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My pulse stumbled.
Sergei turned away before I found a reply and stopped at the bedroom door.
“Lock this from the inside if it helps you sleep,” he dictated.
“Will it keep you out?”
“Yes.”
“The bathroom has no cameras,” he added. “Neither does the bedroom. The hallway does, however.”
Then he left, and the door closed softly behind him. I waited until his footsteps disappeared before turning the lock. I crossed to the window and studied the courtyard below. I saw a camera over the rear gate. Two guards were standing at the entrance. I’d need to find another way to get away than out the back.
The first escape had been sheer panic, but the next one would be fully planned.
It would take time, but I would get away.
Eventually.
CHAPTER 6
Sergei
The next day…
The Iron Wolf Tavern was nearly empty before noon, but Alessia entered like she was walking into enemy territory. She paused just inside the locked front entrance with her shoulders squared, her chin lifted, and one hand wrapped around the strap of the small black bag she had refused to let me carry. The clothes Riley and the others had stocked for her fit well enough—dark jeans, black boots, and a soft cream sweater that made the warm gold in her skin look richer—but she had put the velvet choker back around her throat.
The same one I had threaded my belt through beside the highway.
She had done it on purpose. I knew it from the way her hazel eyes narrowed when she caught me looking at it, a silent challenge passing between us.
“Is this where your family decides what to do with inconvenient women?” she asked.
The Iron Wolf was closed to the public, but the amber lights behind the bar had been turned on, casting a low golden glow over the rows of premium vodka and the deep red velvet lining the booths. The tavern smelled of polished wood, fresh coffee, hot bread, and the faint trace of old smoke that had settled into the walls two centuries ago and refused to leave. Voices carried from the back room.
“Usually,” I replied, “we decide what to do with inconvenient men.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
I ignored her and continued toward the back room. Behind me, she muttered something in Italian involving my intelligence, my ancestry, and a recommendation that I be buried beneath wet concrete.
I understood enough to appreciate the effort.
This morning, breakfast had taken over the back room. Platters covered nearly every inch of the wood. Blini, bacon, eggs, smoked salmon, fried potatoes, black bread, fruit, syrniki dusted with sugar, and a bowl of something Nikolai had apparently already been forbidden to touch. Coffee cups sat beside plates waiting for food. Two weapons rested near Maxim’s elbow. Ivan had a laptop open between a bowl of strawberries and an encrypted radio.
Every person in the room looked toward us, and Alessia’s body went still beside mine.
Riley rose first. She was small beside Maxim, though very few people appeared large beside my eldest brother. Her red hair had been pulled into a loose knot, and she wore a green sweater with one sleeve pushed higher than the other, as if she had dressed while arguing with someone and never finished.
“I’m Riley,” she said, crossing directly toward Alessia. “Riley Morozov now. Murphy before that, and still Murphy whenever the Irish part of me gets angry enough to come out.”
She held out her hand, and Alessia looked at it, then shook it.
Riley smiled. “I’m Maxim’s wife, and I’m also the only person here willing to feed you before anyone starts asking questions.”
“That is not true,” Amy said from the table. “I’m also willing to feed her.”
Riley pointed toward the man at the head of the table. “That’s Maxim.”
