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“It wouldn’t only be that,” Trojan said. “It wouldn’t only be him faking his death again. It would be him trying to make it look like the Bratva arranged for the hit and executed the hit. That’s what we’ve picked up on from some messaging apps. But this surveillance would prove that not to be the case. No member of the Bratva is seen on the scene.”

“Maybe that’s why someone had an employee at Pickering Inc. delete the feed, to cover up that we didn’t have anything to do with it,” Viktor said.

“What is curious, though, is the location. That warehouse is owned by a company that’s connected by two degrees to the Konstantin family,” Trojan added.

“That’s not really telling us anything new,” Alexei complained. “We know that they are connected to Gregori already.”

“In other words,” Maksim said, “we need more time to look into this.”

I nodded at him, glad that there would be more time to investigate the angle of this video being tampered with. “Looks like it was a smart choice not to kill Louisa, after all,” I muttered, mostly talking to myself.

Alexei shrugged, getting a call and stepping away to take it.

“What made you change your mind?” Viktor asked, aware that I’d been directed to eliminate her as a loose end.

“She seemed too innocent to be a willing player in anything Gregori’s plotting.” I couldn’t fully explain it, but I expected them to all question why I had saved her and brought her under my protection. “She’s desperate for money, so she could’ve easily been bought off, but maybe whoever’s behind moving that body, or faking the transportation of that body, is more desperate to not have any witnesses at all.”

“Like Gregori,” Maksim said.

“And that means that a target of our enemy is an ally we could keep around,” I said.

“To keep her around here, though?” Maksim asked. “If she’s answered all that she needs to, and if she’s sharing all that she really knows, then why keep her?”

“Well, she knows even more now,” I replied. “If she’s got a target on her back, it’d be a death sentence to just send her back home now.”

Trojan ended the call on speaker, stating that he’d get back to us shortly as he resumed looking into this matter of the video.

Maksim stood, getting ready to leave with Viktor.

“Doesn’t sound like she’s got much of a life to go back to, though, does it?” Viktor asked.

That was up for debate, but if he wanted my honest opinion, then I’d flatly tell him that it didn’t.

Louisa was shell-shocked coming here and realizing that she was under the protective custody of a Mafia family. But if she could get over that, I imagined she’d have all her needs met, all her wishes coming true.

I walked out with my brothers, curious about what she’d tell me if I were to turn her questions back on her.

What do you need, Louisa?

What do you want?

10

LOUISA

Nikolai didn’t come back to the patio with his brother and cousin. I stared at the door they’d gone through, confused and unsure whether I’d done the right thing.

I owed it to them to speak up, to talk about that video. I’d even gone so far with a show of good faith as to log in and show them those few minutes of footage as proof that I wasn’t making anything up.

Nikolai saved my life last night. Potentially, Brady’s too.

So I owed him. I was indebted to him and his family to assist them.

While I watched Paloma and Brady start a puzzle—her suggestion, not his, I felt rooted in place. Like I was melting into this chair and unable to snap out of this reverie.

Too many things were changing and I wasn’t sure what to latch on to.

“Can I go see the fountain again?” Brady asked me.