“Hey, are you two about done in here?” Grigoriy blasted through the front door. “I’ve eaten, paid my bill, and the waiter was giving me dirty looks for taking up space. If you’re going to eat, the lunch rush is coming in.”
“We’re almost finished here.” Alexei turned back to Sasha, mouthing,
Wear it.
She gave him a bright smile and disappeared once more inside the dressing room. When she exited again, she passed the sales clerk a handful of things, but to Alexei’s surprise, she didn’t take advantage of his willingness to buy her a whole damned wardrobe, and only selected enough to get her through a handful of days.
He paid, determined not to let that tempting little dress get the better of him, and gathered the three sacks of their clothes. With a curt nod to Grigoriy, they left the shop, heading down the street to a small outdoors café.
As they passed a mirrored window on another storefront, movement across the street caught Alexei’s attention. He turned, instincts on alert, only to discover a rather large dog had jumped off a bench and was doing its best to infiltrate an open trash can. Damn. He really was losing it. He was fucking twitchy. Jumping at shadows.
Still, the brief scare brought home the danger surrounding them, and the fact that less than an hour ago they’d been running from Kadir’s men. It also reminded him of the unsettling text message he’d received the night before.
Grigoriy gestured at the approaching intersection. “The car’s around the corner if you want to drop those things off. I’ll get a new table.”
“I’ll do that.” Bending to give Sasha an impulsive, chaste kiss to the
cheek, he bid a brief good-bye and left her in Grigoriy’s capable care at the entrance to the restaurant.
As he rounded the corner, and his gaze fell on their car almost another full block down, a chill swept over him. The same kind of cold foreboding that had become as integral to his being as his sense of smell, his vision. Instinct.
Something wasn’t right. Someone was here. Watching him. Watching Sasha.
The clock is ticking.
Alexei backed up a step. He was a sitting duck on this too-quiet alley, and Grigoriy was too far away to help.
Ahead of him, the next block down, a tan sedan cruised through the intersection at a turtle’s pace.
Fuck!
As brake lights flashed, Alexei pivoted. Adrenaline surged through his veins, driving him back the way he’d come. He ran full bore, no time to stop, to drop the bags, to fetch his gun.
He rounded the corner, and a deafening
boom
filled the air. Reflex sent him to the ground. Sprawled on his belly, he waited for the pain, the feel of wet, sticky blood.
Screams broke out around him as people scattered in panic. He caught bits and pieces;
the car, fire, call the authorities.
Gradually, Alexei realized pain wouldn’t come. He hadn’t been injured. Shrapnel hadn’t caught him from behind. The car had been too far away.
But that explosion had been meant for him.
Grigoriy bolted out the café’s doors, gun in one hand, Sasha’s wrist trapped in the other. Alexei took one look at her frightened expression, and rage unlike any he’d ever known launched through him. No one had a right to scare her that way.
No one.
He scrambled to his feet and grabbed her hand. “This way!” Keeping his pace slow enough that she didn’t stumble, Alexei ushered them through the crowded sidewalks as sirens wailed in the distance. While he’d never been in the direct path of a bomb before, he knew enough
to realize sticking around for the authorities would only make things worse. Even if they could get past all the red tape of not having a visa, not possessing a fucking passport, and their names not registering in any database, they’d still be locked up for a while. And that was classic Opal—stick the target in a place where they felt safe, where they couldn’t get away, and finish the job.
No way in hell was he dying in some Florence jail cell.
No way was Sasha dying at all.
As his own unnatural panic tightened his chest, he pushed his pace faster, practically dragging her onto a northbound bus seconds before it pulled away from the curb. Probably the last one they’d find before Florence locked this section of the city down. Grigoriy tucked his gun into the holster at his lower back and cast a watchful, wary stare out the windows.
Beside Alexei, Sasha wrapped her arms around herself and huddled into her body. She leaned her weight on one leg, the sprint having aggravated her ankle again. His heart turned over. She looked so vulnerable, so scared. Setting the bags at his feet, he folded her into his embrace and rested his chin on the crown of her head. His hands swept up and down her back, soothing her the only way he knew how. She trembled, and he wanted to rip Kadir into pieces all over again.
