Page 14 of Lethal Alliance

I clean up the cut on my face as best I can in the sink, but it needs stitches. I explain this to the guard who brings us a tray of food.

He ignores me.

I find some antiseptic and Band-Aids in the cupboard and do the best I can with those.

The only time we’ve seen Alexei Petrovsky since we boarded the plane is when he told us curtly that we are indeed flying to Miami. Since then he hasn’t spoken to Masha or me at all.

“Are they taking us to Deda and Baba Melnyck’s?” Masha asks. She’s huddled into my side, her eyes watching the door warily.

“I don’t think so,myshka.”

Unless Inger’s parents are part of this, too.

It’s the worst feeling I’ve ever known, not knowing who to trust. It makes me feel more alone than I ever have. I’ve been trying to work it out ever since I heard the guard tell Nikolai on the phone that he doesn’t take orders from him. I’ve been trying to do what I think Roman would, trying to think through everything that happened at the ball and afterward.

In fact, I’ve spent most of the twelve-hour flight going over every single thing I can remember.

And no matter how much I don’t want to believe it, the only possible conclusion I can draw is that Inger,our own mother, is the one who planned this.

Planned to have armed guards kidnap her own children.

It’s an awful thought. One most people would probably not even consider. But more than either of my siblings, I’ve had a front-row seat to my mother’s greed and selfishness for as long as I can remember. I’ve done my best to protect them both, to be the mother she never was, for any of us. To preserve at least a little of the illusion that she really does care for us all. But the truth is, I’m honestly not sure if Inger would really notice if any of us lived or died.

And now she’s traded us to the Orlovs. For what reason, I don’t know.

I’m not sure if Inger was working with them from the beginning or not. Perhaps she and Nikolai planned to kidnap us themselves. But they clearly had outside help, and somehow that help is connected to the Orlovs.

Why would Inger do this?

What possible motivation could she have for working with the same people Roman and Lucia are fighting against?

Darya. Not Lucia.

It seems important that I stop pretending, about even small things, to myself. The savage cut on my face is a reminder that there is no point in pretending. Not anymore.

I don’t sleep for the entire flight, though Masha eventually dozes off. I can’t sleep. I’m trying to think of a way out of this, of something I can do to alert Roman and Darya to where we are.

I try to think of what Mickey might do, but it’s impossible to even imagine. Mickey’s mind is a different world than mine. I don’t have his skills, his insane genius brain.

Instead, I try to think of what Darya Petrovsky might do.

Ever since I found out the truth about Lucia, I’ve been kind of fascinated by her. Mickey wouldn’t tell me much. Most of what I got out of him Roman had already told us or I’d researched myself on the internet.

I know that the Orlovs took Darya’s family home in a coup, and that Darya and her father eventually escaped. Mickey said they’d been running for years before she came to live with us. Darya was so good at hiding that apparently not even Roman knew who she really was at first.

She managed to escape from the Orlovs.

And that means I can, too.

I just need to think like Darya. To be as strong as her. For Masha, as well as for myself.

I just wish I knew what being strong looked like.

We landon another private airfield and emerge to brilliant sunlight.

Several black sedans are waiting for us, all with tinted windows and armed men standing beside them. Alexei follows us down the stairs, his men behind him. He’s clearly showered and changed on the flight, swapping the black suit he was wearing in Malaga for a blue shirt rolled to the elbows that reveals the tattoos on his forearms, over white linen trousers and leather boots. Aviator sunglasses cover his unsmiling face. His white-blond hair gleams in the sunshine, like one of the Vikings off that TV show.

He’s huge. He’s terrifying.

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