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“You can speak freely, Ivan,” Mischa says. He passes me and enters the hall with his mentor on his heels. “It’s not like Little Rose has a family to run to, should she escape.”
I grit my teeth against a reply. Instead, I stand and pad after him, straining my ears for more. Maybe there’s a reason Robert never enlightened me more than he needed to. Knowledge is addicting. It’s power. Already, I’m seeing slight nuances in a different light.
Everything seems clearer, and maybe, deep down, I’m…relieved? Briar thought Robert would trade her for me. Is that why she used me as her own decoy? In the end, he proved her wrong.
And she finally won the only game that mattered.
“There was a complication,” Vanya says, drawing my attention back to him. He and Mischa are paces ahead, navigating a section of the house I don’t recognize. It’s darker, the walls plainer and less ornate. Somewhere I suspect they utilize for business over leisure. “Nikolaus hasn’t let your treatment of his son go uncontested. He’s been spreading rumors to other members of the syndicate, the fucking worm.”
“Rumors?” Mischa questions, but I can’t help feeling that he sounds disinterested. Distracted. I’m not the only one haunted by our last conversation, it seems. “Rumors like his son being a fucking traitor who deserved to be gutted?”
“No.” Vanya looks back as if remembering my presence. “Rumors that you…”
“I told you, Vanya,” Mischa scolds. “You can speak freely around her.”
He sounds so damn smug. Whatever the topic of this conversation is, I suspect that it revolves around me.
“Fine. That prick has been saying that you’re too busy fucking Robert Winthorp’s leftovers to properly lead. It’s gotten the others talking. Some are grumbling that Sergei might be more level-headed—”
“Is that so?” Mischa laughs, stroking his chin. “Maybe it’s time to pay Nikolaus a visit? Perhaps later. But for now…”
We round a corner, coming to a narrow room that must be at the very back of the house. Blinds shroud the windows, choking off most natural light. I can only make out the shrouded shapes of various objects. Boxes? Furniture?
“I want to show Little Rose what her life is worth,” Mischa declares. He flicks a light switch, flooding the room with the glow from a single lightbulb dangling overhead.
This space might have been a study once, like the one he has upstairs. Now, it’s a storeroom containing the mysterious cardboard boxes I spotted in the very first place he kept me after my capture. After approaching one, he pries the lid open and grasps one of the items within.
“Look,” he commands, holding it out to me. “Your husband dealt in flesh. But this is what I deal in.”
Butterflies squirm to life in my stomach. I don’t know what to expect. Cocaine like the awful packets Nicolai possessed? Bloodied coins?
Anything but a long, black object. Its infamous shape leaves no question as to what it is.
“Guns?” I whisper.
According to him, my husband made his fortune on the literal backs of others. How fitting that Mischa trades in violence.
“So unimpressed,” he muses as he returns the gun to the box and closes the lid. Is he disappointed? When he captures my chin in his grip, I can’t tell. He merely observes me, hunting for secrets within my skin. “The way you act when I say his fucking name…” He chuckles, but there’s a harshness to the sound that steals my breath away. “It’s like he had you in a fucking cage. But I don’t believe that.” His nostrils flare as he leans in close. “He kept you so fucking pampered a handful of diamonds wouldn’t faze you.”
The sound of a throat being cleared makes me jump, and Mischa turns away from me as if realizing Vanya is even there.
“I’m going to track down Nikolaus,” Vanya says, his tone gruff. “Before that bastard can spread more lies. In fact, I think you let him off too easy the last time. If his son traded with Winthorp’s, who’s to say the father didn’t, too?”
Mischa’s eyes narrow into lethal slits. “Who’s to say.”
“Then let me handle this.” Vanya turns and exits the room.
I make the mistake of thinking we’re through and start after him, desperate to retreat to quiet again. Robert, bathe me in gold? Maybe. Gold chains. Golden cuffs. Golden bars over every window.
“Oh no you don’t.”
I stifle a gasp as Mischa grabs my other arm before I can slip past him.
“I want to know,” he snarls against the back of my throat. “I want to knowmore.”
About Robert.
“Why?” My voice comes out pained. Afraid? “He’s dead—”
