Page 70 of Sapphire Tears

She shakes her head. “Kolya contacted me about a couple years later. Papa’s cancer had just come back, and I was struggling to take care of him and put myself through medical school.”

I nod, already seeing where this is going. “He offered to help you out, didn’t he?”

“All expenses paid. He only asked that I be available to him as a doctor if and when he needed me. He said he’d pay me handsomely for my services when the time came. He put the proposition forward like he was asking me for a favor. But the reality is, he was doing me one. So I became a part of the world that I had hated for so long. I became a Bratva doctor. And I came whenever Kolya Uvarov called.”

My head is reeling from all this new information. Every time I’m so sure I finally have a read on the Uvarov brothers, some new story smashes it all to bits and makes me rebuild from scratch.

The lie ends somewhere.

The truth starts somewhere.

But I’ll be damned if I can pinpoint the spot.

29

JUNE

A sharp, grating noise rings through the room. It sounds like a deadbolt being hacked apart. Sara jumps to her feet and turns towards the door in alarm.

“Stay here,” she orders.

I ignore her and follow along. In a single file line, we creep up to the door. She doesn’t open it wide, just an inch or two. Wide enough to see something.

Two figures moving through the corridors. Both dressed in black. Both masked.

Sara shuts the door and fastens both the top and bottom locks. Then she turns to me, and I see that her eyes have gone from panicked to frantic.

“We have to get out of here.”

“How?” I hiss. “This is the only door out of the room. And we’re three stories up.”

“Call Kolya.”

I reach for my phone before I remember that he confiscated it when he found out that Adrian had been texting me. “I don’t have it on me.”

Immediately, Sara grabs her own phone and starts typing fast. The moment she’s done, she grabs my hand and pulls me towards the opposite side of the room where the tapestries are hung.

“What are you doing?”

For a moment, I think she’s going to get me to hide behind one of the tapestries. But then she pushes one aside to reveal a trap door.

“No fucking way,” I breathe.

It takes both of us to crank open the heavy metal doorknob that releases the door. “Go on,” she says, ushering me into the dark space. “Hurry.”

I pass through the trap door without protest. Sara follows behind me. It’s pitch black, but a second later, Sara’s phone lights up. I can see Kolya’s name on the screen.

She answers the call and puts it on speaker. “Kolya, we just walked through the trap door. Where are you?”

“Where’s June? Is she with you?” His voice is the most panicked I’ve ever heard it.

“She’s right here with me,” Sara assures him. “Where does this passage lead?”

“Down to the bottom floor. Next to the kitchens. How many men did you see?”

“Only two,” she says as we creep along the cramped hallway. “But there has to be more.”

“The security systems have been disabled. So I can’t get a visual, and none of my men are answering. Either they’ve left their posts or they’ve been taken down. Since the former is unlikely…” He leaves that sentence unfinished. “Follow the path right down to the end. You’ll have to take the steps down. Careful—they’re steep and narrow. At the end of the stairs, there’ll be a door. Go through and I’ll meet you on the other side.”

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