Her heart twisted into a painful knot as she whispered, “It’s my bomb. I’m 10-X-6.”
F
rozen in place by what he thought was his imagination, Alexei blinked at Sasha. He hadn’t just heard right. The one woman capable of opening his heart wasn’t an elite bomb designer. Hadn’t blown up thirty innocent people on a subway. Hadn’t worked hand-in-hand with the
Bratva
to ship arms to terrorist Muslim nations.
One look at her wide, fear-laden blue eyes and her quavering chin, however, said he was lying to himself. She was guilty.
He closed his eyes heavily, fighting the steel fist that rammed into his gut, and shoveled both hands through his hair. Attempting to speak, to demand answers to the million questions screaming in his head, he opened his mouth. Then shut it just as quickly to squelch a vile, rising oath.
“Maybe you should start talking, darlin’,” Misha prompted in his no-nonsense, interrogate the suspect, kind of way.
In that moment, Alexei had never been more glad for his best friend’s interference. If he’d been left to deal with the shocking announcement, he’d say things he could never take back. Not wanting to hear Sasha’s explanations, unable to tune them out, he wandered to the minibar on the far side of the room. There, he flung open the cabinets, pulled out every brand of two-shot vodka bottles inside, and lined them up side by side on the polished wooden countertop.
Alphabetically, to give his churning brain and shaking hands an extended outlet.
Armadale, Balkan.
“My brother was killed in a subway bombing when I was thirteen.
He was ten years older and virtually raised me. My father was too busy researching to spend much time at home. My mom passed when I was seven.”
Sasha’s voice rang low and soft over the racket in Alexei’s head. Though he tried to block it, he couldn’t help but notice the vibrato in her words. He winced against sympathy he couldn’t hold in check and squinted at the bottles.
Cîroc, Goldwasser—No, Chopin.
He didn’t want to understand what could drive someone to blow up thirty people.
Through his peripheral vision, he saw her swivel on the couch, so she could better see him. “He stopped by the house that afternoon to pick up a cooler of meat my father had butchered for us. I handed it to him, sent him on his way.” She drew in a heavy breath and her voice faltered. “The bomb was inside it.”
Fuck.
Alexei’s hand stilled over the bottle of Goldwasser. Against his will, his gaze lifted, and he observed pain etched into her delicate features. She fought the story as much as he fought the hearing of it. Again, his heart tugged, urging him to go to her. To offer comfort.
Instead, he pushed the tiny little bottle to the end of the line, after Chopin.
Sasha cleared her throat. “The authorities questioned me. They questioned all of us. When they spoke to my father, though, he was angry and threatened to use his influence in the government against the investigators. They went away. We buried Petro, and I devoted myself to disarming bombs.”
So that’s what led her to engineering and government work. But where the hell had she gone wrong? What drove her to killing others, when she’d lost someone so very important? Alexei tuned out the questions and stared at the remaining bottles. Grabbing one with a tiny silver cap, he nudged Jewel of Russia in place.
“When I got my
magistr’s
, my father arranged a place for me within the FSB.” She sighed. “Alexei, would you look at me?”
“No.” He stacked Ketel One into position.
Anger turned her tight voice into an even harsher timber. “So you’ll judge me that easily? Without even hearing the truth?”
Bracing his palms flat on the countertop, he looked her in the eye, blocking out the rightful anger that glimmered in her stare. “You killed thirty people, Sasha.”
“Yes!” She shot to her feet, indignant. “I did! But I didn’t know it was going to happen. I had no idea something I designed would be used like that.”
“Sasha,” Misha interjected quietly. “Finish. Sit down, and finish.”
She stared at Alexei, defiant. Then, as he held her angry gaze, resignation dimmed the light in her eyes. She dropped into the chair, but not before he caught the glimmer of tears behind her lowering lashes.
Damn. He would not give in to those tears. No matter how they twisted him up inside, he couldn’t ignore the truth of what she’d done, or the fact that he’d spent most of his life trying to stop the very crimes she’d committed.
Let alone that she’d kept this from him.
