What she didn’t know was whether anything he’d shown her—anything they’d shared—had been real. Had it all been part of his legend, even the fact that he’d slept with her?
“I know he lies,” she managed to say. “I imagine it’s a job requirement. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“What you don’t know, apparently, is that Nikolai Markov’s brother was named Kirill.”
The name stopped her heart. The sun-drenched panorama of cobalt sea and azure sky and manicured foliage whirled around her. Blindly she gripped the balustrade until her fingers throbbed with tension.
“Kirill,” she whispered. “Kirill Danilovich?”
Another name that meant nothing. Danilovich was a patronymic, like a middle name, meaning son of Daniel. After Kirill’s death, she’d never found anyone who might have known her slain boyfriend. That conventional avenue of atonement, making her condolences and grieving with the victim’s loved ones, had been closed to her.
Nikolai was his brother?
Her mind reeled like a drunken sailor. Could that possibly be true? If so, what were the chances he hadn’t known? For that matter, what were the chances he’d stumbled on a job involving his brother’s ex-lover by accident?
Pretty damn slim, by her reckoning.
“Merda,” she said softly, dragging out the syllables like two separate words.
“He’s a free agent, more or less, but the FSB has used him a lot over the years,” Alexis said. “He has quite the family history. His grandfather worked for SMERSH—Soviet counterintelligence—then died in a Siberian prison camp during one of Stalin’s purges. He was turned in by his own son, Nikolai’s father, who later became a decorated KGB agent. After the Soviet Union collapsed, both little brother Kirill and big brother Nikolai—his first name is, legally, Nikolai—went to work for the FSB.”
Little brother Kirill.
Madonna mia, she’d been responsible for the death of his little brother. Yet Nikolai had taken the job of protecting her, perhaps even angled for it. What were his intentions?
“I feel sick,” she whispered. “He—doesn’t even look like Kirill.”
“He used to,” Alexis said dryly. “According to these files, your Nikolai has had complete facial reconstructive surgery on at least two occasions.”
Skylar fumbled the phone and nearly dropped it. Tightening her grip, she pressed her fingers to her lips. So not even the face he showed the world was his own?
Alexis kept talking.
“His real name, once upon a time, was Nikolai Brusov. And the only weakness listed in his dossier is you.”
“I’m supposed to be his weakness?” she said faintly. “How ironic.”
“Actually, you’re more of an obsession. He’s been fixated on you since his brother’s death. For years, he had standing orders not to touch you. I’m sure the last thing Moscow wanted was a media replay of what happened in Bangkok.”
You’re more of an obsession…he’s been fixated on you…
Scraps of conversation tumbled like leaves through the chaotic whirl of her thoughts. Barely aware of her surroundings, she drifted toward her abandoned chaise and sank into it, drawing her knees to her chin. Her friend’s voice came dimly to her ears.
“…and get this. Apparently, he keeps a fucking scrapbook. A Skylar Rossi scrapbook. An agent cased his hotel room a few years back and photographed it.”
“A scrapbook? You mean, like a serial killer?” Skylar’s face felt cold, her lips numb. She couldn’t seem to recognize this flat monotone as her own voice.
“Well, he’s not one of those,” Alexis said hastily. “By all appearances, he’s quite the opposite. Nikolai Markov—or Brusov—is a clockwork machine. He kills on command, and his technique is textbook. Precision, artistry and absolute discretion are his bywords. In other words, this isn’t a man who kills for pleasure or personal indulgence. There’s no passion in what he does.”
“No passion?”
An image flashed before her of Nikolai crouched between her thighs, the smoking heat in his midnight eyes just before he went down on her. Her body flushed and her thighs tingled.
Cavolo! She must be losing her mind.
Alexis hesitated. “He doesn’t do children, if that’s any consolation. It’s one of his parameters, and he won’t take those jobs. He’s turned down torture jobs, and he routinely rejects slaughterhouse-style executions that involve any sort of collateral damage. In fact, his list of credited kills includes only a few females—pretty nasty characters, for the most part. In other words, Skylar, you’re not normally his type.”
