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“Plots often are.”
“Michael I couldn’t bear to kill his baby brother, so Boris was stripped of his titles and holdings and exiled instead. He ended up in the UK, where he bought a false identity, and married into a merchant family, the Winstons, who were willing to look past wobbly birth certificates and passports to add an upper-range Significant to their gene pool.”
“Your mother’s family.”
He nodded. “My great-grandfather was a very bitter man. He spent his life trying to regain his titles and status.”
“I thought you said he was a Communist.”
“That was before he became poor.” Alessandro laughed softly. “My grandfather was obsessed with titles as well, which is why my mother ended up in an arranged marriage to my father.”
His mother was a lower-level Significant antistasi. He’d told me before that she had the magic, but not the power or the training to use it.
“My maternal grandfather arranged that marriage for the title, my mother went along with it because she liked my father and wanted to escape her family, my father thought she was beautiful and they would make powerful children, and my paternal grandfather got a dowry out of it. Everyone benefited.”
His eyes were dark. Eleven years after his parents walked down the aisle, Arkan murdered Marcello Sagredo, and Alessandro’s life would never be the same.
I stood up and wrapped my arms around him. He sighed, quietly exhaling tension.
“Does the Imperium want you back?” I asked.
“It’s not me I worry about. Konstantin is dangerous.”
“I know. I will be careful.”
His phone chimed. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it. “Arkan pulled Sanders out of Alaska.”
Sanders was bad news. Of all the Primes in Arkan’s arsenal, he gave me the biggest dollop of anxiety.
Alessandro got up and kissed me. “I have to make a call.”
“I have to let a Russian prince know exactly where he stands.”
He held up his hand. We gave each other a quiet high five and headed out of the conference room, he to his office and I to the front door.
Konstantin sat on a stone bench outside our office building, exactly where I asked him to be after the meeting. A line of our guard dogs stretched from him. They approached one by one, led by their handlers, so they could memorize his scent. I wanted him properly tagged before he and Alessandro went out.
The sky couldn’t decide if it wanted to be overcast or flooded with sunshine, and the wind kept pushing the clouds back and forth. As I stepped outside, the clouds overhead slid aside and a ray of golden sunshine broke through and spilled onto Konstantin, setting his hair and skin aglow. He looked like an angel. Not one of those untouchable regal angels, but one suffused with warmth. It truly was a movie moment. I half expected him to turn to me in slow motion as a sappy soundtrack kicked in.
Konstantin held out his hand as Ranger, a huge German shepherd, sniffed him. “Kakoy horoshiy pios.”
“Do you like dogs?”
He nodded. “They are honest creatures. Unlike us.”
He would know.
The prince turned to me and smiled.
Wow.
“I didn’t realize you were good with a blade,” he said.
“There are many things about me you don’t realize.” And I would keep it that way.
“I am beginning to see that.”
The way he was looking at me . . . It was a little much.
“Why didn’t Arkan target Smirnov? He knew we had him. It was logical that he would be in the armory, and yet Buller walked right past it.”
Konstantin regarded me with his stunning aquamarine eyes. “Arkan lacks objectivity. He is sentimental, and he places value on friendships. Let’s take Xavier. He is undisciplined, volatile, and impulsive. Everything Arkan detests. But for reasons known only to him, he likes Xavier. He sees him as an apprentice of sorts. He lets him get away with things that would get most of his other agents terminated. In American terms, he plays favorites. Smirnov was the favorite. They met in basic training. They were both plucked out of it by Imperial Security, and they went through Miasorubka together. The Meat Grinder. Intense combat training. I suppose your SEAL program might be similar, except that SEAL candidates can quit and rarely die in training. People fed to Miasorubka die quite often.”
“What will happen when Arkan realizes you killed Smirnov?”
Konstantin grinned. “I imagine he will face the sky and howl like a wolf. I wish I could see it.”
He could call Arkan anytime and tell him that his best friend was dead. Yes, that would change the nature of the bait, but I was sure when Arkan found out that Konstantin murdered Smirnov, he would move heaven and earth to punish him. Konstantin was saving it for just the right moment.
The dog pack retreated, led away by their handlers.
