EPILOGUES
STAR
CRYSTALISED - THE XX
The Russians knew how to do fancy houses.
I'd been in a few in my time, but these were closer to a palace than a mansion.
The homes ofnoxxious’sband members had been something special, and Lily's place was a rich man's wet dream, but this was a king's.
Maybe, at one time, ithadbeen a palace. Maybe it had housed a prince and a bunch of baby princes and they’d ruled over Moscow while peering through the many trees in Petrovsky Park until the Bolsheviks had ruled them.
All I knew was that now, it housed an answer to a question I'd been asking myself since Bear, the ex-Prez of the Satan’s Sinners’ MC, had died.
I stared up at a ceiling that a Renaissance master had undoubtedly painted, and I drawled, "Fancy."
Maxim grunted. "Painted with money stolen from the people."
"Didn’t picture you as a communist, Lyanov."
"I grew up on these streets without a ruble to my name," he said as he took my coat off my shoulders and handed it to a waiting attendant. "The government nourishes the rich and lets the poor suffer."
I couldn’t argue when I knew that to be a fact.
"Why do we have to be here again?"
I arched a brow at him. "You’re not supposed to ask questions."
He huffed and dragged me deeper down the hall. "Let’s get this over with. Kuznetsov puts me on edge."
"He should. He’s a dangerous man."
"I knew that without you telling me," he grumbled, and I couldn’t blame him for his shitty attitude.
This palace wasn’t simply an oligarch’s home—it was the headquarters of a group I’d never even heard of until Bear had died.
The United Brotherhood.
Upon Bear’s death when I’d been invited to his base, when I’d seen what he’d learned, when I’d read his intel on the Sparrows, one question had been driving me:who was his source?
I’d been certain he didn't know who fed him the intel.
I’d been even more certain that the information he’d left behind as an inheritance to his son should never have been for anyone's eyes but his own.
That was the thing about bikers—you couldn't trust them not to betray you.
They were loyal only to the club.
And thank fuck for that.
Every piece of information his source had handed him, Bear had kept and stored in his ‘murder room.’ A motel bedroom that was filled with papers and photos and string that ran across the room in a web that he’d pegged more information to.
Digging and digging and digging, using the worm Maverick had created, I'd managed to find my way in by going back to the beginning. Bear had sent photos loaded down with data to himself—huge files that had once helped me crack the nut that was the Sparrows.
There'd been nothing to trace in those files.
So clean.