He didn’t know how long they rode that way, with him holding her, and her clinging to him like she couldn’t survive the separation. But the bus they’d lucked into turned out to be a tour bus, and it made its way out of the city, into vineyards beyond. A guide droned through the speakers, first in Italian, then in English, announcing the tour at Verrazzano began in half an hour. Over the top of Sasha’s head, Alexei caught the same need for murder glinting in Grigoriy’s dark eyes.
“Let’s stop here. Slip away from the group and figure out what to do,” Grigoriy instructed in a low voice.
Alexei nodded. The vineyard and its acres of privacy were the perfect place to regroup. To contact Hughes and tell him to get them the fuck out of Florence, or to send another pair of Opals after Kadir.
When the bus pulled to a stop, Alexei gathered their bags in one hand. Holding tight to Sasha with his other, he led her off the bus, away from the tourists, and ducked behind an outbuilding. They waited several never-ending seconds for someone to come after them, but no one did. No one asked them what they were doing. No one investigated the three who didn’t belong.
“Over there.” Grigoriy gestured at a distant tree, far away from the vineyard’s public cellars, nowhere close to where the gathered crowd was headed.
“Yeah. You want to call Hughes, or want me to?”
Grigoriy’s jaw flexed as he shook his head. “I need a minute.”
“I don’t feel so good, Alexei,” Sasha murmured quietly. “I need to sit down.”
They all needed a moment, Alexei realized as Sasha wobbled against him. His heart twisted hard. Falling into silence, he held her upright and ushered her along behind Grigoriy. When they reached the tree, he helped her to a seat on the sandy ground, then dropped the bags at his feet. He sat beside her, pulling his knees up and wrapping his arms around them. “There’s a mole.”
Shaking his head as if he shook off thoughts, Grigoriy frowned at Alexei. “A mole?”
“At HQ. There has to be. No one else knows where we are.”
Sasha clutched at his arm, drawing his attention to her pale face, the glassy glint to her eyes. Shit. The last thing he needed was for her to go into shock out here in the middle of nowhere. He wrapped his arm around her protectively and drew her against his side, hoping his warmth would cool the chill to her skin.
“There’s no mole at HQ.” Grigoriy paced in front of them, his scowl as dark as thunderclouds. “I’m going to kill fucking Kadir.”
“Alexei…” Sasha swallowed, pressed two fingers to her temple. Her whisper was hoarse, and he would have missed it if her head wasn’t resting on his shoulder. “Did you…give me…something?”
Did he—what? He cocked his head at an awkward angle to give her
a confused frown. She shook her head as if she was trying to clear her thoughts. Her face tipped up to him, and she squinted, her inability to focus evident in the involuntary motion of her eyes. She wobbled again, and her tight hold on his arm lessened. “I feel like…”
Not fucking shock. He’d seen this reaction one too many times, witnessed the effect of custom-designed barbiturates as they hit the bloodstream, and his brain finished the thought for her.
Moscow.
A hollowness opened up inside Alexei’s gut. Slowly, he lifted his head to look at Grigoriy. His back was to them, his stare fixed on the rolling field of grapes. Too many instances of depending on Grigoriy made black and white impossible to believe. They’d covered each other in word and deed, been willing to take bullets for one another. Their ties ran too deep for betrayal.
But Grigoriy had been the last one with Sasha. He had fed her twice, and last night she’d been exhausted even after sleeping all day. Alexei had written it off to stress. Now…
Fury bubbled to the surface as Sasha leaned back against the tree trunk with a soft groan. Alexei shot to his feet. “What the fuck did you give her?”
A
lexei watched as Grigoriy slowly turned to confront him. Disbelief colored his anger, making it impossible for one emotion to rise above the other. His
partner
had betrayed him. He’d give anything for this to be a dream. To not have to stare down the man he’d trusted with his life, knowing that one of them wouldn’t be walking away from this vineyard.
Grigoriy shook his head with a sardonic chuckle. “Nothing you haven’t given her before.”
It took all of Alexei’s willpower to remain facing Grigoriy and to not look behind him at Sasha. But he couldn’t give in to sympathy. He was the only means of protection she had. His gaze tracked the movement of Grigoriy’s hand as Grigoriy reached behind his back and casually withdrew his customized pistol. He turned the flat black metal over in his palms, staring at it as he spoke.
