“Don’t be conceited.” I chuckled, hoping to add levity to our conversation. Happiness always came easy with us. “Thistrustworthyface and this heart.” I tapped his steel chest. “You’re honest, Lachlan MacKenzie. You’re mine, and your face is adorable. Even while sleepy. So, sleep.”
“Don’t want to.”
“I’ll lie with you?”
“Call your dad. Who knows whattheytold him.”
39
VASSILI
“Tell meagainwhat happened?”Spittle flew through my snarled teeth. My enforcer sat on his knees, wearing only his tighty-whities, in the warehouse area of my Beverly Hills furniture store. I forced a mental prayer because I needed to.
Sometimes it seemed God sat too high to hear us. When I found out about the Chelomeys, I waited for God.
A … few hours. Of course, Simeon and I had to put a plan together. But I … waited.
Now, at a quarter to six a.m., my daughter had been missing for over four hours. For most of those hours, I was in the dark. Zariah and her no-cellphone-on-movie-night policy.
Annoyed at how soft marriage made me, I seized the bottle of Resnov Water from Yuri and sipped the last drop, then raised the bottle.
The goon flinched.
The glass crashed to his left, scattering around him. A large fragment bounced against my tennis shoes. I placed my hands into my basketball shorts. “Scoot to the left, please.”
His gray eyes flicked to the glass. “Sir?”
I turned around and rubbed my brow. At my side, Yuri removed the Grach from beneath the back of his suit jacket. The safety clicked off.
“Okay, okay …” the man said.
Again, I faced him, greeted by the sound of rough breaths, whimpers, and groans.
“Get comfortable.” I gestured with a head tilt.
Sorrow rumpled over the man’s brow as he knelt all the way down, shins sinking into the sparkly jagged bottle pieces. A tear bubbled in his eye.
“Again, the story. Please.”
As he spoke, Yuri stepped toward a showroom table cluttered with floor vases and took a call.
“You’re telling me,” I said after he concluded, “the MacKenzies drank my wine and blue label …” At my every word came a vigorous nod. “And at some point the brother?—”
“Da, the pretty one slipped Natasha a drug at the bar, away from the crowd.”
“She sat by herself?” I asked.
The bobblehead reminded me of one created for my brand years ago. I snarled, saying sarcastically, “Lachlan wasn’t there yet whenthe pretty onedrugged her?”
“Nyet.”
“Where was Jamie?” I’d trusted him. The Marine.
“He and his wife didn’t attend.”
I scrubbed my thumbnail across my brow. “When Lachlan arrived, he accused Borya?” Borya and Baran. Yuri had gotten the best for Natasha. Said his brother, Baran, protected Simona since she was a baby.For many years, he’d said.
“Da.Da,” the guard replied. “That is what the MacKenzie did. Lies, Mr. Resnov. All?”
