Namely, trying to track me down so he can sell me off to Liev Ovechkin.
My steps echo as I walk into the living room, looking around for… who knows what. I wonder how long I’ll have to wait here for him to return. It could take minutes, hours, or even days. I don’t have days to waste on this fiasco. By now, Nikolai has surely realized that I’m missing, and he will make the only inference one could draw from my absence: that I’ve switched sides. That I’ve decided to turn away from the man who saved me, who derailed all his best-laid plans to look after me in a way my own father never has.
I feel a pang of guilt in my heart at that thought. I don’t feel good about leaving Nikolai. Especially after the passionate, amazing night we shared together. I’m still not sure I’m making the right choice. But I can’t turn back now, can I? Nikolai is a hard man, and even though I can sense his soft spot for me, it would be foolish and self-absorbed of me to expect that he would continue trying to treat me with kid gloves now that I’ve so blatantly betrayed him.
I swallow hard. That is what I’m doing, isn’t it? Betraying Nikolai. And if his accusations against my father are true, then I’m the one making a mistake here. But I can’t just accept his version of reality as truth, not without a confession.
Or proof.
Still questioning my own sanity, feeling endlessly guilty about betraying one man or the other, I start climbing the staircase up to the third floor, where my father’s executive office is located. He had the third floor built specifically to house his office, wanting a totally separate space to work in. I never thought much of it, since it seemed only natural for him to want some kind of boundary between life and work. But now that I think about it, it seems kind of odd. After all, my father has always blurred the lines between work and life. He’s never not on the clock to some degree. Yeah, he keeps it secret from me, but I’ve never nosed my way into his business before. I was always content to let sleeping dogs lie.
So what prompted the need for a separate space? Suddenly, that alone seems like a condemnation, proof that he’s not the man I thought he was. I hurry up the stairs and down the hallway, stopping in front of the elegant mahogany doors so similar to the ones leading to Liev’s office.
I realize with a jolt that I have never been inside the room before. I never had a need to. There’s an electronic code box at the door, just like at the entrance to the house. I bite my lip, wondering what the code might be. There’s no place for a print-receptor, so it’s got to be purely code-based. I wrack my brain for an answer. I type in my birthdate. It flashes red. Nope. That’s not it. I try his birthday. Red again. I try my parents’ wedding date. Again, red.
“Shit, what is it?” I mutter to myself.
On a weird hunch, I type in another date, and the light flashes green. My eyes go wide as my stomach twists uncomfortably. That’s the right code. As I open the door, it hits me how horrific that is.
The date that unlocks his office is my wedding date.
Which hasn’t arrived yet.
That means he’s been plotting my wedding date long enough to have made it his personal passcode to his office. This date is so important to him, so memorable, that he relies on it. That indicates to me that he’s been planning this since long before he told me about it about a week ago. It’s not the last-minute thing I thought it was. It’s been in the works for a long time.
Maybe even years.
That does not bode well. If he’s been able to keep my arranged marriage a secret for so long, what else could he be hiding from me?
I walk into the office with an invigorated sense of purpose. I’m not going to just wait around for Daddy to return. I’m not going to give him the courtesy of answering to his crimes face to face. I’m going to find proof that will either exonerate him or condemn him, and I’m not going to hold back. This time, I won’t shy away from the truth, no matter how ugly it may be.
I approach his desk and the first thing I see is a framed photograph of me as a toddler. At first, it almost melts my heart, but then I notice that the photograph is slightly warped, not lying flat in the frame. Like it’s bent somehow. I pick up the frame and unscrew the cardboard back to withdraw the photo. To my surprise, it’s a bigger picture than what can be seen at first. It’s folded in half.
I unfold it to see that it’s actually a photo of my mother and me. My mom, beautiful and elegant even in a simply pair of jeans and a sweater, looks to be barely older than I am now. She’s sitting on a couch—the same brown leather couch downstairs—looking down at me with such a warm look of pure love. I’m in a frilly pink dress, sitting on the floor with a big gap-toothed grin on my face. I must be about two or three. The date on the back says May 2002.
I pick the frame up to slide the photo back into it, but to my surprise, something else falls out the back of the frame. I frown and bend down to pick it up. I let out a gasp when I see that it’s a tiny key.
“What the hell?” I murmur to myself.
What does this go to? I look around the room, but at first I don’t see an obvious answer. I walk around to the other side of his desk and open up his laptop. Again, there’s a passcode. I type in the wedding date again, and it works. “Shit,” I breathe.
I sit down in the great leather armchair and begin to click on random files saved to his desktop. My father, for all his cleverness, has never been particularly tech-savvy. I’m sure he has no idea how to encrypt information or what have you.
Saved to the desktop is a file named BLOOM LIST, and my heart beats louder. I click on it, remembering that the private airline rumored to carry trafficked underage children is called the Bloom Express. This time, I don’t hesitate. I’m going to face the truth.
