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Kira grabbed three glasses and a bottle of bourbon from the kitchen. The bar cabinet that had stood against one wall in the living room had been destroyed by Musa, and she’d had to hunt in the tall kitchen cupboards for a bottle of the bourbon Lyon favored.
Alek stood by the fireplace — scrubbed clean by Lyon and Kira after Musa left — while Lyon stood at the glass doors leading to the deck.
She and Lyon had spent three hours righting the house after Musa’s departure. The furniture was still damaged, but it was useable, and she set the glasses down on the coffee table and poured a generous amount of bourbon into each glass.
“I think a drink is in order.” She handed one of the glasses to Lyon. Their fingers brushed when he took the glass.
She’d been resisting the urge to comfort him all evening. He wouldn’t welcome it — she could almost see the rage boiling under his skin — and the urge itself was dangerous for her. She’d thrown herself into cleaning instead, focusing on the practical aspects of cleansing Lyon’s beautiful house of Musa’s invasion.
She didn’t know what would happen next, but Lyon had called off Rurik’s arrival, which she took to mean he wouldn’t be leaving her at the lake house after what had happened with Musa.
She started to hand Alex one of the glasses of bourbon, then hesitated. “Would you prefer vodka?”
He shook his head. “This is fine. Thank you.”
She raised her glass. “To our enemies, may they die a slow and painful death.” She kept her voice light in spite of the dark words, not wanting to add to the somber tone permeating the room.
She was surprised when Lyon laughed.
He crossed the room to touch his glass to hers. “I must admit, I’m coming to enjoy your toasts."
Alek's blue eyes were full of questions, but he raised his glass anyway.
Afternoon had turned to night, the house grown dark, and the living room was barely lit with the two table lamps they’d managed to salvage, sans shades, which had been crushed.
They drank in silence, Lyon staring into the fire he’d started once they cleaned the fireplace.
“How did Musa Shapiev get someone with the expertise to deactivate the security system?” Kira finally asked. It hadn’t even pinged the app on Lyon’s phone.
“He’s not as stupid as he looks,” Lyon said. “Unfortunately.”
“Lyon’s right,” Alek said. “And I have more bad news on that front.”
Lyon looked at him. “I’m listening.”
“You’ve been exiled by the Spies pending a hearing,” Alek said. “It’s what I was coming to tell you.”
That explained how Alek had gotten there so fast, even before Lyon called to tell him about Musa’s invasion of the house.
Dread dropped like a stone in Kira’s stomach.
Lyon stared at him. “I’vebeen exiled? Me?”
To be exiled meant to be cut off from the bratva, to be cut off from its resources. It was one step away from a hit.
One step away from a sanctioned contract.
Alek’s nod was slow. “Because of what you did at the Port.”
“But I — ” Lyon closed his mouth, as if he’d thought better of what he’d been about to say, and Kira wondered if she would ever know all of his secrets. “It doesn't make sense."
“What happened at the Port?” Kira asked.
“I cut off one of Musa’s distribution channels,” Lyon said. “That’s why I had to get you out of the city.”
She took it all in: the fact that he hadn’t denied her an answer, that he didn’t brush off her question, that he’d disrupted one of the bratva’s supply chains — stolen goods which were then sold to everyone from end users to wholesalers to construction companies — to obviously catastrophic circumstances.
