Alexei and Saint moved to the window as the rest of the council, minus Decoy, filed in, Rubi pausing in the doorway to sniff the air. “Smells like a tart’s handbag in here.”
“Where’s Lili?”
“With her ma. Relax, brother. I’m gonna stand here the whole time.”
I was already rolling off the bed to see for myself. It wasn’t Rubi’s job to watch my daughter, and I owed him so fucking much already. But Cam stepped around him and stilled me with that look he had—the one that was so unreadable that every man he didn’t share a bed with snapped to attention.
“We good for bugs?”
It was usually my job to check, but it was Alexei who answered. “Of course. You would know by now if we weren’t.”
Cam glared at his lover. Then swung it to me and Embry. “That’s twice now that one of you has walked up on a scene and taken an unplanned shot into someone’s face. Twice that I’ve had to rely on outside help to clean it up. Do I need to explain why that’s a really fucking bad idea?”
Not to me. I’d had this lecture already.
Embry peeled the foil from a new tube of Polos and slid one into his mouth. “I have zero regrets.”
“Then I guess it’s lucky Viktor had our backs again, but one day we’re going to run out of favours with him, and what do you think happens then?”
Embry shrugged, unrepentant but listening.
Cam scowled a moment longer, then rolled his eyes. “No more fucking guns. The lot of you can’t be trusted.”
A quiet laugh went round the room, but I couldn’t bring myself to join in. Too many loose ends still haunted me. I believed every reassurance Embry had whispered to me, but now I was awake enough for coherent thought, I needed cold, hard facts.
Across the room, Alexei met my gaze and nodded. “You are worried that surviving members of the Esteban organisation will want revenge?”
I traced the fucked-up hooded skeleton Liliana had etched on my cast. She’d added stars and moons around it, but it was still freaky as hell. “It’s a possibility, right? He had lieutenants. Cousins. His brother?”
Alexei ran his tongue over his teeth. “Not anymore. While Carlos was fixated on punishing you and finding his daughter and yours, Sidorov was busy annihilating the organisation he abandoned to come here. Anyone left has been bought.”
“By who? Sidorov?”
“And Mario Sambini. There was a deal in motion before you were taken. Months before. It is why Viktor came to us all those weeks ago—to assess our readiness to keep Lorenzo busy while his uncle negotiated with Sidorov.”
Embry sat up. “Did he know about Liliana?”
“No. No one did until I went to Pavel. The connection to Mateo was a strange twist of fate indeed.”
“What was he going to do?” Nash spoke from the far wall, one booted foot kicked up behind him. “Before they took Mats?”
Alexei took a cigarette box from his pocket and lit up, inhaling only once before he passed the smoke to Nash. “We did not get that far. You must understand that covert negotiations on that scale take time. But if it is any consolation, I believe the outcome would be much the same, just without Mateo’s blood being spilled. Sidorov is the most dangerous man I have ever known, but he has a fondness for young people that saved my life once upon a time. He would have saved Liliana too.”
“What about you, though?” The words spilled out of me, along with a primal need to know how much my newest brother would’ve sacrificed for us. “Did he want you back as payment?”
Alexei tilted his head. That was it. His only answer and a shiver passed through the whole room.
Cam looked sick. Saint balled his hands into fists.
I needed out.
Fuck, I needed my kid.
“She’s asleep,” Rubi murmured from the doorway.
I shot him a desperate look.
He pulled out his phone, snapped a picture, and passed it over.
