Katya arched a brow. “You sound certain.”
“I am.” I met her stare unflinchingly.
Viktor took a drag from his cigarette, exhaling smoke toward the rafters. “You ever think you might actually like this girl, Dmitri?”
I glanced at him. “No. I don’tlikeher.”
“Mm,” he hummed, amused. “You sure about that?”
I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say. What I felt for Kara Lennox wasn’t like or dislike. It went far deeper than that. It was far more inconvenient, a constant steady awareness that hummed under my skin whether she was in the room or halfway across the world.
I knew what it was. I loved her.
“She’s alive,” I said again, more to myself than to them. “Roman and Lev will have her by now.”
Viktor grinned. “You really trust them that much?”
“No,” I said flatly. “But I’ll kill them if they fail.”
That shut him up.
My phone buzzed against the coffee table, and I reached for it at once. I didn’t even look at the name on the screen before I answered it.
“Markov,” I barked.
“She’s out,” Roman’s voice answered, half-drowned out by the wind. Relief hit me like a physical thing. I felt the breath leave my lungs and then come back ragged.
For a second all I could do was listen: the slap of waves, the high edge in Lev’s voice, somewhere beside him, Roman’s own breath, like a metronome of people who’d just run a riot. “Say that again.”
“She’s out,” Roman repeated. “We’ve got her. She’s with us, Dmitri. She’s… she’s okay.” His words were quick and clipped, like he didn’t trust any of them to be true if he delivered them slowly.
I shouldn’t have felt the way I did—euphoria, hot and stupid—but there it was anyway. My hands curled around the phone so hard my knuckles whitened. “Where are you taking her?”
“Safehouse for the night,” Lev’s voice cut in, rough and amused in a way that said maybe he’d been thinking the same thing I had. “We’re heading inland, gonna lay low for a few hours until the heat drops.”
“You’re not bringing her straight here?” I asked, my voice rising in pitch a little bit.
“We need to move fast,” Roman said. “We can’t risk ARCHEON or Revenant tracing a route back to Viktor’s penthouse.” A pause. Then, softer, “She says she’s fine by the way. She’s stubborn as hell.”
I barked a laugh that tasted like metal. “Of course she is.”
“Listen, brother, we’ll take care of her. Don’t worry about us,” Roman ended abruptly, and then the phone call dropped with a burst of static. I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at the screen for a long moment before I tossed it onto the table. It clattered once and spun, settling beside Viktor’s ashtray.
“Well?” he asked, blowing a lazy stream of smoke toward the ceiling.
“They’ve got her,” I said. “She’s safe. Roman and Lev are taking her to a safehouse for the night.”
Viktor grinned like this was good news. “See? I told you they’d manage. You worry too much, Markov.”
“Funny,” I muttered, grabbing a glass from the counter and pouring myself a healthy swig of vodka that burned all the way down. “Roman and Lev are out there blowing things up, rescuing the girl we all risked our necks for, and I’m sitting here with you.”
Katya didn’t even look up from her phone. “You’re welcome.”
I ignored her, staring out at the city lights instead. The sea beyond the harbor glowed faintly in the distance from where the cargo ship was still burning. Somewhere out there, my brothers were with Kara, and for the first time in my life, I was the one left behind.
I downed the rest of my drink and set the glass down hard.
“Let them play hero tonight,” I said softly. “Tomorrow, I’ll remind them some things are meant to be shared… and some are meant to be conquered.”
