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It only takes one heavy knock for Alexandre to open the door. “Ah, Liam. And friends.” He smirks. “I suppose I should invite you in.”
“You don’t look surprised,” I observe. “Even though I’ve brought company.”
“And we’re not vampires, aye?” Niall growls. “To need to be invited in. We’ll come in if McGregor says we do, and just now, he’s decided that’s what needs to be done.”
“I knew you would come,” Alexandre says, stepping to one side as I enter the hotel room, Niall and Max at my heels. “You pretend to be a gentle man for Ana, but at your core, you are a ruthless killer, just like all of the others. Luca, Viktor, Alexei, Vladimir, Levin, Kaito—you are all the same. Eager to shed blood over perceived slights, to claim what you believe is yours.”
“How the fuck do you know about any of that—about any of them?” I narrow my eyes at him, feeling Niall bristling at my right. “So now you’re not just stalking Ana, you’re stalking me as well?”
Alexandre shrugs, a half-smirk curling one side of his lips. “I thought I should know more about the man who could take my little doll from me. I wanted to know, too, how it was that you found me. It wasn’t hard to guess that the man who gave you the information that led you to me was Kaito Nakamura, who I made my last purchase from before I bought Anastasia from Alexei. All I had to do was pay Kaito a visit under the pretense of another acquisition and give him a handsome sum for what I wanted to acquire instead—information.” He laughs. “He was happy to tell me about you, Levin, and Maximilian here, for a price that I was more than willing to pay. After all, I had already paid a hundred million dollars for Anastasia; I was willing to pay more to have her back.”
He glances from me to Niall and Max and back again. “Kaito said to tell you, by the way, not to be angry with him—that he had told you the Yakuza have no loyalty but to themselves. He gave you information on me, and me information on you in return—fair is fair.”
I grit my teeth angrily, but Alexandre isn’t finished.
“From there,” he says, the smirk still twitching on his lips, “it wasn’t difficult to find out the rest of what I needed to know about you and your compatriots. Your identity, your family, your position—yoursecrets—I know it all, Liam McGregor. You should tell Anastasia the rest before she finds out on her own. Or have you told her already about your deceased half-brother?”
“You’re obsessed,” I snarl, taking a threatening step toward him. “Deranged. You’re a madman—”
Alexandre shrugs. “Perhaps,” he says coolly. “But I would have protected Anastasia better than you can. Loved her better, even. I kept no secrets from her by the time you came for her. She had all of me—the worst and the best. Can you say the same?”
“Enough of this.” I reach for my gun in the holster at my back, beneath the blazer I have on, despite the heat of the day, meant to disguise exactly that. “I’ve heard enough, Alexandre—”
“Stop!” A feminine voice echoes across the room, thickly accented with French, and I know who it is without even looking.
“Call off your bitch, Alexandre,” I growl, my hand on the butt of my own gun. “Now, before I shoot her first.”
“I wouldn’t try it,” she says casually. “I’ll pull the trigger before you can even get your gun free. There’s a bullet pointed at your head right now, Liam.”
My gaze flicks sideways, my blood running cold as I see that she does, indeed, have the drop on me. Only Alexandre had been in the room when we’d walked in—Yvette must have been hiding somewhere. We’d been so focused on him that none of us had seen her until it was too late, and now she has a gun pointed at my head.
Niall instantly reaches for his own weapon, and Yvettetsks, the click of the hammer sounding through the room.
“Don’t even think about it,” she says sharply. “You’re the enforcer, right? You might draw fast, but I’ll shoot before you do. Who will you work for then? Perhaps some third-rate gang might need you to chop heads for them. But it won’t matter, actually, because you’ll be dead.” Her gaze holds steady on me. “You might as well have the priest say last rites for all three of you, because you won’t be leaving here alive.”
“Yvette, lower the gun,” Alexandre says, and I glance sharply at him, shocked. “This is between Liam and me. I did not ask you to come in here, guns drawn. I am trying to convince Liam to handle this in a more civilized manner thanguns, and then you—”
“Stop telling me what to do!” Yvette’s voice rises a notch. “It’s bad enough that you got your little Russian bitchpregnant; now you won’t even let me protect you.Theyhave no interest in being civilized, Alexandre, so why don’t you just—”
A knock at the door startles all three of us, including Alexandre. “Who is it?” Yvette snaps, and for the first time, I see Alexandre look uncertain.
“I’m not sure,” he says carefully. “If it is hotel staff, I will ask them to come back at a better time. Just—Yvette, hold your fire, please. This is not necessary.”
He walks past me, Max and Niall, carefully, as if all three of us and Yvette were bombs that might explode at any moment. He opens the door, and I hear his sharp intake of breath. “What are you—no, this is not a good time. Anastasia!”
I hear someone push past him, coming into the room, and my stomach curdles.Ana.
“I came to talk to you, Alexandre, to ask you to please leave Boston, to please—”
Her words die off, and I pivot, unable to stay still. My hand is still at my back, though I don’t draw my gun, counting on Yvette to be distracted enough not to shoot me. I have to see Ana, have to tell her to leave—
But I hadn’t needed to worry about Yvette shooting me. The instant Ana barges into the room, her pointed chin tilted up as she speaks hastily to Alexandre, Yvette’s focus swivels in a second. She turns, too, her pistol no longer pointed at me.
At that moment, every single person in the room is focused on Ana.
Including Yvette and her gun.
“Yvette,no!” Alexandre’s voice is sharp, cracking through the air like the snap of a whip, but Yvette doesn’t so much as falter. “Yvette, you willnothurt Anastasia. In fact, you will hurt no one here. We can have a civilized conversation about this—”
