“First condition: complete honesty. You tell me everything—about Aleksei and the Bratva, and more importantly, about whatever insane plan you’re cooking up to get Sage back. Everything.”
“That’s—”
“Non-negotiable,” I interrupt. “You want my help? Then I need to know exactly what I’m walking into.”
My hand touches the wall, needing something solid to ground myself. The fake wood paneling buckles under my palm, but I don’t pull away.
“Second,” I continue, “no more decisions made ‘for my own good’ or whatever B.S. justification you want to use this time. We make choices together, or we don’t make them at all. You don’t get to play God with my life anymore.”
I have to swallow hard against the sudden wave of nausea that follows.
“And third…” This is the hardest part, the one that kept me up long past midnight. “When this is over, when Sage is safe and Aleksei is dealt with… you disappear. Permanently.”
He sucks in a breath. “What?”
“You heard me. You get your brother back, and then you’re gone. I don’t want to see hide nor hair of you ever again. You become the ghost you were supposed to be when you faked your death.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. I can hear traffic passing on Route 41, my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
“Those are my terms,” I say when I can’t stand the quiet anymore. “Take them or leave them, but decide now. I’m notstanding in this disease factory of a motel room any longer than necessary.”
Bastian clears his throat. “You’re asking me to?—”
“I’m notaskingyou for anything,” I correct. “I’m telling you what it’ll cost to get my help. You can afford it or you can’t. But I’m done being collateral damage in your life, Bastian. So what’s it going to be?”
The intake of breath that follows tells me that he’s about to disregard everything I just said and try to finagle his way out of this. But I have zero interest in that conversation.
“What’s. It. Going. To. Be?”
He lets the breath back out. Then, resigned, he says, “Okay. You should take a seat. There’s a lot for me to explain.”
“I’ll stay standing, thanks.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Now, start talking.”
Bastian launches into the whole story, from the very beginning. It’s like watching him grow up before my eyes. His brother seals him in that freezer and by the time he comes out, he’s a different man.
Years follow and I see little Bastian grow up. Slaving away in kitchens, bandaging his brother. The growing rift between them, then the separation, then Sage appearing like an olive branch—and Bastian slamming the door of reconciliation in Aleksei’s face.
He tells me about Aleksei reappearing at the office after sixteen years of silence and his demand to launder money through Hale Hospitality. How he refused and Aleksei seemed to go away, but as it turned out, that was never the case. The debacle the nightof the gala, all the missing pieces of Project Olympus. Frank. Harold.
“And so,” he concludes, “now, we have three days.”
I blink. “Three days for what, precisely?”
“Before Aleksei gets back from the West Coast.” He’s all business now. Good. Business is something I can handle. “In that time, I have to figure out where he’s keeping Sage, how to extract him, and how to ensure Aleksei can never use him as leverage again.”
“That’s one hell of a wish list for a dead man,” I mumble.
Bastian laughs miserably. “I know where Aleksei’s men operate, all his little hidey-holes. But I don’t know which one has Sage. Al has been moving him every few days to keep me from tracking him down.”
“So we’re starting from nothing.”
“No, not quite nothing. I have a lead. But meeting him risks tipping off Aleksei that I’m not actually dead.”
“Three days for a wild goose chase,” I repeat as I think. Seventy-two hours to pull off what sounds increasingly like an impossible rescue mission.
There’s a rasping sound as Bastian scratches at his beard. I bet he looks like hell. Red-rimmed eyes, overgrown hair, the works. He sounds like it, at least. “Alright. So step one is to find someone on the inside who will talk.”
“Like I said, I have an idea,” he says. “But you’re not gonna like it.”
