“Yes.”
“Does she know who you actually are?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know what you did to her?”
“Yes,” I say testily. It’s definitely a weird ‘How did you guys meet?’ story. Worse than admitting that you met on Tinder.
“What are you actually worried about?” Sloane says to Ivan.
“She could be a spy for all we know!” Ivan says. “Erdeli might have planned the whole thing. He’s a conniving bastard, and it seems pretty coincidental that she worked so hard to turn your head, Dom.”
“She wasn’t seducing me,” I say impatiently. “I’m the one who started following her, after the break-in at the police station.”
“You could just marry her,” Sloane says, shrugging.
“How is that better?” Ivan demands.
“Well, if you’re worried about her spilling Dom’s secrets and testifying against him in court . . . if she’s his wife, all that’s privileged.”
Ivan lets out an impatient tsking sound, as if Sloane is just making a joke. But it’s not such a crazy idea. Not to me, anyway.
“If I married her, we’d be safe. And she would be, too,” I say out loud.
“Right,” Sloane nods. “Spousal privilege.”
“I can’t believe you,” Ivan says, seizing her by the back of the neck and kissing her roughly. “I have to beg, threaten, and coerce you into marrying me, and here you think Dom should marry some girl he met five minutes ago.”
“Just thinking outside the box,” Sloane says, shrugging. “I mean, we’ll already have a minister here on the first of May . . .”
It is crazy, I’m aware of that.
But at the same time, the thought of Lara in a white dress and veil makes my heart race against my chest.
I’ve already decided that Lara belongs to me. I made her mine when I deflowered her. It’s old fashioned, but it means something in our world, especially in Bratva families. And Lara’s family is one of the most ancient.
Avo Kazarian wanted to marry her off. Well, I stole her instead. I took her virginity. And now I’m going to make her my wife. She’ll be safe from that psychopathic shithead for the rest of her life. And the rest of his, which I intend to make much shorter . . .
It’s a good plan.
All I have to do is convince Lara.
18
Lara
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The sun is almost coming up by the time Dom drops me off outside my flat. I tell him he doesn’t have to wait for me to go inside, but of course he does anyway, watching me from the corner to make sure nothing bad happens, despite the street being virtually deserted.
I creep up the stairs, hoping I can sneak inside without Pavel noticing.
But I stayed out too long.
Or maybe he woke up as soon as I snuck out—either way, he’s now sitting at our small kitchen table, already showered and dressed in a suit and tie, his hair neatly combed. He’s drinking his usual black coffee, the empty plate in front of him showing that he already ate his toast. I can still smell the scent of it in the air, as well as his plain, mild cologne.
I expect him to be furious. But he just watches impassively as I step into the flat, closing the door behind me.
“Do you want coffee?” he says.
“Uh . . . sure.”
I sit down across from him at the table. He gets up, pours me a mug of coffee, remembering to add cream from the fridge. He sets the mug in front of me, settling himself back down in his own seat with a long sigh.
“Do you want to know where I was?” I ask him.
He takes a sip of his coffee.
“I know exactly where you were,” he says.
His gray eyes are stern behind his glasses. But they’re not entirely unsympathetic. Pavel can be stiff and unsentimental in the extreme. He’s a utilitarian. The things he’s done—helping me escape from my father’s house, moving us to St. Petersburg, hiding me, keeping me safe—have all been done for the sole purpose of getting me to testify against my family. Yet he’s never been unkind to me. He’s treated me as a human, not an object.
“Did you follow me?” I ask him.
“I don’t have to follow you.” He taps his cellphone, lying face-down on the tabletop. “I have GPS trackers on your key-fob and your cellphone. I know where you’ve been going every day. I assumed you were meeting someone at the museum and the art school—that was obvious from the change in your mood. I assumed it was a man. I’ll admit, I was surprised to see your little blue dot traveling over to Ivan Petrov’s house.”
“It’s not Ivan,” I tell him.
“No, I assumed not. He’s got some American woman—or so I hear. Also, he’s in Nevada right now.”
“Who did you think it was, then?”
He steeples his hands in front of him, resting his chin on the tips of his fingers.
“Oh, probably the brother—Dominik Petrov. Possibly one of the cousins, but I doubt they’d be so bold as to bring a woman into the monastery with the boss out of the country. Besides, it was Dominik that broke into the police station that night, wasn’t it? Ivan would send his best. And Dominik was the one who lost the marijuana shipment. So he’d want to get it back again, to make up for his blunder. I’m just curious if you two made plans to see each other again right then, or if it was only later that you decided you had a crush on your criminal kidnapper?”
I can feel my face flushing red.
“I don’t have a crush on him,” I say quietly.
“Did you know who he was, when he found you again?”
“No,” I admit, my face burning all the more.
Pavel shakes his head in disappointment.
“I hoped I’d taught you a thing or two over these last few months,” he says. “But they’re playing you like a violin.”
“It’s not like that.”
He pushes his coffee away in disgust.
“How can it be anything else?” he says. “You think it’s a coincidence that Dominik Petrov has developed an interest in you, when I’m trying to eradicate the Bratva families one by one?”
“He doesn’t see me as an asset,” I tell him. “My connection to you is a threat to the Petrovs. He pursued me in spite of that, not because of it.”
Pavel snorts.
“He told you that, I suppose.”
“He doesn’t have to tell me anything. I can see with my own eyes what he thinks, what he feels. I may be inexperienced, but I’m not an idiot. When you live with a violent psychopath, you learn to read people. Or you don’t stay alive.”
Pavel checks his watch. I know he needs to leave for work soon. But he wants to finish our conversation first.
“I’m not going to stop seeing him,” I tell him.
“Oh, I don’t expect you to stop,” he says. “Quite the contrary. I want you to keep seeing Dominik. Keep visiting the monastery. Gather information, learn all that you can.”
“No,” I say flatly. “I’m not doing that. I promised to help you take my father down. I’m not helping you attack the Petrovs.”