Page 121 of Lethal Alliance

I see Graf vodka sitting on Roman’s table, the only time I’ve ever seen that brand since Miami.

“It was an ingenious scheme, Sergei, I will allow that.” Fedorov hits Papa again, making sure the sound travels through the intercom. Papa grunts, and I feel a surge of hope.

At least he’s still alive.

“Let’s lean something against this to hold the button down, shall we, Sergei?” Fedorov is slightly out of breath. “If your daughter can’t watch us, at least we can make sure she listens.” The sound cuts on and off, then buzzes back into life. “You would have been proud of your papa, Darya,” he says in a conversational tone. “He was clever, were you not, Sergei?”

I wince at the flat sound of flesh thudding into flesh, relieved when Papa grunts again.

“Sergei’s hands were nowhere near it,” Fedorov says. “A vodka company owned by the same gulag guards back in Russia who had known him since he was a boy. Each shipment of vodka sent to France with a treasure hidden in the bottom of the crate, all delivered to a warehouse on the Marseilles docks. Then smaller deliveries that eventually made their way to Russian households in Europe. Who would ever think to question Russian immigrants having their favorite vodka delivered? Once I discovered the system, it was like taking candy from a baby. Follow the vodka, pluck a treasure from the family who received it. I was careful, of course. I murdered the families, burned their businesses, made it look like common thievery. In most cases I did them a kindness. Not all of the Russian aristocrats adapted to life in exile, did they, Sergei? The pampered sons and daughters of the olddvoryanstvodidn’t like getting their hands dirty.”

“They had survived.” Papa’s voice is hoarse, but to my deep relief, still strong. “They had rebuilt. They deserved a new life, just as you and your father did. The treasures you stole were small things, a fraction of what they’d left behind. Sentimental items they’d risked their lives to hide in my family’s dacha. Pieces that might be enough, perhaps, to buy a house, to start a business. Enough for a future. But you stole that future from them all, Fedorov.” His voice strengthens with each word, and although I am on the other side of the intercom with a thick wall between us, I know that tone. Know that whatever beating he has taken is not enough to bow my father’s shoulders. I can picture him in my mind, still facing Fedorov down, his piercing blue eyes flashing arctic fire.

I know how formidable my father is when he steps into his full power aspakhan.Despite the desperation of our current circumstances, I feel a surge of pride—and of anger.

My father doesn’t die like this. Neither of us do.

“Enough!” Fedorov’s voice rises. “You caused this, Naryshkin. You caused all of it. All you had to do back in France was hand over a chunk of that fortune, just a few decent pieces. If you had given me what I asked for, all those lives could have been saved.”

“Those pieces weren’t mine to give.” Papa’s voice is ice-cold. “They weren’t then, and they aren’t now. Our fathers swore to safeguard the future of every family who entrusted their treasures to us. Aleksander and I were raised knowing our duty was to honor that promise. We dedicated our lives to restoring every piece to its rightful owner. It was never about hoarding a fortune for us, Fedorov. That is what you have never understood. What you can’t possibly understand.”

“Then why did you steal them all back from me, Sergei?” Fedorov lands another sickening blow. “You like to pretend you have a noble purpose. But the truth is you’re a criminal, a common thief, raised behind bars amid mud and blood.” His voice drops, becomes low and dangerous, with a dark, bitter edge. “Do you remember the day the guards made us fight in the yard?”

This time the sound of his fist is hard enough to send ice through my veins.

“Tell me that isn’t what this has been about, all these years.” Papa’s speech is slightly slurred, and I hear him spit on the floor. “Tell me you didn’t murder my family in Paris because of a childhood humiliation.”

“You beat me half to death in that prison yard!” Fedorov’s smooth composure has disappeared, his Russian accent thick and harsh. “And my own father was so afraid of yours that he let you do it.”

“You raped my sister!” For the first time I hear true rage in my father’s voice. “Your father was an honorable man, and you shamed him. In a just world, outside the walls of that damned gulag, you would have paid with your life. Putting you in the yard with me, a starving child three years your junior, was what little your father could offer mine by way of apology.” Papa’s tone is scathing.

There’s a barrage of thuds and the sick sound of my father’s grunts. I wince, gripping Rosa’s hand.

He can’t take much more of this.

“You were nothing but gulag rats, and my father was a weak fool.” Fedorov intersperses his words with blows. “I killed him in the end, did you know that?”

“I guessed.” Papa coughs.

“My father would have let us starve to death, when he had a Fabergé egg hidden beneath the floorboards of our room in Paris. I begged him to sell it a hundred times, but he wouldn’t do it. He said we shouldwait,keep it hidden until its value increased.I’d been waiting my entire life,” he says bitterly. “So I killed him. I sold the egg the same day. But even with coin in my pocket, I wasn’t good enough for you and your friends.”

“You were a criminal, Ilyan.” Papa’s voice rasps with exhaustion. “None of us wanted anything to do with that life.”

“No. You tried to leave the gulag behind, didn’t you? Pretend you never slept in the mud and fought for scraps. You hid your treasure and tried to disappear. But I found you, Sergei. I found you all, one by one. And I made you all remember where you came from, in the end. You should have admitted defeat, back in Paris. Crawled back into the gutter you came from. If you’d done that, this would have all been over. But you just couldn’t let it go, could you? You couldn’t stand to see your precious treasures in my hands, even then.”

“I told you.” Papa’s voice is thready, his words slurring together. “They don’t belong to me, any more than they belong to you. Your crimes cost hundreds of lives. Futures that can’t be put back together again, families that can’t be rebuilt.”

“Don’t talk to me about rebuilding!” I hear a clatter that sounds like Papa’s wheelchair toppling onto the tiles and a heavy thud that makes my heart sink. “It took me half a lifetime to build another empire,” Fedorov hisses, “and find you again. And even when I did, when I tracked you to Miami, still you and that bastard Borovsky tried to outsmart me. Because you always knew I would come for you, didn’t you? I promised you that night in France that I would see the end of the Naryshkin line, if it took me until my last breath to do it. I’ve kept my promise, Sergei. This war is finally over, whether you accept it or not.” He puts his mouth close to the intercom. “Open this door, Princess Darya Naryshkin, or your father dies, here and now.”

I hear the snick of his pistol, and my heart skips.

“Do not open that door, Darya.” My father’s voice is cold, hard steel. “Shoot me if you will, Ilyan Fedorov. I have lived my life. I have lived more lives than any man has a right to. But my daughter will not die for your greed and corruption. And so long as that vault is closed, you need her. Eventually you will die for this, whether by my hand or by that of Aleksander’s son.”

“Roman Borovsky?” Fedorov’s voice quavers with an almost hysterical excitement. “By now he has opened the vault—and killed your son. Poetic justice, isn’t it, for Aleksander’s son to kill yours?” He lands another blow. “You aristocrats always did love your poetry. Do you think we didn’t know Borovsky was planning an attack? I have an entire army going after him. He won’t ever make it out of that fortress you built.”

“And the children?” Papa’s voice is hoarse. “Did you kill them too, Fedorov? More innocent lives lost for your insane treasure hunt?”

“Children have never mattered to me, Sergei.” He gives a strange, high-pitched laugh. “You, of all people, should know that. What was your youngest girl’s name, back in Paris? Irina? She was eight, if I remember—”

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