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 thought Mikhail was done, but then he circled around the table, put a glass in front of me, and poured a shot into it. I looked around in shock. Radimir looked up at the wall, at the notes and phone records, and map, all the work I’d done to find Grushin. And then he looked at me, pale and half-drowned...and nodded somberly. The others were nodding, too.
They trusted me. Accepted me. I felt myself choking up.
They all raised their glasses, and I slowly raised mine, too.
“Welcome to the family,” said Radimir.
I felt my eyes prickling and quickly knocked back the shot to cover myself. I expected it to burn, but it was smooth, like liquid ice with a flame frozen inside. Apparently, I’d never had the good stuff. Then Mikhail’s dogs surrounded me, and any tears were hidden by a rush of furry heads butting my legs, wet noses in my hands, and tongues licking my cheeks.
When I’d given out an amount of head scratches and ruffles the dogs deemed sufficient, and they’d padded back to Mikhail, I explained what I’d seen at the warehouse. “Grushin isn’t smuggling goods, he’s smuggling people.” I hesitated. “I thought it was sex trafficking, but...there were men. And a child. I don’t get it. It can’t be for labor, the money doesn’t come close to adding up.”
Radimir nodded. “Life is cheap. A person is worth thousands, maybe tens of thousands. Not millions.”
“Ransom?” asked Bronwyn. “Could they be hostages?”
I thought back to the people I’d seen. “Going by their clothes, they didn’t look like they were from rich families. Even if they were, why would he be moving them from Russia to the US?” I sighed. “I asked my hacker friend to check the head of the gaming board’s bank account. She didn’t find any bribes. In fact, he could have done with a bribe; his wife’s hospital bills had almost cleared him out.”
“Maybe Grushin blackmailed him,” said Radimir.
Mikhail snorted. “I told you, the man’s a Boy Scout. He doesn’t have any dirty secrets.”
“Maybe Grushin threatened his family, then, like he did with Yakov,” I said. But it didn’t sound right. It was one thing to threaten a gangster, who couldn’t go to the police. This guy was a respectable, high-up official. I looked at the web of information on the wall, feeling the case pulling me in. “There’s something we’re missing,” I muttered.
“And it can wait until morning,” said Gennadiy. “You need to sleep.” And he stood up.
I started to argue and then caught myself. He was right. And he was—I melted inside—he was looking after me, just as I’d looked after him. I nodded goodbye to everyone and let him lead me up the stairs to his bedroom. He took my hands in his and turned me to face him. There was a look on his face I’d never seen before. What’s going on?
He squeezed my hands, struggling to find the words. “I am...violently in love with you. Even when we were enemies, all I could think about was having you. Now I can’t imagine a life without you in it.”
The words, carved into weighty, silken ice by his accent, resonated through me. The fragile, silvery filigree that had been growing inside me for months vibrated and sang. I tried to answer, but I didn’t have the words, and I wouldn’t have been able to get them past the lump in my throat anyway. I just nodded hard.
“I’m…” He gave a long sigh, and when he spoke, I don’t think I’d ever heard him sound more Russian. “I am not used to this.” He gestured between us. “And even less used to talking. But…” He took a deep breath. “I want to tell you why I’m angry. Why I can’t stop. Because I’ve realized there’s only one thing that scares me more than facing this, and that’s losing you.”
I nodded and guided him to the bed. He sat on the edge, and I knelt behind him, my arms around him as I listened.
He told me what happened when they were kids, when Radimir was fifteen, Gennadiy fourteen, and Valentin twelve. How their father, a good man, had tried to expose corruption in the Russian government, and one of his co-workers, a man called Olenev, had stabbed him to death to silence him. And then he’d framed the three brothers for their father’s murder, and with the help of a corrupt prosecutor, had them sent to a brutal borstal in Vladivostok. All three of them were tortured, starved, and beaten by the staff for three years.
I got it, then. Why the Aristovs hated the justice system so much, why they’d chosen to live outside it. No wonder Gennadiy had hated me...just as I’d hated gangsters.
“When our mother tried to visit us,” Gennadiy said, his voice shaking, “the warden raped her. When she was dying of cancer, we weren’t even allowed to say goodbye.”