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“What do you want to do?” Alek asked him.
“What I want to do is beat them all bloody until someone confesses,” Lyon said. “But that would be foolish.”
He had very few men in his inner circle at a time when he needed every one. He couldn’t afford to lose them all in an effort to ferret out the one who had betrayed him. Especially when none of the men had the kind of ambition — let alone skill — to pull off what would amount to a coup.
No, there was more to it than he was seeing. He was sure of it.
“Let’s go,” Lyon said. “I need to pack.”
He started back through the woods, Alek on his heels. “Pack? For where?”
“Prague.”
15
Kira stood silent next to Lyon in the elevator at the Grand Mark Hotel in Prague. She’d said less than twenty words to him since he’d ordered her to pack her bags for Prague, but she hadn’t fought him.
Compliance was her new weapon.
It was a return to the way she’d handled him immediately after their marriage, when she’d resigned herself to a loveless marriage with the man they called the Lion. In the ensuing weeks, she’d had a new dream, one in which she and Lyon lived happily together, one in which they shared a love like the one shared by Kira’s mother and father.
That had been a fanciful imagining. This was the reality.
She was Lyon’s wife, and she would remain his wife for the foreseeable future, would remain his wife until she realized the power, the legacy, that she and her father had planned.
She glanced at Lyon without turning her head, glad she was still wearing her sunglasses. The sun had been peeking over the horizon when Lyon’s private jet had landed in Prague, and Kira had been eager to shield her eyes from the brilliance of the light casting the storied city in gold.
Now she used the sunglasses to her advantage, taking in the man standing next to her, leaning against the elevator’s reflective interior. His thighs were encased in navy trousers of the finest wool, legs crossed casually at the ankle as if he hadn’t a care in the world. His simple white button-down was open just enough that she had to force herself not to look at the triangle of skin visible through the open buttons at the top.
His dark hair was artfully tousled. She remembered running her fingers through it while he held her, naked, in bed.
She cursed him silently. How did he do it? How did he manage to look so beautiful, so erotic, after a red-eye from Chicago? How did he make her wet when she’d returned full circle to hating him?
The elevator dinged and they stepped into the hotel’s Presidential Suite.
Her gaze was pulled beyond a luxurious living room and bar area toward a wall of windows. Kira moved toward it as if hypnotized, her eyes on the regal towers and spires framed by the glass, the sky lightening to a cerulean blue behind them.
She hadn’t been particularity enthused when Lyon told her they were coming to Prague. She’d been getting settled back into her life at the penthouse, trying to figure out her next move with Lyon and the bratva.
But she hadn’t expected such magnificence. She’d been to Paris and Rome, had marveled at the history in both of those cities. But they seemed almost glossy in comparison to Prague, a page out of a fashion magazine compared to a newspaper printed in a language she didn’t understand.
From this vantage point, Prague felt ageless, timeless. She’d read up on the city on the flight, and she could see the series of bridges that crossed the Vltava, the wide river that wound through the city, including the Charles Bridge, a series of stone arches dating back to the 1300s that spanned the river.
She heard movement behind her and turned to find Rurik entering the room with a bellman and their bags. She was surprised to hear him speak in Czech to the young man pushing the cart.
The young man went to work unloading their bags.
Like Lyon, Rurik had been an enigma to her since the day she’d come to live in the penthouse. Lyon called him a “house manager,” but he’d also taken Rurik with him when leaving the apartment, and Kira had long suspected there was more to him than met the eye. He was too large and muscular to be a simple errand boy, and she’d noticed that he often carried a weapon when he left the penthouse with Lyon. Now he was here with them in Prague where there was no house to manage at all.
He tipped the bellman. When the elevator doors had closed in front of him, Rurik turned to Kira. He pointed to the door on one side of the living room. “Your room is there.”
“Thank you,” Kira said.
“I’m in a room on the next floor down if you need anything,” he said, heading for the elevator. “You have my number.”
Lyon had given her phone back when he’d returned her to the penthouse. It had felt like trust at first, but then she’d realized it wasn’t trust — it was confidence. Kira could try to run again, but he would find her.
And he knew that she knew it.
