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Now she thought it had been a kind of survival instinct. She’d known what Lyon was from the beginning. Her father’s death had been the reminder she needed.
They’d agreed together that she would marry Lyon, but that agreement had been a means to an end, a way to secure the Baranov’s legacy in the bratva despite the lack of a male heir to inherit her father’s title.
She wished she could turn back time, return to the day her father had told her about Lyon’s proposal, decline the offer. Her father would not have forced her to marry Lyon, but she’d been seduced by the promise of power, not just for her, but for the Baranov name. Had been seduced by the opportunity to give her father what would have come easily if only he’d had a son.
Then, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, she’d neglected to honor the spirit of the agreement, had let herself be fooled by her thirst for Lyon, the love she’d allowed to grow like a poisonous seed.
Her father was gone. There was nothing to be done about that now, and she knew he would say the very same thing if he were here. But she could focus on the future, on ensuring that her father hadn’t died in vain. On fulfilling her promise to him.
“I will fix this,” she said, her eyes on her father’s name, etched in stone. “I won’t make the same mistake again.”
She thought of Lyon, of the despair she’d felt the night she’d left. It felt different now, like a symptom of her disease. The disease being love.
It was a disease that would not take root again.
“I love you,Pápochka.”She touched her gloved fingers to her lips and rested them on his name.“And I'm going to make you proud.”
Resolve filled her with purposeful euphoria as she turned to go. The Lion thought he was in control again.
They would see about that.
14
Lyon made his way down the walkway leading to Millennium Park, the silver gleam of the Bean reflecting the city’s surrounding skyscrapers. The city had pitched it as resembling a drop of liquid mercury, but residents had seen something else in its trademark curves.
Hence, the Bean.
The city’s tourist pages heralded the sculpture as a marvel, but Lyon had never cared for it. It seemed to float in the middle of a concrete sea, unintegrated with anything around it.
Now he made his way toward it, avoiding the tourists lining the walkways leading to the sculpture. The wind whistled through the trees along the path, biting into his face, making a mockery of the sun shining brightly in the clear sky overhead.
He spotted Ivan immediately. The older man stood a couple of feet from the Bean, bundled into a black wool coat and staring into the sculpture’s metallic surface. Was he looking at his reflection? Using it to watch the people behind him?
It was anyone’s guess. Despite his long relationship with Ivan Demenok, the fact that Lyon thought of him as a father figure, Ivan sometimes still seemed an enigma.
He crossed the concrete surrounding the Bean and stopped next to the older man.
“What do you see?” Ivan asked, still looking into the reflective surface.
Lyon looked. “Two men trying to move a mountain.”
Ivan chuckled and turned away from the Bean. “Life is a kind of chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with.”
Lyon stifled a sigh. Normally he enjoyed Ivan’s penchant for using quotes about chess to comment on life. In this case, the quote — from Benjamin Franklin —told Lyon nothing he didn’t already know.
“In life, as in chess, one’s own pawns block one’s way,” Lyon said, rebutting with a quote from Charles Buxton.
It was appropriate. Musa had been a pawn in Lyon’s game. Now he stood between Lyon and true leadership of the bratva.
“Indeed,” Ivan said as they made their way slowly around the Bean.
“I didn’t expect another test,” Lyon said.
Ivan didn’t look at him. “The test is of your own making.”
“You told me to do something bold,” Lyon said. “You guaranteed me cover with the Spies.”
“And cover you received,” Ivan said.
