by Roxie Rivera
She nodded. “The dossier that Rada gave Eric kept the detective busy chasing dead ends for a long time.”
“So, Marco was right about Tiffany’s parents,” he said, flicking more ash onto the table. “Were they your agents?”
“I inherited them from a former colleague. They wanted out of the life, and I made it happen. Giving Eric that dossier was the last thing Rada ever did for me.”
He seized on that detail. “For you? But is she working for someone else now?”
“Yes. Not by her own choice,” she added. “She was being blackmailed.”
“By?”
“The same person pulling Marco’s strings.”
“And who is that?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It always is in our line of work.”
“Where is Marco? Do you have a location on him?”
“A morgue in College Station,” he said, looking through the photos again. “Tiffany takes after her mother.” He gestured to his neck. “Left a hell of a mess behind.”
She narrowed her eyes. “The fire? That was you?”
He nodded. “You keep a very close eye on the news.”
“Dead body? Arson?” She shrugged. “It made it onto my radar.”
“The girl is safe, in case you were wondering.”
“I was. Her mother is very worried.”
“Did you move them?”
“I sent them to a safe house. I owed them that much, at least. Do you want to reunite Tiffany with her mother?”
“No,” he answered firmly. “She was very clear that she doesn’t want to see her family anytime soon.”
“Do you blame her? It’s always difficult for children when they learn scary things about their parents.”
“Is that why you haven’t told Holly who her father is? Who you are?”
Frances glanced away, her gaze settling on the floor as sadness darkened her face. “She would never forgive me, and I can’t lose her.”
“I don’t want to lose her either,” he admitted, “but she deserves to know what I am and what I’ve done.”
“Not yet,” Frances said, pinning him in place with her cold stare. “We have to get through this,” she added, pointing to the folder, “before you tell her the truth. If you spring it on her, she’ll run, and we’ll have a harder time keeping her safe. If you care about her,” she paused, “if you love her, you’ll wait.”
Not wanting to talk to Frances about his feelings for Holly, he simply nodded in agreement before returning his attention to the folder before him. “Who was pulling Marco’s chain? Who did he think he was working for?”
“It was a fake DEA agent.” She leaned forward and rifled through the pages and photos in the folder he still hadn’t looked at yet. She found the photo she was looking for and slapped it down in front of him. “Slava Gruzin. She’s been in Canada under a fake name—Sally Green—since the nineties.”
“I know her,” he said, taking a closer look. “She was younger, obviously, but I remember her coming to my dinner at our house when I was a kid.” Feeling strangely homesick seeing a face tied to his childhood, he glanced up at Frances. “Is she still out there?”
She shook her head. “She was handled two nights ago.”
“By you?”
She shook her head. “I’m too old for wetwork. I have a contractor I prefer for jobs like that.”
“Local?” he asked, thinking she used one of the Professionals.
“He used to be,” she replied, leaning back in her chair.
Picking up on her hint, he asked, “Gabe Reyes?”
Was that why Gabe had wanted to speak with him? Why he had asked Nate to give him those contact details? To give him a heads-up about the work he was going to be doing in their territory?
“Yes. His rates are higher than most, but he’s worth it. And he’s clean about his work,” she added, narrowing her gaze. “That fire was pathetic.”
“You weren’t there. I didn’t have a lot of time to clean the scene. I had to make do.” He waved his hand. “It worked out fine. Very little collateral damage.”
“Your lack of planning is astounding.”
Never one to take criticism gracefully, he retorted, “Your lack of transparency is going to get Holly killed.”
She pursed her lips. “You don’t get to sit there and tell me how to protect my daughter.”
“You’re not the only one who wants to protect her.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said, setting her pistol on the table. “Which is why you’re still breathing.”
He tossed down the folder. “I’m tired of these games. Just tell me what the fuck I need to know and let’s figure out how we’re going to protect Holly.”
Frances inhaled sharply before exhaling slowly. She lowered her weapon to her lap, changing her aim from his chest to his dick. He wasn’t thrilled about that, but he figured it was better than a bullet to the heart.
“You aren’t going to like the story I’m going to tell,” she began. “There’s a very real chance that we’re going to die. You and me,” she clarified. “Me for something I did years ago, and you for the sins of your parents.”
“Well, you’ll have to be more specific because I’ve seen my parents’ files and they committed a number of sins for the motherland.”
“Yes, but this one, in particular, was the worst,” she countered. “It’s not in any of the files, but it started all of this.” She pointed to the folder. “The girl. The blonde.”
He took her picture from the folder. “What about her?”
“Look at her.”
He did. He really looked at her. And then he knew. “Is this Holly’s mother? Her birthmother?”
Frances nodded. “Kira Gurianova. She was a young agent. Brand new but very good. She had that natural talent for this kind of work. She would have been great someday.”
“But?”
“But she made the mistake of falling in love with my brother.”
“Your…brother?” Kostya finally made the connection. “You’re Maksim’s sister. You’re Holly’s aunt. Nikolai’s aunt.”
