Page 9 of Lethal Legacy

Vilnus’s scarred, brutal face is only inches from mine. He hits my cheek, hard, with his open palm. “They have their wings cut off.”

“Leave her alone!” Fifteen-year-old Alexei struggles with his bonds in the chair opposite, his eyes glowing with rage despite the blood running down his face.

“Tell me how to get into the vault and I will.”

“He doesn’t know,” I gasp, trying to breathe through the dual pain on my face and back. “If we knew, we’d tell you.”

“Pizdozh! Don’t lie to me.”

Alexei strains against his bonds. “She doesn’t know. I don’t know. None of us do. How many times do we need to say it?”

Crack! A fist smashes into Alexei’s nose.

“No!” I scream. “Don’t hurt him, please. It’s true. We don’t know how to open the vault.”

“Then we should just kill you all now and blow the damn thing up.” Vilnus fingers the long blade that is his favorite tool of torture.

“You can’t.” This comes from a man I assume must be another Orlov. He’s an older man, his forearm inked with the tattoo of a rose entwined in barbed wire that signifies a long time spent in a Russian prison. He rarely comes to the compound, but when he does, he terrifies me.

“Their fingerprints are part of the vault’s security system, that much we do know.” His eyes are as cold and dead as if he were already a corpse.

“Fingerprints can be copied.” The tip of Vilnus’s blade presses into my back, right above where the tattooist is working. I know what the needle is marking me with: the red sparrow of the Orlovs. All his men carry that tattoo on their hands, the mark that warns them against either speaking to outsiders or, more specifically in my case, of ever trying to leave.

“And we can’t ever be sure a copy will work,” snaps the older man. “What we need is the man who built that vault, but you’ve already killed him, Vilnus, haven’t you? So now we have to find someone who knows what he does.”

“Or”—Vilnus drags the knife down my back in two short, brutal strokes that makes me scream and Alexei struggle in vain against his ropes—“we cause enough pain for these two spoiled little brats to start talking. Until then...” He draws the knife across my skin again, this time horizontally. “...let this serve as a reminder: if you try to run away again, little sparrow, I will find you. And then, fingerprints or not, I will kill you.”

Ireach over my shoulder, touching the raised scars still there. Vilnus drew the knife deep enough down my back that the tattooist worked around the wounds while they were still bleeding.

A red sparrow, with its wings and head cut off by the scars Vilnus made.

When we escaped six years ago, the first thing I did after we’d reached the relative safety of Argentina was get ink over those scars. Now they are drawn over to look like a cage with an open door.

Because Vilnus’s little sparrow did fly away, despite his threats. And I’m never going back.

Not alive, at least.

Ireturn to the motel after my shift, bone achingly tired and terrified of what I might find when I open the door. I’m almost catatonic with relief to find Papa awake, sitting stiffly upright in a motel chair. His gnarled old fingers grip the kitchen knife I took from the flat when we left.

My heart cracks a little more.

Papa should be safe in his own bed, with an army of servants looking after him, not trying to protect himself from possible killers.

“Papa.” I ease the knife from his hand, speaking in soft Russian. “You should be sleeping.”

He tugs gently at my hand.

“Docha,” he says, more clearly than I’ve heard him speak in weeks. Touched, I fold down to rest at his feet. Papa isn’t given to endearments. And it’s been a long time since he’s called medocha, which is a little like “sweet daughter” in English.

He puts a hand on my head, and for a moment I savor it, the touch that for my earlier life meant safety and security.

Until it didn’t.

“Docha—shouldn’t—work,” Papa says, laboring over the words.

“I’m okay, Papa.” I squeeze his hand. “I’m happy to work.”

“Petrovsky.” He thumps the side of his chair as he says the word, a dangerous spark in the pale, washed-out eyes.

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