Page 75 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

There’s only one Lukas Romanoff.

The city beckons ahead of me. A hotel. A shower. A bed and a few hours of hard-earned sleep.

Instead, I whip the car around in a screeching U-turn and head back towards the suburbs.

* * *

Outside Of Erik Arnaud’s House

Coming here was a bad idea.

What if someone picked up my trail? What if reports have spread about the car I’m in? I could be bringing enemies right to their door.

“Just put the goddamn blanket down and leave,” I growl to myself.

I’m standing on the front stoop to Brigitte’s brother’s house. The sun still hasn’t fully risen. The sky overhead is mottled gray and black.

The house itself is dark. No lights in the windows. No one awake or moving.

It’s like I’m the last human being on the planet.

The blanket in my hands is the only thing that feels real. Warm and soft, it smells vaguely like my son.

I repeat my command to myself: “Put it down and leave, motherfucker.”

Why is that so difficult?

The house number gleams in front of me in the headlights of a passing car. Unlucky number thirteen.

I’m not superstitious, but you don’t make it as don without learning to trust your gut. And something deep in my chest is throbbing like an alarm right now.

The house looks innocuous enough. Clean, white-painted bricks, a small fake tree on the left side of the door, a mailbox on the right. It’s a suburban dream. Picture perfect. Not a twig out of place in the hedges or a blade of grass growing wrong in the lawn.

So why do I feel so uneasy?

That’s when it hits me.

It doesn’t look lived in. It looks like a set house built for a movie. Fake. Composed. A mirage in the night.

The throbbing intensifies.

Arya is in there.

My son is in there.

And something very, very bad is in there with them. That’s what my senses are saying to me. Or rather, screaming.

Kick in the fucking door and check on them.

Make sure they’re safe.

Make sure they’re alive.

As soon as the idea enters my head, I shove it aside. Coming here was stupid enough. Busting in like a one-man SWAT team would be making things ten times worse.

I take a deep breath and exhale my burgeoning tension. I’m just deliriously exhausted. All this shit I think I’m sensing? It’s bullshit. Made-up. My own mind betraying me.

I need to sleep and then I need to refocus on what matters: separating Zotov’s head from his shoulders and taking back my goddamn city.

---