Heard or were you tracking me?“I’m on my way to The Grindhouse, but I need you to do a deep dive on Jeremiah King.”
“Heard he’s been around the Zahkarov mansion. Aralina?”
“Yes. I didn’t even know they were dating.”
“Well, Zahkarov’s sister frequented the New York library, and her security is quite lazy.”
“So, you already have info on him?”
“A little, tried breaking into the King Industries servers, but they’re locked tight like Fort Knox. You’ll need someone with genius hacking skills to break in, but also be prepared for consequences.”
Natalya. I didn’t speak her name out loud because I wasn’t alone in the car. Zio Luca wanted to keep his wife’s hacking wizardry on the down-low. According to Dom, even government networks were child’s play to her. She worked for the Archer Syndicate from time to time. She’d been a vigilante long before she married Zio Luca.
“Okay, if you can get?—”
Rumbling thundered behind us, followed by metal crushing metal. It had me spinning around to check what was going on.
A garbage truck.
The screeching deafened my ears, and a shock wave shook the car.
“Is your seat belt on?” Sato yelled. The phone I was holding clattered to the floor as I fumbled with the seat belt.
Hold on.
“Hurry.”
My fingers were suddenly not my own, and I kept missing the latch. Panic trapped a scream in my throat.
“Lucy!” Sato shouted with an urgency engulfing me with dread.
The last thing I saw was another garbage truck hurtling straight for me before all turned dark.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Kirill
“We got ambushed, pakhan.”
Before this point, the scariest phone call of my life involved Aralina. That time when she almost died in the house fire. But the crawling sensation that started on my scalp and traveled down the back of my neck and spine was hauntingly familiar.
I rose slowly, fingers gripping the phone, deaf to everyone else in the room asking questions.
“How bad?” My voice was outwardly calm, but my insides were detonating in epic carnage because it involved Lucy, and I was nowhere near her to protect her. Any doubts about how she’d grown vital to my existence vanished.
Without a word to anyone else, I left the parlor room in search of Kolya. The only man I trusted to come with me. He was already at the foyer. With grim determination of the brothers we once were, we headed to the front door where my Porsche was parked.
“Maybe I should drive?” Kolya asked.
Instead of answering him, I gunned the engine. Kolya knew better than to waste time because I wasn’t waiting another second. He barely parked his ass in the passenger seat before I went screeching out of the driveway.
“Get ahold of Sato. If no response, try Feliks again.” He was my soldier following Lucy’s car and the one who called me.
The tracker on Lucy’s vehicle was at a standstill on the 14thStreet bridge.
“I already tried Sato,” Kolya answered. “Feliks! What the hell is going on?”
