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“No, that’s totally okay,” Aurora says with a gentle smile. “You’ll eventually learn to separate the two. The work from the man. I had issues with it at first, knowing what Mikhail does for a living. But deep down, he has a heart of gold. Dimitri is the exact same way. Don’t judge him forwhathe is, butwhohe is. Trust me, it’ll make all the difference.”
Aurora can’t be more than a couple years older than I am, yet she speaks with such moving wisdom that I can’t help but be impressed. Her words resonate with me, helping unlock a realization I didn’t know I was capable of having.
I don’t have to like what Dimitri does for a living. He isn’t his work. I’ve only ever known him to be a fiercely loyal, protective,goodman. Maybe I can make peace with that.
“Natalya?”
I turn to find Dimitri poking his head out through the back door. He crooks a finger and promptly disappears somewhere inside.
“Looks like I’ve been summoned,” I say to Aurora.
“You go on ahead. I need a bit of quiet before the kids get home from school.”
“You have children?”
“Three of them! All of them just as loud as their father.” Aurora throws her head back and laughs. “Go on. I’m sure you have pressing matters to attend to. If you have the time later, maybe we can have some tea?”
I smile wide. “I’d love that.”
* * *
Mikhail Antonov is an intimidating man. Big, burly. A damn bear. I’ll have to take Aurora’s word that he has a heart of gold because helookslike he’s going to tear me in two using the strength of his deathly glare alone.
“So, you’re the woman,” he says by way of greeting.
I gulp. “H-hello?”
“Turn the laptop around, dammit!” someone else speaks.
The voice emanates from the device on Mikhail’s desk. He turns it, revealing a video call with two new faces I’ve never seen before—yet I find them both strangely familiar. They both have dark brown hair and equally dark brown eyes. It’s the shape of their nose, I think. Just like Dimitri’s.
Dimitri takes his place beside me, one hand on the small of my back. He gestures toward the screen. “That’s my twin, Pyotr. And that’s Luka.” There’s no light in his tone, nothing but gravity and coldness. He’s not playing around anymore. “Luka, tell her what you told me.”
The youngest Antonov clears his throat. His location is a mystery to me. It’s as though he’s seated in a dark room, his hoodie pulled over his head, nothing but his computer screen to illuminate his features.
“I was looking over the bomb schematics,” he says. His Russian is heavily accented in American, but I understand him well enough. “Dima sent them over for me to look at. From what I can gather, that’s a close-range trigger transmitter.”
I arch a brow. “But what’s the point? Once I…” I glance at Dimitri.
He nods. “They know everything. It’s cool.”
His twin, Pyotr, scoffs at this, but doesn’t continue.
I clear my throat. “Well, okay, uh… Once I set the timer, it should have gone off by itself. A transmitter would have been a built-in redundancy.”
“You’re assuming it was a mistake in its design,” Mikhail says, his voice like distant thunder. “What if Levitsky added the instructions for a transmitter on purpose?”
I let his words sink in. On purpose…
Something in the back of my brain clicks. “He set it off himself,” I realize aloud. “That’s why it went off early. He probably saw Dimitri leaving the store and that I was still in range. It would have tied up all the loose ends if he managed to kill us at the same time.”
Dimitri sets his jaw. “Luka. Pull up the traffic cam footage. The one showing the exact moment the bomb went off.”
After some rapid click clacking on his keyboard, Luka pulls up a video and screen shares it with everyone. I watch the video play out uncomfortably. I never thought I’d have to watch it once, let alonetwice. I wince as the events play out. The car explodes, shaking the surrounding area. It’s only natural for my eyes to be drawn toward the bottom left of the screen where I can see Dimitri rushing over to help me.
But in the upper right?
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing.
