives him a nod.
“Your children are in Moscow. As soon as Maxim and his men are disposed of, I will allow you to go to them.” My father gives me a smile. Small. Cold. Victorious.
But there’s one thing this agreement doesn’t settle. “Where is my mother?”
My father stands, his massive form seeming to balloon to fill the entirety of the office. “Come. I’ll take you to her now.”
I stand, ignoring every pang of sadness, regret, and horror that comes flooding through me.Maxim,I think, wishing for all the world I could speak the words to him myself.Forgive me.
“You were always going to come back, Annika.” My father extends one big hand in offering. “Welcome home, my daughter.”
It feels like cutting my heart in two. But I take my father’s hand, and look up into the eyes of the Snake.
“Khorosho byt’doma,” I say.
It is good to be home.
Chapter Twenty-One
Maxim
“We should have heard something by now.” The door bangs shut behind Sacha and he paces out into the snow. “Something is wrong.”
“It’s only been a few hours. She needs time.” But Sacha is giving voice to fears I can’t help but share. Annika should have found a way to reach us by now. Unless the worst has happened, and her father has taken her prisoner. “We need to get ready to take off.”
Sacha turns a hard glare on the plains of snow. My men are packed and ready. Soon we’ll load into the cars and follow the way Annika went. Once we’re posted outside the compound, we’ll wait—but not much longer. If Annika hasn’t convinced her father to surrender or make a deal, I have to uphold my end of the bargain.
This will be war.
“We shouldn’t have sent her,” growls Sacha. “We should have retained the element of surprise and gone in guns blazing. Now Desyatov knows we are in town. Now he knows we know where the compound is. He’ll double his guard. Triple it. We’ll be walking into a massacre.”
“He doesn’t know any of that for certain. And he doesn’t know how many men we have.”
