“I should’ve fucking killed him,” I said, pacing.
“Perhaps,” Sergei agreed. “When you caught him spying, we voted to keep him alive, though.”
Rubbing my hand over my face, I gritted my teeth some more and thought back to when I’d let the lieutenant go a few years ago. He’d been too greedy, too eager for power, trying to spy for Niko Popov. He’d gotten it into his head that he could gain the other boss’s favor by fucking us over. The only reason he’d lived was because we thought he could still be useful as bait someday. Or a scapegoat.
“He’s clearly out for revenge,” Sergei said.
“And no doubt trying to bring my daughter to the fucking Popovs so they’ll recruit him.” They never would, but you couldn’t fix stupid.
“You’re sure that this is because of the Popovs?” another man asked.
I grunted, my mind already racing with ideas of searching for my daughter. I plotted which districts to send men to, which crews could comb through which buildings. We had to move and act now. Not later. Every second that she was gone could count.
“If this isn’t something to do with Niko Popov, we know where else to fucking look,” I replied, referencing Roberto Giovanni.
Sergei took charge, ordering supervisors to start searching. As he handled the immediate delegation, I shrank under the guilt that this would be my fault. If I hadn’t been so obsessed with keeping Claire here, would this have happened? If I hadn’t been pulled away to focus on Giovanni, would I have predicted Niko trying to order my daughter’s capture sooner?
“We will find her,” Sergei said as we left the control room.
“But would she have even been missing if I were paying attention?”
My nephew frowned at me. “You mean because you’ve been focused on looking into Claire and who’s after her?”
I growled. Not one woman but two. How far I’d fallen from keeping my life simple with business only.
“Do you think she could be here on purpose?” he asked. “To distract you?”
I paused before getting into a car with him, glancing back at the building and spotting Claire standing at the door, frowning with worry.
“No.” I wanted to dismiss it. “Claire wasn’t planted here as a spy.”
She was too innocent, from another world where violence wasn’t the currency that ruled life.
But she’s hiding something.
I couldn’t forget how nervous she got when I mentioned her colleague.
A threat could be lurking too close to her for comfort, without her even knowing. I doubted that skittish and gorgeous doctor was at fault for any wrongdoing, but I couldn’t reject the possibility that she could know something.
“She doesn’t matter,” I stated coolly as we left to search for my daughter. “She can’t matter right now.”
That was the problem. Claire did matter. Too much. She was already getting under my skin and I wasn’t sure how to navigate that.
But first, I had to retrieve my daughter and know I wasn’t failing my own flesh and blood.
16
CLAIRE
Mikhail left without a word.
After he saw the disarray in Anya’s room, he stormed out and was surrounded by his men. In charge. On the go. Ready to slaughter every enemy in his path. I hadn’t known this brutal boss for long, but I didn’t need any further lessons about how looks could kill. Murderous intent was etched in his expression. A dark, lethal aura of danger radiated from him as he hurried away.
Unlike the horror that hit me when I found that man being tortured in the kitchen, I was struck with a deep, harboring sense of dread. Sick to my stomach with worry, terrified to the extreme of a panic attack, I didn’t know what to do. How to react. If I could help.
Because that was what I did. I was trained to help, to assess, to stabilize. It wasn’t only altruism that ran through my veins. It was just who I was. I cared, dammit, even like this.
“Can I help?” I asked Martin once I turned away from the door, watching Mikhail go.