She nodded, her gaze taking on a faraway quality. “After our parents died, we were separated as children. Maks ended up in a boy’s home, and I went to a girl’s orphanage. I got plucked out very quickly and sent for training. He had a rougher start to life. Much like Nikolai,” she added. “It’s why they’re so much alike. Not in their dealings with women, thankfully, but in all the other ways.”
“Was Kira a honey trap for your brother?”
“It started that way. He was onto her in an instant. He’s always been scarily good at ferreting out liars. He knew what she was and what she wanted from their first meeting. She got under his skin. Before they knew it, they were in love. Real love,” she emphasized. “He loved her in a way he never cared for any of the others. I think he would have eventually divorced Galina for Kira. It was that serious.”
“Which would have been a problem for her handlers,” he murmured knowingly. “Why were they after Maksim? This was a wild time for our country. Politically,” he clarified. “From what I’ve read of the files back then, the mafia wasn’t high on the list of priorities for our intelligence agencies.”
“You’re right. It wasn’t. This wasn’t about politics or national security. It was a vendetta, plain and simple.”
“Between?”
“Maks and Igor Rybak.”
He blinked. “The shadow head of KGB? The man who personally trained my parents?”
“And me,” she said. “And Kira. And many others.”
Realizing how deeply the connections between Maksim and his own family went, he felt suddenly off-kilter. “What was their vendetta about?”
“A woman,” she answered sadly. “It seems to be the running theme in my brother’s life. The details aren’t important, but it was bad enough that Igor spent most of his life trying to hurt my brother.”
Kostya was certain the detail
s were important, but he would get those answers later. “But he didn’t know you were Maksim’s sister?”
She shook her head. “There weren’t any files on us as children. After the war, there were more important things than getting paperwork done correctly. I didn’t find Maks again until I was in my early twenties. By then, he had a bloody, violent history, and Igor was part of it. I kept my mouth shut and made sure we were never tied together as siblings. I did whatever I could to help Maks grow his empire, and he did whatever he could to help me when I needed it.”
Going back to the picture of Kira, he said, “Igor knew that Maksim wouldn’t be able to resist a beauty like this.”
“Yes. She wasn’t careful, though. She got pregnant, and once her handlers realized her condition, they pulled her from the field. She was held in isolation and interrogation for a few weeks before they sent her out for an abortion.”
“That obviously didn’t happen,” he remarked.
“She killed the agents who had escorted her and escaped. Maksim put her up in different safe houses, kept her happy and healthy while she carried his baby. I was working in Moscow at the time, doing energy contracts and negotiations between the Russian and American governments. I kept my ear to the ground and tried to keep Maksim apprised of any developments toward Kira.”
“If Centre wanted her, they were going to find her eventually. You, of all people, should know that,” he said.
“They sent their best team to find her—and they did.”
Seeming anxious suddenly, she reached across the table for the pack of cigarettes he’d dropped there. He slid his lighter toward her, and she lit up, her thin, elegantly gloved fingers working the lighter with a kind of graceful elegance he had rarely seen.
She inhaled, her eyes closing briefly, and then blew out a long, slow breath. “I got a tip from a friend on the inside, and I left to go find and move her. Maksim was too far away so I knew that I had to be the one to get there first. But there was a storm,” she explained. “A terrible blizzard. It slowed me down. When I got to the safe house, it was too late. Her guards were dead. The nurse and midwife staying with her were both dead.”
“And Kira?”
“Shot in the heart and the head, dead on the floor by an empty bassinet.” She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “She had gone into labor earlier in the day. All the equipment and supplies for a delivery had been used. There was still a pile of bloody laundry in the corner of the room. She would have been too weak to fight or run.”
“And Holly?” he asked, his heart in his throat.
“I heard a banging in the kitchen,” Frances said, her eyes glistening with tears. “I followed it and found the back door open. It was banging against the frame because of the wind. There was snow building up on the kitchen floor. I went to close the door and then I heard this strange sound. It was…it was like a little kitten. Just soft and weak.” Her hand was shaking as she brought the cigarette to her mouth for another draw. “And that’s when I knew what they’d done. They had thrown the baby out into the cold to die.”
“What?” he asked, aghast at the cruelty. “Just tossed her out in the snow?”
“They put her in the trashcan. Just dropped her in there like a piece of garbage.” She flicked ash on the table. “I picked her up and put her inside my coat. I got in the car, put her inside my shirt against my skin and closed the coat over her, and I drove away as fast as I could. I took her to a hospital that I could trust, told them she was mine, and never left her side again. It was easy enough to get the papers I needed to bring her home as my daughter.”
Kostya was at a loss for words. Their business was a messy one, and sometimes terrible things were done, but to torture a baby by throwing them out to die in the cold? It was something he couldn’t fathom. It was a cruelty that he didn’t understand.
“How did Maksim respond?” he asked.
“The same way he always does. Violence. Bloodshed.” She put out her cigarette on the edge of the table and pocketed the butt. “It was a volatile time politically, and he used his contacts to make sure that Igor was done.”
“He had him killed,” Kostya said, trying to remember when, exactly, Igor had died. “It was February, wasn’t it? When he died?”
