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“Okay,” Victor says after a few more moments. He blinks, like he’s coming out of an information fugue state, and shakes out his fingers. “Fuck.”
“What?” Malice makes an impatient gesture. “What did you find out?”
“This isn’t some random guy looking to stir up shit,” Victor says quietly. He turns his laptop around so we can see the picture of the man on the screen.
I shiver at the sight of him. He looks harsh and brutal, like Malice, but scarier somehow. There’s something dark and haunting about him, even in the slightly blurry image on the screen.
“This is Ilya Petrov,” Vic informs us all. “Nikolai’s brother.”
“Fuck.” Malice and Ransom both curse at the same time.
I look between the three of them, but I don’t really need anyone to spell out for me why this is worse than someone random doing the snooping. The proof of what brothers are willing to do for each other is right here in front of me. These men have lied, blackmailed, and even killed for each other.
“Makes sense for him to want to get to the bottom of things,” Ransom says. “He must be pissed about Nikolai dying. Maybe they were close.”
Malice shrugs a shoulder. “Even if they weren’t, it’s not like he can just let the fact that someone killed his brother go. He probably wants revenge. At the very least, he likely wants to make sure he’s not next.”
“Now that we know who he is, I can work on tracking him down,” Vic says. “If we work fast, hopefully we can deal with him before he figures out who killed his brother.”
“What else do we know about him?” Malice asks. “Anything else?”
Victor holds up a finger and then spins his laptop back around. He types a bit more, his eyes bouncing back and forth as he scans through whatever site or database he’s searching.
“He has ties to the Russian mafia,” he says after a few beats. “So he’s either ex or current. There’s not much else about him here. He’s almost as much of a ghost as Nikolai was.”
“Probably just as skilled,” Malice mutters. “Or close to it.”
“We’ll need to be careful,” Ransom puts in. “If he’s still trying to track down who killed his brother, we have a small window right now where we can act. He doesn’t know who we are yet, and we need to make use of that. Act quickly.”
My stomach flutters as I process his words.
Act quickly.
If they move on this new information fast, then that means this could be over soon. I won’t need to stay here with them any longer. If they take out Nikolai’s brother, then it’ll be safe for me to go home.
I’ve wanted that ever since the night they first brought me here. To be free of being a pseudo-prisoner, to be able to go back to my regular life and everything that entails. April stopped texting me about that group project for Walsh’s class days ago, but I could try to double down and catch up on all the school work I’ve missed so far. It’ll be hard, but since I don’t have to work late nights anymore, I can do it. I can manage to scrape by this semester and then really throw myself into the next one.
All the things I’ve been working toward so hard are still right there, and I could go back to focusing on them and not all the unnerving things that happen around these men.
I should be excited about that. It’s what I’ve wanted since the night they crashed through that door and shot Nikolai: to just go back to being normal.
And some part of meisexcited, already thinking about the future and my life course correcting. But another part of me is less happy. That part feels strangely… heartbroken to think that this might be over soon.
I don’t want to think too hard about why that is.
38
WILLOW
Armedwith the new information Victor has uncovered, the Voronin brothers leap into action.
Breakfast is officially over as Victor takes his computer upstairs and practically barricades himself in his room to do research, trying to hunt down as much as he can about Ilya Petrov.
Malice and Ransom don’t have the resources that he does, or the neurotic aptitude to use them, so they do their recon by more conventional means, sifting through rumors and calling in a few favors to see if there’s anything they can learn on the street about this guy without drawing attention to themselves.
They spend the rest of the day on that, and I make myself scarce, not wanting to get into the middle of it and risk interrupting any of them.
As conflicted as I feel about leaving and this all possibly being over soon, I know it’s important for them to do this and do it right. Because if Ilya comes for them before they can get to him, then it could be ugly. There are three of them, and I’m sure they fight well together… but still.