She allowed herself a faint, bitter smile. “But then there’s that personal connection.”
What were the odds he’d accepted—even maneuvered for—a job that required protecting her, the woman he blamed for his brother’s death? Despite his smooth assurances, she’d never been certain what the MFA intended when they hired him to “take care of her,” except that they valued his famous discretion. He wasn’t the sort of hit man you’d hire if you wanted the death of a high-ranking American diplomat splashed across the front page of Pravda and the Washington Post.
He was precisely the sort of hit man you’d hire when you wanted something special—a discreet, well-timed accident with plausible deniability.
Her stomach churned. She bowed her forehead against her knees and focused on…just…breathing. Her chest felt tight, as though a boa constrictor had wrapped around her torso and squeezed. In a minute, she’d need a hit from her inhaler.
Thank God she’d managed to get a refill.
“Skylar?” Alexis had been calling her name for some time. “Skylar, talk to me. Are you all right?”
Pull yourself together, Dr. Rossi. You’re not the first woman to be betrayed by a man you slept with—a man you trusted with your life. And you damn well won’t be the last.
The important thing was, she’d survived him. For whatever reason, maybe because the MFA had relented when she left Khimgorod and decided to let her live, he hadn’t pulled the trigger. She’d stayed alive and walked away.
And she would never, ever make the mistake of trusting a man with her heart again. Every time she got involved with someone, the outcome was either an emotional mess or an outright disaster.
In this case, it was both of the above.
“Skylar? If you’re there, damn it, say something!”
Wearily she straightened from her huddled, defeated posture. With a sigh, she leaned back against the chaise.
“I’m here. Don’t send out the cavalry just yet. On the other hand, if you could send the cavalry, it would help a hell of a lot. I have three hours to figure out what I’m going to do—if anything—before General Krasnov lands on Capri.”
Her friend’s voice tightened.
“Here’s where my husband and I have a running disagreement. If you were a trained agent, Victor says, here’s a prime chance to get the evidence you need to bring down the head of the entire chemical smuggling operation, permanently. Photos, a recording, witnesses if you can get them, plus garden-variety surveillance on the buyer. Who knows what else could turn up?
“But you’re not an agent, as I keep reminding him. You’re a scientist and a diplomat, with no training and no obligation—”
“But I do have the obligation, Alexis. I’m the only person on Capri who knows what’s about to happen. I’m the person who has a purchase order for VX nerve agent squirreled away in her hotel room. Cavolo! I’m probably the only person on Capri—aside from Krasnov and his buyer—who even knows what VX is.”
She drew a shaking breath. “It’s my obligation to keep this poison from winding up in the hands of a rogue state. I’ve got nine governments trusting me to keep this sort of thing from happening. That’s what they pay me for.”
“As if you need the money.” Alexis snorted. “You’ve practically endowed your own charitable foundation with your father’s ill-gotten gains.”
“Alexis, if I walk away now,
and six months later some photojournalist wins the Pulitzer for an exposé about the effects of VX nerve agent on a remote village full of innocent people on the Korean Peninsula—or in downtown Seoul—I’m not going to be able to live with myself!”
Her voice had gained resonance as she spoke. Now a tincture of renewed resolve flooded through her. This was what she was about, the reason for all of it—the only way she could ever atone for those innocent deaths in Bangkok.
Even Kirill’s, though he’d been anything but innocent.
“I have to stop this from happening,” she said flatly. “If the Embassy won’t help, I’ll get the evidence we need to take down Krasnov and the bloody CMA myself.”
Like a good friend, Alexis pulled out every trick in the bag to dissuade her, even put Victor on the line to rumble cautionary warnings and tactical suggestions at his wife’s insistence. In the end, Skylar thanked both of them, then calmly arranged to scan and email them an image of the VX purchase order in case it all went wrong. In case someone else needed to pursue this without her.
