Ultimate Vengeance (Wanted Men Book 4) (45 page)

People came and offered their condolences, and he nodded as though paying attention. He wasn’t.

“You have beautiful hands.”

“Thank you.”

“Markus came with me to your gallery one evening. We stood on the sidewalk and observed through the window. You were speaking with a group of young people about a textured painting done entirely in gold.”

“Really. I…didn’t know that.”

“Of course, you didn’t.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “You should have come inside. I would have liked to meet him.”

“That’s funny because he wanted to meet you, too. But I spared you.”

She looked at him and frowned. Her lashes were long and fanned. “From what?”

He didn’t answer and stopped talking altogether. Every little while over the next two hours, he traced one of Yasmeen’s long fingers, lingering at the tip of her nail. He had to fight the need to bring her palm to his face to test its softness.

“Lucian?”

He lifted his head, giving up his study of the delicate bones that made up her knee.

“Yes, Yasmeen?”

“I should go.”

Wondering if what he felt at her words was sadness, he didn’t try very hard to identify it. He nodded and helped her up. The place was slowly clearing out.

He left his spot to walk her to the entrance. She came up and kissed his cheek, and he found himself memorizing her scent. She was the darkest waters of the deepest seas.

“Will you come to the church tomorrow?” He forced himself to pose his demand as a question.

“Oh, uh, I’d assumed it would be a family service.”

“No.”

“Okay, then. If you’d like me to be there…”

“I’ll send a car for you.”

“You don’t have to do that, Lucian.”

He cupped her jaw in a light hold and rubbed his thumb along her high cheekbone. The exotic slant of her eyes was incredible. “I don’t
have
to do anything, Yasmeen. I do only what I want. A car will be in front of your building at ten.”

He saw a flash of wariness flit across her face. “All right. My address is—”

He brought her forward and placed a light kiss on her lips. “I know your address,
draga
. You will sit with me tomorrow, yes?”

“If you’d like.” More wariness.

“I would like,” he confirmed as he released her. “You are free to go.”

She hesitated. “Um, will you be okay tonight? I mean, I don’t want to come across as…um…” She grimaced. “What I mean is, if you’d like to share a meal or a glass of wine to keep your mind busy, well, I’ll be home all night. Please know you’re welcome to drop by. Or I can meet you out if you’d prefer…anyway, bye.” A mortified smile flashed even white teeth before she spun away.

Lucian was pleased to see she hadn’t ruined one of his favorite things about her. Yasmeen’s pearly canines were sweetly pointed. He still remembered how much he’d enjoyed feeling them sink into his shoulder on that night two years ago.

He should have felt a softening in his heart at her offer of company. He didn’t. He felt something else. Something that would scare this exquisite girl into running from him.

Not that she’d get far.

He watched her walk through the foyer, lingering over the perfection of her body. When the door closed behind her, he waved his driver over. Sorin came in closer, too.

“You’ll be picking Ms. Michaels up tomorrow morning at ten,” he instructed Isaac as he ignored his caretaker’s hovering. “She will attend the service. When it is over, rather than take her home, you will bring her to the airport.”

As expected, a low grunt of disapproval came from Sorin. Isaac knew better because he nodded and left.

“Is Ms. Michaels aware she has travel plans in her immediate future?” Sorin asked.

“No.”

The big body that had prevented Lucian’s death more than once came around to block his way when he would have gone back to take his place on that uncomfortable bench.

“Will she be made aware of them?”

Lucian perused the room. He detested every single soul present. The one he wanted in his life was gone. The one he needed. “When she wakes in Rasnov she will be.”

“Lucian.”

He looked at Sorin, holding that dark gaze without conscience. “Yes, Sorin?”

“Just so I am clear. You are taking Ms. Michaels to Romania without her knowledge?”

“Yes, Sorin,” he murmured as he strode away.

Markus’s funeral and the days that followed were some of the most difficult Alek had ever been through. He’d attended too many memorials in his short life, had lost more people than an average thirty-three-year-old, but he’d never been directly responsible for any one man’s death. Regardless if Sergei had mistakenly shot Markus in place of Alek or if the psychotic sonofabitch had targeted an innocent man for his own reasons, no one could deny Markus had been in the parking garage that night because of a task he was performing for Alek. Which meant he was responsible for his friend’s death.

Even though he accepted it, he couldn’t deal with what it meant at this time and he eventually had to shut it down and switch over to autopilot. He buried his emotions. He would bleed for his friend, he would mourn him, he would grieve, but not now. Not when Markus’s murderer was still out there, possibly preparing to take another of Alek’s loved ones.

Meetings were had, and discussions took place as they tried to figure out how to get one step ahead of the turncoat he and Vasily were ashamed to call family. And as more and more of Sergei’s activities came to light, their shame grew right along with the pile of bodies.

Anyone Sergei had been partnered with in the years he’d spent in the States was now gone. According to Yuri’s estimates, the deaths had all occurred around the same time Markus was killed, which meant, within twenty-four hours, Sergei had gone from location to location and quietly murdered eight men.

That’s when it became apparent he was trying to erase all evidence of his life in the U.S., and that’s when Maks suggested they worked to figure out where Sergei had spent most of his time. Where would his memories take him next?

Aside from the home he’d shared with Renee and Evan, which had been checked the day they’d learned Sergei was the mole, they narrowed it down to the Brighton Beach warehouse, Rapture, and Vasily’s house. With the warehouse already gone, they’d sent in teams of sweepers to meticulously go through the two remaining places.

Late last night, in the basement of Rapture, Micha and two others had found what they’d hoped not to; clear evidence Sergei had intended the club to be a target. Small packs of RDX—that wasn’t theirs—had been hidden among crates of stored HMX. Thank Christ the job had been abandoned. They’d found no connectors or ignition which would have signified completion. Had Sergei had the time to do this one right, there would have been nothing but a crater to mark where Rapture had once stood.

