The only living child that Rene and I could ascertain. It was common practice to murder any female child when they were born, along with the woman who gave birth to the female child. No sons were born with the ability to produce fire.
They murdered infant babies simply because they were female?
The bite in her voice became even more pronounced, worrying Gedeon even further. He was out of the open meadow and heading back to his vehicle. He’d told her of the practice. She knew that in some remote villages in other countries in modern times the practice still held true. Male children were prized, for whatever reasons. Females were always less than...
His woman could get riled. She did have a temper. It took a lot to get her there, but when she went off, she went nuclear. They needed her calm, able to move freely around and know exactly where she was going. The palace was a labyrinth of secret passages, apartments, and secret entrances and exits. It was not simply the front rooms they presented to visitors. It was a mini city. In one night, they would need to navigate that city without being caught. They had the added burden of finding Cosette and bringing her out with them.
Getting worried, baby. This is a difficult one. You have to keep your head in the game.
There was a short silence, and then she flowed into his mind. Meiling. The way she did. Filling him. Her strength. Delicate, but so fucking strong. She’d taught him that women could be like that. Gentle, able to bend when the wind came at them with the force of a hurricane, but they didn’t break. They were that strong.Shewas that strong. Meiling would stand with him no matter the cost to her. Together they wouldn’t allow these men to continue their reign of terror.
My head is totally in this game, Gedeon. I would never risk your life by losing sight of what’s important. I’ll be in that room with you to back you up. I’m being cognizant of the time. After, I can do more exploring. The kitchens are hotbeds of gossip. There are three kitchens.
It occurred to me that if each of the five has his own home within the palace, Cosette would most likely have been taken by one of the Russian lairs. The men looking for her were made up of Russians from the Amurov lairs. They werebratya. Shifters. If you come across any of the three lairs, those are the ones I would check first.
You’re right, Gedeon. I was looking at the palace as a whole and making it into a grid pattern in my mind to section it. We would have been here for months looking for her.
He would have taken one of the mighty Dragon Justices prisoner and tortured him to get the information, but he wasn’t going to admit that to her. She probably read that shit in his mind, but if she did, she wouldn’t condemn him for it. She never did, not even when he expected her to.
Gedeon returned to his vehicle and boldly drove right up the road toward the gates.
Making my way up their drive now. Half their army is on me. If I were an ordinary man, I might be intimidated.
I’m so thankful you’re anything but ordinary.
He drove the Jeep right up to the fence. Up close it was even more impressive than in all the photographs they had of it. For one thing, the iron was far thicker than it appeared in pictures. There were barbs, metal hooks, woven into the anchors, so if anyone dared to try to climb the fence, those barbs would tear into their flesh and eventually hold them in place. It was a wicked but very effective way to prevent an army from getting to those inside the palace.
Gedeon, after close inspection, was brought up the wide marble steps—steps he thought ostentatious and useless when trying to escape or fight in winter or during a rainstorm; they would be as slick as hell. Marble might show off wealth, but it was a mistake if one wanted to be certain they could fight off an army. The five Dragon Justices counted on the fence to keep out their enemies.
He entered through the highly decorated double doors. Thick with gold inlay. Real gold. The enormous wings of a dragon made up the two doors while the body and head were carved in the center. When the doors were opened simultaneously, the dragon appeared to move. Gedeon thought the artwork was incredible, breathtaking. Reds and blacks made up the dragon, but the scales were all gold. He would have liked to take his time studying it. Rene would have loved it. Rene was a huge fan of art.
He was ushered into a very large room meant to impressvisitors. The ceilings were high. The walls shimmered with ivory. A long table of black enamel was surrounded by high-backed chairs all edged in gold. The chess set Meiling had told him about dominated the center of the room, with two ornate chairs on either side of the playing board. The chairs represented the chess pieces, one a red dragon, the other a black dragon.
