After my heels scrunched against the stone, the guards’ eyes narrowed, and their mouths started moving a mile a minute. They were getting their boss, all right. Their target had arrived, like they knew she would. But what was giving them pause was the man who accompanied me.
I had no clue if they knew who he was in the world. He had no identity. He appeared like smoke—slit throats and then gone, nothing but blood left in his wake and maybe a few purling wisps.
Not even a minute later, we were escorted into the main house. Gold and creams decorated the entire place. Rich and classy. It had Livia written all over it.
Livia. She stood at the top of a long staircase, looking down on me. Her gold dress glittered under the soft lights of the chandelier.
She smiled. “I would say that I didn’t expect you, but…once we got the right man, I knew it was only a matter of time. You were created by Brando and Scarlett. Timeless romantics. Attached at the hip—or should I say heart?” She waved this off. “I thought we were better friends, though. You lied to me at the club. That’s not very Fausti-like.”
“My sense of honor doesn’t run that deep,” I said, suddenly feeling taller than I was. More secure. “I’m not defined by my family. I’m defined by me.”
Her eyes hardened. I’d hit a sensitive spot. Just because my name was Fausti didn’t meant that I couldn’t be me, too.
“Since you brought up friends, though… You left out something, too,bestie,” I said.
She snapped her fingers. The guns came even closer. More men surrounded us. Arsenius Bykov stepped out of the shadows, dressed in a tux, a glass of something in his hand. He was just a little taller than Livia, but he was wide shouldered. He stood next to his wife, looking down on me, too.
“Not likely,” she said. “I fear no one. I have no secrets. If you wanted to know something, you should have just asked me,bestie.”
“Ah. You use that term so loosely.” I shook my head. “Can I be godmother?”
So subtly that I would have missed it if I hadn’t been paying attention,Bykov put a hand to her arm. He didn’t want to give anything away by her reaction. She was going to come after me, but he didn’t know what I truly knew.
Yet.
I shrugged. “Well, can I? We were good friends once. I wouldn’t allow anyone to hurt him. Or get to him. That’s what a good friend does for another good friend.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do. What was it you just said? You fear no one? If that’s the case—why the anger? Touched a sensitive spot, Livia?”
“I lost those a long time ago,” she said.
“I only have them for people I love. People who deserve them.”
We locked eyes, and a war raged between us in the silence. Two women on separate sides of the battlefield, ready to fight at the sound of the cry.
Arsenius Bykov sounded it. “Kill her!” he shouted. “Spill her filthy blood on my floor! At my wife’s feet! Pull her arms and legs from her body.”
Before they could get to me, I pulled the picture from the pocket inside the suit and held it up. “Kill me,” I said in Italian, “and you kill him.”
Livia let out a shrill cry, enough to turn blood to ice. Bykov shouted orders to stop when she clamped onto his arm, digging her nails in. She said something to him in Russian.
“Aleksander,” I said. “Is that right? I think he looks a lot like you, Livia. But it still seems early to tell. What is he now? Seven months old? Eight?”
Something hadn’t sat right with me the night she’d pulled me into the room atS’envoyer en l’air. She was a thin woman. Always had been. Her breasts were one thing—the size—but not the pouch she had. It made me to start to think.
She was hiding a secret, too. One no mother wants an enemy to know about.
A child.
Lev confirmed it. She’d given birth in Russia under a Russian name. But hiding from Lev was like trying to hide in the daylight with no trees around.
Our eyes connected again. Her breathing had turned heavy. She was visibly shaking. Bykov looked between me and Lev. He pulled a phone from his pocket, spoke in Russian. Something too fast for me to understand. He shook his head, confirming that Aleksander was gone from his room in the palatial palace.
One of Lev’s Numbers had taken him like a thief in the night.
“Who. Are. You?” he asked Lev in Russian.
