Page 120 of Lethal Alliance

That man was Fedorov.

The realization snaps into my brain like the last piece of a missing puzzle. It was Fedorov who came to our house all those years ago. Fedorov who had the tattoo of a rose entwined in barbed wire.

Fedorov is the only person of whom Vilnus Orlov is truly afraid.

And now he’s standing outside our door.

I walk over to the intercom like I’m sleepwalking and press the button.

“Ilyan Fedorov.” It takes all my will to maintain a calm voice.

“I see you’ve done some research as well. Or has your papa been telling tales? Don’t answer that.” There’s a light note to his voice, as if he’s smiling. “Let’s ask him ourselves, shall we?”

My eyes meet Rosa’s, my horror mirrored in her own. There’s the sound of a scuffle through the intercom, then my father’s voice booms through the speaker, loud and authoritative in Russian. “Do not open that door, Darya, no matter what you hear—”

I wince at the sound of the flesh meeting flesh, my father’s grunt of pain.

I press the button so hard my finger turns white. “So you torture old men now, too, Fedorov? Little girls and old men. That’s some record you have.” My voice shakes, but not with fear.

The thought of that bastard hitting my father takes my fear and turns it to fury.

“Oh, I’ve been waiting a long time to repay Sergei Petrovsky his due, believe me.” Fedorov’s voice is as cold and dead as I remember, any momentary lightness gone from it. “To take back what he stole from me.”

“Really.”Keep him talking.“From what I understand, it was you who did the stealing back in Paris.”

“My old friendhasbeen telling you some tales, then.” The sound of another blow comes through the intercom. “I imagine Sergei left out the part where he betrayed his promises to my family. Then again, that part of the story hardly reflects well on the noble Naryshkin name, now does it? The old Graf wouldn’t have approved of that, Sergei, now would he? His only son betraying the guard that helped him survive the gulag? No, the noble Graf wouldn’t have liked that at all.”

Even through the crackling intercom, Fedorov’s caustic hatred is palpable.

To my intense relief, Papa’s voice is the next I hear, his anger masked beneath a carefully measured tone. “The debt to your father was repaid long before Aleksander and I reached France, Fedorov. Your father was rewarded for the help he gave mine. As you know very well.”

“ButIwasn’t!” the man hisses. He puts his mouth close to the intercom, his venom almost spitting into the room. “I was his son. The son of the man who fed you out of his own pocket when you were a baby. I grew up behind the same damn bars you did, even if it was in the guardhouse. My father always told me we would be wealthy when we got to France, because the Graf would take care of us.”

“And he kept that promise.” Papa’s voice sounds resigned. “Your father was received in Switzerland by Fabergé himself, who personally handed him one of the rarest imperial eggs as a gift. It isn’t our fault you sold it for less than it’s worth the moment your father was dead.”

The sound of Fedorov’s blow is so vicious that I wince. The intercom cuts out, and I take the chance to press the button on our side.

“If this is a question of money,” I say, desperate to stop him beating Papa, “I know we have more than enough to repay your father’s kindness.”

It’s a long time before Fedorov answers, and when he does, he’s breathing heavily.

“Oh, we’re long past money.” His voice shakes with rage and the effort of beating my father. “Money I have, Darya Petrovsky. More than every one of those arrogant fuckingdvoryanstvowho looked down on us back in the gulag. They never learned, not even after their dachas had been burned and their tsar had been shot. Even decades later, in France, they looked down on us. All I wanted was to take what my father was owed, for the years he helped men like your father and grandfather survive when they might have died. A necklace here, a trinket there. But even that, the exiled nobility of Russia could not spare for those they considered so far beneath them. Where was loyalty then, when I was starving in the Paris streets and came begging at their doors? Is it any wonder I took what I was owed at the end of a knife?”

Inside our safe room, Anton is muttering into his phone. He gives me a thumbs-up, then circles his finger again.

He’s found someone who can help us.

I almost slump in relief.

Keep Fedorov talking.

“They should have helped you,” I say carefully. “You had every right to be angry.”

“I didn’t need their help.” His voice is detached and cold. “I discovered your scheme myself, didn’t I, Sergei?” I wince as I hear the thud of Fedorov delivering another blow. “The Russian KGB had never found the men who broke into the Naryshkin dacha. Even if it was the sons of Prince Naryshkin and Count Borovsky who opened the vault, people speculated they must have been robbed and killed soon after or sold the contents. There was no way such vast wealth could have been carried across the steppe, if that was even where they’d gone. By the time Sergei and Aleksander did finally make it to France, they were all but forgotten, the story of the missing treasure little more than myth.” Another blow makes a brutal sound, and I flinch. “That was until I discovered the treasures hidden inside crates of Graf vodka.”

Graf vodka?

Instantly I see my father’s hand pouring the bottle, hear him saying, “You can’t buy it here in Spain...”

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