MOLLY
“Idon’t understand why we can’t stay at the hospital.” I said as I shifted in the plush leather seat of Ivan’s black Range Rover and watched the outskirts of the city flash past.
Behind us, Doctor Petrov and a Chernov approved team of medics sat in a large adapted van. It looked like a rich family had decided to live their best van life, but the inside was kitted out with the very best in mobile medical care.
Kirill was inside, asleep. He hadn’t woken since they removed the bullet from his chest and operated on his lung. I hugged my middle and willed myself not to cry. If I’d thought I was crying often before, it was nothing compared to now.
“Because he’s a sitting duck at a hospital. The police will try to get bugs in his room, pay staff to spy on him, and the other families would do even worse. Antonio De Sanctis might try again. He embarrassed himself trying to cheat us, and now, a failed attempt on Kirill’s life with the pretense of avenging a slight against his spurned daughter.”
“I thought the police were on the bratva payroll?”
“Not all of them. Some of the unpaid ones still like to do the right thing.”
“Spurned daughters. Undercover nurses. Who needs Broadway around here? I had no idea organized criminals were so dramatic,” I muttered, hugging my knees.
Ivan boomed with laughter, making me jump. Max’s older brother was a big guy. Bear big. Everything he did was big. He looked huge, laughed large, and talked loudly. He was a lot.
“So, where are we going?”
“A little town outside the city. Woodhaven,” Ivan said carelessly.
I froze, turning an incredulous look on him. “Woodhaven.As in Kirill’s hometown?”
Ivan nodded, and then it seemed to hit him. “Right, it must be your hometown, too.”
“Yeah, it was. It was where we met.”
“So I guess we’re going back to the beginning. It’s more poetic than Broadway,” Ivan announced, chuckling and turning the radio on. Brash Russian pop filled the car, and I tried to ignore how it pounded in my temples.
Woodhaven. I hadn’t been back there in years. Ivan was right, it was the start of everything. The place where Henry had terrorized me in my childhood home, and I’d met Kirill at Blackhall Prep, an elite school. I’d been a loner rich girl, and he’d been the scholarship kid going on to better things.
We entered the town limits, and it was like stepping into the past. The feeling only grew stronger as we took a familiar turn toward the biggest, most ostentatious houses in town.
“This used to be my neighborhood,” I muttered, staring out at the familiar streets.
“I think you’ll recognize a lot more in just a minute,” Ivan muttered before turning into my old street.
My childhood home sat back off the road behind an impressive wall. The new owner had only added to the security. Cameras bristled along the boundary, and a guard post sat at a gate that looked ready to endure an invasion. Ivan pulled up outside, and guards with barely concealed guns flanked the vehicle.
I stared in shock around me as we were waved into the compound. There was no denying the feeling the old place gave, fenced in, and secure as a prison. There was also no denying a simple truth becoming clear to me.
“Kirill bought my old house.”
Ivan nodded. “At auction. After your family disappeared, it languished here until your father was declared missing and stopped paying the mortgage long enough for the bank to step in. It was a good few years, and by the time it went to auction, Kirill was able to buy it.”
“I don’t know whether to be touched or totally freaked out,” I confessed as we pulled to a stop in front of the house on the massive gravel turn circle that looked nearly untouched. I turned to Ivan. “Please don’t tell me my room is untouched or something weird like that.”
Ivan’s loud laugh boomed in the car. “What, are you telling me keeping a shrine to the one who got away isn’t romantic?” Ivan laughed again at my expression. “Don’t worry, I can assure you everything is different. Kirill made it a house for adults, not for kids, though. I should say, he always planned to bring you here.”
We got out of the car into the late afternoon sunlight. Spring was sliding into summer in Woodhaven, and the trees and plants around the entrance to the house were flourishing. Dark ivy crawled over the old stone façade of the grand home, and wisteria dripped its purple veils along one side of an ornate orangery.
The van with Kirill and Doctor Petrov pulled up beside Ivan’s car and another Range Rover. It was black, like all things Chernov bratva. Black by name, black by nature. They had their branding on point.
“Devushka, come inside,” a familiar voice called to me from the entrance.
I twisted to see Olga standing in the imposing doorway at the top of the stairs. It was too strange to see the housekeeper anywhere outside The Tower, never mind in my childhood home, a place I’d never thought I’d set foot inside again.
“You should rest,” Olga told me bluntly as I climbed the stairs.