“He’s Russian. The cousin of the man who took me from the orphanage and the one who likely paid for me.”
I tugged Viktor closer, still in awe that I existed in a reality where he let me. Where he relaxed against me, half sitting on my lap. “Why’s he still breathing then?”
Viktor sighed.
I’d have let it go, but the sense of running out of time weighed heavy on me. “Is every cunt on this list from the past?”
Viktor looped an arm behind his head, cupping the back of my neck, as if touching me gave him strength. “Past. Present. Future. Is why they must die.”
After burning the plans and scattering the ashes, we went to bed on that note. And I slept like I’d swallowed a bottle of tranqs, as if Vik being safe in my arms for the night was enough.
But I woke early the next morning with dread in my gut, my bones heavy with raw fear. We had a fucking murder mountainto climb and there was every chance we wouldn’t reach the summit. Welovedeach other, and it was the shittest thing ever that we might not live to enjoy it.
[ 25 ]
VIKTOR
Two nights later, I flew us to France. It was the first night flight we had taken together, but Ranger had lost his fear.
Leaving Lida unsettled him more, but I could not think about that. If we didn’t come back, she was safe with Katya. That was it; I could not contemplate anything else.
Ranger didn’t seem to contemplate much at all. He’d left everything behind—passport, his precious battered Beats headphones. The amethyst he’d kept with him since his father had died. Maybe a piece of his heart too.
The helicopter stayed in France.
We boarded a boat that would slip us, undetected, to the Norfolk coast. Above us, the moon waned, and its fading light glittered off the fragment of rock at Ranger’s wrist. It called me to him, in my heart, but I stayed where I was. The time for sentiment was fading with every tense minute that passed.
Tell him you love him.
I did not need to. If I was certain of nothing else, I was certain of that.
Hours later, we recovered a vehicle and drove north to the safe house Jake had secured fifty miles from our target.
I had not been there before. It was nicer than I expected. At the kitchen table, I discovered why.
Alexei Ivanov regarded me over the rim of a coffee mug. “You took your time.”
He spoke Russian.
Behind me, Ranger made an irritated sound and stomped back the way he’d come to smoke.
I lowered the gun I had swept the ground floor of the house with. “Do I need to check upstairs?”
“No.” Alexei eyed the door Ranger had slammed in his wake. “The nomad prefers the sun.”
“He’s okay.”
“That is not what I meant.”
I didn’t care to find out what Alexei meant. Our relationship was strange. We weren’t friends. But he’d said something a few days ago that had shifted my perspective, and now something else, something deeper, lay unspoken between us.
Relaxing, I tucked my weapon away, leaning against the doorway. “I did not expect to see you again. Why are you here?”
Alexei stood, rinsing his mug in the sink for longer than anyone else would consider necessary. Then he faced me with an expression more open than I was used to from him. One that matched the realistic apprehension building in my gut. “You will have to be very lucky to succeed with this plan, and luck has not been your friend of late.”
Through the window, I saw Ranger move to the gate, smoking, his favourite scowl firmly in place. “That is a subjective point of view.”
A shadow of humour warmed Ivanov’s steel gaze. But it was brief. “Thatis why you cannot fail. It is more than just you who cannot lose the nomad.”
