Page 132 of Immaculate Corruption (Romanoff Bratva)

“Not quite,” Gennady says grimly.

I turn to see him standing next to my mother’s gravestone. I freeze for only a fraction of a second before leaping into action. I snatch up Lukas and scurry away towards the parked car a few dozen yards away.

“Easy there,” Gennady says, trying to calm me down.

“No!” I cry out. “No, you’re not taking me back to him! No! Gennady, I—”

“Arya, relax. I’m not taking you back to him.”

I’m almost to the car now. Lukas is crying again, no doubt because he senses me freaking out. But the calm in Gennady’s voice slows me down.

“How did you even find me?” I gasp.

He holds up his cell phone. “A good spy always keeps his friends as close as his enemies.”

“You tracked me?”

“Guilty.”

I shake my head. “I’m not your friend, Gennady.”

He nods sadly like he understands and expected that answer. “Maybe not, but I’m trying to be yours, Arya.”

“What does that mean?”

“Honestly, I’m not even sure. Just thought it sounded kinda deep and cryptic. We’re in a graveyard, after all.”

I snort through my tears. “How can you be funny when the world is falling to pieces?”

Gennady tilts his head to the side. “Because it’s the only way I know how to be. You’d know something about that, wouldn’t you?”

“What doesthatmean?”

“Look at you,” he says, gesturing to the car and the bags visible in the trunk. “You’re running away. This isn’t the first time you’ve tried that, is it?”

“Stop asking me these goddamn leading questions, Gen.”

He chuckles bitterly. “Am I wrong?”

Lukas has quieted down and is looking back and forth between Gennady and me. My back is up against the cold metal surface of the car, but the frantic sense of fight-or-flight has receded somewhat since Gennady surprised me.

“No,” I admit softly. “You’re not wrong.”

“We do what we’ve always done. I laugh because I don’t know what else to do. You run because you don’t know what else to do. And Dima—”

“Don’t talk about him,” I snap. “Don’t even say his name.”

He nods again, so empathetic that I want to slap him across the face and tell him to stop pitying me. “I understand why you’d say that.”

I bark out another laugh. “No, you definitely do not. You don’t even know the half of it.”

“I know that he’s suffering without you,” he offers.

“Bullshit.”

“He is,” Gennady insists. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Oh, yeah?” I throw out sarcastically. “Is he expecting me to volunteer as a sacrifice for the third Trial?”

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