Dark Desire

by Lauren Smith

  “Name it.”

  “Elena’s parents were planning to visit her in California. She left them a message to stay home before I destroyed her phone. I want her to be able to contact them, but their phones are most likely being tapped by the Russian government. I need them to be given safe phones, and I need them to be moved out of their house and put under protection.”

  Royce sounded more alert, his tone sharp-edged with concern. “Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on? I thought she would be safe with Vadym dead.”

  Dimitri rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “We tested Elena’s blood.”

  “Okay . . .” Royce waited for him to continue.

  “You remember the stories that someone escaped the Romanov massacre a hundred years ago?”

  “Yeah, one of the daughters. Anastasia . . .” Royce was silent, then cursed. “No, that’s impossible. Crazy.”

  “Not so crazy after all, it seems.”

  “So if that’s true, how did the government find out?”

  Dimitri let out a breath. “Elena knew she was adopted and decided to run a blood test on one of those ancestry websites to find out about her past. They don’t know her exact connection to Anastasia, but they’ll have had enough to know she’s a direct descendant of the imperial royal family.”

  “Holy shit. Do her parents know?”

  “I imagine not, but they will still have targets on their backs. The Kremlin will want to use them to get to her.”

  “Okay. I’ll go pay a visit to them and stash them at my house on Long Island until you give the all-clear.”

  “Call me when you have them so we can speak to them. Elena will need to hear their voices.”

  “I’ll let you know.” Royce hesitated. “Can I tell Kenzie about this? She’s worried about Elena.”

  “Yes, of course,” Dimitri assured him. “And I have one more favor.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Call Wes Thorne and tell him I need five tickets to the United Nations gala that’s happening in New York soon. I also need a dress for her.”

  “A dress?”

  “Yes, a very specifically designed one. I’ll text you some images. Maybe you could put Kenzie on that if she wants to help.”

  “Sure. Send me the details.”

  “Thank you, Royce.” He ended the call and stood still in the silent house, thinking. There was one more thing to do, and he would need to call in every favor he was owed. He checked his watch. It was after two in the morning. He dialed another number and waited.

  A British-accented voice answered. “Edgeworth here.”

  “It’s Razin,” Dimitri said. “Is she awake?”

  “Yes, but she is not taking calls, even from her favorites.” The British Private Secretary chuckled.

  Dimitri smiled a little. Edgeworth’s boss did have a soft spot for him. “Please give her this message. I need access to a certain tiara.”

  “Which one?”

  “The large diamond diadem of Alexandra Romanov.”

  Edgeworth drew in a deep breath. “There is only one person she would give that to.”

  Dimitri kept his tone quiet. “Its rightful owner.”

  “You can’t mean . . . My God, after all this time . . . The stories are true?” Edgeworth now knew just what was at stake.

  “Yes, and we need to send the Russian ambassador a message. The biggest one we can.”

  “Only the royal jeweler knows that she has that tiara. If she sends it to you, there could be questions about how she acquired it.”

  “Acquiring a piece like that at a private auction is not something to be ashamed of,” Dimitri promised him. “And we need never say where it came from.”

  “Very well, I will convey your request to her when she wakes. If this means what I think it does, you had better be careful.”

  “I will.”

  Dimitri stood still in the hallway a long moment before he returned to bed. Then he took Elena’s body in his arms and finally got some rest. Knowing Maxim, Leo, and Nicholas were watching his back gave him a chance, for the first time in days, to dream.

  “Sir, Ivanoff hasn’t checked in.”

  Vladimir Andropov spun his chair to regard the man who stood nervously at his door. Normally he didn’t let any of the lower-level intelligence agents bother him. They knew to stay in their cubicles in the nondescript building at the edge of Moscow’s city limits, but it seemed today, he was going to be pestered by them. He cursed his corner office being on the same floor as these fools.

  “How long has it been?” Vladimir Andropov demanded. He didn’t know the man’s name. It didn’t matter. The man, like any other agent handler, could be replaced.

  Viktor’s handler pushed his thick glasses back up his nose and shifted on his feet. “It’s been about six hours since we expected him to send us flight details.”

  “Six hours?” Vladimir didn’t yell. He didn’t have to.

  “We assumed he had a delay, but his last check-in said he was on time. He didn’t confirm mission completion, at least not with the code he was assigned.”

  At this, Vladimir leaned forward, his chair creaking in slight protest.

  “Are you telling me you haven’t confirmed his kill?”

  By the pallor on the man’s face, the handler could tell that the answer might just get the underling killed. “We were certain when he checked in. He promised to send more with his flight details, but we haven’t received anything . . . ,” the man stammered.

  “Bring me everything on his assignment, now!” Vladimir took no small amount of satisfaction in watching the man trip as he rushed away.

