Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I turned and stormed away, not looking back. Grushin was terrifying and beyond powerful but now I had one slim hope. He was scared of Alison because she might expose him.
We’d wondered what the hell he was doing to make so much money. Now we knew it wasn’t the usual drugs or gambling or protection rackets, because those things he could just bribe the authorities to ignore. It must be something so bad, he couldn’t have it brought out into the daylight because the public would demand that the authorities stop it.
Our only chance was to become like Alison, to become cops. To expose whatever Grushin was doing before he killed us all.
46
ALISON
I groaned and tilted my neck one way, then the other, the muscles so knotted with tension they felt like concrete. I’d been hunched over a desk all day, painstakingly sifting through everyone Grushin had called.
There was nothing more I could do until Gennadiy got home, so I wandered through the mansion again. I found Mikhail in the living room, rolling around on the floor with his dogs as they played tug-of-war with a knotted rope. I moved on and found myself in the kitchen. Wow. It was enormous, with shining, stainless steel surfaces and appliances, and a massive stove for when the chef needed to cook six different dishes at once. I opened a door and found a walk-in freezer stocked with sides of beef and legs of lamb, and next to it a pantry. I gazed up at the shelves, which went right up to the ceiling. There were bags of potatoes, crates of vegetables and exotic fruits, canned goods, and all the flours, grains, and spices needed to cook and bake almost anything.
The pantry door had swung closed behind me, and I was just about to open it to leave when voices entered the kitchen, one deep and Russian and one soft and calming. Radimir and Bronwyn.
“…important to you,” Bronwyn was saying.
“It’s important to Mikhail,” said Radimir. “He keeps saying it’s the responsibility of the Pakhan to think about the next generation.” I peeked through the crack in the door. They were standing six feet from me, right in front of the pantry. Radimir, in his three-piece suit as always, was hulking over his wife as she leaned against the kitchen island. I bit my lip. Should I open the door and let them know I was there?
“But it’s important to you, too,” said Bronwyn gently.
Radimir scowled and glanced around, checking there was no one listening. Aw, shit. Before I could do anything, he was speaking. “If you’d asked me a year ago, I wouldn’t have even considered having children. But now…” He put a hand on Bronwyn’s belly, and his voice became almost wistful. “…with you…” He looked deep into her eyes. “But the only thing that matters to me, Krasavitsa, is that you’re happy.”
Bronwyn bit her lip and then reached up and brushed her fingers across his stubbled cheek. “You know…if we do want a baby, there’s something we’re going to need to do a lot of.”
“Didn’t we come in here to make you a sandwich?” Radimir teased.
“The sandwich can wait,” muttered Bronwyn, and tilted her head up, and his lips were on hers in a second. Then his hands slid under her sweater and— Oh. Um… I felt my face heat. I was going to be stuck here until they finished.
At that moment, the chef bustled in, carrying a carton of groceries. He pulled up short in the doorway. “Sorry, sir.”
Radimir shook his head, scooped his hands under Bronwyn’s ass, and picked her up, making her yelp in surprise. “Guest room?” he muttered under his breath.
“Guest room,” Bronwyn panted.
They swept past the chef and out into the hallway. I slumped in relief. Whew.
Then the chef opened the pantry to put away his groceries and jumped back, startled, when he saw me lurking there.
“Don’t mind me,” I told him sheepishly. I ducked under his arm and hurried away.
As I left the kitchen, something occurred to me: where’s Valentin? I’d been home all day, working in a study just off the hallway, so I knew when people came and went. Valentin had come back from surveilling the clinic an hour ago, and he hadn’t gone out again, but he was nowhere to be found.
Then I remembered what Gennadiy had told me at the Irish bar. The anniversary that had been weighing on Valentin…it was today. And suddenly, I knew exactly where he’d be.
I went straight up to the top floor, then found the door that led out to the stone balcony. As I climbed slowly up the stairs, not wanting to spook him, something hit me: I’d thought of the mansion as home, just then.
The stairs led up to a small, flat section of roof with a low parapet, hidden from view from the front of the house. And that’s where I found him, sitting on the parapet with his legs dangling into space. He glanced up when he heard me, and I saw the raw pain in his eyes. He didn’t invite me closer, but he didn’t tell me to get lost, either.