Before I could move, beholden to stare back at the bird, she took off.
In a flurry of her dark wings lifting up and pushing the air down, she bent in her thin little legs and launched into the sky.
She was here one second, with her mate, then gone in the next.
Soaring through the sky, a blur of dark and gray feathers that contrasted the dull clouds that kissed the skyscrapers of the city, she was gone.
She took off.
Flying without any shackles.
Almost as if she were demonstrating what I knew I had to do.
Go.
Escape, Kali.
You need togo.
It was past time to envy a pigeon for her freedom and ability to choose her one mate for life.
It was time for me to escape this hellish imprisonment and get away before my brother could truly sell me off to a Mafia man.
Two months.
I stepped back from the window, stronger with this resolve that was a long-time coming.
I need to run.
Fisting my hands to vent the anger coiling inside me, I vowed that with all my might and until my last breath, I would.
3
ALEXSEI
It felt fitting to start a new mission on the first day of a new year.
Once I saw Misha to school, since it was my turn to take both him and Lev to the private institution where they’d have tutors and specialized studies, I headed to the property that Simon was currently calling home. While we employed a team of hackers and cyber experts, Simon was the best of the best.
Emil had taken a big step back since Helene was born. He wasn’t retired yet, but he was on a sabbatical for the time being. I was sure that in a matter of time, he would be back out there, taking a few hits that our team of assassins couldn’t handle.
Simon had worked most closely with Emil, though, so with Emil’s abrupt leave, it was clear that Simon was needing new assignments to sink his teeth into. There was never any “off” time, but it looked like the hacker was more than eager for something to preoccupy him.
Seated in an executive chair with many monitors surrounding him, he looked like a glorified gamer. I knew otherwise. He was skilled at finding out the impossible and unearthing the hidden.
Yawning wide, as he was clearly just getting up, he admitted, “I would’ve been on the hunt for Kalina Boranov sooner.”
“I know.”
He shrugged. “But hey, now that Emil’s settling down, I’ve got a wide-open schedule.”
“This will be different,” I said. I wouldn’t be asking him to find a target to be killed but a missing distant relative. After a couple of hours, he was through with sharing what he had from before. Back when Ivan and Raisa married, Emil had asked Simon to search for Kalina, letting Raisa use the Dubinin resources to find her only remaining, yet distant, family. We looked then, to no avail. Simon was thorough in explaining the little he’d found about Kalina.
While I didn’t have the skillset that Simon did, he gave me some things I could look into. It would free him up to do the deeper dive through the web.
Three days later, though, I was back at this computer room with no results from my avenues of searching for Raisa’s cousin.
He didn’t have anything for me either.
