Page 91 of Lethal Alliance

It feels empty without him.

I shiver, wrapping my arms around myself.

Masha looks up at me. “Lexi our friend,” she says solemnly.

“Yes,myshka.” I tousle her hair, trying to still the odd, uneven thudding of my heart. “Lexi is our friend.”

29

DARYA

Zurich is a picture-perfect postcard of pristine blue skies and white peaks, the last shreds of snow clinging to the mountains around the city.

I haven’t been here since my year of finishing school, right before the Orlov coup. It feels odd to be back here again, like visiting another life, one where my greatest concern was what clothes to choose for dinner with my parents in the city.

Some things are the same. The private airport, the limo waiting for us on the tarmac, the heavy security detail guarding our every move.

The biggest thing that has changed is me—and that means the entire world has.

We glide through the city streets toward the downtown bank that holds Roman’s safety deposit box. He is tense on the seat opposite me, his face as remote as carved marble. We still haven’t discussed Rosa. I have to respect his wishes, even if I disagree with them.

There’s still time to change his mind.

After we’ve opened the box. After he’s got the key.

We drive past the grand arches and enormous stone facades of the more famous banks and turn down a smooth cobblestoned road in a quieter part of the city. The door we arrive at is plain black, set into an unremarkable dull stone building. There’s no gold plaque or garish sign announcing the name of the institution. Just a plain intercom that admits us to a formal entry, where Roman has a brief conversation with a cool blonde woman behind a counter. He punches in a code, we both walk through a biometric scanner that records our details, and the woman hands him a small key.

Another door, another conversation, followed by an elevator ride, and we’re met by a man in a very expensive suit. We decline his courteous offer of coffee or champagne, and he leads us to a small room.

The room is empty but for a gleaming steel table, atop which is a large square metal box with several dials and two locks on the front. The man waits outside while Roman turns the dials to enter his code, then comes in with a gold key, which he uses on one of the locks, then leaves again. Roman waits until the man has closed the door behind him before turning his own key.

The lock releases with an audible click.

Roman lifts the lid.

I gasp.

It isn’t like I haven’t seen a Fabergé egg before. I have, more than once. In my own home. At auctions. In catalogs and online.

But I’ve never seen one like this.

The eggs I’ve seen before were a handspan tall.

This one stands at least a foot—and it’s magnificent.

Made of varicolored gold, decorated in crisscrossed threads of rose-cut diamonds and pearl, and encased in translucent sapphire enamel, the jeweled egg surpasses the most opulent imperial examples I’ve ever seen—and I’m familiar with most of them. It gleams up at us from a velvet casing, the carved golden display stand nestled at its base.

“It’s something, huh?” Roman smiles at me as he lifts it out. “Wait until you see what’s inside.” He handles the delicate piece with the same exquisite care he does my body. Watching his fingers delicately probe for the hidden spring that opens the egg is surprisingly intimate, bordering on the erotic.

He glances at me and raises his eyebrows, his lips curving in the secret smile that always sets my skin aflame. “Now what,” he murmurs close to my ear, “has put that particular look in your eye,vedma?”

He presses the button with his eyes still on me. “It always fascinates me,” he says as the lock clicks open, “to discover new ways to make that delicious blush appear. You do realize that if we were playing our old game, Miss Lopez, I would definitely have won the day.”

Now his grin is unmistakable. In the middle of a Swiss bank secure room, handling a black-market masterpiece worth untold millions.

“You’re incorrigible, Mr. Stevanovsky, did you know that?”

He kisses the tip of my nose. “I think Mr. Borovsky is more appropriate in this moment, Miss Petrovsky.” He turns back to the egg and gently allows it to fall open in his hands. The egg parts like an orange cut into four segments, revealing an exquisitely carved double-headed eagle wrought in gold, wearing a brilliant diamond and sapphire crown. The outstretched wings of the eagle are traced in thin strands of seed pearls, the eyes gleaming fierce ruby red.

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