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I just have to hope that once I go into the Syndicate compound, I’ll come out again.
—
I’m so keyed up on the drive to the compound, which is located outside of the city proper, that the buzzing of my phone makes me jump, jerking the wheel to one side as I drive. When I’ve recovered, I reach for it, bracing myself for it to be the same cold voice I’d spoken to this afternoon.
Instead, to my surprise, I hear a feminine voice that takes me a brief moment to place. She sounds upset, and for a moment, I have a memory of a different woman’s voice, before I realize that it’s Natalia.
“Mikhail?” There’s a soft, pleading quality to her voice that I’ve never heard from her before. “I hope it’s alright that I called.”
It takes me a second to steel myself against the momentary weakness I feel, the desire to ask her what’s wrong. “I gave youthe phone for that reason,” I tell her instead. “I’m very busy, but if you need something–”
“I need to see you. If I can. I don’t mean to push–I know this is a different kind of arrangement, but what I mean to say is–I’d like to see you tonight, if–”
For a moment, I have the wild and entirely inappropriate urge to turn the car around and drive back to Moscow.She’s vulnerable,I think, my body tightening with anticipation at the idea of how that could be exploited for my own plans.She clearly is upset to call you like this. This isn’t like her.
What if it’s some kind of trap? What if she’s figured something out?
As if she could do anything to me, even if she did.
Once upon a time, Natalia Obelensky discovering my plans for her might have been very bad indeed. The sort of things her father could, and certainly would, have inflicted on me are the sorts of things that make even me shiver with horror. But he’s buried and rotting, and she has nothing and no one now. Even if she suspects me, the worst that can happen is that I have to take her by force, instead of enjoying the pleasure of her giving herself to me willingly.
On the other hand, not arriving at a meeting with the Syndicate has much more far-reaching consequences.
“Mikhail?” Her voice comes over the line again, small and hesitant. “I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have called–”
Maybe after the meeting?
“I’ll have to call you back,” I tell her firmly. “I’m in the middle of something, but when I’m finished, we can talk. Of course, I want to see you again, but–”
“I understand,” she says hastily. Something about the interruption makes me clench my teeth, a hot burst of anger replacing the softness I’d so momentarily felt. “I’m sorry, I–”
“I said it’s fine. It’s just a bad time. I’ll call you back.”
I hang up before I can say anything else that might make the situation worse. I shove the phone into the center console, fighting the surge of emotion that wells up in my chest.
On the one hand, this is good. She trusted me enough to call in a moment of weakness, and that means that things are unfolding just as I hoped they would.
On the other, what I felt at the sound of her soft voice is dangerous. It’s wrong. And it’s nothing I should ever feel for Obelensky’s daughter.
She’s not Mika. She’s nothing like Mika. She’s not a damsel in distress. She’s a snake. A woman hiding from the truth of what she is. And I’m going to make her pay for it.
When I see the forbidding buildings and black iron gate of Obelensky’s compound rising up in front of me as the car winds its way down the long drive, I force my thoughts away from her and the unexpected call.
I need to be at my best for this meeting.
“Smert elo milost.”I give the password again to the guard at the gate. “Mikhail Kasilov. Here to see Vladimir Babanin.”
The guard raises an eyebrow and turns his head, speaking in sharp, rapid Russian into his earpiece. He waits for a moment and then nods.
“The Wolf will see you.”
The gate opens, slowly, and I swallow hard as I put the car into gear, driving up to the front. Four more black-garbed guards are waiting for me when I get out, and one of them holds out his hand.
“Keys and weapons,” he says sharply. “Or no entrance.”
I’m more loathe to give up my gun than my keys, but I hand over both, and the knife I keep on me. In other circumstances, I might have tried to smuggle some weapon in, but not here.
Here, the crime is not worth the punishment. All men in my line of work know what happens if you cross the Syndicate.
