Page 80 of Bratva Sacrifice

“There’s no one here by that name.” The notes of confusion are obvious, truthful. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. Perhaps you’re looking for the previous owner?”

The previous owner. Something in my gut shifts, unsettled.

“Alexei Morozov,” I say. “He doesn’t—he isn’t—”

“Ma’am, my employers only recently acquired this property.” The voice over the end of the line is vaguely conciliatory, almost regretful. “I’m very sorry. If you like, I can inquire about a forwarding address—”

“No.” The word comes out bitter. “No, thank you. My mistake.”

But it wasn’t. The mistake wasn’t mine. It was his.

Chapter Forty

Alexei

Fucking shit.”

“I don’t know what you expected,” Anatoli says dryly, his voice inflected with his exasperation. “You knew what she was like.”

I did. But I did not expect this. I never expected Katya to come looking for me. The last thing I need is this complication. The last thing she needs is to be back in the thick of this life she hated, the life she only ever wanted to escape. It is far too soon after her alleged death, besides. I never expected her to want to return to Chicago. There is nothing left there for her.

“There is more,” Anatoli says, and his tone is beyond annoyed. He holds a folder beneath his arm, one he guards closely. “When she did not find you in Chicago, she applied for a visa. To Russia.”

Russia. She is trying to come to Russia. The folder beneath Anatoli’s arm—probably it contains a copy of her application. Her vital documents.

Her new fucking name. My fingers itch to reach out and grab it. To pore over these documents of hers for any fragment of information which I have until now denied myself. Her name. Her address. Her handwriting. Her fucking scent which might somehow linger upon the pages.

Anatoli is wise to guard these things from me.

An ocean is not far enough between us, I think with a shallow laugh. Like a fool she attempts to come here, to Moscow. To me. She speaks no more than a few words of Russian. She does not know where to find me. But she will ask. She will draw attention to herself, even if this is unintentional.

I have enemies here—more enemies than I had even in the United States. She will be a marked woman the moment she sets foot on Russian soil, and she will not know this. She endangers herself with his ludicrous request. She threatens the freedom she has won, threatens to ruin everything that has been built for her. She threatens everything she said she wanted.

I would burn the world to the ground and salt the fucking earth to protect her, and she—she wants to come to fucking Russia.

She would place me in an impossible position. She would place herself in a worse one. Her hard-won freedom will become obsolete. I know already that if ever she is in my hands again, I will never let her go. She is a compulsion, an obsession. She is in my blood like a drug. She is in my veins, in my head, in my fucking heart.

I scrape one hand over my mouth. I do not reach for the folder tucked beneath Anatoli’s arm. I do not endanger Katya as she endangers herself.

I keep the promise I made to her.

I protect her, even when she is too fucking foolish to protect herself.

I tell Anatoli, “Shut it down.”

Chapter Forty One

Catherine

Denied.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out why. Or how. Catherine Miller looks good on paper. An upstanding citizen. Intelligent. Wealthy. Educated. There’s absolutely no reason my visa application should have been denied. And there was no reason given, anyway. Just a flat denial, and a terse suggestion that I shouldn’t attempt to apply again, because I won’t be approved.

It’s Alexei. It has to be. He’s washed his hands of me completely. I’m not even permitted in his country, much less his presence. It’s a cold, rude awakening, and I’m filled with a frothing, boiling rage. I feel shamed, humiliated…bereft.

Like the last tie between us has finally been severed. Not by my hand—by his.

It’s so unfair. It’s so unfair, and there’s nothing I can do. Again, I’m powerless. And the worst of it, the very worst of it all, isn’t that it’s not the first time I’ve felt this way. It’s that I am alone in this feeling. There is no hand that sifts through my hair at night. There is no big body curled around mine, no arm thrown over my waist. There are no soothing murmurs in muted Russian that I don’t understand.