Page 162 of Lethal Legacy

“Is that AlexeifuckingPetrovsky?” I stare at the screen, something hard and unpleasant growing in my chest.

“I’m afraid so.” He clicks again and brings up a digital record with the school logo. “And, predictably, if I might say so, it gets worse.” He points to the screen. “Alexei and Lars roomed together for two years. Quite the buddies, it would seem.” He pulls up an array of photos, each of which shows the young Alexei and Lars in a variety of scenarios. “Rowed in the same crew. Ran cross-country together. They even visited one another’s houses—here’s a photo of Alexei celebrating Lars’s thirteenth birthday with Lars’s parents, in Stockholm. The last photo of them is this one in theOld Collegian’s magazine. They were both fourteen at the time.” It’s a photograph of the two grinning boys in school uniform, showcasing the school’s new computer lab. “It was this photograph that Mickey found, and how he tracked the association in the first place.”

Pavel gives me a worried look. “I know you wanted him to focus on Andersson’s movements, but there wasn’t much I could do once he found the connection. He’s like a dog with a bone once he gets hold of something.” I can hear the admiration in his tone.

I don’t like Mickey knowing any of this, but I can deal with that later. I tilt my chin at the screen. “Go on.”

“Barely a month after that photo, Sergei Petrovsky had his first stroke, and Alexei was pulled out of school and brought back to Miami. He never went back, for obvious reasons. Two years after that, Lars got his first software deal and left the school also. There’s no further record of contact between the two—until the sale of theGuapa.Like I said, the yacht was officially bought by a shell company in the Caymans. But Mickey tracked the money, and the company is an Orlov front, like we thought.”

I just grunt. That much is obvious.

“Lars Andersson boarded a flight from Sweden to Italy a couple of days before the yacht changed hands. The next time he used his passport was in Spain, at the Madrid airport, when he flew back to Sweden.”

I can feel Dimitry’s eyes on me. I try to breathe deeply. “So despite having sold theGuapa,Andersson remained aboard it all the way from Italy to Spain. Including when it refueled here.”

“And he wasn’t alone.” Pavel casts me a wary glance. “According to the flight manifests, Alexei Petrovsky flew into Italy on the same day as his old buddy Lars.”

“Pizdozh.”I glare at the screen.

This is bad. Really fucking bad.

Dimitry frowns. “But why would Orlov send Alexei in person for theGuapa? Don’t rich assholes usually just pay a skipper to move their yachts?”

“That’s the fucking billion-dollar project question.” I drum my fingers on the back of Pavel’s chair. “However Alexei managed to get there, clearly the scheming little fuck was planning to meet up with his buddy Lars.”

“It looks like it.” Pavel glances at me. “I think you can safely assume that buying the yacht was Alexei’s idea, one he somehow got the Orlovs to buy into. The real question we need to be asking is why?”

“That’s not the question,” I say tightly. “We have one of the world’s best tech experts aboard the most high-tech yacht in the world, in the company of a man with very questionable loyalties. Despite the reputation English boarding schools have for rampant homosexuality, somehow I doubt that Alexei Petrovsky and Lars Andersson were fucking each other in the sunshine.”

“Why would Alexei Petrovsky be working with Andersson to bring you down?” Dimitry shifts restlessly as the car winds down the mountain road in the darkness. “He hates the fucking Orlovs. If he wants his sister back, wouldn’t he befriend you?”

“Not if he thought he could use me to get his family back.”

His eyes widen. “You think he’s coming after Mercura? Planning to trade it to the Orlovs for his father and sister?”

Among other possibilities.

“I think there’s a chance.”

I depress the accelerator as we hit the steep curves, leaning the car into the corners.

“Holy shit.” Dimitry gives a low whistle. “What a clusterfuck.”

“Yup.”

I’m glad I sent Mickey home earlier with Luis. I need time to think this shit through.

“There’s a loose cannon the size of Lars Andersson potentially trying to fuck us,” I say grimly, “right when Mercura is at its most vulnerable phase. And Alexei clearly knows Lucia is in Spain. When Ryder found Lucia in that public bathroom during the parade, he claimed he could get a message to Alexei. He also told her, and I quote, that Lucia is ‘trusting the wrong people.’”

“Yeah, you told me. But since when do you trust journalists?” Dimitry’s tone is dismissive. “This Ryder fuck is a littlemudakwho wants to stir up trouble. For all we know, he’s not even in contact with Alexei. Why would you believe a single word he says?”

Because he knows more than he should, about too many things.

But I’m not getting into that, not even with Dimitry.

There’ll be time to deal with Ryder and his theories once Mercura is safe. For now, what matters is securing the future, not digging up the past.

And if protecting Mercura means having to kill Alexei Petrovsky, then I’ll do it.

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