They both looked at me expectantly, Nova tipping her head back to meet my gaze, and I shot her a reassuring smile before I began.
“We have Vol—Anton to thank for finding you. When we realised you were missing, he was able to find you with a tracker he had implanted in your engagement ring.”
Nova’s hand flew to her mouth. “Hewhat? He was tracking me all this time?” Ripping the huge diamond from her finger, she threw it across the room. “Howdarehe?”
Ryker swiped it from the floor. Crossing to the bedside lamp, he held it up to the light, examining it from all angles. “Huh. It must be embedded in the setting. I need to ask him how he did this. Might be useful.” When he returned his gaze to us, he frowned at the outrage on Nova’s face. “Yeah, it was a shit thing to do, especially because he did it without your knowledge. He knows that, believe me. I had a longchat with him this morning. And not that it makes any difference, but he hadn’t activated the tracker until he received a set of photos showing you and Jay.”
“Photos?”
Ryker glanced at me, and I continued. “Yeah. The guy who was hired to do your engagement shoot? Igor paid him to follow you and Volkov around. Based on what we now know, he was trying to catch one of you out so he could break up the engagement. He was hoping to terminate the whole deal we had with the Volkovs. He had some long-range photos of your sketchbooks too. Nothing identifiable, but we think he was probably trying to get as much evidence as he could.” I didn’t mention the barrow, but from Nova’s sharp intake of breath, I could tell that she’d made the connection, and I wondered what exactly she’d been drawing that had him so interested.
“He was behind the sabotage too,” Ryker added. “He had a long-term plan, but we fucked it up by interfering in his side business when we went after the accountant.” His face shuttered, a muscle ticking in his jaw as he ground out the next words. “You weren’t supposed to make it out alive. He had an alibi set up so the blame couldn’t be pinned on him. It’s all my fault. I came up with the idea, and I’ll never forgive myself for it. I’m the one to blame.”
My throat worked as I struggled to get my emotions under control at the reminder that if it hadn’t been for Volkov’s tracker, we might have turned up too late.
Nova shook her head violently, reaching out to her twin. “You’re not to blame. Theonlyperson to blame is Igor. Well, him and whoever was working with him. And he didn’t succeed. I’m here, and I’m safe.”
“I’m to blame too,” I rasped as Ryker reluctantly sat on the bed, letting Nova take his hand. “If I hadn’t let you getinvolved with investigating my dad’s accounts—if I hadn’t started investigating them in the first place—then we wouldn’t have even known about the meeting.”
“Why are men so stubborn?” Nova muttered to herself. “Neither of you deserves any blame. It’s all on Igor. What was his long-term plan, anyway?”
“Apparently, he wanted to become Pakhan in Anton’s place. He’s the half-brother of Anton’s dad, and I don’t know…we’re not privy to all the information, but from what I can gather, he was unhappy with his position as brigadier, and he felt like he was owed more than he was given. Sabotaging your agreement was both about weakening Anton’s position and sowing distrust between us and the Volkovs so he could broker his own deals that would go in his favour. It was the same reason he was sabotaging the supply lines.” Ryker swiped Nova’s water from her bedside table, taking a sip. “He planned to draw it out longer, to allow himself more time to tip the odds in his favour, but then he panicked when everything went down at the ship graveyard.”
I nodded. “Speaking of the graveyard, we found out he’d been siphoning money into offshore accounts from several businesses, not just the clinic. The accountant provided a lot of useful information after a, uh, a bit of persuasion from the combined forces of the Thorpes’ and Volkovs’ trusted henchmen.”
“Wow. That’s… I don’t even know what to say. Will your dad get his money back?” Nova asked.
“I don’t know. We only have basic information at the moment. It’s going to take a long time to untangle everything, and I know they’re still working out the details of what actually happened. It’s been carnage since it all blewup yesterday when they showed up at the manor and we discovered your tracker.”
“How did you discover that Anton even had the tracker?”
“We were at the manor for the meeting we’d set up, and Volkov’s men stormed the house. He was talking about the photos. He fucking pulled a gun on me.”
Ryker smirked. “I don’t think Jay’s forgiven him for that yet.”
“He threatened you too,” I muttered, shooting him a glare before returning my attention to Nova. “So anyway, he had the tracker app on his phone, and he was convinced you were seeing another man. We were sure there was no way you would do that?—”
“I wouldn’t.” Raising our joined hands, she pressed a kiss to my knuckle. “Never.”
“I know. We realised you weren’t in the manor, and all Des knew was that Bill had picked you up, but he couldn’t get hold of Bill. So me, Ry, Dan, and Volkov left while Volkov’s dad was arguing with your dad and followed the tracker. The signal cut out before we got to you, but we managed to find Bill’s car. We were lucky they weren’t expecting anyone. We took out one of them—or Ryker did—and Dan managed to keep him contained after he woke up when the rest of us were inside the bunker.”
“Anton had an emergency call system in his car,” Ryker added. “Like the one we have in our cars for the emergency services, but his is linked up to some kind of emergency Bratva hotline. That’s another idea I might steal from him.”
“You should. It could be useful,” I agreed. “So while Dan was making the call, we went inside. There wasn’t anyone else there until we got to the bottom of the passageway.”
“Did you say it was a bunker? That makes sense. Theyput a sack over my head, so I had no idea where we were, but it felt as if we were going underground.”
I gritted my teeth at this new piece of knowledge. No punishment could ever be enough for what they’d done to Nova. Ryker growled under his breath, his thoughts clearly along the same lines. “Yeah. It was an old wartime one that Igor had commandeered. It was pretty basic, but he was using it to store everything. Lucky for us and for the Volkovs, because we were able to get all the evidence we needed.”
“We discovered Bill down there. Ry said he would make him a deal if he told us where you were?—”
“There was never going to be a deal.” Ryker bared his teeth in a savage smile. “And he paid for his crimes. We saw to that.”
I shuddered at the memory of the echo of bones snapping and the screams as acid poured into open wounds, but no punishment could have been too harsh for him. He deserved to pay for what he’d done. Guillotine Graham was planning to circulate some carefully edited footage—edited to remove anything that would incriminate us—as a reminder of what would happen if anyone fucked with the Thorpes or any of their associates.
“Bill got us into the room where we found you with Igor. It was… Fuck, if we’d been any later…” My arms tightened around Nova, and she sighed.
“But you weren’t. I’m here, and I only have bruises. They’ll fade. Do you want to hear what happened to me?”