  When Vladimir was alone, he stared at the wall of his office where his service medals awarded by the president of Russia hung in decorative window boxes. Beside one was a framed picture of him as a young man, barely twenty years old, and his partner, Viktor Ivanoff. They had both been young back then, but they’d worked well together and had taken to the grim nature of their work.

  As the years had passed, Viktor had wanted to stay in the field, but Vladimir had craved the comforts of power and had worked his way up the ladder of the intelligence sector. He was officially Viktor’s boss now, but he always assigned someone else to be Viktor’s handler on missions. Now he sensed that had been a mistake.

  The man returned in a flurry and placed a file on Vladimir’s desk. “This is all we have.”

  Vladimir shooed the man away and began to sift through the papers. It was a new file, yet there were dozens of pieces of yellowed paper that were tucked haphazardly between crisply printed new reports. He removed all the older pieces, examining them closely. His heart stuttered to a stop as he recognized the date and the location.

  Maine, the United States. Twenty years ago. He reached up to touch his neck where a jagged scar marred his skin. He and Viktor had shared an assignment in Maine to kill a woman named Tatiana Anderson.

  It should have been easy. Yet it had been anything but. He and Viktor had barely escaped with their lives. The woman had help escaping them. She had been with a man who knew his way around weapons. In the end, they had killed him, but she, the actual target, had gotten away.

  They had been forced to seek medical aid and had agreed to say they had killed the woman. She had been nine months pregnant and wouldn’t have gotten far on foot in the winter storm she’d escaped into. Most likely, she’d died in the woods. They had been too far from any hospital for her to get help, and Vladimir had been certain her water had broken during the fight that night.

  Vladimir dug through the file, his hands trembling now as he pieced together something he never could have imagined.

  Tatiana Anderson had made it to a hospital and had given birth before dying. A child now fully grown. Vladimir examined the photos in the file. A pretty blonde woman, young, with big green eyes. Tatiana’s file had resurfaced because her daughter had used a DNA profiling site. Her DNA markers had triggered an alert in their system. Vladim
ir’s blood ran cold as he realized what that meant.

  Tatiana had been a direct Romanov descendant, straight from the line of Nicholas and Alexandra. Tatiana’s daughter carried that same imperial royal blood. No one had told him or Viktor this when they’d sent them after her twenty years ago. If Vladimir didn’t find out what had happened to Viktor and fix this mistake, things could go badly for him.

  He continued to search the file. There had to be answers somewhere in it. Viktor wouldn’t go this long without reporting. Failing to report to headquarters meant Viktor was injured or dead. He had a cyanide capsule in one of his molars, so if he had been captured, he wouldn’t have stayed alive long enough to betray his country.

  Vladimir was going to have to handle this himself.

  Vladimir slammed the file shut and put it in his attaché case. He grabbed his coat from the coatrack in the corner of his office.

  The man who had told him Viktor had not checked in was lingering in the hallway. “Sir?”

  “I’m leaving for a week. Report to Boris Yatvin while I’m gone.”

  “Yes, sir.” The man ducked back into his cubicle and left Vladimir alone.

  His mind was already miles away, plotting the death of a girl who should never have lived.

  14

  Elena wasn’t sure what to think when she woke alone in the master bedroom of the lodge. For a second, she didn’t remember where she was. There was no sound of the sea, no briny breeze drifting through an open balcony door. Then last night’s events came screaming back, creating a dull ache behind her eyes.

  She was descended from Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. It was like something out of a childhood fairy tale . . . except for the fact that Russian assassins were trying to kill her.

  She stretched across the bed, feeling the slight indent left in the mattress where Dimitri had been beside her. Last night, he’d promised to stay with her, to be with her. She searched the pillow, expecting to find a little note from him, but there wasn’t one. Her stomach cramped with sudden panic.

  Had Dimitri already broken his promise to stay with her?

  When she pushed the covers back, she suddenly heard Dimitri’s delighted laugh coming from down the hall. The knot of tension inside her eased. She dressed in jeans and a sweater and padded on her bare feet toward the sound of activity. She halted at the sight of the four handsome Russians cooking up a storm in the kitchen. Dimitri was working the griddle, flipping pancakes. Maxim was slicing lemons and dropping them into a pitcher of water. Nicholas was setting the table. Leo was cooking scrambled eggs on one skillet and frying bacon on another.

  “Good morning, kiska.” Dimitri beamed at her.

  “You all cook?” It wasn’t like they were impressive chefs or anything, but she’d honestly expected to come in and see them cleaning their guns instead of doing something strangely domestic.

  “Naturally,” Nicholas answered with a wink. “We have many skills.”

  “Did you sleep well?” Leo asked.

