Roman is taking her.
But Roman is also protecting me.
“Mishka.” Her voice is hoarse from screaming, but it’s steadier now, and she’s looking at me with those eyes that I’ve seen before, the ones she gets when she’s solving a problem that has more than one answer. “Go with Kolya. Don’t fight. Do you understand?”
I don’t understand.
I don’t understand anything.
But I nod because she’s my sister and she’s telling me to do something, and even now, even being carried out of a room by a man who killed our mother, she’s still trying to keep me alive.
“Good.” She says it to me, but she’s looking at Roman now. “Good.”
Roman’s hand tightens on her waist, and he looks down at her with those hungry eyes, and I think he sees it too, sees whatever shifted in her, because his jaw unclenches just slightly, and he says something in Russian too quiet for me to hear.
She answers him the same way.
And then they pass through the broken doorframe. Roman’s hand comes up without looking, cups the back of her head, shields her from the jagged splinters of wood even while she’s gripping his jacket with white knuckles.
A car door slams somewhere outside.
An engine starts.
Tires crunch on wet pavement.
And then they’re gone, both of them, together, and I’m lying on the floor of the common room with Kolya standing over me and the taste of blood still copper-sharp on my tongue.
“Come on, kid.” Kolya’s voice is gentler than I expected. “Boss wants you protected. I’ve got a car outside.”
I push myself up off the floor.
My ribs ache where the guard’s arm caught me, my tongue is still bleeding, my hands are shaking so hard I can barely stand, but I stand anyway because Anya told me to go with him.
Kolya leads me toward the broken door, and I step over the splinters where Roman shielded Anya’s head.
My sister is gone. The monster took her. And God help me, I think she let him.
Kolya opens the car door, and I get in.
The black king is still in my pocket. And somewhere in the snow, my sister is holding onto a monster who thinks he’s taking herhome.
ROMAN — Volkovskaya Mansion, Library, 3 January, 03:17
My phone buzzes, and I look down at the screen because I’ve been checking it every thirty seconds since Mishka left with Kolya.
Boy secured. Safe house in Rotterdam. No complications.
I shove the phone back in my pocket and stand in the hallway outside my own bedroom door, listening to the silence on the other side. The silence started in the car from Ghent when she pressed herself against the window and wouldn’t look at me. It continued through the private jet, where she sat with her knees pulled up and her eyes fixed on nothing, lasted through the drive from the airstrip to the mansion, where she walked three steps ahead of me.
The lock clicks, and I step through the doorway, and there she is, exactly where I left her, spine pressed against the headboard with my jacket wrapped around her body because she still hasn’t taken it off.
She looks up when I enter, and her eyes find mine, and there’s no fear in them, just hatred, pure and clean and bright as a blade.
I haven’t slept in three days.
The scratches on my face are still bleeding at the edges because I won’t let anyone clean them, won’t let anyone touch what she left on my skin, the evidence that she fought and clawed and tried to tear me apart before her body went still in my arms on that broken doorstep in Ghent.
I look like a man who’s been gutted, and I don’t care.
