Page 39 of Lethal Legacy

I knew it the moment I saw the panic in her eyes when I mentioned the motel she slept in last night. The blood drained entirely from her face, the lush bottom lip sucked savagely inwards beneath her teeth, hard enough I feared she’d bite right through. Her eyes darted to the door, and for a moment I genuinely thought she’d make a run for it.

You can’t fake that kind of fear. The fear of being hunted by death itself.

I should know. After my mother’s disappearance and my father’s murder, I ran with that fear for six years. And no matter how hardened I became during that time, I’ve never forgotten how it felt to look over my shoulder, or the tension of keeping my identity a secret. Ten-year-old Roman Borovsky disappeared the night his father died in Miami. Six years later an orphan with no surname stood in front of a bullet intended for Mikhail and became Roman Stevanovsky.

I found a way out. And nobody, not even Mikhail, has ever known who I truly am.

I toss off the glass of vodka and refill it, gripping the edges of the vast dining table, staring at the clear liquid in the glass.None of this solves the problem of what to do about Lucia Lopez.

Except that for some reason, it does.

I know how it feels to have no choice but run. To guard secrets that aren’t mine to tell. To live with a revenge I can never take.

I don’t want to involve myself in whatever storm is chasing Lucia. But I can certainly give her a way out, or at least the resources to outrun it.

And if the storm decides to come for her?

Well, like I said, I protect what is mine.

And I’m no storm.

I’m the fucking apocalypse.

I put the stopper into the vodka bottle and walk back to the safe, which is the only piece of furniture behind the locked door. The safe cost me a small fortune at auction a few years ago. I anonymously outbid hardened thieves and Russian oligarchs, who were all drawn by the irresistible challenge of cracking a Borovsky safe. Not that any of them would have succeeded. They’d have wound up blasting it open, and even then, they’d have had trouble.

It took less than three minutes for me to crack it open.

After all, I’d watched my father build it.

I run my fingers over the brass plate bearing my family name. Opening the heavy door, I place the vodka bottle gently on the shelf inside.

“Za Zdorov'ye, Papasha,” I say softly. “Have a drink on me. It’s your favorite.”

This is the room where I keep my father’s memory locked away, a private place only I visit. The safe is the last one he ever made. I keep it empty, except for the lone bottle of Graf vodka.

I close my eyes briefly, remembering my father’s strong, lined face. He was already an old man on that long-ago day when he knew they were coming for him.

“You must run, Roman,”he’d said, gripping my shoulder.“Do you understand me? The men coming for me know I have a son. I will not see you die beside me, or forced to live the same life I’ve given everything to escape. Do not try to help me. Promise me, now.”

His Russian accent was thicker than normal, as it always was when he was emotional.“Run, my boy, and do not look back. No matter what you see or hear. Go to the compound I showed you, and ask for Sergei Petrovsky. He will help you. And remember what I taught you. Live a good life. Make me proud.”

He’d waited until I gave my promise before thrusting me out the back door, moments before the Russian men crashed through the front one.

He never knew that I stayed, watching through the window, until the last breath was stolen from his body.

I did run to the compound. But when I got there, a car arrived at the gate. I saw the driver through the windshield.

His hands on the steering wheel had the same sparrow tattoo as the hands that tortured Papasha to death.

I kept running, and I never looked back.

“I ran just like you told me to,” I say now, my voice harsh in the empty room. “But I didn’t escape your life, Papasha. I became the king of it instead.”

It hasn’t been the life he wanted for me, I know that. And I doubt my father would approve of many of the things I’ve had to do to survive it.

But I know that he would approve of helping Lucia.

There was nobody to help my mother when she ran. Nobody to save my father after she left, or when those gutless fucks came for him. And there sure as hell wasn’t anyone to help me the night I fled the sight of my father’s lifeless eyes, nor during the hard years of street survival that followed.

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