To my horror, I find a massive, almost endless spreadsheet with the names and photos of countless children, all of them wearing frightened expressions, some with tears visible in their eyes. There are categories marked: “date of acquisition” and “date of sale” along with an even more repugnant column labeled, “date of disposal.”
The dates go all the way back to the 1980s, two decades before I was born. I scroll down, too transfixed by panic to stop, and my heart does a painful thump when I see a familiar face, one that looks bizarrely like mine. Only this young girl has blue eyes, where I have brown.
“No,” I murmur. “No, no, no.” I check the name beside it.
Karina Petrekova.
My mother.
“No!” I exclaim, my hands trembling as I move to close the file and back away from the computer with tears in my eyes. My mother was one of the trafficked girls. She was probably bought for my father as a gift or something unimaginable. My own mother!
Before I can click the X to close out of the spreadsheet, something pushes me on. I can’t hide from this anymore. I need to know.
I verify that her date of acquisition and sale occur prior to my parents’ wedding anniversary, and then I scroll over to check the date of disposal.
It’s the date of her death. January 1, 2004. New Year’s Day.
My father always told me that she was hit by a drunk driver returning home in the wee hours, after a long night of partying. But now I have more than enough information to make me suspect that story. After all, what kind of husband would have filed his wife’s tragic death as a “date of disposal?”
I close the file and turn away, trying not to cry. I’ve seen enough. But just as I’m about to rush out of the room, I notice an ugly gray lockbox in the corner of the room, sitting on a bookshelf in between the novels. Holding the tiny key in my hand, I walk over and kneel down, my heart racing.
I lift the key to the lock, and to my surprise, it fits. I turn it and hear a click, and the lockbox door swings open. Inside of it are several thick wads of cash, both in American dollars and in Russian rubles. Nestled neatly between them is a stack of leather-bound books. I pull them out and my jaw drops as I realize it’s a pile of old passports. The first three all bear my father’s photo, but with names I don’t
recognize.
The fourth one belonged to my mother. In her photograph, she looks to be no older than I am now. The fifth and sixth bear names I don’t recognize, but the faces… they look familiar. Especially the one with a man’s photo.
The man looks a lot like Nikolai. Only the birthdate is 1964.
The answer hits me full in the face. This is Nikolai’s father, and the other must be his mother. Nikolai was right. He has been telling the truth about my father, about the criminal enterprise he’s been running right under my nose all these years. The man who raised me is not a good man. Quite the opposite… he’s the devil. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. And all this time, I have defended him. I have believed in him. I’ve trusted him.
I loved him.
I reach into the lockbox, feeling around for anything else. As long as I’m discovering the truth, I might as well learn as much as I can about the man who is swiftly turning into my enemy.
If I’m going to back to Nikolai with this information and beg him to forgive me for doubting him, I don’t want to go back empty-handed. I fumble around and find a sheet of paper covered in a thick layer of dust.
I pull it out, blow off the dust, and start reading. It’s a typed document with my father’s signature at the bottom, and as I read over the legalese, it dawns on me that this is some kind of will. It looks pretty old, but it outlines the fact that in the case of my father’s death, all of his estate, his earnings, his business ventures both legal and illegal, should pass on to me—but only if I remain unmarried at the time of his death.
There is a clause that states that if or when I marry, all of my inheritance shall pass to my husband.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, horrified. No wonder Daddy has been so dead-set on marrying me off to Liev. He doesn’t want me to take over the business. Liev is his partner in crime, and he wants to continue running the empire without me around to meddle in it. He wants to nullify my power, take away what I would have been granted.
If he dies before I marry Liev… it will all be mine. The money, the power, the reputation.
I never wanted that kind of power, and I certainly don’t want his reputation. I refuse to be the criminal my father is. But if I inherit his estate, I could turn over a new leaf. I could use the power and the money and the influence for good.
My heart is pounding so quickly that when I stand up, I nearly fall over with dizziness. It’s so much to take in, so much to comprehend. I can’t believe how wrong I have been all these years, how messed up it is that all this time I’ve been financially benefiting from the evil work my father has done.
I know I can’t go back in time and change the past, but maybe, just maybe I can do something to change the future. I know what I have to do.
Nikolai
“Are you ready for this?” I ask, watching Ana as she holds the phone in her hands, sitting on the bed quietly. She is silent for a long time, but finally, she nods, looking up at me with resolution in her eyes.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m ready.”
Our eyes are locked for a few long moments, and even after everything we have agreed to, there is tension in the air. I have no doubt that she can taste it just as well as I can.
“I will be listening,” I say, nodding back to the living room where I have my laptop set up to monitor the call. “Remember, it’s okay for you to be nervous. He will be expecting you to be. It might look more suspicious if you’re enthusiastic.”
“I know,” she says. “I’ve played the part before. I don’t think he knows I’m capable of lying.”
I crack a smile, but it soon fades.
“I don’t have to tell you that the situation is completely in your hands now,” I say. She gives me a hard stare. She knows exactly what I’m talking about, even though we don’t have to say anything.
