“I’m not leaving New York, and neither is Mom.”
“Fine. Stay if you want, but I’m taking Mara.”
“Why?” I sat up in bed, agitated by Henry’s aggressive urgency.
“Because he’s found us. Viktor fucking Chernov and his men. We aren’t safe here, and we should never have come.”
“I don’t know why you think the man you stole from seven years ago cares about Mom or me, but I’m sure he doesn’t.”
“Don’t be naïve. There is no one Viktor won’t touch to revenge a slight. No one and that includes you and your mother. Please, Mallory . . . I know you don’t like me and probably wouldn’t care if I turned up floating in the east river tomorrow like Kaplan Holmes, but I don’t want you or Mara to get hurt. I may have been a shit dad, but you two are the only family I’ll ever have.”
My hand was frozen in an icy grip around my cell phone as my mind caught up with his words. A sense of foreboding filled me, ripping through me like wildfire. It was the first time Henry had told me the last name of the man we’d been running from for so long.
“Who did you say?” I asked, my voice muted.
“Viktor Chernov,” Henry said. “The Chernov bratva. Now, he’s got his sons looking for us too. Rabid watchdogs are even worse than their father, I’ve heard. Soulless psychopaths.”
My breathing sounded too loud inside my head as everything closed in around me and the world stopped turning.
Chernov.
Chernov.
Kirill Chernov.
I ended the call with my father as a lock clicked into place inside me. I saw Kirill walking with the arrogance of a prince. His bulletproof car and tattooed criminal-looking entourage. Federica’s warnings and The Tower penthouse. His distance and the memory of the burning cold in his eyes. Cold enough to drown a man in the East River?
No. This was Kirill, who I had been waiting on for so long. I could trust him. I trusted him so much that I hadn’t even wondered what his dad’s name was. The only time I’d heard his last name had been from his friend at the Blue Rabbit.
Well, go and ask him now.
I couldn’t deny that instinct.
I slid out of bed and followed him.
The penthouse was a bit clinical but felt barren and creepy in the early morning. The freezing tiles met my feet, reminding me this wasn’t some weird dream I had fallen into—this was happening only days after finding Kirill again. Maybe it was the years between us, but there was something I couldn’t put my finger on, and I had to get to the bottom of it.
I tiptoed down the hall after Kirill. I’d expected the bathroom or kitchen light to be on. Instead, I saw the light blue of something electronic slipping through the inch-wide crack in a doorway I’d never seen open.Kirill’s office? The door had been locked earlier. I knew because I’d checked out every room in the palatial airline hangar he called home while waiting for him days earlier.
My heart thudded in my ears, and a terrible sense of dread clamped down on me. My instincts screamed at me to turn and go back to the warm bed.
Don’t look.
Yet my feet continued to carry me forward.I stopped outside the door and gently pushed it open. It swung in another few inches. Not much, but enough.
Kirill sat at his desk facing me, staring at a huge monitor. The desk was covered in them. He looked up as I pushed the door open. The only sign I’d surprised him was his fist curling into a tight ball on the desk.
“Princess, you need to sleep.”
“My dad called,” I confessed. “He wants to move my mom from the nursing home.” I leaned against the doorjamb, watching the man I had run headlong into the unknown for without once considering my safety.
Kirill frowned. “Why? If it’s about money, you don’t need to ask me. I’ll have the bills transferred to my account.”
“No, it’s not that. He thinks the man he was running from all those years ago has found him. Viktor,” I said slowly. I waited for Kirill to look at me blankly, to wonder why I was telling him this so solemnly. Wetting my lips, I steeled my nerves and leaped off a cliff into the unknown. “Viktor Chernov . . . like you.”
Silence fell, heavy and oppressive. Kirill kept his dark gaze on me, his eyebrows lowered. He seemed confused and uncertain. Good. It reassured me.
He sat back, his fist loosened on the desk, and the pinch between his eyebrows smoothed. Then he smiled.