“We might have some time, though.” Natalia looks at me sympathetically, and my stomach tightens.
Don’t do it. Don’t let yourself hope again. Don’t listen to her. She’s a snake in the garden, nothing else. For all you know, she was sent to torment you. This could all be some trick to make this worse.
I’ve never been a suspicious or paranoid person, but I can feel it trickling into my veins, making me feel sick with it. I have no reason to trust her, nothing to make me feel secure that she’s telling the truth.
“What do you mean?” I ask tightly, feeling the words stick in my throat. “There’s no getting out of here, the guards–”
“Keep your voice down,” Natalia cautions, her own a low and raspy hush. “Our father is a very busy man, Sasha, and one who tends to get caught up in his own work. Now that you are out of his line of sight again, and as long as he believes you are safely behind bars, he’ll assume that you are here for him to get around to killing you when it occurs to him again.”
“That’s–horrible.” The words come out as a whisper, and I feel colder than ever. It makes me feel like an animal caught in a trap, waiting for the hunter to come and finish the job when he feels like it, with no urgency on his part and no agency left in mine.
“I want to help,” Natalia says softly. “There’s no reason for you to die for his pride or his obsessiveness. But I can’t do it alone.” She presses her lips together. “I have some–access. Some tricks. But I will need help–just you and I cannot try to break out of here and succeed.”
“I don’t know what I can do for you in here.” I wave my hand stiffly at the rest of my cell. “I don’t have anything. I don’t know anything. I only even found out that Obelensky was my father a couple of weeks ago. This is–a fucking nightmare.” The last words rush out on a gasp, and I sink my teeth into my lower lip, doing my best not to cry.
“I need names,” Natalia says gently, leaning closer. “Anyone who might care for you, who might be willing to help, who I can try to contact. Give me those names, and I’ll try to get in touch with them, Sasha. We’ll make a plan, and–”
That bone-chilling coldness and sweeping paranoia fills me again. I move away without meaning to, pushing myself further back on the bed as if I could put even more space between her and me.She’s been sent here to find out who was sheltering you all this time,I think with a sick certainty, my eyes widening.Obelensky staged this to get to Viktor, to have proof. If you say anything, it puts all of them and everyone in their orbit in danger.
Natalia sees the sudden distrust and fear in my eyes before I even say anything. I can see it in the flicker of disappointment on her face and the way her shoulders slump slightly. Before all of this, it might have been enough to make me think twice about mistrusting her, but after Art, I’m terrified of making the same mistake again.
There’s the sound of footsteps down the hall, and Natalia stiffens, turning quickly to glance in that direction.
“They’re changing the guards,” she says, her words clipped and rushed suddenly. “I have to go. I know from the look on your face that you don’t want to trust me, Sasha. But I’ll be back, and I’ll find a way to make you trust me. If I can do that, I might be able to get you out of here.”
She spins on one thin, pointy heel, glancing back once more at me before she vanishes into the shadows, slipping away into the darkness of the building as I sit there in utter astonishment.
I’m not entirely sure that this wasn’t all just another dream.
14
MAX
The next day, I once again find myself in the car with Levin, this time on something of a road trip.
“We’re going to Novgorod,” he tells me without preamble as we pull away from the hotel, once again with breakfast in hand. “We’ll stay the night there after we meet our contact, and come back in the morning. With any luck, Yusov will have something for us by then as well.”
“We don’t just want to wait to hear from him?”
Levin all but rolls his eyes as he looks over at me. “The more eggs in the basket, the better Sasha’s chances,” he says simply. “But not too many eggs, or they might start talking to each other.”
“Who are we going to meet?”
“An old associate from the Syndicate.” Levin leans back in his seat, mouth pressed together thinly. “Once again–let me do the talking. She’s not the friendliest type. She’s especially not fond of priests, so let’s leave that bit of backstory out.”
“You’re the one who brought it up last time,” I tell him crossly, gulping black coffee. It’s early in the morning, earlier than even I’m used to rising, and I didn’t sleep well. After my quick and unsatisfying release, I’d been restless, my dreams volleying between erotic and horrifying, all of them having to do with Sasha. I feel as if I slept two hours, at most.
“Because Yusov deserves to have the fear of God put into him,” Levin says wryly. “Valeria, on the other hand–well, even I gave her a wide berth, back when I was a part of the Syndicate.”
“And she still is?” I ask, ignoring Levin’s comment about Yusov.
“In a way. She takes jobs for them.”
“Is it so easy to be in or out? That doesn’t fit with what I’ve heard.”
“For some.” Levin shrugs. “There are a handful who are strong and deadly enough that Vlad sees it to his benefit to allow them to find a way out, for certain deeds, or to keep them on a contractual basis, with greater freedom. Others shouldn’t be free, but have turned into monsters that even Vlad fears. Javier Aguilar is one of those,” he adds. “So long as he stays in Mexico, Vlad won’t go after him. He fears him too much.”
“The one who took Isabella.” I’m not privy to everything that happened in Mexico, when Niall infiltrated Javier Aguilar’s compound–a man called the bride tamer–to rescue Isabella from him. Still, I know enough to know that he’s another man not to be fucked with.