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Larissa’s determination remains unbroken. She fights me, pushing my hands away. “Not without my husband.” She turns and shrieks, “Rurik!”
“Lara.” I grip her shoulders. “You arenotdoing this here!” I roar. “This is not for discussion! You will listen to me.” And when she continues to scream for her husband, I reach for our father’s voice in desperation. “Eto moi prikaz!”
Those familiar words—this is my order—shock her into equally familiar obedience. Tears continue streaming down her face, butshe struggles up to her feet, her panicked fear forgotten. A rush of smoke surrounds us, and I realize that the gallery is on fire. An acrid smell of charred flesh floods my nose, and it’s getting hard to breathe.
Gasping for air, I pull Larissa across the room toward a dimly lit exit. With my last bit of energy, I yank her out the open door. Two people rush across the street to help us.
Only when we are safely across the street do her senses slowly return.
“Rurik,” she stammers. “My Rurik.”
I look over, relief pumping through my body when I see him running toward us. His face is covered with scratches, but he is otherwise uninjured. Rurik throws his jacket over Larissa’s shoulders and yanks her into his arms. She cries harder, each sob hammering against my heart, and Rurik rocks her gently.
I look back at the pandemonium unfolding before my eyes.
The elegant gallery has been reduced to rubble. Ambulances and fire trucks are screaming to the scene as the NYPD begins setting up a cordon to keep the onlookers away. What happened presses down on me like a specter that will never leave my side.
There’s no turning back now. This will make the news. And amidst the darkness and destruction, a dark thought bubbles to the front of my head. This is only the beginning.
Not doing anything makes me angry. I pull out my phone and wait for Alexander to answer. “Yes, Nikolai Gennadyevich?” His smug voice answers on the other end.
“Where the fuck are you?” I shout.
“I went out to get a cigar. I met a delightful couple from Quintock …”
I cut him off. “Lanzzare … they bombed the gallery opening. Gaspar Villegas is dead.” I struggle to keep my voice low while my eyes dart for any signs of danger on the street. “I need you here,now.”
“Chyort voz’mi,” the voice curses. “I’ll be there in five minutes, my pakhan.”
“I’ll put a bullet in your head if you’re not here in three,” I bark angrily into the phone. “Inform the other pakhans. Sorokin, Popov, Chuikov, all of them!”
It’s one thing to kill each other, but the Lanzzare have touched civilians. This won’t go quiet.
Alexander pauses. “At this hour?”
“Did I fucking stutter? Call them!”
There’s a longer pause, and I wonder if I lost the call, and then Alexander asks, his voice now deadly serious, “Do you have the girl?”
“What does she have to do with it?”
“The thing is,” Alexander takes a deep breath on the other end. “Her father was always a very accomplished bomb maker.”
Blood drains from my face at the words. And before I can respond, the call disconnects.
22
NIKOLAI
When I walkoff the elevator, Eden is sitting on the floor in a pair of borrowed jeans and a T-shirt. She turns the pages of a book on El Greco, and her hands smooth down the pages. I’m thankful I didn’t bring her out tonight. Not having an evening dress and her eagerness to run away probably saved her life. I tower over her, my arms crossed over my chest as I stare down at her.
She looks at me with surprise, her mouth forming an O. She notices my smoky clothes and sooty skin. The aroma of burning debris lingers around me. Her hands rise to her face as she continues to gaze at me in astonishment.
“What happened to you?” she asks, getting to her feet.
I can tell she’s concerned about me. It drops my anger a notch even as Alexander’s words echo in my mind.Her father was always a very accomplished bomb maker.I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“A bomb went off at the gallery.”
