Page 71 of Lethal Alliance

Papa might have told my mother the full story of that past, but he never told us. Not ever.

“Wow.” Abby’s eyes shine, her wine forgotten. “That’s the most incredible story.” She shakes her head. “How did it end? I mean... how did your home get taken from you?”

My smile fades. “Papa had been at war with a Colombian cartel ever since I was a child. He’d made allies of the biggest Russian families in Miami, formed a coalition to fight the Colombians. I don’t know if anyone told me Papa was the head of that coalition; I just knew, from the way the other men who visited us deferred to him. But then Papa had a stroke.”

I will remember that day as long as I live: my mother’s shriek, the shrill of ambulance sirens.

“The doctors said he probably wouldn’t survive. Mama, Alexei, and I slept at the hospital, too scared to go home in case he died while we weren’t there. While we were sitting at his bedside, one of Papa’s allies, a man named Vilnus Orlov, launched a coup.”

I wrap my hands around the teacup, trying to warm myself on the inside. But there isn’t anything that can melt the frozen memory of that night, and what came after it.

“We had no idea,” I tell Abby softly. “When Vilnus came to the hospital and offered to drive us home, told Mama she needed to take a break, we thought he was being kind. It was only when we got inside our home that we first saw the bodies and the blood.” I grimace. “Vilnus hadn’t even bothered cleaning up before he brought us home. He was too anxious to get us locked up, I guess. That first night, I slept in a bloodstained room, beside a dead body.” My mouth tightens. “It didn’t get any better after that. Vilnus had launched the coup because of what was rumored to be in the vault. He wasn’t happy when none of us could tell him how to open it.

“We were kept alive because Vilnus worked out that our fingerprints were needed to open the vault. Unfortunately for him, our fingerprints alone weren’t enough.”

“Roman.” Abby nods. “Dimitry kind of told me this part.”

“Yes. Roman’s fingerprints are needed, too.” I don’t mention the key. That is Roman’s secret, not mine to tell. “Vilnus was convinced that we knew more about how to open the vault than we were telling him. We didn’t, or at least not back then. When my father didn’t die, Vilnus thought Papa might have the answers he wanted. But Papa was unconscious for months, then a complete invalid for years after that, and Vilnus got impatient.

“He targeted my mother, because he knew it killed Alexei and me to watch her suffer. Then, after she died, he and his men used their fists, and knives, on Alexei and me. It was like a sport to them. They did anything they liked to us, except to the parts of us the rest of the world could see. And they didn’t rape me. At first, because it would have lessened my value. Later, because they were scared I’d cut my own fingerprints off.”

Abby blanches.

I hear the brittle note in my voice and shake it off, thrusting the memories away. I don’t want to think about what Vilnus did to me, not while he still has Masha and Ofelia. And besides, I forced myself to deal with those memories long ago.

Vilnus Orlov stole years of my life. I wasn’t going to allow him to make me a victim for the rest of it.

“Finally I managed to escape with Papa,” I say. “You know most of the rest, or at least the parts that matter.”

Abby pours the last of the bottle into her glass, her face pale. “How old were you?” She glances up briefly. “The night of the coup?”

I stare at the wall behind her, seeing the bloodstained walls, the head blown clean off the guard who had watched me every day since childhood. “I was just seventeen,” I say softly. Her face swims back into focus. “One year older than Ofelia is now.”

She grips my hand. “They’ll get her back, Darya. You know they will.”

I clutch her hand silently, unable to echo her reassurance. We sit in silence until the night is deep and my eyes are drooping.

Finally I give up and see Abby into the guest room. Then I crawl into Roman’s enormous bed and fall into oblivion as soon as my head is on the pillow.

I comehalf awake to the vague rumble of voices, which seem to be getting louder. Through a fog of exhaustion I feel the mattress shift as Roman kneels against it, his lips on my cheek. He smells like blood and gunpowder, and my stomach lurches with fear.

“What happened?” I ask, almost dreading the answer.

“Nothing that matters. Go back to sleep,” he whispers against my hair.

“The girls?”

“Not yet. I promise I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

“Mickey?”

“Safe in bed.” He pulls the covers up over me. “Dimitry and Abby are on the floor below us in your old apartment. I’m going to take a shower. Go to sleep,milaia.” His lips graze my cheek again, and I turn toward him, but he’s already stripping off his clothes, heading for the bathroom. I watch through eyes that keep closing, seeing the old scars on his flesh as if they’re new, the war wounds from the years he’s spent fighting. No amount of scars can dent the breathtaking power of him, the solid wall of muscle that is his back, the hard-corded thighs. In the dim light of the bathroom I watch him shower, marveling that he’s mine, that even amid this chaos, we’ve somehow still got one another.

I’m dozing when he makes it to bed, only semi-waking when he rolls me into his arms, murmuring soothing words into my ear. I fall back to sleep with his hard body cradling mine, his hand cupped around my breast and his breath warm and sweet on my neck.

When I wake again,Roman is already gone, and I discover with a shock that it’s almost midday. There’s a message on my phone:I’ll call as soon as there’s news. Abby is in the kitchen.

I shower and come out into the kitchen to find her perched on a stool, eating watermelon with her coffee.

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