Everywhere Gedeon looked, from the tall vases in various places on the floor to the paintings on the walls, the room held tremendous artwork. He could have spent weeks there, just in that one room, and never be able to see all of the priceless art.
“Mr. Volkov.” The voice was smooth. A hint of arrogance. Of amusement. The man knew the impression that room would make on anyone. He found Gedeon’s reaction particularly amusing and let him see.
Gedeon turned his gaze from one of the paintings depicting two dragons falling from the skies, talons locked together as they spun toward the ground, wings out. The artist had been so good Gedeon could almost feel the combat, the way the two males were fighting for supremacy, both refusing to give in even when death was so close. He turned cold eyes on the men who had orchestrated the murders of his family members.
He had been certain, when he had asked to see them, they would have him investigated. He knew they wouldn’t ever find a connection to his family, long dead now. No one ever thought or remembered that thepakhanhad kept his mother and the youngest boy alive. There had been no one left alive to remember.
He had the kind of reputation that would intrigue these men. He had never failed to get a job done—unless he had made his client disappear. One didn’t ever double-cross him. He could track and find anyone, given enough time. He negotiated deals between lairs that despised one another and made them stick. He had become legendary. Heknew he would be facing all five of the board members, not just two. That suited his plans. It also meant he had to be much more careful.
“Please take a seat, Mr. Volkov, and let us know how we can be of service to you,” said Bolin Wang, the appointed spokesman. From everything Rene could dig up on them, Bolin Wang was often the front man. He was soft-spoken and very slow to rile. “I’m Bolin Wang. These are my colleagues, Longwei Lis.” He indicated the shorter man with gray hair worn pulled back in a ponytail. Lis wore traditional robes almost as ornate as the dragon chair he sat in. His son, Kang, sat behind him looking annoyed, bored and petulant. He wore a suit, as did the three Russianbratya. Each of those men was introduced, and Gedeon marked them for death. Makar Turgenev. Ilari Morozov. Klim Zima. These were men from the same region Gedeon’s family had originated from. One of these men had gone to the others out of jealousy and conceived his plan of ridding the world of anyone who might be smarter, or faster, or better at anything than they were.
Gedeon had been a toddler, but he had a good memory. Once an event took place in his presence, it was imprinted on his brain. What’s more, it was there in Slayer’s memories as well. He called up his leopard. They simply needed a trigger. One small word or gesture, the way the man turned his head or gestured with his hands, would bring the memory to the forefront.
Gedeon seated himself in the ornate high-backed, gold-edged dragon chair facing the five men. He was well versed in appearing confident because he was. He had already assessed the situation. Each of these men had bodyguards, but they were arrogant and had ordered their guards to stay to the other side of the room. The room was enormous. Not one of the bodyguards, even though they were shifters, could get to their primary target before Gedeon could kill them.
He knew he could kill at least three of them before the others could react. Meiling would take out the other two and possibly Kang. Then it would be a fight to make it out of the palace without the soldiers getting to them before they could escape the country. Without their leaders, the lairs would collapse into chaos for a time. Gedeon doubted new leaders would want to seek revenge, but if they were that reckless, he would cope with the fallout when he had to.
He studied the faces watching him so intently as he explained that he had taken the job of finding an unknown woman for Lubin and Miguel Diaz. He understood these men wanted the woman delivered to them. Since they wanted her, perhaps they had more information on her that would aid him in his work. Lubin and Miguel had no information whatsoever on her. It had been Frankie who had kidnapped her cousin, Libby, and ultimately killed her. Gedeon sounded bored, as if he were repeating facts, data he’d acquired.
“This is the hotshot investigator, coming to us for information because he can’t do his job,” Kang sneered.
Gedeon didn’t deign to look at Lis’s son. “If you can’t—or won’t—help me, no worries, I can run her down, but I thought it would be faster if you had more data on her. It seemed as if you were in a hurry to find her. I can leave,” he offered.
“You are an arrogant son of a bitch,” Kang snapped. “Do you think you can just walk out of here without our permission too?”
