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"Of course. I wouldn't invite you in there otherwise."
He gripped my elbow in his and led me off the dance floor.
As we meandered across the ballroom that was pure Renaissance elegance, something that Catherine the Great herself might have danced in, he murmured, "You are with Lyanov?"
"I'm with no one."
He clucked his tongue. "So like your mother."
I didn't reply because the desperation for answers was a toxic mass leaking cancerous cells into my bones.
If I blew this, I'd get nothing other than a burial in a mass grave.
I knew that.
I was here for this purpose.
I'd identified this man's IP address.
I'd identified, through investigation, that he was the head of a brotherhood I'd never even heard of, not outside the murder room Bear had left behind.
And as a result, I knew what the United Brotherhood could do and what this man was capable of.
Embracing my death as I headed to his office, I accepted that I'd come so far in my search for answers that I couldn't stop.
Why had Eamonn Keegan killed my mom?
The question drove everything I did.
The silence of Anton’s study was immediate. A stark contrast to the band out in the ballroom that graced the party with modern and classic music.
More like a library than a study, the walls were lined with books, and they ranged from floor to ceiling, with those special stepladders perched in different corners to access the books that were hard to reach.
Above the fireplace, there was a wall of photographs of Anton shaking hands with everyone from celebrities to presidents.
The fire bloomed with heat as if he'd been sitting in here all evening and hadn't been playing host to a party beyond these doors.
In the center, which would put his back to the windows, his desk sat pride of place.
He ushered me over to the chairs in front of it then retreated to the fireplace.
When he returned to my side, he was carrying two photo frames.
My brow furrowed as I realized he was shaking my dad's hand in one. Mom was at his side, smiling that smile every spouse of a celebrity learned to use—apathetic interest.
In another photo, she was there too. Younger, this time. Dressed in a dark suit, boxy, little tailoring, lined against a wall, watching as Kuznetsov shook hands with Clinton.
The problem was... she wasn't standingnearClinton.
She wasn'thisprotective detail.
She was Kuznetsov's.
"I knew you'd come to us, Star," Kuznetsov mused as he studied the photo of my parents. "I knew you'd find us. It was just a matter of patience."
My throat felt as if I'd swallowed an apple whole. "Who are you?"
He smiled as he leaned against his desk. "We are everything, and we are nothing. We were there before the Masons began, and we will be here when one superpower decides to blow up the world with a click of the leader’s fingers."
