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There was a goldfinch and a blue jay, a cardinal and a hummingbird, even a snowy owl. She touched the last bird and something tugged at her chest.
It was a small falcon with a spotted chest and yellow feet.
Malen'kiy sokol…
As if her mother had known.
“I’ll take this,” Kira said. “I don’t know where it will end up, but I want the baby to have it.”
She noted the wistfulness in her voice and was glad it had escaped here, among friends, and not when she was with Lyon. She wanted to spend the last three months of her pregnancy getting ready for the baby, decorating a nursery, taking childbirth classes with Lyon.
Instead they were in limbo. Tonight, Lyon would join his men in breaching the water crib where Vadim and his men had been staging their takeover.
After that, who knew?
She felt Annie’s hand close around hers.
“I’m sorry,” her friend said. “This must be such a hard time to be pregnant.”
Questions crowded Kira’s mind. Would they be back in the Lake Forest house when the baby came? At the penthouse? Or would they be someplace else altogether?
Would Lyon survive his attempt at assassinating Vadim and his son? Or would his weakened body and traumatized mind be a fatal liability?
They were questions she didn’t want to voice to Lyon. She already knew he wouldn’t consider sending the men in his place.
He wanted to be there. To be the one to end the men who had tortured him.
Kira understood that.
Lyon needed her to be strong. To trust him and accept these challenges as part and parcel of being the pakhan’s wife.
And she had prepared for this her whole life by being her father’s daughter. She knew the sacrifices that were required of the pakhan’s family, the danger they faced, and the uncertainty.
She would bear it without complaint.
To Lyon or anyone.
She forced a smile and squeezed Annie’s hand. “I’m fine. I think my hormones are making me emotional. Either that, or we need more food.”
She could tell from the look in Annie’s eyes that she didn’t buy it, but Annie was the best of friends precisely because she knew when to leave something well enough alone.
She got to her feet. “Come on, Lina. We may not be able to defeat Vadim Ivanov, but more food we can handle.”
23
Lyon waited at the entrance to the tunnel with Markus and Alek, listening to the retreating footsteps of the other men. The scent was familiar — moist concrete and lake water, mold and rat shit.
It made him think of Sergei Ivanov, of the slow circle he’d made around Lyon before he’d used his knife to slice Lyon’s chest.
That’s what he’d smelled on Vadim’s son: the tunnel leading to the water crib, the lake.
Something inside him — the part that still woke up at night in a cold sweat — wavered, and he forced himself to breathe through the panic that threatened to overwhelm him.
In a rare display of disagreement, Alek had argued about whether Lyon should be here at all. Lyon was weaker in body than he’d once been. It had only been two weeks since his rescue, and the damage that had been done to him by Vadim’s men and the fact that he’d been tied to a chair for over a month would take more than fourteen days of food and exercise to correct.
But Lyon wouldn’t leave this to the men. Not after all they’d already sacrificed for him. The organization was under assault because Vadim wanted Lyon out of the way.
Vadim was his enemy. He would risk his life along with his men to see the encroacher vanquished.