The specifics of what would happen to her, she preferred not to think about. She didn’t want to risk losing her nerve.
When she ended the call, her friends’ last minute warnings still ringing in her ear, she leaned her head against the chaise and closed her eyes. She was really going to do this, she realized. Because failure wasn’t an option, and there wasn’t anyone else. Her odds would have been better with Nikolai in her corner. Instead of the protector he’d pretended to be, he was the vengeful brother of her worst nightmare.
Again the pain of his betrayal slashed through her. She’d have a lifetime, she supposed drearily—if she were lucky—to coddle her broken heart.
Her lungs were still uncomfortably tight. The combination of heartbreak and terror would do that to a person. Absently she reached for her inhaler.
“I wouldn’t do that, Dr. Rossi,” a familiar voice murmured. “It isn’t beneficial for your health.”
She jolted upright, the inhaler spinning away to clatter on the flagstones.
Nikolai Markov—the man she’d thought gone for good, the lover she’d expected never to see again—stood behind her. Still immaculate in his pressed khakis, white shirt open to reveal the silky tanned column of his throat. The ocean breeze ruffled his chocolate hair, the sun picking out bronze highlights in the depths.
Behind mirrored shades, his eyes were inscrutable. But one corner of his delectable mouth curled up.
“Hello, Skylar,” he said softly. “Did you miss me?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
King hunt: Sustained attack on an enemy king, usually resulting in checkmate.
“Madonna mia!” Skylar stared in raw shock at him, this man whose disappearance from her life—melting away as abruptly as he’d appeared—was killing her by slow inches.
The man who’d stalked her, hated her, lied to her, probably seduced her for his own sadistic pleasure. While he was buried inside her, while she came apart in his arms, was he fantasizing about the moment he would finally wrap his hands around her throat?
White-hot rage boiled through her, salted with the scalding pain of betrayal. The bastardo would be lucky if she didn’t kill him herself.
“Come to finish the job?” she said coldly. Thank God her voice was in working order.
His head tilted slightly. Concealed behind the shades, he studied her.
“You left the piazza rather suddenly, Skylar. I didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye. Fortunately, the signora at the tourist office proved more than willing to divulge where you’d gone—in exchange for a generous commission.”
“A commission?” She snorted. “She’s fortunate you opted to bribe her rather than torturing it out of her.”
She’d known at the time the woman was a risk. But she’d believed Nikolai had gotten his damn money and would have no further interest in her. If not, there would be no place on Capri she could hide from him.
His face shuttered.
“Torturing women is not an option on my list of services, Skylar. Clients rely upon my associate Ilya for that.”
An image moved through her brain of the hulking Russian with his mud-colored eyes. A fine sheet of goose bumps rose along her bare arms. Whoever Nikolai Markov—or Brusov—really was, she knew without question she was better off with him.
But what the hell was he doing here? Now that the MFA had paid the piper, maybe he felt free to pursue his personal agenda. Maybe he planned to add one more photo to his Skylar Rossi scrapbook—the crime scene photo of her crumpled body sprawled on the rocks with a broken neck.
Somehow, despite the mountain of evidence against him, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it. His nearness still set every nerve and synapse in her body firing: his effortless elegance against the shattering blue of the Mediterranean sky, the rich warmth of amber spice rising from his suntanned skin, his watchful vigilance as he waited for her to react.
She was the center of his universe, she realized suddenly, with a shock that kicked her heart against her chest. Whether he hated her, protected her, interrogated her or made love to her, she never ceased to be the unwavering focus of his attention. She’d been his sole obsession for eighteen years.
A frisson swept through her and whispered along her bare skin like a balmy breeze.
Her reaction to him, even now, infuriated her. She scrambled to her feet and made a belated swipe for her white sarong. The filmy fabric did little to conceal her virtual nudity under the tiny bikini, but she swept it around her hips and knotted it with shaking fingers.