She smiled wryly. “Do you really think my brother was going to let the man who killed his lover and tried to murder his baby just die? Do you think him that merciful?”
He went cold at the thought of how far Maksim would go for vengeance. “Torture?”
She nodded. “For a while.”
“And then?”
“And then Maks sent him to a place where he would be forgotten.”
He finally put together the clues she’d sent him. “The fingerprint!”
“I know one of your spiders hit the Interpol database. Igor was wiped off of the databases years ago. He’s a ghost.”
“But he’s the prisoner in the Black Dolphin you wanted me to find.”
“He was the prisoner in the Black Dolphin.”
“Was?” he repeated, his heartbeat ticking up a few paces. “He’s dead—or he escaped?”
“Escaped.”
“How? That prison is inescapable.”
“Not when you’re dead,” she replied. Reaching forward, she touched the photo of Slava. “She finally located him in the prison a few months ago. She found a doctor working in the facility that she could extort. She used him to have Igor declared dead after a heart attack that he probably induced with medication. Once Igor was in the prison morgue, it was easy enough for her to smuggle him out into the real world.”
He looked at the photos and their numbers. “And this is his hitlist.”
“Yes. He’s killing everyone who betrayed or abandoned him.”
Trying to think critically and logically, he said, “Igor is old now. He’s been in a shithole for almost thirty years. He’s broken down physically and mentally.” He glanced at Slava’s photo. “And his only ally is dead.”
“No,” she countered. “He’s found other allies.”
“Mexico,” he said, feeling that cold chill ripple up his spine again. No wonder they hadn’t been able to locate Lorenzo.
“The enemy of my enemy,” she replied. “They’re both men with nothing to lose.”
Worrying about the mayhem Lorenzo and Igor could cause together, he stated the obvious. “We have to find them.”
“I have Gabe working on it. He got some information from Slava, but I’m not sure how much of it was useful. I suspect he’ll sniff out Lorenzo quicker than Igor.”
“One will lead us to the other.” He started piling everything back in the folder. “What are you planning to do?”
“Work my contacts. Convince my brother to stay in Moscow. Keep Holly safe.”
“Maksim is wanting to come here?”
“Mexico,” she answered with a shake of her head. “He wants to be the one that finally kills Igor.”
“That’s just what we need,” he grumbled, thinking of the trouble Maksim could cause down south. He was just as hardheaded as Nikolai, maybe even worse.
Just as he started to close the folder and slip it into his jacket, he caught sight of his mother. Remembering what Frances had said earlier about the sins of his parents, he slowly glanced up at her. She had a sad look on her face, her pale eyes darkened by regret. She shook her head, as if reading his mind. “You don’t have to ask if you aren’t ready to hear it.”
His heart clamored in his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. Nevertheless, he asked, “What team did they send after Kira?”
“Your parents,” she said after a second’s pause. “Nina and Arkady.”
Feeling lightheaded, he stood abruptly and pushed away from the table. He pocketed the folder, his cigarettes and lighter. His mouth dry, he said, “I’ll be with Holly tonight if you need to find me.”
Frances didn’t try to stop him leaving or tell him that she didn’t want him near Holly. Maybe she understood more than
he had suspected. Maybe she saw him as a mother would see their child. He was suddenly a little boy whose life had been completely upended by the knowledge that his parents had tried to kill the baby who had grown up to be the woman he loved.
He needed to see Holly. He needed to hold her and love her. He needed to be with someone who cared about him, who had always been real and truthful.
Out in his car, he raked his shaky fingers through his hair. There was something else that Frances hadn’t told him. It was an answer he hadn’t been ready to hear.
If his parents had killed Kira, had Maksim killed his mother and father?
Glancing back the house, he felt a twisting punch in his gut. Or had he just been sitting across from the woman who had murdered his parents?
Chapter Eighteen
“DID YOU SEE the ballroom mockup and cost estimate for the gala?” Savannah asked as she swanned into my office and dropped onto the sofa.
“I glanced at them,” I said, my gaze fixed on the computer screen in front of me. While I had been out at Samovar, there had been a minor dustup between a client and one of our newest stylists. Gesturing to the screen, I asked, “Were you on the floor when this client complained?”
“Yes,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “It was absolute bullshit. Nisha was supervising Katie. They talked to this girl at length about the color she wanted, and the reality of how many appointments it would take to get there. I heard Nisha and Katie both suggest a more natural peachy or caramel tone to the highlights, but the client insisted on silvery blonde!”
“Was it really as bad as her shit fit would have me believe?” Rereading the nasty comment that had been left on our social media account, I worried the client had been left with a dye job from hell.
She shook her head. “The highlights were beautiful. Katie did a really good job of giving the client what they wanted while also balancing the overall look of her hair. It’s not Katie’s fault that her client didn’t listen to the advice she was given. Here.” She pulled her phone from the pocket of her skirt and tossed it at me. “Look at the photos I snapped of her hair. It looks perfectly fine.”
And it did. It looked very nice, flattering even. It wasn’t exactly silver, but it was close. With only one appointment, there was no way to take dark brown hair to silver even with a bucket of chemicals and heat.