Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
“If she was the pilot, then she was wearing a helmet, and it was dark and in the middle of a fucking thunderstorm. I know we all say you have the eyes of an eagle, cousin, but they’re not that sharp.”
They didn’t have to be that sharp.
She was wearing a helmet, but the visor was up, and I saw those eyes. Intense, emerald-green eyes that stared back at me that night, and in my dreams every night since.
I knew that color. It was the same color as the emerald hummingbirds my mother loved. It was a very distinct green, one that I had seen nowhere other than in those delicate feathers—until now, in her gaze.
“It’s her. I know it.” I popped another caviar-covered cracker in my mouth. The salt of the roe burned my tongue. I’d never learned to appreciate caviar like a true Russian. But I also hadn’t eaten in two days.
“Okay, so we know the girl was the pilot, but how do we know for sure that she’s Egor’s daughter?” Gregor asked.
Fighting the urge to snap at them, I fanned out the pictures and picked up one printed from a newspaper.
In the grainy black-and-white photo, she wore a white dress and stood next to a man old enough to be her grandfather. The caption below it read “Egor Novikoff weds his daughter Zoya to prominent businessman and twice-widowed Yelizarov Foma Makarovich.”
“Makarovich. Isn’t he the one who—”
“Tossed his first wife into a freezing lake and left her there to die? Yes,” I answered, staring at Zoya’s face in her wedding photo, wide-eyed and tight-lipped as if she were struggling not to cry.
“She got herself out of the water and back to the house. He wouldn’t let her in, and she froze to death on her front porch. He was married to his second wife a week later.”
Kostya let out a low whistle.
“She is his second?” Artem asked.
“Third. The second died a few weeks after miscarrying a child. She was malnourished and abused. The official report said the grief killed her, but the coroner suspected starvation and lack of medical care had more to do with it,” I answered.
“So, Egor’s daughter was the one who survived?”
“She’s a widow,” I confirmed, laying the photo down and pulling out another one from the stack.
This one was a picture of the elderly man, his throat a gaping red smile.
“It looks like someone took care of her husband on their wedding night. Probably saved her a lot of pain.”
The men all nodded, staring at the grotesque image.
I leaned back in my chair, watching their expressions. “She is the reason Egor didn’t retaliate after you killed his sons.”
I had to admit the kill was efficient, but sloppy.
Whoever had carried out the hit on Makarovich had more determination than skill. There were hesitation marks, like they weren’t able to get a single clean cut.
The jagged lines meant the subject suffered. He would have bled out fairly quickly, but death wasn’t instant.
It wasn’t a clean kill. But it got the job done.
I didn’t know this girl. She was my enemy. She had made herself my enemy the second she took my cousin.
But still, there was a kernel of pride growing in my chest.
“The girl used her dead husband’s money to buy her freedom and then bribed a few Russian officials to toss her father into a Siberian asylum.”
Mikhail was the first to laugh and then struggled to cover it with a cough.
I grinned at him, knowing exactly why he found it as funny as I did.
“Damn. That’s cold…literally. It would’ve been kinder to kill the bastard,” Mikhail chuckled.
I agreed as I drummed my fingers against the table, fighting to remind myself that she was the enemy.
“I have a feeling she knows that.”
I’d spent hours digging into this woman. Piecing together every fragment of information I could find, from hundreds of sources.
She was smart enough to avoid social media, which was rare for someone her age.
Because she was an attractive woman, most of my contacts back in Russia didn’t give a damn about anything else—just that she was attractive.
Even the fact that she’d been married didn’t matter to them. They were more than willing to overlook “used goods” for a chance to fuck her.
And the crude comments? They bothered me more than they should have.
Finally, I’d caught a break. The judge who signed the order to have Egor sent to the asylum was actually very impressed by my little kidnapper.
“What else do you know about her?” Gregor asked.
“Most people underestimate her because she’s a woman, but she has impressed the few people who have actually taken the time to notice her. One judge referred to her as the son Egor needed.”
“What does that mean?” Artem asked, picking up his coffee for a sip.
“It means that most believe she’s smarter than Egor gave her credit for and could outthink and outmaneuver her late brothers. She was never given the opportunity to prove herself under her father’s control, and yet she still came out on top. More than one person insinuated that if we had been going against her and not her brothers, the outcome would have been far different.”