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I don’t move. The hot cup rests between my hands until the couch dips with additional weight, and the cup is gently lifted from my grasp.
Still, I don’t move.
Andrev’s hands appear. He gently takes my left hand in his, and a damp cloth begins washing over my fingers and knuckles. With each pass, the blood becomes fainter and fainter on my skin as I stare, unwavering, into the flames.
If only the memories were so easily removed.
Men had poured into our home like a black sea, flooding the foyer and colliding with Kristof’s men. The clash of guns and bodies was unlike anything I’ve heard before, and the deafening din of dying screams and gunfire will haunt me for years to come, I’m certain.
But none of that compared to Chek. Andrev had darted out of the room to clear a path, and Chek had taken my hand and pulled me with him. We only made it a few feet from the door before he was shot. The hot spray of his blood on my face was shocking, and then, suddenly, he was a dying weight in my arms. I’d tried my best to keep him upright and screamed for Andrev to help, but I wasn’t strong enough, and we’d gone down in a heap.
By the time I crawled out from underneath his body, Chek was dead, and I know he took bullets surely meant for me.
A stranger had followed us up, and he’d tackled me, telling me my time of playing games was up. We wrestled on the floor until one hand sealed around my throat, and I was certain my last moments would be dying on the bedroom floor with no clue to Kristof’s fate.
Andrev saved me.
He pulled my attacker off me, tearing my necklace in the process, and then he had my hand and we were running. Running until we made it outside, where we were then facing down barrels of guns when?—
“Are you alright?” Andrev’s quiet voice cut through my rampant memories, dragging me back to the reality of the warm, crackling fire and his hands cleaning mine.
I can’t find the words. Tearing my gaze from the fireplace, I finally look at Andrev. His face is tight and drawn, his thin lips pressed together and his eyes down as he washes the blood from my knuckles.
As per Kristof’s order, he’s stayed by my side, and I know it pains him as much as it does me not to know where Kristof is.
I can only nod shakily, and I do so until he glances up and acknowledges it.
“Any luck?” August Nikolaev, my rescuer and savior, strides into the study, clasping his meaty, gloved hands together. He’s a burly, almost jolly man with thick black hair and a well-kept, bushy box beard that holds more color than his age suggests it should. He reminds me of Father Christmas if Father Christmas were a six-foot, muscular, Russian Mafia gangster.
Snow falls from his hands, and he shakes his shoulders, dislodging more as he shrugs off his coat.
“Nothing,” Andrev replies. He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, and I immediately know what they’re talking about.
Kristof.
August and his men rolled up mere minutes after my father’s army had flooded the estate. He arrived with superior firepower and wiped out every last one of them. I’d never met August before, and the way he approached had left me sick with fear that I was about to be snatched away by someone this powerful and dangerous.
After all, my father had spoken proudly about his bond with the Nikolaevs.
It turns out that August is only loyal to Kristof because he was the only connection in the States who reached out to the Families here in Russia, the only one who didn’t forget them when success in the States boomed. It was a tough idea to swallow at first, even with Andrev’s reassurance, but on the drive here, August filled me in on a few details.
Honestly, I think he was chatting to distract me from all the blood and death, and it sort of worked. For a little while.
Kristof’s loyalty to August and all the smaller Families here in Russia has made him the man to follow. While my father leads a successful operation in America and the heart of the Russian Family now resides there, the power here shouldn’t be forgotten. Kristof was the only one to recognize that, especially when the docks were at risk.
Knowing all this doesn’t make his absence any easier.
August strides across the room to the liquor cabinet and pours himself a large glass of something copper-colored. He drains half of it in a single gulp while Andrev finishes washing my hands.
“Why hasn’t he called?” I murmur, staring down into the tea as it’s placed back in my hands. “He would call. I know him. He would call me immediately.”
Andrev shuffles next to me and glances over the top of my head at August.
“We’ve been trying, my dear,” August says gently. “Currently, all attempts to reach Kristof have gone to voicemail, but my men are out looking for him. We will find him, I assure you.”
My attention snaps to him. “Can you promise me that? Can you promise me that you’ll bring him back to me?”
August’s busy face pulls into a smile and he approaches me.
