Page 21 of Lethal Obsession

“What are you doing here?” I asked him, anger and old fear making my voice shake. “You shouldn’t be in this place.”

When he looked at me, his face was as deeply lined as I’d ever seen it, his eyes faded and raw with pain, but there’d been peace in his expression too, or at least acceptance.

“D’yavol obitayet v tikhikh vodakh,” he’d said quietly. The devil lives in the still waters.

I understood immediately.

He’d needed a night alone with his ghosts. A chance to reckon with a past he had been incapable, at the time, of fighting.

In a strange way, I even envied him the ability to so easily lay those ghosts to rest.

But the truth is that I’d rather play host to the devil than disturb the still waters in which my ghosts reside.

Which is why it takes all of my composure now to follow my father’s measured footsteps to the heavy steel door that guards the stone stairway to hell.

That goddamn smell.

It hits me as soon as the door opens, a dank, stale miasma tinged with the sharp edge of blood and violence.

Maybe the latter is only my imagination.

The truth is that I lost so much of my own blood down here, then later spilled so much of others on Orlov’s orders, that, real or not, the stench of it remains indelibly entwined with the air.

I clench my fists, willing my gut to remain calm. Even seven years later, this place makes me sicker than a rookie facing his first corpse.

I follow my father’s stiff back through the dark corridor, refusing to look left or right.

My step falters only once: when I pass the room where Ofelia was kept.

The walls in there are still pockmarked by bullet holes from the night she was rescued, when we finally overturned the Orlovs.

Every bullet hole is a reminder of how close she came to dying. Of the scars she bears still, inside and out.

Breathing deeply, I force myself to pass the open door.

It’s over now. She survived.

I try to hold on to that.

Several moments later, we finally reach the vault.

It’s certainly impressive, I think dispassionately as we enter the codes with which we’ve replaced the original locks and the heavy iron door swings open. The vault is an entire room, built to hold a fortune in pre-revolutionary treasures my father and Roman’s smuggled out of Russia in crates of Graf vodka. Over the last few years, Roman’s family and mine have worked together to restore the treasures to the descendants of their former owners. But many pieces remain unclaimed, their owners either long dead or untraceable.

The lights come on automatically, revealing shelf after shelf of exquisite jewelry and art. At the center of the room are glass cases holding two Fabergé eggs, the most valuable pieces in the entire collection, one belonging to Roman’s family, the other to mine.

Although now I suppose we’re one big, happy fucking family, I think grimly, staring at the jeweled creations.

And just like that, we’re back to Ofelia again.

“Here.” Papa’s voice is almost shockingly loud in the enclosed metal space. He reaches for a small box on one of the shelves. “It isn’t as valuable as some of the pieces. At least, not in monetary terms.”

He opens it, revealing a gossamer-thin webbed necklace interspersed with seed pearls.

Most of the pieces on the shelves have cards beneath them giving details of the original owner. This piece, however, sits on our family’s personal shelf.

I frown as he places it in my hands. “Where did it come from?” I don’t recall having ever seen my mother or Darya wear it.

“It belonged to my first daughter.” His expression is unusually pensive. “It was a christening gift from her maternal grandfather.”