“Don’t you find it odd that you didn’t hesitate to knock her out two years ago, and now, when I’ve done nothing more than you have, you’d like to tear my throat out?”
Tearing his throat out didn’t come close to what Alexei wanted to do to Grigoriy. Flatten his face, slam a couple dozen bullets into his chest, cut out his black heart. All of them ranked higher. Any one of them would satisfy the overwhelming urge to kill. He lifted his chin, ground his teeth together, and stared down his former partner.
“You had to get in the way, didn’t you, Alexei? You couldn’t be content
with doing the mission, taking the
girl
to London.” He held the Sig loosely, his forefinger resting on the trigger. “I tried to warn you.”
“You’re a fucking asshole.” Alexei eyed the gun, knowing the moment he went to pull his, Grigoriy would fire. Whether Alexei could twist and duck at the same time and avoid a fatal hit was the question.
“You could have just let me do my job.”
“And what’s that? Betraying the Opals? Killing me?” Alexei jerked his head toward Sasha. “Killing her?”
His heart leapt into his throat as Grigoriy leveled the gun at Sasha. Head cocked, expression thoughtful, he eyed his target. “No. I’m not going to kill her. Not yet.”
“Just me.”
The silence that answered was all Alexei needed to hear. His stomach churned with a combination of disgust and sorrow. After all they’d been through, all the times they’d walked side by side with one foot already in the grave, it would come down to this. He swallowed down the bitter taste of bile.
“Did you put that bomb in the car?”
“Not me, exactly.” Grigoriy shrugged. “Another of Symon’s faithful.”
“But you knew about it when you sent me there to put the packages inside.”
Alternating his gun between his hands, Grigoriy nodded. “You had to go and lock the door last night, Alexei. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have to end your life here. Symon would be pissed as hell, but I can deal with that—for old time’s sake.”
As Grigoriy swung the Sig back to Alexei and the barrel stared him straight in the face, Alexei grabbed at anything that would give him an advantage. Any bit of conversation that might distract Grigoriy and tip the scales in his favor. He swallowed hard, aware of the bead of perspiration that trickled down his left temple.
“Symon. All this time we’ve been trying to bring down the
Bratva
,
and you’re working for him? Don’t be a fool, Grigoriy. He’s not going anywhere. He might hold the power now, but it won’t last long. He’s too greedy. Dmitri knew that. It’s why he kept Symon out of the inner circle.”
Grigoriy let out a harsh snort of disdain. “You think I don’t realize Symon’s a sinking ship? Fuck that. When I’m done with this job, I’m done with everything. No one’s going to tell me where I’m going, who I’m lying to next. I’m no longer a puppet.”
Taking a tentative step backward, closer to Sasha, Alexei gauged his reflexes against the man he knew so well. Grigoriy was on a roll, anger driving his tongue. Not a good thing for an operative. Downright foolish when confronting one equally skilled. And Alexei used it to his advantage. “You make a damn good one.”
As rage flashed behind Grigoriy’s black eyes, his finger tightened infinitesimally on the trigger. Hesitation—another mistake. If an Opal aimed, an Opal fired. It was the only way to stay alive.
Keep pushing. Pile up the mistakes. Distract him.
“What about her? Why does Symon want Sasha?”
The tension in Grigoriy’s hand lessened as he shrugged his shoulders. “Hell if I know. My job’s to bring her in. I didn’t ask questions.”
“And the car, the tail that’s been on us?” He edged closer to the tree trunk.
“Fucking Kadir.” The words tore from Grigoriy’s throat in a vicious snarl. “Bastard thinks he can have whatever he wants. I
am
going to find him when I turn her over.”
Alexei’s mind connected the fragments at lightning speed. Kadir wasn’t connected to the
Bratva
. Grigoriy had sought to keep Sasha from Kadir as well—that at least hadn’t been a lie. They had just been working together for opposing reasons. He retreated a heel’s distance closer to the tree trunk and Sasha’s unconscious form. If Grigoriy didn’t calculate the dosage correctly, if he’d given her too much, her life was already on the line.
That thought gave Alexei the advantage he needed. He snatched at opportunity like a drowning man thrown a rope. Using Grigoriy’s perceptive observation about his feelings for Sasha, Alexei knelt close to her side, careful to keep his gaze focused on the gun. “How much did you give her?”