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He wanted to feel triumphant, to be sure it could be done, but an insidious voice whispered in his mind.
Impossible.
He considered his other option: giving up his fight, letting Russia take control once and for all, slinking into the shadows in defeat.
It only took a second to come to a decision. He didn’t know whose voice was in his head telling him winning was impossible.
But it could go fuck itself.
24
RUBY
Ruby paced around the dining room, adjusting the trays of sandwiches, the bowls of fruit, the vegetable tray.
“It was fine where you had it before and it’s fine now,” Vera said, a note of humor in her accented voice.
“Right,” Ruby said, straightening. “Right!”
“When are Aunt Brooke and Grampa coming?” Olivia asked.
Ruby looked over at her daughter, sitting on the floor and coloring at the coffee table in the living room, and almost wept. It had been five days since they’d brought her back from New Orleans and the relief of seeing her daughter could still bring her to her knees.
“Soon,” Ruby said, trying to compose herself. She was already nervous enough. She didn’t need to revisit the string of what-ifs that had played constantly in her mind since returning from New Orleans.
What if Damian Cavallo hadn’t been able to track Adam?
What if things had gone wrong at the motel?
What if Adam had hurt —reallyhurt — Olivia?
Stop, she ordered herself.Just stop.
Olivia was safe. She was right here, settling into a new routine in Roman’s loft.
She’d woken up the first three nights in her new bedroom and padded quietly into Ruby’s room across the hall to climb into Ruby’s bed. Ruby had nestled against her daughter’s small body, savoring the rise and fall of her breath as she fell back asleep.
But the last two nights Olivia had stayed in her own room, a sign that she was feeling safe in the loft, the trauma of being in hiding with Adam fading.
She would need therapy of course — Ruby would see to that when things calmed down — but Olivia was more like herself, sharing her observations of the world, practicing her reading by sounding out the titles on Roman’s books, planting seeds in the little planter Roman had bought her for the roof deck.
Sometimes when Ruby came out in the morning, she found Roman and Olivia at the kitchen table, eating the sugar cereal Ruby had never bought back in her apartment, reading the boxes together while they planned their next movie screening.
Ruby hadn’t been able to hide her smile the first time she’d seen Roman — giant, scarred, forbidding Roman — eating a bowl of Lucky Charms and debating Olivia over which color marshmallow tasted best (he maintained they all tasted the same but Olivia swore the pink ones were strawberry and therefore superior to the others).
Ruby walked to the living room and looked down in time to see a black SUV roll into the building’s underground parking structure. The SUV was one of a fleet that Roman seemed to have on hand, and he’d insisted on sending a driver to pick up her dad and Brooke. He didn’t want anyone tailing them to the loft, and he didn’t want anyone seeing them exit their cars on the street in front of the building.
Her dad and Brooke had balked, but Ruby had backed Roman’s position.
It was for their own safety.
She’d read volumes into her dad’s expression when she’d explained on their video call: Ruby was falling into Roman’s world, a world where it was normal to have drivers and armed security, where it was possible to be tailed and targeted by a deadly enemy.
“They’re here,” Ruby said, turning back to the living room, pacing toward the kitchen where Vera stood, cleaning up from the mountain of food she’d made for the visit.
Vera affectionally patted Ruby’s cheek, except with Vera it felt more like a stinging little slap. The Russians were funny that way: hard and stoic on the outside, sometimes on the inside too.
But Vera had a heart of gold and Ruby was more than happy to put up with the unintended assault on her face when it came from the older woman.
