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“Remember all those rumors,” Bronwyn responds, his voice tight and gravelly. “They are real. I’ll kill you.”
Dmitri is across the room in a flash, and Mikhail is there too. I didn’t even see him. They stand on each end of the sofa, projecting their energy.
Bronwyn must decide to give, and he steps back slightly. He looks at me. “Sparrow, I need to know. Are you Gina’s?” I look up at Andrei, who is looking down at me. I see the acceptance in his slight nod.
“Yes.” My voice is barely above a whisper. “She gave me this.” I pull the necklace from under my shirt. He staggers back when he sees it and falls into the chair across from me.
“It’s true. You are my daughter. The timing works out. Plus, she wouldn’t sleep with McCall anymore, unless he raped her. If McCall weren’t already dead, I’d kill him.” He leans forward, bracing his hands on his knees. He stares down at the floor. I watch as his body tightens and releases. His breathing is deep and loud. When he looks up, his eyes are glassy. “He knew and kept you from me. She tried to tell me over and over, but I was so focused. I’ll never be able to fix what I broke with you.”
“How?” I ask.
Andrei sits next to me and wraps his arm around my shoulders to pull me into his body. I watch as Bronwyn takes us in, his eyes following every movement. It’s hard to believe anything got past this man, he’s so focused.
“Just like Brett sold you to MacEvoy, his father sold Gina to me. She divorced him right after. We dated quietly. One day I went to see her in the apartment I had put her up in, and she was gone. The night before, she and I argued. She wanted to marry, but I’d been married before and didn’t want to go through that again.” He takes a deep breath. “You know Brett wasn’t hers, don’t you?”
“How?” Brett told me I wasn’t his sister, but he didn’t go into details. How did everything I thought I knew about my life become so messed up and a lie?
“McCall forced her to marry him. We were lucky to get the divorce, but he never removed his claim from her. When she went back to him, I thought she went willingly, and then obviously you were born. I focused on other things at that time, not realizing I was just ignoring her. She messaged me. We met up and she said she had a secret to tell me. I told her I’d moved on, but I hadn’t.” He moves to the edge of the chair. “I stopped doing that other work because of her, but then I got the casino. I swear I didn’t know about you, or I would have come for you. She died that night. I’ve always wondered if he killed her because she came to see me.”
“You know he killed her?” I choke. It wasn’t until one of the nights I was being held prisoner in that warehouse that I had the dream and realized the truth. I watched, but I was so young when it happened, I thought it was a dream.
It wasn’t.
He beat her to death.
“Did he?” he asks me.
Tears clog my throat and I look up at Andrei. He looks down at me and I see the pain in his eyes too. I nod.
“Fuck!” Bronwyn explodes from the chair.
“He and Brett both did it,” I confess the truth I now know.
“I’ll kill him.”
“Stand in line,” Andrei says as he squeezes me to him. My head swims and I feel dizzy. My eyes roll and I fall back.
* * *
Andrei
She faints in my arms, and I hold her to me.
“She needs food and rest. Come back tomorrow.” I lift her up and Dmitri follows me as I carry her to the room, him pushing the IV pole. I lay her on the bed and lean down to kiss her forehead. I pull the covers over her and settle her in. I don’t want to leave her, but we have to get everything lined up for next week.
When I step out of the bedroom, Bronwyn is standing in the living room.
“Why are you still here?”
“I’m not leaving here without her. I just found her. She’smychild.”
Everything in me locks up. Every muscle in my body contracts. I turn toward him as my eyes laser focus on him. I’m so close to pulling the gun I slipped into the back of my pants when Sparrow wasn’t paying attention.
“She’s mine and has been for months. She won’t be leaving here. He’ll go to your casino or Grayson’s to look for her. It would be better for both of you if he came here. As you had to have seen, this place is the most secure building right now.”
There is a knock on the door, and one of Mikhail’s soldiers walks in with Sasha and Boris. The two Karelian Bear Dogs don’t pull on their collars, but you can see in the flap of their fluffy tails they are excited to see me. The soldier drops their leashes and on command they come to me. I’ve trained them in Russian. Both are medium-sized dogs with black and white coats. Some people mistake them for huskies. My vet comments all the time that they are the biggest he’s seen. Boris is in the mid-fifties in weight and taller than most males his age. Sasha is big but not as big as her brother. They will protect my girl with their lives, I know it. I order them to the bedroom door, where they lie down and wait for the next order.
“I’ll put some men a couple of blocks out to keep an eye out for him.”
