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“You can leave it outside,” I called, peering through the peephole but not seeing anyone, just a shadow in the hall.
“Need a signature,” the shadow grunted.
I double checked the safety bar and wedged my foot against the bottom of the door for good measure, then opened it just enough for the server to be able to slide the ticket through. I peered through the crack, horrified to see Demian standing there.
“Please just talk to me for a second,” he pleaded, holding up his hands.
He looked like hell, tired and dirty, with dark circles ringing his eyes. A tiny, distant part of my heart remembered how we used to play as children. Carefree and innocent and always there for each other. Then a bigger part remembered my ruined home and that signature detonator of his. The feeling of the roof crumbling down around me. How lucky I was not to be dead.
I rolled my aching shoulders and started to slam the door in his face and then call for help, but he leaned against it, wedging his foot into the small space and making it bigger. The safety bar slid open to its furthest point with a metallic clack. He didn’t start slamming on the door or try to force his way in. He just stood there looking pathetic.
“Please, Kar,” he said. “Please let me talk to you. Just listen to what I have to say. Give me five minutes, please.”
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “What in the hell?” I demanded. “What can you possibly have to say? You know when my father finds out what you did, you’re as good as dead, right? So why are you wasting your last hours on earth looking for time with me that I’m absolutely not going to give you?”
He shook his head sadly, as if he pitied me. “Stop being so naive. I didn’t act on my own. You know full well I was ordered to set those bombs, and yes, your father knew you might be in the house.” His hand curled around the door, and he pressed his face into the crack. “It was messed up, but I’ve seen the light. I’m choosing sides now. Your side.”
All of his words landed like small bombs, each one exploding a bit more of my patience and compassion. He knew me as well as anyone on this earth, so he knew how much I hated lies. I’d heard my father’s voice last night, heard the concern, and knew that he wasn’t part of Demian’s perfidy.
“Fuck off,” I said, pushing harder on the door, not caring if I broke his hand.
His little speech hadn’t moved me, but the next words twisted my heart into knots.
“Your husband is a Morozov,” he said, pushing back to keep me from shutting the door. “Maybe not raised as one, but he’s acting with them.”
“Shut up,” I said. I turned and raced to the bed where the gun still lay on the pillow where Roman’s head had rested. Back at the door, I raised it and aimed it at Demian’s face. “Get out of here before I shoot you.”
“I’m not armed, Karine,” he said, staring down my gun. I snorted, believing that about as much as I thought Roman was a Morozov. “I’m not,” he repeated. “And you are. So, just let me in, and I can prove it to you.”
Hell, I did have the gun. But was I falling for his filthy lies? It was just that he seemed so calm and sure of himself. So confident in his words.
“Stand back and prove you’re not carrying,” I said.
He took a step back and lifted his shirt, turning in a circle so I could see there was nothing in his waistband.
“Now will you let me come in so I can show you what your pig of a husband really is?”
Anger boiled within me. Why let him get away with what he’d done, with the horrible things he was trying to make me believe? I had the gun. I was in charge.
I unlatched the safety bar and pulled the door open, keeping the gun at my side, but releasing the safety on that as well. I stepped back, and Demian slowly came into the room, looking almost convincingly sincere.
But I knew Roman. Maybe not as long as I’d known Demian, but I knew his true heart. My husband loved me and kept me safe, and I trusted that he would keep doing that. There was no way he was my enemy. No possible way.
My enemy was here in front of me now, and it was time I made him pay. As I raised the gun to point it at him once again, he lashed out, faster than a rattlesnake. Knocking the gun out of my hand with a force that snapped my arm back, he ducked down and pulled his own gun out of a hidden ankle holster, swinging it toward me. I heard the crack of the handle hitting the side of my head a split second before the pain made me sink to the floor.
“Why’d you have to be such an idiot, Karine?” Demian said, as I hit the carpet and blacked out.
Chapter 25 - Roman
No longer concerned with secrecy, I called Evelina while I paced the hotel suite with the energy of a caged lion. The need to retaliate, and hunt whoever had taken Karine, was so powerful it made it difficult to catch a full breath.
“You have to calm down,” Evelina told me.
“The hell I do,” I snapped, my fist clenching. “Tell me again why I’m in this hotel room waiting for you?”
“Because you need backup,” she said. “You were never in this alone. We’re on our way.”
It might have only been twenty minutes, it might have been ten days before Evelina and her husband Mikhail arrived with a team. Time had ceased to have any meaning, and I could only stare in shock when Mikhail clapped me on the shoulder.