Alexei gave up on his alphabetizing and twisted the cap off a miniature bottle of Stolichnaya. The entire two-shots worth burned down his throat in one gulp. He slammed the bottle on the countertop with a grimace. Better. A second would help block the need to hold her close even more.
Alexei grabbed the Sobieski and tossed it back as well.
“Alexei, please listen to me. I’m not a killer. I swear to God, I’m not.”
He scowled at her plea. “I’m fucking listening. I’m trying like hell not to, but I am.”
The flash of hurt that passed over her face nearly collapsed his resolve. He took a step forward, coming to the end of the bar, an apology on the tip of his tongue. But at the last moment, he remembered just who she was. Not the demure, vulnerable woman he’d lost his heart to. But one of the premiere bomb designers in the world. Someone even Sandman couldn’t outthink.
He stopped at the corner, one hand clenched into the padded leather rail. “How the fuck do you go from disarming bombs to building them, Sasha?”
She shook her head adamantly. “I was in research and design. I told you this. My father arranged for the promotion. I had no idea he was taking my work and selling it. Not until two years later, when he informed me I had killed my brother, and that unless I wanted to go to jail for the rest of my life, I had to cooperate with his deranged plans.”
That disclosure sucked the wind right out of Alexei’s lungs. Her father—she’d been trying to tell him. Hinting her father wasn’t the man he appeared to be. He’d manipulated his daughter, to a terrible end. Son of a bitch. Alexei wanted to kill the man. Right here, right now, he wanted to reach through Yakiv’s chest, tear his black heart out, and stomp it into the floor. What kind of man did that to his daughter?
No doubt feeling similar compassion, Misha reached across the table for Sasha’s hand, but she folded her arms across her chest and huddled into her protective embrace. “I knew he was selling the bombs to the
Bratva
. But I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t turn him in—anyone I could go to was involved. So I tuned it out, played along like a good little girl, hating myself, hating him, and pretending I had no idea what they were being used for.”
Something Alexei could personally relate to—and he hated that he could. He wanted to be angry. Wanted to fault her. Wanted to feel anything but the twisting of his heart and the pain that recoiled behind his chest as all the hopes and dreams he’d let take life last night crumbled into ash.
He reached behind him for the priceless Jewel of Russia, cranked off the cap, tossed it on the floor, and gulped the contents down.
“When that bomb went off in London not long after, and the secure reports filtered in to my department, I recognized my own design. It destroyed a part of me to know something I’d created had killed people.”
“But you waited another year to run.” Misha pointed out the protest screaming in Alexei’s head.
“I couldn’t just up and disappear.” As if the retelling were too much, Sasha rose from the couch and began to pace. “I had to destroy my designs. Had to demote members on my team to positions where they could never get their hands on anything related to my research. It took time. Before I could finish, I learned about the crate of seventeen nuclear warheads heading for Pakistan.”
She stopped beside Misha’s knee, and her gaze fell on Alexei. The early morning sunlight caught the glimmer of her watery stare, softened her expression even more than the anguish she displayed. He closed his eyes against the sudden, instantaneous physical ache. He couldn’t fix this for her. Even if he could somehow sway Clarke, Hughes would never let her walk. She’d been involved with a mass murder in his country. He’d put her behind bars the minute she stepped off the plane.
And Alexei didn’t know how he could stop the truth from escaping, for if she’d said one thing he couldn’t ignore, it was her claim that she could disarm the Novichok. She was the only one capable. To get her beneath Central Hall Westminster, Hughes would have to know the truth.
“I couldn’t do it anymore. I left that night, called the American Embassy in Moscow, hoping that someone would investigate and find the crate before it was too late.”
“We did,” Misha murmured as he reclined once more in the sofa. In his grim expression, Alexei recognized the battle he fought as well. Right, wrong—where did the lines end, where did they cross? They had both committed wrongs in the name of Intelligence. Judgment wasn’t theirs to give. At the same time, Sasha stood before them, a representation of what they’d spent too many years fighting. She had been the threat.
What she created now threatened them.
“How did your design end up in London, attached to a container of Novichok, Sasha? Is this why Saeed protected you?” Alexei despised the question even as he asked it. But he had to know. Had to find out if she was still, somehow, wrapped up in all of this.