That final discovery proved without a doubt any location Sergei had access to in the last month could not be deemed one hundred percent safe. Which was why a mass evacuation was currently taking place.

No one wanted to separate, but the boys understood it was the smart thing to do. Gabriel was taking Eva north, Vincente was going west with Nika, and Maksim, who’d appeared torn in half when he’d left Vasily’s house a little while ago, was going south with Sydney and the kids. With Vasily’s full blessing, they were each taking a team of Moretti men with them, as well as their usual muscle.

“Lekzi, if your beautiful mama doesn’t move her ass, your papa is going to go fucking crazy.”

Alek was in the bedroom, holding his daughter in front of the mirror on the dresser. He’d learned she enjoyed bouncing up and down while staring at herself, and he’d spent so much time in this very spot over the last couple of days his footprints were permanent marks in the oval rug.

He looked to the walk-in where he could hear Sacha murmuring to herself as she packed enough to last a few weeks. He, too, had decided to take them to their friendly neighbors up north. He figured the Canadian side of Niagara Falls would be a good place to lay low. Honeymoon capital and all that shit. Maybe while he was there, he could convince the mother of his child not to leave him. He shouldn’t. But he was damn well going to pull out every stop he could think of to change the decision he could see she’d already made.

“I can see your mama’s fear,” he whispered to the baby. He’d found himself confiding in her more and more. “I know what she’s thinking, but I can’t let her take you away from me. To lose you both would be unbearable, and I won’t let it happen. So how about you tell your papa how I convince my love this is only a temporary nightmare?”

Lekzi answered him with a happy squeal as she bounced up and down on legs that had the sweetest Michelin Man rolls. She slapped her bare feet on the surface, tinkling the miniature wind chimes on the porcelain Tudor style house Sacha had placed at one end of the dresser.

He looked into the mirror and met her pale-blue eyes, then shifted his attention to meet the gorgeous gold of her mother’s as Sacha came out with a big bag over her shoulder. His chest constricted. He couldn’t lose them.

He cleared his throat. “Ready?”

She nodded.

“Anton brought the other bags out earlier. If you take her, I’ll grab that. Yuri is waiting in the infirmary.” Yuri had insisted on giving the baby a final once over before Alek took her away.

He placed his hand on Sacha’s lower back as they left their room. He’d have cuffed their wrists together but figured it best if he kept his hands free.

As they made it to the main floor and crossed the foyer, Alek saw Anton in his regular spot in a chair to the side of the archway that led to the kitchen. Grigori had trailed down behind them since he’d been stationed in his cubby at the top of the stairs. The guy was diligent, even when they were in the house.

“Will Yuri do a full check-up?” Sacha asked as she played catch-the-soother with Lekzi.

“He said there is no need for more blood work, but he’ll do everything else. If something worries him, he’ll send us back to Dr. Uvich.” At Yuri’s insistence, they’d visited a specialist the day after Lekzi had been poisoned, and a pediatrician the day after that just to be sure no one had missed any possible side effects.

Sacha paused and looked over her shoulder. “The last time he checked her, she became fussy. I should grab some fruit to occupy her.”

Alek nodded and changed direction, leading them to the kitchen.

No sooner had they passed Anton when the spectacularly loud boom of an explosion came from behind them. The noise was deafening, the force of it propelling Alek into Sacha’s back and Grigori into his. They went with it and kept going with Alek snatching the baby and dragging Sacha at a dead run toward the stairs at the end of the corridor. Through the ringing in his ears, he could hear debris raining down behind them.

“Grigori?”

“Panic room, I know.” The byki shoved at Alek’s back to get him moving faster.

Alek took the rest of the steps two at a time and in seconds was all but throwing Sacha into a huge room hidden in the corner of the basement that no one and nothing was getting into. It was reinforced to the tits and had enough supplies to keep alive any inhabitants for at least a month.

“What the fuck happened?” Yuri demanded as he came skidding in from the direction of the other set of stairs. He was still dressed in surgical scrubs from a trip into the city early this morning.

“Sergei is here,” Alek said. “It has to be him. You two don’t leave my fucking family. Promise me, right now!”

“Alekzander.” Sacha was shaking her head, looking petrified as he handed Lekzi over. “You can’t go back up there.”

“My uncle is up there, Sacha.” The second Grigori and Yuri gave him their word he was heading for the steel door. Without focusing on what he was leaving behind, he pointed to the screens. “Turn the cameras on, Grigori, and let only those we trust inside.”

He slammed the heavy door and burned through the open concept basement that was one-part living space one-part laboratory. By the time he heard the sound of gunshots, his girls were safely tucked away in the back of his mind, and getting to Vasily was his only thought. With a focus he’d never before had to utilize, he got himself up the stairs they’d just come down. He didn’t go out that door but locked it and raced through the basement and up the other stairs to come out in the waiting area outside the infirmary. He traveled the corridor, heading for the foyer, and kept his ears, which had thankfully stopped ringing, peeled for all those little sounds one knew to listen for in their own homes. Sounds which alerted him to the presence of men walking or opening doors. There was a lot of cursing, sporadic firing, and footsteps crunching over debris.

He pulled the trigger for the first time when he came face-to-face with a stranger who simply walked out of the game room, gun at his side. Alek’s bullet entered dead center in the man’s throat. He’d never seen him before so he was an enemy. He took the guy’s Glock and kept going. He could hear shit happening in the kitchen. Four shots went off. Fuck. Where was Anton?

He inched along, needing to get to the foyer where he’d have the best view of what the fuck Sergei had brought with him. Where the hell had he found the men to wield this firepower? Hired hands? Or were they his cousin’s new friends from the Baikov Bratva?