“Put her in her room,” Pavel ordered, and Dimitry moved to do exactly that. The moment they’d shared where he offered her solace in the raging storm of her grief was over, the bubble burst as reality intruded. Dimitry lifted her up in his arms, not even looking down at her tear-stained and blotted face as he carried her from the room like a disobedient child. They left her brother’s body on the floor as he stepped over him, and Pavel called someone to dispose of it with only a grimace for the mess he’d made.
Dispose.
As if Sacha hadn’t been a person at all, just the garbage to take out at the end of the day.
“I did everything you asked!” Faye screamed from outside the door as Dimitry carried her off. Pavel didn’t show even a hint of remorse or care for what he’d done, sitting back behind his desk and returning to work while I watched in horror when two men came in with a tarp and nudged Sacha’s body with their boots until it rolled onto it. They carted it out, and housekeepers came to clean the blood from the hardwood floors.
It was all so methodical, so careless. It was something well-rehearsed, that they’d likely done countless times with countless men and women. I didn’t want to think about what would happen to his body and how Pavel would rob Faye of her final goodbye.
“Why?” I asked, glaring at the elder Kuznetsov. Dima’s grip tightened around my waist in warning, but I ignored it in favor of shrugging off his grip. “You had what you wanted.” My lips trembled as the housekeepers deposited the red, soaked rags into their buckets of soapy water and fled the room.
“Hush, Isa,” Dima urged me, tugging me tighter into his chest. Even surrounded by the coppery scent of blood and death, none of that seemed as repulsive as the feeling of his body fitted snuggly against mine.
“No one tells me what to do. Now she has a new handler, and he’ll teach her how to stay in line. Her skills are valuable for now. She won’t be hurt so long as she learns to do what she’s told,” he explained.
I went to reply, but the words stuck in my throat. Helplessness like I’d never known overwhelmed me, knowing there was absolutely nothing I could say that would make a damn bit of difference. Even at his worst, with Rafael my words had power. Here, I was nothing.
Dima released me finally when he seemed to realize I had no intention of attacking his father. I wouldn’t do anything so foolish. Faye had nothing left to lose, but I still had everything I’d never known I wanted but couldn’t imagine my life without: my husband, my baby, and the new family I’d created unwittingly with Regina and the Cortes brothers.
Dima stepped around me and moved closer to his father, saying something in Russian as he went. I ran my fingers over the chess board behind me, trying to draw strength from a symbol that had once given me the most terrifying moments of my life. I forced the memory of Faye’s pain away, needing to focus on what was coming.
The sun had fully set outside while we played our game of chess, and the time would soon come to know if Dima intended to keep his word. Sleeping alone on my first night in Russia was the best possible outcome I dared to hope for.
Pavel’s phone rang with an alarm, the noise shrill as it vibrated on his desk and the buzzing sound seemed to echo through the room. “What is it?” Dima asked, stepping away from the desk and moving toward me once more, like he already knew that whatever it was, he wanted to have me close.
“Radar spotted a plane approaching. They’ll be here soon,” Pavel explained, meeting his son’s eyes intently and holding the stare past the point of comfort. It left me with the distinct impression that Pavel was testing Dima, determining what he would do in the situation if he had been the head of the family. I supposed he was used to having a number of sons to choose from in terms of taking over after he was gone. Suddenly, he was down to only one, and I didn’t get the feeling Dima would have been his first choice.
But my breath stalled in my chest as I pondered the meaning of his words.A plane?I didn’t dare to hope as I reached behind me, grasping one of the chess pieces in my hand and turning it until my thumb touched the flat bottom and I held it firmly. Drawing strength from the familiar feeling of smooth marble in my grasp, I fought back the urge to panic. If Rafe’s lesson where he’d worn a mask had taught me anything at all, it was that my own fear was my greatest enemy in these moments.
“Shoot it down,” Dima said with a shrug. Pavel nodded in approval as Dima turned his attention to me. I leaned back against the table, hating the way the movement jutted out my chest and his attention dropped to it. I resisted the desire to yell out for Pavel to stop, knowing that he wouldn’t listen to me anyway. I needed to wrap my head around my options, around the limited choices I could make in the next moments, but with life and death hanging in the balance, those moments flew by far too quickly.
I felt the moment I had to make the choice like a crack of lightning resounding through my body, threatening to tear my heart in two if Pavel successfully downed the plane and Rafe was on it.
Even my devil couldn’t survive a plane crash.
Dima closed the distance between us, his hand falling to my waist and snapping me out of the moment of dread that had flashed through me. His body was close enough to mine that when Pavel picked up his phone and moved to follow through, everything inside me went still.
Time slowed to a crawl.
Nothing existed but the satisfaction on Dima’s face when he lowered his head toward mine, his eyes on my lips as if he could steal them for himself.
But they didn’t belong to him. They belonged toEl Diablo.
I moved as quickly as I could, striking fast and hard like Rafe and Joaquin had taught me. I drew my hand away from my back, the chess piece clutched in my grip becoming a weapon as I drove it toward his face.
The grey, glinting eyes that were so vivid in a sea of hazy memories widened in shock. His body flinched back just enough to give me the extra space I needed. I put all my weight into it, propelling my body forward toward him and fighting back the urge to gag when the crown on the queen piece pierced through the flesh of his eyeball. It sank into the socket, a sickening pop rippling through the air and shuddering up my arm as I pushed forward. Still, I drove it deeper, raising my leg and kicking it down on top of his kneecap until he collapsed in front of me.
Pavel shouted from beyond his son, his voice a blur as I yanked the queen piece back. My vision filled with red, the haze of blood and gore consuming me as I looked down at the crown of the queen piece and the empty hole where Dima’s eye had once been. His hands raised to touch what he no longer possessed.
Suddenly, he looked like the monster I already knew him to be.
“You fucking bitch!” Pavel yelled, and I threw the bloody chess piece at him with all the strength I could manage. There was a moment of satisfaction when it struck him in the forehead and the marble left a trail of red on his skin, and I wished it had been a knife like Rafe had taught me.
It bounced off as I sprinted forward and out of Dima’s reach. Pavel and I fought for the phone in his hand, his elbow glancing off the side of my cheekbone as I grabbed the cell and threw it to the floor. I stomped my heel down on it twice in quick succession, reveling in the feeling of the screen cracking beneath the pressure even as he shoved me to the side and I toppled over.
Pain exploded across my nose and mouth, taking my breath away, when Pavel kicked me in the face. Everything ached as the taste of blood welled on my tongue. I spit it out, leaning onto my hands and taking a moment of satisfaction in the red stain on the area rug beneath my body. Pavel glared at me, but didn’t move to touch me again.
Not when the baby in my belly was too valuable for him to risk.