Okay, Nicolai had said I wasn’t supposed to let her take me outside or get in a car with her. That was my boundary.
Ueli and Dusha were so alert, they were vibrating.
I didn’t like this.I didn’t like this.
CHAPTER 6
visit
NICOLAI
The suite’s front door clicked shut behind Ueli and Dusha as they chased after Lexi, who was following Clemmy, and I turned back to the bedroom to grab my socks, jacket, belt, and wallet.
My scalp was still damp. I’d barely toweled off in my haste to make sure Lexi didn’t tell the attorneys anything ambiguous.
Ridiculous, that Clemmy had swanned in and countermanded whatmusthappen, what I desperately hated, what I would have to live with.
I wanted to strangle my cousin, who was probably my nearest living relative after my brother, sothatwould be unfortunate if I ever needed a kidney or a spot of bone marrow.
My belt rested atop the dresser, and I coiled it around my fist. I could snake it around my waist in the car as I wouldn’t be driving, of course.
My socks had been folded in the second dresser drawer by the staff as usual, and I grabbed a pair to match my blacktrousers. Englishmen match their socks to their mood, and the sentiment seemed spot-on, even though my genes were likely mostly continental European rather than English.
My ancestors were in the forefront of my mind, those psychopaths who wouldn’t have cared if an innocent spouse were torture-murdered. I didn’t know why I was different. I just thanked God I was, if I was, if I wasn’t fooling myself.
The motionless air in the suite was so silent, so undisturbed by another living being, that my ears rang a bit as I hurried into the living room, shoving my wallet in my trousers’ hip pocket and tapping my phone in the right front as I caught my jacket that slipped over my arm.
My belt unlooped itself several rotations from around my fingers.
The end dangled.
So irritating. I couldn’t even hold onto my goddamned belt as I tried to catch up with Clementine and Lexi, who were heading for the damnedstreet.
Thank God the Billionaire Sanctuary staff were reliable and the coffee table bowl had been refilled with apples.
I veered to snag one for my breakfast in the car.
Surely Lexi would heed my words and not endanger herself by getting into an open, unguarded car with Clemmy, who I was quite sure had never been taught to drive by a responsible adult.
Yet another drawback of growing up in a boarding school was that we taught each other mundane skills, such as driving, despite having absolutely no knowledge but a great deal of arrogance in the area.
Clemmy dodged through traffic like she was playing a video game, racing and slipping through openings far too small for whatever convertible sports car she’d rented or stolen.
Convertibles,dear God. Shades of JFK’s and Archduke Ferdinand’s assassinations.
One ride with Clemmy on the Autobahn was most likely responsible for the ashen smudge of gray that had emerged on my temples when I was twenty-three. That ride was the closest I’d ever come to screaming like a husky being groomed.
I was ruminating, cogitating, generally grumbling in my head at everyone I knew but especially at my fucking cousin swanning about and poaching Lexi as I reached for an apple in the crystal bowl, and that was when I perceived the gun pointed at my head.
The hollow emptiness of a handgun’s barrel followed my movement as I dipped, reaching for the apple with my belt-wrapped hand.
My fingers grasped the cool firmness as I looked up, cycling through which of my enemies or friends might be pointing a weapon at me, but the man was a stranger.
White guy, brown eyes and light brown hair, wearing an unstructured suit made of cheap black cloth, a deadpan Slavic pucker to his mouth, and his head tilted back with the aggressiveness of someone who might already be squeezing the trigger.
The apple fell from my fingers.
I snapped my belt like a bullwhip. The leather cut his face.
