Page 325 of Lodestar

“Meaning?”

“Remember the Romanovs?”

“I have a preteen daughter, Troy. I’ve seenAnastasia.”

“Yeah, well, good thing, seeing as Belyaev believed he was a direct descendant of the Romanovs.”

I hooted out a laugh. “So, he was a stoner, then?”

She chuckled with me. “Whateverwethink, he believed it and he had others believing it too. He was a nasty fucker though. I wished I’d gotten his hit. Your…” Her tone sobered. “Your uncle seemed decent. It didn’t make sense that he was a Sparrow in all honesty.”

“Because he wasn’t. He was there for me. My grandfather told me that he was friends with Belyaev. Aleks knew that Belyaev had killed his wife and used that as a bargaining chip to further his ties with the Sparrows so they could find me.”

“Interesting.”

“Fascinating,” I drawled.

She hitched a shoulder. “Sorry.”

“Thanks for lying,” I mocked, but I was smiling. ‘Adapt and overcome.’ I hadn’t been a Marine, but I lived by their motto.

"Weird that they'd be friends though," she mumbled out loud.

"No weirder than you and me being friends." I grabbed the bottle of juice Conor had brought with him and took a sip. “So, who was Belyaev and how doyouknow when Conor could barely find anything about him?”

“Because Jorgmundgander gave us his profile but in the aftermath, they tended to wipe their targets’ slates clean.”

“Why?”

“Easier to pretend they never existed that way. Jorgmundgander’s MO is skeevy as fuck. They make the CIA appear friendly. They don’t just kill someone; they eradicate them. Every part of their lives.”

At her long pause, I frowned. “Wait… Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“That you were probably dumped into the sex slave business because of your ties to your mother? Yeah. That your dadprobably got dealt some shitty coke or something to kill him, yup. They go in and they clean up after themselves.

“You probably only lived as long as you did without interacting with them because of your dad’s status.”

“Fuck.”

“About sums it up,” she agreed. “If your grandfather and unclewerelooking for you, that’s probably why you were impossible to find. That you were a commodity the Sparrows could use undoubtedly worked in your favor and stopped them from killing you outright. If you consider living to be a benefit, that is.”

We shared a glance. Snorted. Returned to staring straight ahead.

“Until Kat, I didn’t. After,now, with Conor, I’m even gladder to be alive.”

She hummed. “Never took you for a fool in love.”

“It gets us all,” I mocked. “So, Belyaev…”

“He was the key player in sourcing the women in the Baltics.”

“Didn’t stop them from having a steady stream once he was dead.”

“Course not. They shoved his younger sister’s husband in the hole he left behind, but he had a lot of power and his replacement didn’t.

“As I said, he had others believing he was a Romanov too. Where he was from, at any rate. It was why they took their daughters to him—they thought he’d give them a better life.”

“Bastard.”

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