Page 47 of Lethal Alliance

I shake my head slowly. “I don’t know, Mickey. I was just a kid when my father took me there, and it was years ago. I don’t know what’s down there these days.”

I already know what he’s going to say before he opens his mouth: “Darya would know.”

Yes, Darya would know.

But bringing her here means bringing her into Mercura, into the entirety of my operation. My men won’t like it.

Tough.

The truth is that this is long overdue.

I look around to find most of the team casting me surreptitious glances. “Pavel,” I snap.

“Boss?” His head spins around so fast it almost comes off his shoulders.

“I’m going to bring Darya here later today. Set up a private room. I don’t want her in the middle of the operations center.”

“Boss.” He nods. “Um—are you going to tell her about—”

“That’s not really any of your business, Pavel, now is it?” I glare at him until he gulps and shakes his head.

My curt tone is unfair. Pavel’s question is entirely valid. So close to the hard launch, security around Mercura has never been tighter, and Pavel is responsible for maintaining the high levels of secrecy.

But the truth is, I don’t like the answer any more than he does.

I need Darya’s input around the compound and the Orlovs. To do that I need her to see what I am seeing, so she can explain it to me, and that means bringing her here.

The problem is that even if I want her input, I don’t want her anywhere near business. I want her home, and safe. Even the thought of placing her in danger, after all we’ve lost, makes me feel physically sick.

“Well, I think that the sooner she’s here, the better.” Mickey speaks without looking at either of us. “She’s the only one who’s actually been inside this place.” He gives me a sideways look. “Unless I count Sergei, but it doesn’t seem like you’re keen on involving him. And like you said, you were too young to remember.”

I nod wordlessly, trying not to think of that long-ago night, of my father rolling me in a blanket and thrusting me in the back of the car when Mama was asleep.

“We’ve got something to do, you and I,”he whispered in my ear.“A job only you can do, Roman.”That is about all I recall of that night, apart from the odd, rubbery feel of the stuff Papa used to take an impression of my fingertips. But even that memory is enough to throw me back there, to the clapboard house where my parents raised me.

Why were we living there,I wonder,while Sergei Petrovsky was living in a goddamn palace?

Why did my father care so much about guarding Sergei’s treasures?

Even to the point where it meant losing his wife—and endangering me?

I swallow hard on the bitterness of old hurt. It has no place in the midst of this crisis. I won’t allow old wounds to interfere with whatever help Sergei may be able to offer. When it comes to the compound, to getting my girls back, I’ll kiss the old bastard’s ring and genuflect a thousand times if it will help.

Even if all I want to do is thrust a knife through Sergei Petrovsky’s lying, cowardly heart.

What pisses me off the most is that part of me had begun to actually like the prick. Had even, if I’m honest, found a certain peace in his company, an almost familial comfort.

Well, that’s fucking gone.

Sergei Petrovsky is a source of information now, nothing more. And once I have that information?

I can’t kill him. It would upset Darya, and I won’t ever do anything that might hurt her again. But if that bastard thought he was closely guarded before, he’d better get used to cavity searches and bars on the window now. He’ll live out his days with my men watching his every goddamn bowel movement, and my children nowhere near him.

15

DARYA

“Da.”

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