Page 57 of Nemesis

There’s also my sister to think about.

“Alright, Vas, you can come out now,” Octavia calls from inside the room.

I do my best to relax my features before pulling open the door with a soft creak. She stands beside the tidy, white bed, hair still matted into that tangled braid. Dirt and blood streak her cheeks and neck, despite the doctor’s best attempts to remove the worst of the gore.

She’s objectively, incomprehensibly beautiful.

“Well?” Her impatient voice snaps me back. “What do you think? Should we believe him?”

It takes a moment to realize she actually…values my opinion?

“Oh, come on, I know you were spying,” she says, misreading my shocked silence.

“Wow. Nothing gets past you. Maybe that’s what your next career should be,” I tease, pulling closer like a straining magnet. “You’d be a sexy spy.”

“Hush.” She rolls her eyes, climbing back onto the bed.

The sun burns brightly through the windows, but I’ve been awake so long that the sight does nothing to wake my tired muscles. A soft ache throbs in my jaw from one of the various hits I’ve taken in the past few days.

“I think it would be wise to maintain a reasonable amount of doubt until you have definitive proof to match the narrative,” I say, sitting down on the blanket beside her. “That being said, the timeline he gave does match up to the information I’ve heard. According to my reports, the Siderovs and Popovs were contemplating an alliance about twenty-five years ago. Then, a few years later, the two families were back at war, any potential affinity forgotten.”

“Why would Russians care about random American mobs?” she asks, wrinkling her nose.

The corner of my lips tugs up. “Just the way it is. Half of running a successful empire is keeping tabs on your growing list of enemies.”

“Seems like a lot of paperwork.”

I laugh softly, and the sound of it seems to shock both of us.

There’s something intimate about sitting together on the large mattress. It feels more personal than all those times I held her in my arms on the cold, hard floor. My eyes are already glued to her face when a small smile cracks her lips.

“This is so strange. We’ve known each other for only a handful of days, but⁠—”

“I know,” I say softly.

She tilts her chin up, pinning me in place.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, pulling back. I don’t like the crestfallen look that pulls over her face, or the way she tries to hide it from me by turning her head.

“Nothing. It just feels like…” she trails off, gaze darting away. “Like you’re going to leave.”

It takes everything in me to remain completely still. There’s something truly frightening about the way she so easily reads me. I know better than most how to maintain my guard, and yet, something in that cage broke down every brick I’d laid.

Logically, I know there’s no way she’d know about the phone I pocketed off one of the guards on our way into the room. I’m not sure how she’d react to the plane ticket I secured with my hidden offshore accounts. I had plenty of money for two tickets. In fact, I have more than enough stockpiled from my years of servitude to make both of us disappear by morning.

But I only bought one ticket. My guy assured me it would be valid for any flight at almost any airport in the US, so all that’s left is to find an opening.

I suppose I also have to find the will to leave.

I won’t leave her right away. Not while she’s still adjusting to her new family, and certainly not before I deem the situation safe.

“I’m sorry, zayka, but you have to stay with Nanny⁠—”

“No!” Her shriek cracks through my chest. She’s so small, she could fit in a suitcase, and she certainly tried that tactic while I packed. “You always leave, Vasi, and I hate it! Don’t go.”

The plea devolves into a messy round of sobs that makes me want to lift her into my arms and promise to never leave again. But I can also feel Uncle’s cool presence weighing down the air at my back. He’s waiting.

I can’t let him get near her.