He watched the entire maneuver, gaze sliding down her legs like a physical caress. His lips pursed in silent approval. Under the heat of the Capri sun, all the air leached slowly from her lungs.
Flustered, she scooped up the inhaler rolling at her feet.
“What are you doing here, Nikolai? Hasn’t the MFA paid your tab?”
“Paid in full.” He eyed the inhaler. “I’ve transferred the entire sum into escrow. Irina’s neurosurgeon will perform the procedure in three days’ time.”
Despite the pain of betrayal burning a hole in her chest, Skylar sensed the reservoir of quiet relief beneath his words. She was human enough to share that sentiment on the unknown woman’s behalf. Transverse myelitis was a hellish disease.
“For her sake, I’m glad.” The question she’d promised herself never to ask came tumbling out. “Is she your girlfriend? Your lover? Your wife?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend. And I damn well don’t have a wife.” He removed the glasses, revealing the obsidian depths of his eyes. They seemed to swallow her, to envelop her in dark heat. His next words nearly failed to register.
“Irina is my sister.”
On guard for another lie, she stared at him.
“Your sister? I didn’t think a man in your profession could afford the luxury of family.”
And what a doozy his family was. His KGB father had turned in his grandfather, who lost his life in the gulag. His brother had been smuggling chemical weapons to the North Koreans. As for Nikolai himself—the man with no name, the cipher who wore another man’s face—
“My sister Irina and her son Misha are my sole surviving relatives.” Though she wanted to look away, his gaze held her trapped. “Misha studies under an assumed name at a Swiss boarding school. Until her illness, Irina floated from place to place, from resort to cruise ship to casino for the most part. I support both of them.
“Believe it or not, I even had a mother,” he said dryly, “whom I also supported until she passed away. Are you surprised to learn I’m human after all?”
“That’s open to debate,” she fired back. “Is there something you’d like to tell me about the male half of the family?”
A muscle ticked in his temple—a microscopic reaction in a normal man. But she knew him well enough to recognize his tell.
“Is there something you’d like to hear?” he countered.
Fresh anger
sparked through her. “Why don’t you tell me about your brother?”
Carefully, he folded his glasses and slipped them into his pocket.
“I don’t have a brother, Skylar.”
“But you did once, didn’t you?” Her anger crested, a band of burning steel that squeezed her chest. “Why don’t you cut the crap, Nikolai, and tell me why you’re here? Did the MFA give you one more assignment? Or is it time to settle old scores?”
“What old score is that?”
The band tightened around her chest.
“Did you find you couldn’t just walk away, Nikolai, from the woman you’ve always blamed for Kirill?”
He blinked—the equivalent for him of a shocked exclamation. Despite the inferno of hurt churning through her, she felt a flicker of satisfaction. For once, she’d made him react.
“The mysterious Victor strikes again, I presume,” he said slowly. “Have you a well-connected lover of your own, Skylar, who’s somehow escaped my notice? Because if so, he ought to be here beside you, protecting you, watching your every move, keeping you out of trouble. Sliding inside you at night, making love to you until you cry out in his arms.”
Just the way I have. The words he didn’t say sent a shiver skidding through her.
“Stop trying to change the subject,” she said, breathless. “I told you I know about Kirill. I even know about your Skylar Rossi scrapbook.”
Finally, that flawless composure cracked. His jaw tightened and he glanced away, biting out a short curse in gutter Russian.
Illogically, the fact that he didn’t rush to deny it made her angrier. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to work herself into an asthma attack. Blinking against the sting of tears, she fumbled the cap off her inhaler.
Nikolai launched into motion like a coiled tiger. A scrape of breath, a blur of movement were all the warning she had before an iron grip closed around her forearm. For the second time in five minutes, her inhaler went spinning through the air.
Suddenly he was filling her vision, inches away, toe to toe, six feet one inch of violently alert Russian male.
The Russian Temptation (Book Two) (Foreign Affairs 2) Page 24
