When he returns with the full duffle, we leave and I tell the guards on duty outside the penthouse, “Tonight you’re inside, on the traitor’s door.” I don’t trust the locks or code anymore. Not after Gavriil proved they mean nothing. When they slip through the apartment, I finally press the down button and let the city lower us to the garage.
I pull out my phone and type three words I didn’t expect to write anytime soon to Viktor:If needed, disappear.
He sends back a single word:Understood.
An SUV waits in the far bay, black with a new plate. Petrov opens the trunk and lifts the rug. The bag is there, heavier than it looks, with the kind of money that doesn’t ask any questions.
“Well done,” I tell him when he tosses the duffle with Alina’s things inside.
My phone finally buzzes in my pocket.
Renat.
“Boss,” he says, and I can tell by the one word all went according to plan. “Pallets secured, targets down, no witnesses to report it. We’re loading up.”
“Good,” I say. “Deliver the guns to Gavriil, then get back here.”
Petrov closes the trunk as I end the call. It’s time for my men to start reporting for duty, the ones going with us on this trip. I want to greet each one, to ensure they can still look me in the eye, that they haven’t betrayed me to my brother, their true boss, and confirm that I can trust them to protect Alina at all costs.
Every contingency I begin to plan leads to one truth: Gavriil and I are now on a collision course.
No matter what happens though, I’ll find a way to crawl back to her.
28
Alina
The penthouse is never trulyquiet, but tonight the silence feels heavier. Even when the men lower their voices, there’s always a low, mechanical hum stitched through the walls. Tonight, that hum is louder. Or maybe it’s just me and I’m missing Dominik, wondering what’s taking him so long to return.
But then, when I get up to go fix a cup of coffee, I hear a muffled voice I know better than my own, shouting my name.
I hurry out of the bedroom so suddenly my shoulder clips the doorframe. For half a heartbeat I’m ten years old again, bare feet slapping the hall of our old building as Archer calls from two floors down because the elevator’s broken again and he’s racing me down. Except his voice then was all light and braggy. This voice is frantic and scared.
In the hallway, two guards stand outside a door that’s usually locked. That’s where the shouting leaks through. They track me without moving anything but their eyes.
“Archer’s in there?” I ask for confirmation though I already know. His voice is muffled because he’s no doubt gagged and tied up. But he’s here, in Dominik’s penthouse.
The guard on the left lifts his chin the smallest degree.
Dominik came back with my brother but didn’t bother to tell me he had found him?
I stare at the door and hear Archer’s muffled cursing now, slamming something—a foot into a chair, or shoulder into a wall.
“Open it,” I say. It’s a simple request; one the men could easily refuse.
The guards hesitate, as I expected. And in that breath, I feel it: the line between me and them and him—whatever I am to Dominik now is enough to make them hesitate.
Grabbing the front of the closest one’s black tee to tighten the collar around his throat, I lift my knee up between his legs but don’t strike yet. “Open the door, or I’ll slam your balls up into your throat!”
Russian words pass between the two before the guard on the right finally reveals a key. He inserts it into the lock, turning it with a click.
“Thank you,” I say to him as I release the other man’s tee and lower my leg because I can be polite and violent at the same time.
Archer is in the middle of the room, with a cloth tied around his mouth, wrists cuffed, a chain between them, his hair matted with sweat or grease from not washing it in days. He looks both bigger and smaller than he should. He stares at me and for a split second the old Archer is there in his army green eyes, the brother who taught me how to skip rocks on the East River, who stole a bag of oranges when we were thirteen and then peeled every single one for me with careful hands. The memory hits so hard my chest aches, and then the sour taste of everything he’s done lately washes over it like dirty water over a cut.
I remove the gag since that’s all I can do for him right now. There’s no amount of ball smashing that will convince the guards to remove the restraints. They probably don’t even have the key to the cuffs.
“Alina,” Archer says, and the relief in it nearly buckles my knees. He tries to stand until the chain stops him. “Christ. You’re still alive,” he breathes, like my survival is a miracle he doesn’t deserve and a burden he doesn’t want.
