He finally spoke, voice low, controlled. “So what is it they want from us? Why did they send you after my family?”
“They’ve started paying attention to you,” I said. “ARCHEON doesn’t admire many people, but they have… a professional respect for you three. You built an empire quietly, efficiently, without leaving the usual trail of corpses. You’ve done what they do—control the balance of power—but without pretending you’re saving the world. They like that.”
A flicker of amusement crossed his face, but it was gone as fast as it came.
“But,” I continued, “they’ve noticed something in your orbit that bothers them. There’s another Bratva group, the Dragunovs. They’ve procured a batch of repurposed drones. Chinese or North Korean tech, depending on who you ask. Basically, they’ve got military-grade hardware repackaged as civilian deliverydrones and from the information we’ve gathered, they’re going to sell them to the highest bidder.”
“And you were sent to find out ifwe’reinvolved?”
I nodded. “You were their variable. They know you have your own distribution networks, your own military contacts and they know you’ve done business with the Dragunovs before. To them, your family is both an asset and an obstacle. You’re competition, especially if you were connected to the drone sale. You’re one of the few players in the game who can make their lives harder and they don’t like that.”
He absorbed that in silence, watching me the way a hawk eyes its prey far down on the ground beneath them.
“And where doyoufit into this?” he asked.
“I was supposed to watch you,” I said. “To learn who your suppliers were, what kind of hardware you were buying. My job was to get close, identify your contact points and recent activities, and pass it all back.”
“Instead,” he said, “you drugged my brother.”
“I had no choice,” I said quickly. “They gave me a mission. Get close to Roman, assess whether he was involved with the Dragunovs, and confirm whether the drones were passing through any of your channels. ARCHEON doesn’t care about ethics. They care about results.”
He was still silent. The wind picked up, and my hair swirled around my face. My pulse thudded in my throat.
“I didn’t expect to…” I stopped, searching for the right word.Feelwas too small, too dangerous. “I didn’t expect him to be?—”
“A distraction,” Dmitri said.
“A person,” I corrected.
Dmitri’s expression didn’t change, but his silence shifted. I could feel it, the way a change in air pressure comes before a storm.
“Tell me about Lev,” he said finally.
I forced myself to meet his eyes. “What about him?”
“You knew him before all of this,” Dmitri said. “You went to school together.”
So he’d done his homework. Dmitri Markov didn’t ask questions he didn’t already have the answers to.
I turned away, staring out over the water. The sun was lower, brushing gold across the horizon, but the heat still clung to everything. My skin prickled under it.
“We went to boarding school together,” I said finally. “Back in Geneva. I was a scholarship student. He was—” I hesitated, a small, unwilling smile ghosting across my lips. “A Markov. A legacy student.”
Dmitri didn’t move, but I could feel his attention snap back to me.
“Lev had a reputation,” I went on. “Even then. Brilliant, gorgeous, untouchable. A bit of a bully, a little cruel when he got bored. The teachers adored him. The other students feared him. I… didn’t.”
“You challenged him,” Dmitri said.
“I existed, I didn’t fall at his feet, and I may have made him the butt of a humorous comment or two,” I corrected softly. “That was enough to earn his ire.”
The memory came unbidden, the echo of marble hallways, snow tapping against tall windows, the faint scent of his cologne mixed with ink and testosterone. He’d been beautiful in that cold, unreachable way that boys like him always were. All sharp lines and haughty eyes. Always convinced the world would bend for him.
“I used to argue with him,” I said. “In class, over books, over nothing at all. He’d wait until everyone was watching and try to break me down, whether it was intellectually, emotionally, whatever amused him that day. And I… pushed back.”
Dmitri’s expression was inscrutable. “Why?”
“Because no one else did,” I retorted, annoyed at the memory of the condescending boy Lev had been, and still was. “And because it drove him crazy that he couldn’t make me flinch.”
