Page 136 of Lethal Legacy

He nods slowly, his eyes on mine big and solemn.

“I don’t want to lie to you about what is underneath Hale Tech. I always intended to tell you about it, one day. I guess I just wanted to protect you for as long as I could. To keep you safe. Because what we’re doing here is dangerous, Mickey. I need to know that you understand that.”

“Dangerous.” He cracks a smile that takes me by surprise. “You’re explaining tomehow dangerous technology can be? Seriously? You can’t even convert a PDF document.”

I laugh aloud at that, shaking my head.

“I underestimated you, Mickey. I’m sorry, okay? But what you’re about to see would mean the end of us all, if anyone ever finds out. I can bring you inside it. But once I do, there’s no going back. I’m not sure your father would have approved of me doing that, while you’re so young. And I’m pretty sure Lucia would kill me if she knew we were even having this conversation.”

“I’m not a kid, Roman.” Mickey’s eyes narrow, and I see a steel in them that I never really noticed before. “I have an IQ of 180. That makes me technically a genius, in case you don’t know that stuff.” He half smiles. “I act a lot slower than I am. It’s easier that way. People leave me alone.”

I look at him curiously. “How did I not know all this?”

He shrugs. “Because people see what they want to see. Even you. And what most people see is a geeky kid in glasses who can’t talk to people.” That makes me actually laugh out loud.

“Well, Mickey,” I say, opening the car door and stepping out, “come with me. You’re about to meet a whole lot of people just like you.”

41

ROMAN

Mickey slips into the tech head group like he was born into it. It’s almost amusing, how fast they recognize one of their own. Within minutes he’s glued to a screen, laughing at some joke I don’t understand and completely absorbed by whatever the fuck the little symbols on the screen mean. I haven’t explained Mercura to him yet. There’ll be time for that, although I suspect that by the time we leave, he’ll probably know more about how it works than I do.

I leave him to it and follow Pavel into the private office. “It’s good to see Mickey here.” He touches a key, and the screen bursts into life. “He’s too smart for light and sound shows at a parade, boss.”

“I’m starting to get that.” I lean over his chair. “What am I looking at?”

“An academic paper by one Lawrence Carter Rydell.” Pavel grins at me. “Aka paparazzi journalist Lance Ryder.” The journalist’s shiny smile appears onscreen, and my fingers tighten on the back of Pavel’s chair.

I’d love to shove those gleaming white teeth straight down the fucker’s throat.

“What you told me at the parade, about the Naryshkin Treasure, was the missing link. It turns out that Lance is just the name he uses as a byline on pap pieces, which is why I couldn’t find anything on him before. Lawrence Carter Rydell, however, is the very posh son of an aristocratic British mother and wealthy American father. He grew up between London and Miami. Daddy was a hedge fund man, Mummy had the posh connections. Lawrence was educated at Eton, then later, Oxford. This was his final paper.” He clicks back to the academic paper.

“‘The Redistribution of Imperial Russian Wealth in the Soviet Union,’” I read aloud. I frown. “So this fucker studied Russian history?”

“Not just history. He studied linguistics, learned to speak Russian fluently. Even spent time in Russia. According to this paper, his particular area of interest was the so-called Naryshkin Treasure. I’ve sent you a copy in case you’re interested.”

“So our boy likes Russian treasure stories. What’s this got to do with him chasing Lucia?”

“Everything.” Pavel clicks again, this time to a news story. “Ten years ago, Lawrence’s nice life came crashing down when Rydell senior was found dead in his Miami mansion. Turns out he had a small gambling problem. And Rydell senior wasn’t just using his own money. He also dipped into the hedge fund he was managing, to the tune of several million. Gambling is mostly illegal in Florida, so his favorite places to lose money were high-stakes private card games. Clearly he got in too deep with the wrong people. His death was supposedly a suicide.”

I scan the article briefly. “Bratva hit,” I say curtly when I finish.

“Since the Russians run nearly all the card games in Florida, it definitely looks that way. Lawrence certainly thought so. He went on a one-man mission to track down his father’s killer. His family was completely bankrupt, and after his father’s disgrace, none of his old connections wanted anything to do with him. He started writing freelance articles about Russian crime families. He pitched them to the likes of theNew York TimesandWashington Post, but nobody really gave a shit about some Russians running a game in Miami. He wasn’t subtle, asked questions in the wrong places, and caught the attention of the wrong people. The only reason he didn’t wind up in a ditch like his father was because nobody actually printed his articles.

“Then he started pitching the tabloids instead and found his audience.” He clicks again. “This was the last article he wrote under his own name.”

My heart stops.

Lucia’s face is front and center on the screen.

She’s a lot younger, sure, but it’s unmistakably her.

“Darya Petrovsky.” Pavel’s voice has a satisfied edge. He spins in his chair, clearly pretty happy with himself. “She’s the daughter of Russian bratva legend Sergei Petrovsky, who, I’m guessing, is the old man currently hanging out in your finca.”

All I can hear is my father’s voice:“Go to Sergei Petrovsky’s compound. He’ll take care of you...”

The room spins around me, past and present colliding in a weird slipstream. Pavel’s voice seems to come from a long distance. I have to force myself to concentrate on what he’s saying.

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