Page 112 of Nemesis

What goes up must come down.

The beautiful woman never returned with adoption papers. My roommates stole and destroyed the pointe shoes before I could even wear them to my first class. And that man helped destroy something in me that I never managed to completely heal. It’s like Vasiliy’s scars. The skin thickened over the wound, too thick to be pierced again.

“Where did you go?” he whispers in my ear, folding his body around mine in a warm cocoon.

“I have a bad feeling about the whole Popov situation,” I say, snuggling into his hold. “My cousins won’t tell me what’s going on, but I think it’s getting bad.”

Ever since I overheard them talking business at breakfast, they’ve been more careful to conceal the growing tension from me, but I can feel it rising in the compound. Even my father seems wound tighter than usual.

“Seemed to me like Popov already gained access to Sasha’s lower circle,” Vas responds. “If he managed to get one of your dad’s men to turn on him, I have no doubt he managed to get another.”

Vasiliy doesn’t sanitize information for my ears, and he’s never once made me feel less than. Never.

“How did he manage to turn the guy you interrogated on fight night?” I ask.

“Daughter,” he responds instantly. “And wife.”

Oh.

“Did either make it out alive?”

“The little girl is healthy and safe. Your father sent her to one of his allies in London.”

A child, alone in the world, all because of this endless vendetta.

“You let him die.” I’m not stupid. I know what happened to the poor man who betrayed us. What was expected from the Bratva…

“Was it difficult?”

“Yes,” he answers softly. “It was difficult. But not as difficult as remembering how terrified I was in the safehouse when I didn’t know if I’d manage to get you out alive.”

His honest words trickle through the air like snowflakes. I don’t look away from the intensity in his eyes. Not until a phone starts ringing from the bedside table.

The phone is Vasiliy’s; the burner he uses to contact his little sister and her caregivers. I reach over.

“It’s Anya,” I say, offering the device with the name written across the screen.

His face twists in confusion. Then he takes the phone from my hand and climbs out of bed. “I’ll be right back⁠—”

I wave him off, collapsing onto the mattress. The morning birds chirp as I settle against the pillows, content to fall back asleep until he returns. But when I flip onto my side, something falls out from the far side of the mattress.

I climb over to Vas’s side of the bed and scoop up the two items that toppled to the ground. One looks to be a passport, but I don’t recognize the name. The picture, however…

When the second item, a folded piece of paper, unfurls in my grip, my blood runs cold.

Anya is not even six years old.

She doesn’t make calls without the help of her nanny, so I can already sense danger before I even step out into the hall and press the device to my ear.

“How kind of you to answer my correspondence after all these months,” my uncle drawls through the phone speaker.

My heart goes into overdrive.

“Why do you have my sister’s phone?” I ask evenly, pacing down the hall. As far as I know, he hasn’t set foot in my Moscow residence since the day he stormed in, demanding I leave for New York. That was the original deal, after all.

“How else am I supposed to speak to my wayward nephew?”

My spine stiffens.