Sacha narrows his eyes at me. “Is she as they say?”
Beautiful? Tortured? Utterly unreadable?“She’s dangerous.”
Sacha nods. “It makes us look weak, you know. Waiting by our phones like girls on the eve of a dance for Viktor to ring.”
Part of me thinks he’s right. But that part also knows what Sacha would have me do: put a bullet in Annika now and send her to father, piece by piece. “It makes us look patient.”
“New world rules,” Sacha says, with a touch of bitterness. Unlike me, Sacha was born into this world. His father and his father’s father, much like Annika’s, were Bratva families, bred in the alternately depraved or opulent underbellies of Moscow’s most secret, competitive, well-organized crime syndicates. “It does not send a message to let her live.”
“She’s estranged from her father,” I remind him, sitting back in my chair. “Our intelligence said the same. What would you have me do?”
Sacha says nothing for a long moment. Then he sits down across from me. “If we’re not going to kill her now, we should use her.”
A hot flash of rage goes through me, but I don’t let it show in my face. In my mind I’m picturing the sweet, soft-edged girl in my bed three years ago—not the venomous, prison-hardened computer hacker who vanished halfway across the world and practically had to be extradited.
“Go on,” I say, reaching for the bottle of whiskey on my desk. I pour each of us a glass.
“Three years is a long time,” he says. “But Annika is still her father’s daughter. Once she was his right hand, running drug and gun operations for him, going deep undercover. Word is she was there when that FBI agent was shot outside the Kremlin, do you remember?”
I do. “She would have been, what, sixteen? Come on, Sacha.”
“Russian women are like Russian men. Cold to the bone when they must be. Don’t think she isn’t capable of it because she’s beautiful and young.” He drinks pensively. Then, “She’ll know things. How we can strike back most efficiently at Viktor. Who to kill. Where to raid. How to cut off his legs and get him cornered. And if she is estranged from him as you say, perhaps she will be that much more compliant.”
I consider this. I’ve been unable to think past the surprise of our linked history, mine and Annika’s, and Alexei’s suffering. But Sacha has a good point. “I won’t break her,” I say. “If we do this, we do it right.”
“She must be very pretty.” But he sits back, satisfied. “So. When can I meet the Daughter of the Snake?”
Chapter Four
Annika
Iwake to the smell ofblini, rich and buttery and delicious, like my mother once learned to make.
Shick!
I throw up a hand to deflect the flood of blinding daylight that comes through the window. A slip of a girl moves to the next and tugs open the thick, velvet drapes.
“Kakoye-to preduprezhdeniye?” Some warning?
The girl shoots me a bright, devilish smile. “I don’t speak Russian.”
“Good.” I sit up, rubbing my eyes. Judging by the light outside the compound, it’s already late afternoon. A dismal gray sky shows between black trees—not far past the grove, I see a tall stone wall wrapped around the estate.Where the hell am I?“How long was I asleep?”
“Four days.”
I gawp, and the girl laughs, carrying a beautiful, gild-painted porcelain tray to the bed.
“Kidding,” she says. She has what might be a German or Dutch accent, keen blue eyes, and a glossy curl of a ponytail. “It’s four. How do you take your tea?”
I want to glare, at her and the food, but my exhausted body can barely focus on anything but how delicious it all smells. “Coffee,” I say instead, sharply, and she answers me with a snort.
“Knew it.” She points to the tiny cup of very black coffee on the tray. “Americans.”
“I’m not American,” I say. I wish I had the patience to wait for her to leave before diving into the food, but I can’t fight the hollowing hunger pains. I slather sour cream on the steamingbliniand begin shoveling it into my mouth. “You are the cook?”
“Mmhm. Not always. But today. Generally I’m only a housemaid.” She sits on the silk-tasseled chair beside the vanity and watches me, eyes twinkling. “You like it.”
“Yes. You’re good,” I admit, too satisfied to be grudging. I gesture generally to the house. “Tell me about this place.”
