“I still am,” he says in a low voice. “You need to get to the basement. Now, Artyom.”
There’s an edge to his words, not just of urgency. Annoyance. Valentin sounds exasperated by something. It takes a lot to rile my cousin in that way.
“Are they there?”
“Nina is. Get there. Now.”
He hangs up the phone with a resigned sigh.
I don’t have time to think about why Nina and Ava have been split up, or what Valentin was annoyed about.
I spring into action.
The basement is a relic of the days that my family was involved in human trafficking. A storage space, really. These days it’s somewhere we explore as children, and occasionally a wine cellar or used to hold art or antiques that were acquired with dubious origins before we can locate a buyer.
I race across the grounds to the archery course. The basement lies below the green, a kind of tomb made of concrete and marble.
My guards follow, but I’m running fast enough that I don’t care ifthey keep up.
Nina was here the whole time. On the property. Which means that whoever did this is a member of my own family.
Polina.
The thought grips me with certainty. This is an eye for an eye. I killed Denis, and now she’s going to take my wife from me.
I punch in the code to get into the basement, but the mechanical lock turns with a high-pitched straining sound. The door is jammed shut, like there’s something on the other side holding it closed.
There’s no other way in.
Nina is just on the other side of this slab of metal and yet I have no way to reach her.
I pound at it, wondering if it’s broken, until pain starts to shoot through my arm. Then I place my ear to the door to see if I can hear anything.
I catch snippets of voices. None of them Nina’s. Polina sounds frantic.
“Let him in—” I catch.
“We can’t. He’ll?—”
The mechanism makes a loud screeching noise and I can’t hear the voices over it.
“Polina, I know you’re in there. I know she’s in there. Open the fucking door.”
I shout over the grinding until my throat aches from the volume.
The voices on the other side fall silent.
My guards catch up with me, but even the five of us straining at the door can’t make it budge. The unlocking mechanism is stilltrying to work, but there’s something in the way.
I press my ear at the door again, trying to parse what I’m hearing.
There’s scuffling, and screeching, and low frantic voices again. Like they’re moving furniture around.
The movement stops and finally I hear a clicking sound as the door swings open.
I burst into the room, shoving through the wall of Polina’s guards.
The cavernous chamber is illuminated by a single light bulb.
