Footsteps behind me get my attention. “He still looks at her painting like that.” Max appears at my shoulder, a strong, sturdy presence. “As if she was his moon, sun, and stars. It’s one of the few times he looks happy. When she died…and he thought you’d also died…I think that’s when the light went out of him.”
The words pierce me like bullets.
Dimitri did that, and I helped him.
The chasm in my chest—the one that opened up on the night of my mother’s murder—gapes wider.
I study Max, feeling like a lost little girl again. “I don’t know what to do.”
He shakes his head and drifts deeper into the vault. “Me neither. But maybe don’t just take my word for it. See foryourself and decide. There’s no rush. Roman waited fifteen years to see you again. He can wait until you’re ready.”
As Max continues his retreat, a prickle of anger stirs in my heart.
I need his insight for a life-changing choice, and he’s walking away?
But maybe don’t just take my word for it.
Has anyone ever said that to me?
My anger morphs to shame as I ponder the situation. Dimitri always told me to trust him, to believe him. That I didn’t need to doubt him.
Now Max advises me to decide for myself rather than blindly trust him.
I keep an eye on him as he limps between the stalagmites in the back.
Then he laughs, pressing his arm against his broken ribs. “Take all the time you want. You’re not going to go broke waiting.”
“Hate to tell you this, Max.” I add more loose pages from the photo album to my stack. “Everything was in Dimitri’s name. I don’t have a single penny or asset. Not even a bank account since I was hiding from Roman.”
“Anika.” The use of my full name gets my attention. “Come here.”
I set down the album and wander over to discover what he found. As I get close, I realize the flat wall between the stalagmites is actually a tight curve tucked into the shadows.
My heart beats a wild rhythm in my chest.
Holy shit.
The cave opens up into a new chamber.
Shelves crafted from steel and heavy grating stretch from floor to ceiling. Stacked on top of them…
Shock weakens my knees at the sight of bundled, plastic-wrapped stacks of currency. Euros, US dollars, yen, rubles, pounds… Not just stacks, but cubes at least two feet per side.
Next to those lie neat piles of silver bars. Below that, I spot gold bars and crates of coins. Chests full of gems with colors that span the entire rainbow.
My head spins, and I think I might collapse.
“Dimitri was right about one thing.” Max gestures over my shoulder, pointing at a shallow handwoven basket filled with blue-gray crystalline clusters. “Pretty sure that’s at least a million dollars’ worth of osmium.”
I have no idea what osmium is, but I recognize the imperial green of the two raw jadeite crystals sitting in a basket of cushioning pine needles.
Just one of those would be enough for me to buy a new house, complete with hydroponics, geothermal heating and cooling, and solar power so I’m never stuck relying on a fireplace again.
Hell, the resources in this one room could purchase and operate this island for the next hundred years, maybe more.
Judging from the glow coming from the back, the cave doesn’t stop here.
But this is Kozlov money. I can’t take it.
