I move closer to her, close enough that I can feel the heat from her body and the soft floral scent that's uniquely hers. "Are you angry with him?"
"Yes." The word comes out sharp, honest. "I'm furious. He left me alone all this time and let me think he might be dead. And now he's playing games, leaving me clues I can't decipher while people are trying to kidnap me."
I reach out and cup her face, my thumb brushing across her cheekbone. Her skin is soft and warm, and I can feel the tension in her jaw. "We'll figure this out. We'll find him, get the answers we need, and end this."
She leans into my touch for just a second before pulling away. "There's something else."
Of course there is. "What?"
"I want to try and leave a note for my father."
29
MARIYA
The cemetery gives me the creeps.
I've never liked these places. Too quiet and still, with rows of headstones stretching out like silent witnesses to lives that ended too soon. The grass is perfectly manicured, the paths clean and well-maintained, but there's something about walking among the dead that makes my skin crawl.
I pull my jacket tighter around myself, even though the afternoon is warm. The note in my pocket feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, and my heart pounds with each step I take deeper into the cemetery. Behind me, at a respectful distance, Andrey and Matvey follow with two guards. Far enough back that it looks like I'm just a woman visiting a family member's grave. Close enough that they can reach me if something goes wrong.
Because something always seems to go wrong these days.
I scan the headstones as I walk, looking for the name I've only heard in stories. Katya Pushkin. My father's baby sister, and the aunt I never met. He used to tell me about her when I wasyounger, his voice going soft in a way it rarely did. How she'd been his favorite sibling, how she'd moved to America to marry an American man she'd fallen in love with, and how she'd died just five years later, giving birth to a stillborn baby.
"She was brave," he'd told me once, his blue eyes distant with memory. "Braver than any of us. She chose love over duty, and she never regretted it."
I'd asked him once where she was buried, and he'd told me. A cemetery in this city, under the shade of an old oak tree. At the time, I'd thought it was just another story. Another piece of family history that didn't really matter to my life.
Now I'm hoping it's the key to reaching him.
The oak tree comes into view, massive and ancient, its branches spreading wide over a section of older graves. I move toward it, my eyes scanning the names carved into weathered stone. Most of them are faded, the letters worn smooth by decades of rain and wind.
But then I see hers. The headstone is simple, just gray granite with her name and dates. But what catches my attention are the flowers. Fresh white tulips, their petals still perfect, are arranged carefully at the base of the stone.
My breath catches in my throat. Someone's been here recently. Very recently.
I glance back at Andrey. He's standing about fifty feet away, his blue eyes fixed on me. Even from this distance, I can see the tension in his body, the way his hand rests near his hip where I know he keeps his gun. He nods once, a small gesture of encouragement.
I turn back to the grave and kneel in the grass. My hands are shaking as I pull the note from my pocket. Andrey helped me write it, mostly in code that would look like gibberish to anyone who didn't know what to look for. I hadn't wanted to do it that way, hadn't wanted my father to know I was working with the Bratva now, with the very people he'd testified against.
But then, he knows I married Andrey. There's no point in pretending otherwise.
The note is brief, just a few lines asking him to meet me to talk. To explain what the hell is going on and why he's hiding while not letting me know he's okay—until now.
I look around carefully, making sure no one else is watching. An elderly woman tends a grave several rows over, but she's not paying attention to me. A groundskeeper works near the entrance, too far away to see what I'm doing.
Slowly, carefully, I reach forward and tuck the note under and behind the white tulips. The stems are still damp, like they were placed here this morning. Maybe even within the last hour.
As I'm pulling my hand back, my fingers brush against something cold. Something metal.
I freeze, my heart slamming against my ribs. Slowly, I move the tulips aside and see it.
A necklace. My mother's necklace.
The one with the small sapphire pendant that she wore every day until she died. The one my father had buried with her because he couldn't bear to see it on anyone else. The one I thought was gone forever, six feet under in a cemetery in Russia.
But here it is, lying in the grass beside my aunt's headstone. Waiting for me.
