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“No! The only one who gets to end this motherfucker is me,” I growl, not taking my eyes off Ana. She winces.
“Trust me, my love,” she whispers, her mouth an inch from mine.
In a split second, I understand something with profound clarity. If I shoot Turner now, I’m basically telling Ana that her wishes, her reasons, and her love mean less than my need for revenge.
That’s not a mistake I’m making again.
“I’ll explain when we’re out of here. I promise,” she says.
I manage one curt nod.
Directing my attention at Diego, I order gruffly, “Let’s go. The cops will deal with the guards. Make sure Adam scrubs the camera footage throughout the building.”
I point my gun at Ana’s abductor. “This piece of garbage comes with us.”
Diego and another agent grab Turner, roughly dragging him into the stairwell. I have my arm around Ana, half carrying her. All of us race down the stairs until we come upon a throng of people exiting the hotel.
Blending in, we walk out undetected.
We’re on our way to a safehouse located somewhere rural inland. That’s all the information I get from Bryce while the caravan of Suburbans navigates westward, away from Virginia Beach.
He’s driving and I’m in the passenger seat. Behind us sits Nathaniel Turner with two of Bryce’s men. It isn’t lost to me that he’s in a position very similar to what he put me through. Not sure who had it worse—the one poisoned into unconsciousness or the one battered and hauled out of the building.
God, I’m so angry at the unnecessary damage and enormous consequences of my brother’s actions. My brother. Nathaniel is my half brother. Will I ever wrap my mind around that revelation?
His mother worked in one of the restaurants in Connecticut the summer my parents got engaged. Nikolay and Madelaine met at Princeton. Father was in Connecticut to meet Mother’s family and start the arrangements for a wedding that was to be held the upcoming spring.
Alicia Turner got pregnant and, according to her son, was paid some money to leave the state. Nathaniel didn’t learn of his parentage until a mere five years ago, when his mother died.
He became obsessed with confronting our father. He tried to reach out through legitimate channels but was rebuffed with every move. There’s even a cease and desist against him, filed by Petrov Shipping’s vast legal department. The buffer between Nikolay Petrov and the rest of the world is so robust, I’m not a hundred percent certain that Father was even aware of Nathaniel’s efforts.
“Keep telling yourself that, Ana,” Nathaniel had scoffed. “He’s not a clueless old man. He’s a jerk who thinks he can hurt people with no consequence.”
With Father’s health issues barring intercontinental travel, Nathaniel would have had to find his way to Moscow to gain access in person. He was smart enough not to try that tactic. If he showed up at headquarters and demanded to see Nikolay Petrov, Nathaniel would have landed in a Russian jail.
When I relocated to Norfolk, his plan formed to use me as a way to lure our father to the US.
“But why not just get access to me when I moved back?” I had asked when we talked in the penthouse suite. “And Sergei had been living in Columbus for years. Why not confront your brother and sister?”
“Confront you? So you could reject me too? I hated you and your part in Nikolay’s facade of a family man. That liar needed to face me by himself. I watched my mother suffer shame and heartache. Her family rejected us after she decided to be an unwed mother. I thought being successful and having financial security would help her find peace. Till her deathbed, when she finally confessed the identity of my father, she was tortured by the knowledge that Nikolay Petrov never felt the consequences of his irresponsibility.”
How much of this should I believe? It seems so out of the realm of possibility that a secret of such magnitude has remained concealed for four decades.
Yet there’s no denying Nathaniel’s eyes. They looked familiar because they are exactly the shape and color of Sergei’s and our father’s.
I’m shaken out of my reverie when we slow down, the crunch of gravel ceasing till the vehicle is filled with hostile silence.
Bryce looks at his rearview mirror and telegraphs some kind of message to his men. They haul Nathaniel away with neither protest nor struggle, because the prisoner has duct tape on his mouth and cuffs on his wrists.
When we’re alone, I take a moment to appreciate the man I love. The man who rescued me. Reaching out, I’m overtaken by the need to touch him. However, he grips my wrist to stop me.
“Wait,” he barks. He’s focused on guards entering and surrounding what looks like an abandoned farmhouse.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“An FBI safehouse,” he answers gruffly.
“You work for the FBI.” I’m dazed, although it makes perfect sense that he has all this manpower and technology at his disposal.