If she wanted to, she could easily use this chance to rat me out to her father. I wonder whether she knows I wouldn’t kill her. Regardless, she could abort everything in the next few minutes. Part of me doesn’t want to trust her with this, but the rest of me knows it’s the right thing to do. All I can do now is hope that she sees reason.
“Let’s get this over with,” she says, and I turn and leave the room, making my way over to the table in the living room where I settle down and put on my headphones to monitor the call that will make or break everything my comrades and I have worked for. Within seconds, I hear the phone ringing... then comes the voice of Nestor Koroleva.
“Anastasia,” he says. His voice is cold.
“Daddy,” Ana says, and I have to admit, I’m impressed by how broken she sounds. I can taste resignation in every syllable.
“What do you want, Anastasia?”
“I…”
“Finally deciding to see reason?” he asks.
“Daddy, please, I-”
“Don’t waste my time, Anastasia,” he says. “You’ve done enough damage as it is. I raised you better than to stammer. Now tell me, is your childish little fantasy coming to an end, or are you just taking up more of my time to act out again?”
I hear a pause for what sounds like genuine sniffling on Ana’s part. Nestor is silent. He knows damn well what he’s doing, picking at her ego to keep her from thinking she has the upper hand. He’s a sharp man who is used to this evil business.
“I don’t want to be away anymore, Daddy,” she whimpers. “Are you sure I have to go through with this to come back?”
“You know the answer to that, girl,” he says. “Now, are you ready to act like an adult and come to your senses?”
“...I hate you, Daddy.”
“That’s not an answer to my question.”
“Fine,” she says. “Where do I have to go?”
I carefully write down every relevant detail as Ana sets up arrangements with her father. The conversation lasts some time, but it’s obvious to me that Nestor has been planning this for a long time. He has a clear plan for how things must happen. This has been planned for a very long time.
By the time the phone call is over, I have all the information I need.
Nestor has a private lodge upstate in the mountains. He’ll have things ready in three days’ time, probably because he worries that his daughter will try to back out again, so he wants things ready as quickly as possible. I was pleased to hear Ana bargain with him, making him agree for it to be as small a ceremony as possible.
The fewer people in attendance, the more likely it will be that every single person there deserves the fate that I’m preparing for them.
She also demanded that she not come to him until the day of the wedding. That was a much harder sell for Nestor—not unreasonably. Ana could easily make him look like a fool by preparing the wedding only for her not to show. But he didn’t have much of a choice.
When Ana appears in the doorway, walking toward me, I stand up and smile at her as I cross the room to take her in my arms in a comforting embrace.
“You make a fine actress and negotiator,” I say sincerely.
“I’ve never had to make a phone call like that in my life,” she murmurs into my chest. “I don’t know how I can even speak to him. That man...he’s not who I thought he was. I can even hear his voice differently now.”
I stroke Ana’s hair and kiss her on the head, holding her snugly to me.
“You did better than I could have hoped,” I say.
“What happens now?” she asks, turning her head up to look at me.
“Now, I put my plans into motion,” I say. “And you do just a little more acting.”
Ice crunches under even the most careful of steps, so I hold my body utterly still, crouching around the corner of the massive, snowy rooftop of the luxurious lodge.
The sound of footsteps draws closer. I ready myself, slowing my breath so that not even my visible breath in the chilly air of spring can give me away. Seconds pass like minutes until the guard making his way around the corner is right on top of me.
Silent as a shadow, I lurch upward, ga
rroting wire in my hands, and I whip the thin string of metal around the man’s neck. Before he can tense up, Maxym slips around from behind me and grabs the gun out of his hand while I strangle the man. Slowly, the guard’s thrashing dies down, and he soon goes limp in my arms. Wordlessly, Maxym and I lay him down on the ground and move his gun away from him where it can’t slide off the roof.
All around the building, my comrades are all doing the same thing, neutralizing the outside guards one by one. I give Maxym a nod, then proceed with him further down the roof to the point of entry we planned out.
We didn’t even have to bribe one of the caterers to get us information about this lodge—Ana told me all I needed to know.
The three days between the phone call and now were tense. Ana nearly backed out more than once, but she stayed the course, and I rallied my men. All the prisoners who are here with me today are men who have been burned by the bratva over time, people like me who are only playing the bratva’s games while they bide their time for the perfect moment.
A moment like this.
And now that we have the chance to strike, we aren’t about to let it go to waste.
We already have confirmation that Nestor and Liev are present. Right about now, Liev’s groomsmen—his toadies that worship him in the bratva—are making their way down the aisle with him, waiting for Nestor to walk Ana down the aisle to give her away in just a few moments. Time is of the essence. This has to be perfectly coordinated.
With Maxym watching my back, I make my way to the utility door and use a stolen key to unlock it, slipping inside. Maxym doesn’t follow me until I’m a few paces ahead of him. He knows what the plan is.
Killing for Her Page 15
