Page 6 of Lethal Alliance

I understand your loyalty to your brother, and his to you. I believe there is nothing Alexei will not do to keep you safe and guard your family’s legacy. I understand that. I can even respect it.

Except that it seems Alexei is planning to trade with the Orlovs for your freedom—and his bargaining chip is a project I have spent many years creating.

I can protect what is mine, no matter who comes for it. But I can’t protect you if you run to Alexei now.

I know your brother will never stop trying to get you back, just like I know the Orlovs won’t ever stop trying to get into that vault, no matter what he offers them. I won’t allow you to be a pawn in their games.

I’m asking you to trust me, Darya. Trust that I will care for your father and do all I can to keep your brother safe. But to do that I need to know you are safe, too. And that means asking you to disappear again, somewhere your brother can’t find you. There’s more than enough money in the account to run as far as you wish. If you need a new identity, the man I’ve named on the card will help you do that.

When I have won this war—and I will win, Darya—I will find you again.

You may not wish to see me. That is a chance I have no choice but to take. I will respect your wishes whatever you decide.

I meant it when I said I loved you. Even if I never see you again, I want you to know that I am

Yours,

Now, and always.

Roman.

I foldthe letter with shaking hands. I wonder when he slipped it into my clutch.

When he had me naked in a darkened office?

When I lay beneath him in the aftermath of the explosion?

Either way, it was before he thought I’d betrayed him.

I stare blindly into the stored baggage locker at Malaga Airport. My satchel is sitting inside it, a lonely reminder of the life I’ve led, and the one I’m about to lead again.

A life of running. A life without Roman. Without the children. Without Papa or my brother.

I close my eyes, trying to still my churning stomach. But closing my eyes only takes me straight back to the ballroom in Malaga, and the bomb that has changed our lives forever.

Whatever Roman might have felt for me when he wrote this letter is long gone. I saw the killer in his eyes when he told me to run. Roman believes me to be complicit in the explosion at the ball. He thinks I deliberately endangered his children. There’s no coming back from that kind of betrayal.

The children.

I saw Roman’s face. Whatever Dimitry whispered into his ear turned him from the man I thought I knew into a stone-cold killer. I can’t imagine what news could have been that devastating.

Not the children. Please, God, please, not the children. Please let them be safe.

But even the thought that they might be hurt, even the slightest edge of that thought, is an abyss I cannot dare approach. That way lies utter madness, a loss of such horrific magnitude I can’t begin to comprehend it.

I fumble blindly in the envelope that held his letter, needing to do something, anything, other than let my mind go down that dark road, and my shaking fingers pull out the passport and ticket he put inside it.

I read the name on the passport dully, without taking it in. It belongs to someone else, a name plucked from the ether by some anonymous forger. Just holding the passport, facing the prospect of yet another name, of years lost to the lonely darkness of running, makes me feel sick.

I clutch the edges of the locker, trying to breathe, to force my mind to function. It’s been less than half an hour since I ran from the explosion. It feels like an eternity.

I’m no longer wearing my ball gown. It’s stuffed behind a gas station dumpster half a mile from the ballroom, exchanged for a simple black slip dress made of thin enough material to fold into a tiny patch in my clutch purse. My elaborate hairdo has been replaced by a simple braid, makeup wiped off in a couple of easy swipes. My heels were plain enough to match both dresses. I got a taxi on the roadside outside a bar half a mile away from the ball. I feigned an argument with a nonexistent boyfriend as I climbed into it and addressed the driver in terrible, English-accented Spanish, telling him to take me to the airport so I could fly back to London. I cried the entire way to the airport to give my story credence.

The tears, at least, weren’t fake.

My escape was made on autopilot. I’d thought it through, known that a solid plan was the only prevention against what I knew would be an emotional, not to mention dangerous, escape.

I just hadn’t truly believed it would come to that. Some part of me had dared to believe there might be a solution that would allow me to stay without endangering those I love. Instead, it seems I waited too long, and endangered them all.

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