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But Lyon had another piece of the puzzle, one Logan Bane didn’t have.
Another flash of memory swept through his mind: Viktor’s daughter Kira as a child, serious and watchful. Then he saw her as she was now, a woman standing next to Viktor in his office, her hand on his shoulder, bending to kiss his papery cheek.
Viktor’s only child. Beloved by him. Respected by him.
“We’ll see,” Lyon said, standing.
It wasn’t for this man, this stranger, to know the details of Lyon’s plans. He’d held them close this long. A few more weeks was nothing.
Logan Bane stood as well, and they stared at each other across the short distance between them.
“I will accept your offer,” Lyon said. “You give me assurance that the woman drops the murder case and ceases to pursue the bratva for twelve months afterward. I give you my assurance that Yakov will be eliminated, the woman and her child safe from our people as long as they live.”
Logan nodded. “I’ll bring it to her for approval.”
“You have forty-eight hours,” Lyon said. “After that, the deal is off the table.”
He headed for the path, noting that Alek immediately moved into place behind him.
Good. Lyon didn't have friends, but Alek Evanoff was the next best thing. He didn’t yet know Lyon’s plans, but Alek was smart, loyal, and ambitious enough to know the bratva should be — could be -- more than it was.
That he and Lyon should be more than they were.
Lyon had just reached the sidewalk when he thought of something. He turned back to find Bane still standing near the bench, watching him, his bodyguard crossing the grass toward him.
“I’ll consider our agreement sanctioned by Ronan Murphy, given his introduction,” Lyon said. “Failure to fulfill any of the terms will be seen as a betrayal of that agreement — by you and the Syndicate.”
“Same,” Bane said.
Lyon nodded. “Forty-eight hours.”
He turned back to the path, already moving the new pieces into place.
34
Logan led Ella carefully down the path to the beach. The moon was nowhere to be found, and the sky was inky overhead, the stars doing little to light the night.
“If you wanted to get lucky, you could have just booked us a room,” Ella said, laughing. “Or waited for Leo to go to bed.”
“I missed you too much to wait for bedtime,” Logan said. He’d only been gone a day, but his conversation with Lyon Antonov made real the possibility that his relationship with Ella was near its end.
Once he told her what he’d done, he couldn’t take it back.
He wanted to be alone with her when he told her, and he couldn’t afford to wait: the clock was ticking on Antonov’s offer.
He and Mauz had gone straight to the airport following the meeting. Logan had been home by midnight, Ella already fast asleep in his bed. He didn’t have the heart to wake her. Not for this, and not when she worked so hard.
He’d crawled into bed next to her, pulled her into his arms, and eased her back to sleep with tender kisses.
When he woke up, she was already on her computer with her team in Chicago. He’d waited a couple hours, but she’d been neck-deep in work, and he’d finally given up and gone to the office to fill Hawk in on his meeting with Lyonya Antonov.
“Well, this is where it all started,” Ella said as they stepped onto the sand at the cove. “Do you remember?”
“Do I remember?” he asked. “The most beautiful girl in the world took my V-card on this beach. How could I forget?”
She pulled away from him and walked backwards toward the water. “Do you remember what we did after?”
She pulled off her tank top and unbuttoned her shorts.
