Page 146 of Lethal Alliance

Yuri draws on his cigarette, his eyes never leaving my face.

“Your wife shot her own guard, the man who had been sent to keep her safe. And then, showing a very uncharacteristic disregard for her own safety, she went downstairs to directly confront a deadly enemy who had invaded her home. Quite the show of heroism, isn’t it, for a woman who, to my knowledge, had never wielded anything more deadly than a credit card?”

Yuri licks his lips, his eyes sliding sideways, then to the floor, before coming back to mine.

“As if all of that wasn’t enough,” I say, “Vera then proceeded to shoot her own daughter-in-law. Without question. Without hesitation of any kind. She just pointed her gun at Inger’s head and blew it half off.”

Yuri blanches. His eyes drop to the empty vodka glass.

“By all means.” I refill his glass, and he gulps the contents before the bottle has even returned to the table, his hand shaking. I stare at him, wondering how I ever thought this man was powerful.

But did I ever truly think that?I wonder. As I have every moment since Alexei handed me a name on a piece of paper, I remember the long-ago words of Zinaida Melikov, the Russian heiress who murdered her father:Most of all, you should ask yourself: why did Yuri take you in? What does he have to gain?

“Vera told us she shot Inger out of grief. It sounded plausible enough. Vera is an old woman who had already lost one son. Now her other son was dead, seemingly betrayed by her own daughter-in-law. That’s enough to send anyone over the edge into insanity, right?”

Yuri doesn’t answer. I pour him another glass. His eyes are slightly glassy. He stares at the vodka, but doesn’t touch it.

“Drink,” I say calmly.

He does.

“Then I listened to the accounts of all the people who were there that day. I couldn’t play the audio back because it wasn’t recorded, but between Darya, Rosa, and Sergei, I got a pretty accurate account of Inger’s last words. Would you like to know what they were, Yuri?”

He doesn’t move, just stares at me.

“Inger said, and I quote:You said he’d be safe.

“Of course, everybody assumed she was talking to Fedorov. But Fedorov was already dead by then. Sergei was unconscious on the floor. The only two people alive and conscious outside that room were Inger and Vera. We all assumed Inger’s last words were a result of her grief and confusion, that she was talking to a dead Fedorov in a moment of madness.

“But it bothered me, Yuri. I’m stubborn like that. Wouldn’t Vera be just as angry at Fedorov as Inger? Wouldn’t that make them allies, rather than enemies? It was a loose end. One which made no sense at all. Then Vera disappeared, right in the middle of our investigation. Went to a health spa in the Swiss Alps. No phone reception, no internet. Said she needed to ‘heal.’ Do you know what Switzerland is famous for, Yuri? Apart from banks, chocolate, and watches, of course. I’ll give you a guess. No? Fine. I’ll help you out.”

I pour myself a glass of vodka. “Switzerland is famous for refusing to extradite its citizens. Now, I know what you’re going to say, Yuri: Vera holds passports for the UK and the US. Not Switzerland. Right?” I don’t wait for him to answer. “Wrong. As I’m sure you’re aware, your wife’s first ever passport was issued in Switzerland. That was long before you met her, of course. The passport was issued for one Vera Peretz, a Jewish refugee from Poland. She was traveling with her ‘father,’ a man named Andras Peretz. Only Peretz was really Ilyan Fedorov. He used the orphaned daughter of one of his own murdered captains to help with his new identity when he entered the US. After all, people have a lot more sympathy for a man with a young daughter, don’t they?”

I toss off my vodka and push Yuri’s toward him. “Drink,” I say quietly.

He almost chokes as he swallows it. Eyes watering, he stares at me.

“Vera Peretz owed Ilyan Fedorov everything. He saved her life and gave her the best of everything—including an adoptive brother.” I lean forward, clasping my hands on the table in front of me. Yuri’s nostrils flare, his every muscle tense. “Do you know how Nikolai described Vilnus Orlov, right before I put a bullet through his head?”

He makes a small, impotent noise, like a trapped, wounded animal.

I smile coldly. “Nikolai described Orlov as afriend of the family. The words stuck in my head, Yuri. I’ve been part of your family for almost two decades, and I’ve never once heard of Vilnus Orlov being a family friend. And I would have known. If I’d ever heard so much as a whisper of that fucking name, I’d have been gone from your household before you had time to pull a gun. But you were always very careful, weren’t you, to keep that little secret? Just like Vera never disclosed the reason she hated my presence at her table, in her family.”

“We didn’t know.” He rasps the words in a pathetic protest, the panic starting to spread across his eyes. “We weren’t sure—”

“But you suspected, Yuri, didn’t you?” I cut him off coldly. “Or rather, Vera did. Vera might have been long gone from her adoptive father’s home, but she was still in touch with him. She’d been raised knowing about the Naryshkin treasure, the great wealth that her parents had been killed for, that had been stolen from her adoptive father. And then suddenly, out of the blue, I turn up. A homeless Russian boy named Roman, in Miami. The miracle is that she told you of her suspicions, rather than Ilyan himself, or even Vilnus. That’s what happened, Yuri, wasn’t it? She told you the story about the vault, about the missing boy her brother had been searching for all these years, and suddenly you realized that, quite by accident, you’d stumbled across a fucking gold mine.

“I remember being surprised when you invited me out onto your yacht after Mikhail had been shot. You’d already given me a fat envelope of cash. In my experience, men like you paid your debts, then considered matters settled. You barely looked at me the first time you met me. But a few days later... well. Suddenly, I was a hero. A second son. A man to whom you owed everything. Your son owed me his life, you said, and so my life was now your responsibility.”

I shake my head. “And I was dumb enough to believe you,” I say softly. “Lonely and desperate enough to truly believe you gave a fuck about me.”

“Roman—”

“Don’t,” I say quietly. “Just fucking don’t, Yuri. It’s way too late. When was it that you became certain of who I was?”

He stares at me, body stiff, lips pressed together, as if he’s actually considering not answering. Then he slumps back in his seat, lighting another cigarette, the fight seeping from his old, sagging body. “Not for a long time,” he says dully. “I suspected. You had no identity, no past, and it was clear you weren’t telling me the truth about your background. Then, you and Mikhail miraculously got funding for Hale. I knew nobody would have given you that kind of backing without surety of some kind. But in the end, it was Nikolai and Inger who pieced it together, with the help of some journalist.”

“And all that time,” I say, staring at him in contempt, “you could have told Fedorov. Or Orlov. But you wanted to take it all for yourself, Yuri, didn’t you? You thought that you could play us all. You even suggested I take Inger as my wife after Mikhail died. It was only when you suspected Orlov was moving in that you told Inger the truth.”

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