“No!” With the sharp cry, her voice cracked, and she buried her hands in her face. “My father’s a biochemist…” Her shoulders shook with silent tears. Her words became difficult to understand. Through the hodgepodge of consonants and vowels and choked sobs, Alexei gathered she’d left an undetonated bomb at a test site, prior to her flight, and her father had manipulated her yet again by taking that dud and using his expertise to drag in the current threat. The fist around Alexei’s insides let go a fraction of an inch. She wasn’t directly responsible. She’d been genuinely clueless to the Novichok.
Thank God.
It was Misha, though, who rose to comfort her. Despite the way Alexei ached to feel her in his arms, he couldn’t bring himself to move. If he touched her, her wrongs would be forgiven. Although she hadn’t been a willing participant, she’d still participated. She could have done something. He didn’t know exactly what, but she could have stopped her father before this got out of hand.
Hell, she could have turned herself in when she made the phone call, and…
His thoughts ground to a stop. And what? Find herself buried in some unmarked grave for betraying the
Bratva
? They were embedded in politics, held key officials in their pockets. There wasn’t a damn person Sasha could have gone to.
Which was exactly why she didn’t want to see her father. Suddenly he understood. Yakiv would kill her. Grigoriy had turned against the Opals to do the same. No wonder the
Bratva
went to such lengths to track her down. And Kadir—was he somehow associated with the arms? He had the contacts, worked intimately with the very same people who would be interested in the warheads that had been intercepted. Was he chasing her to bring her to the same deadly end?
Every instinct Alexei possessed demanded he protect Sasha. But every ounce of training, every bit of his soul Clarke had saved by bringing him into the Opals, equally demanded he do the right thing and turn her in. Take her to London, confide her history to Clarke, and let him sort it out.
Worse, he couldn’t, no matter how he looked at the situation, ignore the one thing that terrified him the most. Unless he wanted to be an accessory to the death of thousands, he had to deliver Sasha to the bomb.
It was too much. Too many conflicts at once and none of them came close to the future he’d envisioned, the brief glimpse of life he had witnessed for one, precious night. There would be no happy ending. Clarke wouldn’t put two countries at odds to save one woman. Sasha would go to jail. She could tell her story all she wanted, but the only proof was her word—and for a country that still screamed for justice, her word was meaningless. Especially paired against her father’s influential reputation.
Alexei grabbed the bottles left on the countertop. Avoiding Sasha’s tear-stained face, he glanced at Misha. “I’ll be at the airport. Call my cell when you get there. I’ll meet you at the plane.”
With that, he stalked to the door and into the hall. It slammed behind him, a death knell to everything he held dear.
I
saak bounced the keys to his temporary flat in one hand, whistling as he made his way down the stairs to the car that waited at the curb. Too many years of waiting had finally come to an end—in less than three hours Sasha would be home. Delivered to justice in his arms.
The half of him that felt a father’s love balked at the end he’d bring to her. But he pacified that twinge of sympathy with the assurance he would make it quick. Painless. One shot to the forehead, and he’d even give her the chance to make her own amends first.
Hell, he’d even let her pray, if that’s what she wanted. But he would not falter on his necessary duty to punish the delinquent child.
As for Symon…Isaak gave into a wry smile as he ducked into the backseat and acknowledged the driver with a cordial nod. For failing to honor his end of the agreement, Symon would soon discover Isaak didn’t take well to broken promises. The bomb might yet detonate even with Sasha’s imminent arrival, but all morning long, armored BMWs led by a motorcade of two black Range Rovers each escorted the EU dignitaries to a secure, remote location. British officials couldn’t evacuate the city, especially not on such short notice; the fallout would be intense. But Symon would be defeated.
If Sasha disarmed the device, Isaak’s victory would be even more sweet. He would be celebrated for not only aiding in the defeat of a threat, but also taking down the very criminal who crafted the bomb. No one would ever be the wiser to his machinations.
As no one had been all along. Not even Symon, who believed he was working with the man he’d come to know as a
Bratva
accomplice.