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Anika wiped blood from Alina’s mouth, her touch careful despite the absolute rage she must be feeling. “Nora’s four. She shouldn’t know how to hide from armed men.”

“I know how old she is.” Alina tried to push upright, groaned, and sagged into the pipes. “I taught her because I knew this could happen.”

“Because you planned to take her.” Anika stared at her sister while the pumps shook the floor beneath us. “That’s why you ordered me to the casino. You needed me away from the mansion.”

Alina’s head knocked softly against the pipes. “Sokolov wanted you there to force me into the open. I needed him watching you long enough to move the children.”

“You knew we wouldn’t let her go alone.” Maksim moved away from the door and crouched beside Anika. “Just as you knew we’d attend the auction.”

Roman paused with his hand against Alina’s pulse, trying his damndest to save her when all I wanted was to kill her for what she’d done to Anika.

“I goaded Sokolov into putting you on the auction block. I needed all of this to come together, and that was the best way to get the ball rolling.” Alina licked blood from her split lip. “I made sure the auction house connected her to the stolen money. Then I sent the listing where the three of you would find it.” She swallowed several times before the words came again. “I knew they’d take you, but I also knew no one else would get near you once they did.”

“You couldn’t know they’d protect me.” Anika shook her head, annoyance clear in the gesture even as she continued to help Roman with the bandage.

“I knew they were possessive bastards.” Alina’s eyes moved to me. “I counted on it.”

“An excellent quality when you describe it that way.” The joke tasted like shit, but it kept me from drawing the knife Mikhail had already noticed. “Why us? You believed we killed Dmitri.”

Mikhail lifted his head at his father’s name, and Alina cupped the back of his skull. “You stood over his body. Sokolov gave me the photograph after Dmitri disappeared.” Her breath caught, and Roman shoved a folded pad against yet another wound. “You took the man I loved. You owed his son.”

“We found Dmitri dead.” I crouched on Mikhail’s other side, careful to keep my hands in front of me. “We thought you killed him.”

Alina tried to laugh, but the sound collapsed into a cough. “Bullshit.”

“We have the original file.” Roman checked her breathing and retightened the dressing. “The photograph was taken after we entered the room. Someone wanted you to believe we killed him.”

The overhead pipes groaned. Rust showered across my shoulder, and water surged beneath the grate before the nearest pump forced it back. We had an injured woman, a terrified boy, and a tunnel that sounded ready to shit itself into the harbor. Naturally, this was when five years of lies decided to unravel.

“Dmitri worked for us.” Maksim’s attention returned to the steel door when something struck metal in the passage beyond it. “He knew many things about us. Helping you made him dangerous to Sokolov, not to us.”

Alina stared at Mikhail. Her mouth opened twice without producing a word. The boy touched the bruise along her jaw, then turned the same solemn attention on me.

“Your father tried to protect you.” I offered him one of the few truths I knew I could uphold. “The men responsible are going to have a very bad fucking night.”

Mikhail studied my face, deciding whether I belonged in the group that had caused him pain. Fair question.

Roman took over the pressure, allowing Anika to rock back onto her heels. “You gambled with my life because the odds looked good.” She pressed her lips together before they could tremble. “You don’t get to call that love and expect it to fix everything.”

“I needed you alive.” Alina turned her face toward the wall. “You could hate me for the rest of your life as long as you still had one.”

Mikhail reached across her and closed his fingers around Anika’s blood-slick wrist. A sob pushed through her clenched teeth, but she covered his small hand with hers and held on until she could breathe without shaking. Then she faced her sister again. “Tell me exactly where Nora is. No more games, no more fucking riddles. Where is my daughter?”

Alina pulled in a shallow breath. “She’s with⁠—”

Static exploded through my earpiece. Gunfire followed, close enough to tear through every channel at once. A guard forced his voice over the noise. “Movement on the dock. Sokolov’s men have charges on both⁠—”

The first blast struck behind us. The walkway kicked sideways, throwing Anika across Maksim’s arms and driving me over Mikhail. Brick and concrete crashed around us while pressure punched through the chamber, popping my ears until they rang. I covered the boy’s head, dragged Alina against the wall, and tasted blood where my teeth cut through my cheek.

A second explosion hit beyond the steel door before the first finished rolling through the tunnel. Its frame buckled inward, pipes tore loose from the ceiling, and one pump died beneath a metallic shriek.

Roman’s light cut through the dust after the chamber stopped moving, sweeping from the wall of rubble behind us to the collapsed doorway ahead. His jaw hardened. “Both entrances are gone.”

32

ANIKA

I lay across Maksim’s arms with concrete dust in my mouth and my ears ringing. His hands moved over my head, neck, and ribs before I shoved them away and rolled toward Alina. “I’m fine.” My knees slipped on the tilted walkway, and I could barely draw a full breath, but none of that mattered. “Check everyone else.”