I hold up a hand to stop him. “How could he have done that if Malik banished him to St. Petersburg?”
Ivan raises a brow at me. Of course, he would have falsified everything to cover his tracks. “Kirill and Pavel’s job in St.Petersburg was to gain support. Kirill manipulated everything so that he could be there to make sure our mother never escaped.”
“So, what?” My jaw clenches so hard I can hear my teeth grinding. “He thought he would help Andrei overthrow Malik and then what? He still isn’t the heir.”
“Until our father legitimized him as a reward for his service.”
Blyat.
That would make Kirill the next heir, but if he is seeking to kill Andrei and gain the throne then why isn’t he dead?
Ivan knows what I am thinking and voices his answer before I can verbalize my question. “Until recently, he hasn’t tried to make a move directly on our father. He started with us. The heirs.”
Us.
The heirs.
“Why the façade, Ivan?” I look askance at my brother. “You join with Christian Ward. Blackmail my wife. You spend the last how many years impersonating an FBI agent. For what? To get revenge on me for killing Antony? For letting our mother die? Honestly, I can’t figure out what the hell you’ve been playing at,brother.” I spit the word out. “Why should I trust anything you’re telling me right now?”
Silence simmers in the air between us. Volcanic activity bubbles beneath the surface waiting for the right moment to explode. There is bitterness between us. A tight rope strung to the point that the threads fray. One harsh pull and it could sever itself forever and there would be no repairing it.
Ivan’s throat bobs before he speaks. When he does, his voice is quiet, broken. It is the voice of a man who has lost everything he loves. Something I know about all too well.
“I hated you at first,” he admits hoarsely. “Antony disappeared one night, and he never came back. Kirill told me…” Ivan chokes; his throat clogging with overwhelming emotion.“he told me that Antony found you, our little brother, and that he was going to bring you home. When he didn’t return with you, Kirill showed me a picture of you stabbing him.” Standing, he runs a hand through his hair. Ivan paces the small space between our chairs still holding his drink as he tells me his story. “There was so much rage and pain. I couldn’t imagine why you would want to kill your brother.”
“I didn’t do it by choice,” I assure him gently. Ivan comes to a sudden halt and hangs his head, shame coloring his cheeks.
“I know,” he whispers brokenly. “Over the years more and more things just were not adding up. Conversations I overheard. Meetings he had. Our father gave Kirill so much power for his loyalty and he never saw how much his brother abused it. Still does. Losing our mother made him mad for revenge, but when the war was over and the bloodshed ends, he was broken. Despondent. The more time went on the more he withdrew from his duties asPakhan. Especially after losing Antony.”
“How did Kirill becomePakhanof London?” I wonder. “Wouldn’t he want to sit closer to the seat of power in Russia?”
Ivan snorts. “The one good thing our father’sSovietnikdid was send that fucker here,” Ivan spits. “Vlad couldn’t prove it, but he began to put things together as well. Our father put an end to the Tkachenko human trafficking ring when he took power. It disgusted him. Suddenly, not long after Kirill started gaining power, there were new rings popping up and women going missing again.”
“Did you ever find out a name?”
“No,” Ivan sighs and sits down in his chair utterly defeated. “Just an emblem of some kind of lizard or something on the top of some papers.”
Bingo.
“The Chameleon Agency.”
Ivan sits up straighter, the slump in his shoulders straightening.
“You know who they are?”
“We had a run in or two with them over the past year,” I tell him. “They take women and put them in auctions all around the globe. Sometimes they sell them directly to high profile clients. Have you ever heard of The Dollhouse?”
“Rumors and whispers,” he admits with a shiver. “But nothing else. Some say the organization is older than most countries. That every large-scale assassination attempt in history is thanks to them. Cesar, Lincoln, Rasputin, Alexander, Ghandi, King—the list goes on and on.”
“Pft,” I roll my eyes. “That is a bit presumptuous.”
“But not altogether without merit,” Ivan points out. “Who knows how long an underground organization like that has gone unnoticed. Been renamed. Do I believe they orchestrate the assassination of Julius Cesar? No. But Lincoln? King? It is a distinct possibility.”
“Both of those figures were assassinated by men,” I rebut. “From the research we have all been doing, that isn’t their target for forced recruiting.”
“It isn’t now,” he says. “But women hold more power now than they did in 1865 and in 1968.”
He has a point.
