“I can,” I said. “She’s too close to you, too worried you’re in danger.”
“No, she thinks I’ve been brainwashed. She’s always—”
I gently stopped the sisterly tirade with a hand on her wrist. “Even the best of us can have blind spots. You’re hers. Call Aleks.”
She did, and while he didn’t start yelling, I could tell from Lilia’s side of the conversation that this wasn’t going to be smooth sailing.
“I’m not a hostage,” she insisted for the third time. “There are no demands. Well, one, but it’s from me, not Gavril.” A long pause, in which she scowled while listening. “Yes, that’s what I’m trying to ask. We want to meet.” Another pause. “No, absolutely not. It has to be neutral. Not the restaurant, either.”
I mouthed a word to her, and she grinned. “We’ll be at the downtown public library when it opens. There are study rooms where we can talk privately.”
She hung up, swallowing hard. “He thinks I’m insane. Asking to meet in a public place wasn’t helping, and…” she trailed off, going pale. “It won’t keep him from causing a scene.”
“So, a few librarians, a couple of unemployed people, and what? A homeless person or two get a show. I can’t think of a more neutral spot, and you’ll feel right at home.”
We still had some time, so I had the driver pull into a twenty-four-hour diner where we all ate a greasy breakfast and poured coffee down our throats. The guard gobbled down a breakfast sandwich and went to sit in the car while Lilia and I held hands across the table.
It felt like the end, and her continued lack of color in her cheeks told me she was more worried than she let on. Her smiles didn’t reach her eyes, and she held on too tightly.
“I’m not giving you up,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I won’t let go.”
She kept turning my wrist to check the time, becoming jittery with coffee overload. I cut her off and suggested she splash some water on her face to freshen up. The last thing Iwanted was for her to greet her angry cousins in a state of such high stress. It didn’t go far to dispel their assumptions that she was still my prisoner.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, more to assure herself than me.
“I have no doubts,” I told her, getting the first real smile since she set up this meeting.
Finally, the library was open, but when the driver rolled up to the front entrance, she smacked her hand against my chest.
“You have to stay in the car for now,” she said, turning to the guard with a fierce look. “Don’t you dare let him out, and neither one of you follow me.”
“Do you really believe your cousin is going to assassinate me in the damn public library?” I asked.
Her long silence told me that she did indeed think that might be possible. The idea of her going in alone raised all sorts of alarms. It all boiled down to one question. Did I trust my wife?
Yes. Of course.
I gave her a searing kiss before letting her go. The guard handed her his phone. “I’ll call when it’s safe to enter the fray,” she said, putting on a very good show of confidence.
“There isn’t going to be a fray,” I told her, running my fingertip down the side of her jaw, which was set with determination. “You’ve got this.”
“Yes, I do.”
She took off at a brisk trot up the staircase, disappearing behind the doors of the old Art Deco building. The hairs on my neck prickled as if a sniper rifle was aimed at me through the car windows, and I told the driver to circle the block while we waited.
We barely made it around before she called, telling me it was okay to join them and telling me which room they were in. How could she have told her cousins everything in that short amount of time? And would we be able to use our indoor voices for what lay ahead?
The moment I entered the historic building, I ignored the grand atrium, barely felt the sun shining through the vast windows as I jogged up the escalator, skipping every other step in my haste.
I knocked once on the closed door to the small study area and opened it. It might have been comical to see the three huge men crammed in there on one side of a desk, with Lilia sitting on the other, looking as nervous as if she were in the most important interview of her life.
Maybe she was. It was the most important of mine.
Aleks was flanked by two of her Russian cousins, Rurik and Daniil. None of them uttered a greeting as Alek motioned for me to step in. I caught Rurik’s eye, recalling that I would be dead because of him if it weren’t for Lilia shoving me out of the way.
He raised a brow and grunted. “We wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t saved my life,” he said.
The closest thing I’d probably ever get to gratitude out of a Petrov. I only nodded and turned my attention to Aleks.
