Page 4 of Brutal Loyalty

“I still don’t trust you. But I will permit you to board the plane, and I will warn you that, should you try anything, anything at all, which hinders or threatens those I work for, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

Roman nodded toward the airplane, and Elena breathed out in relief.

He picked up her suitcase, gesturing to the pilot’s door he’d just opened, and together they boarded the plane. While Roman sat down and settled in to run through a series of equipment checks and warm-ups that Elena couldn’t even pretend to understand, she moved behind the front seats to enter the cabin of the craft. And found the door locked.

“Uh-uh. No, Ms. Popov. One consequence of my distrust is that you’ll need to stay where I can see you. As much as it pains me to subject myself to more of your arguing, eye-rolling, and hair-twirling, I must insist.” Roman lifted his chin toward the copilot’s seat.

Elena stared at him as though he’d just eaten a live squirrel. “Sorry—what?” She blinked at him.

“Sit right here, where I can see you, and don’t touch anything.”

Elena wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to like a child, though, and she definitely wasn’t accustomed to being ignored. Her luggage banged against the cabin door, and she sulked back into the cockpit to slip down into the seat next to his.

Looking out the large front window, over the nose of the plane, she scanned the horizon.

“Uh…it’s gotten dark outside,” she said.

“It would still be light out if you’d showed up on time,” Roman replied as he leaned over a small screen. His eyes scrolled across a series of gauges that all looked like something from a science fiction movie—circles and lines with tiny numbers and letters that made no sense to her.

All they needed was a computerized voice talking about a self-destruct sequence and the illusion would be complete, Elena thought.

“No, it would still be light outside ifyouhadn’t decided to give me a huge interrogation instead of just starting the plane and gotten us flying to begin with,” she snapped back.

Roman didn’t respond, focused on his work as he was. They sat in relative silence then, interrupted by the thrum of the engines and the clicking of buttons as he finished what he was doing and finally taxied them out of the hangar and onto the runway. Moments later, he got them into the sky. Elena watched the world blur around them and the landscape below fade into indeterminate blobs of light and color. When she realized they hadn’t spoken at all since leaving the hangar, she let out a tiny sigh of relief; it seemed that Roman’s endless questions were over.

After what felt to Elena like a small eternity, she leaned back in her seat and looked more closely at the sea of tiny buttons and blinking lights. She had never been in a cockpit before. Everything looked so complicated.

Growing tired of staring at the console and all of its complexities, she next watched the clouds for as long as she could bear, then eventually pulled a meal replacement bar and a heavy leatherbound tome from her suitcase. She munched with relative contentment while she read.

“Dostoyevsky?” Roman asked. She looked up to find him staring at her with the faintest hint of intrigue.

“Uh…yeah? Why?” She gave him a sideways look.

“Just didn’t expect that is all,” he said.

“What, just because I’m pretty, you think I can’t read?” Elena nodded toward her suitcase. “Today, Dostoyevsky, and tomorrow, Nietzsche.”

“Never would have pegged you as the philosophy type,” Roman said quietly, looking back toward the front of the plane. Elena rolled her eyes and buried her attention back in her book.

Hours passed while she remained engrossed in her reading, until she noticed Roman fidgeting.

He kept checking that small screen he’d been examining earlier, and she saw something unfamiliar on his face: a flicker of concern.

“Everything…okay?” she asked. Any trace of contempt had fled from her voice now—her earlier irritation had long since passed. This man was the pilot; if he was concerned, she was, as well. Maybe chauffeurone wasn’t the nicest person, and maybe she generally hated his guts, but a problem with the plane meant a problem with them getting home—and Elena wanted nothing more than to be out of this plane and comfortably ensconced at the Sokolov mansion.

“To be honest, no. You’re going to have to help me so we don’t crash,” Roman said gravely.

Elena could only stare back at him, praying he was joking.

CHAPTER3

Roman

“You’re serious?” Elena asked.

Roman nodded. His eyes scanned the monitor, checking the readings for what seemed like the twentieth time, before looking back to her. He hated to ask this catty, loathsome woman for anything at all, especially help, but their lives were at stake.

“Do you see that, there?” He pointed to a small gauge near the center of one of the monitor screens. “That’s an engine indication advisory. The oil temperature in engine three is over a hundred degrees hotter than what’s in the other engines.”

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