  “Yes, I did. I’m sorry I woke you all last night.” She remembered seeing all of their faces crammed in the doorway, staring at her as she suffered a night terror.

  Dimitri pointed at the kitchen table with the spatula. “Have a seat.” He seemed far more relaxed now that his friends were here. She was glad. In a way, they were making her more relaxed too. It felt like she had a small but fierce army to protect her now. But she still worried that it was selfish of her to ask him to stay with her when it put his life in clear danger.

  Dimitri filled up a plate with food and set it down in front of her. She was relieved to see a sensuous gaze mixed with affection in his eyes. So he hadn’t changed his mind about them. He’d merely gotten up early to make breakfast. She felt like a fool for worrying.

  Soon, the four men had their own plates and were seated all around her. Their plates were stacked high. She almost laughed. They definitely needed the calories, though. They were all built like Dimitri, tall, hard-muscled, with raw power emanating off them. She was glad they were on her side.

  As she ate the men spoke freely, with a gentle, brotherly intimacy between them, and it filled an emptiness inside her that she had never noticed before. She was an only child, and she had never had the camaraderie of siblings before. Dimitri hadn’t been wrong—these men were his brothers. She should have felt shy around them for any number of reasons, but they were surprisingly easy to be around and didn’t expect her to join in their conversation if she didn’t want to. They spoke in English and offered her brotherly smiles, which still made her blush.

  “So, where in Colorado are we headed?” Maxim asked as he buttered a slice of toast.

  “Steamboat Springs. There’s a mountain resort that has private cabins that have plenty of bedrooms. We’ll be close to civilization, but not in the middle of it.”

  “What about internet?” Leo asked.

  “They should have it, but I imagine you’ll need to enact every security protocol you have and boost the signal,” Dimitri said.

  “I’m sure I can,” Leo agreed.

  “Max, Nicholas, and I will be training Elena once we get there.”

  “Training?” Elena said suddenly. “What training?” She didn’t like the sound of that.

  Dimitri reached across the table and placed one hand over hers. The touch instantly calmed her sudden panic. “Self-defense.”

  “What, you mean like throat, nose, and groin punches?” she asked.

  Nicholas winced at the mention of groin punching. “Yes, but more than that.”

  “Yes. There is more to self-defense than punching. Most often, the attack comes before you are ready. You need to learn how to react when you’re already in a losing position.”

  A losing position. Yes, she was all too aware of that. While she was nervous about the lessons, she knew she needed them.

  “Okay, I’m in.” That earned a smile from Maxim, but she had a feeling he was going to be her most challenging teacher.

  The more time she spent around them, the more she saw how different each of Dimitri’s friends were. Nicholas and Leo were more fun, if fun was the right word. More relaxed, perhaps. Maxim and Dimitri were more tightly wound, but when all four were together, they interacted seamlessly. She supposed if anyone had trained together pretty much their whole lives, they would be that accustomed to each other.

  After they finished breakfast, Elena returned to her room to pack her suitcase. She suddenly had that eerie feeling of not being alone. She looked over her shoulder and saw Maxim in the doorway. He stepped into the room, tension practically radiating from his dark-brown eyes.

  “Your Gra—”

  “Elena,” she corrected firmly.

  “Elena. When you were with him . . .” Maxim avoided saying Vadym’s name, but his tone made it clear who he meant. “Did he ever mention a girl named Katya?”

  Elena sat on the edge of the bed and drew a deep breath. She worked so hard to not think about those days. “Katya . . .”

  A flare of hope lit Maxim’s eyes. “She is my little sister.”

  Elena didn’t give any sign that might let him know she already knew about his sister. She didn’t want him to be mad at Dimitri for sharing such a personal story. “I don’t think so . . .”

  He pulled his wallet out of his jeans pocket, dug through the contents, and held out a photograph. It was worn at the edges, as though it had been handled frequently. A dark-haired young woman with lovely light-brown eyes grinned from the photo. A sudden, violent memory came back to her, making her gasp.

  “What is it?” Maxim came closer, his voice soft and urgent.

  “I . . . I didn’t know her name . . .” She tried to summon up every detail of that memory. “I was in his office . . . He had left my cell door open. I thought it was a trap at first . . .”

  Her cell had always been so cold, and she only ever wore a thin black shift as clothing. She had been starved for warmth, and his office had been cozy compared to her cell. “I
crawled into his office. My chains had been attached to the wall. He had left me in a hurry.” She continued, desperately trying to pull every detail back, knowing it was a terrible idea, but she had to tell Maxim what she had seen. Her hands tightened into fists as she delved deeper into her memory. Her skin turned clammy, and she had to swallow down bile.

  “I hid in the corner of his office, and I noticed a set of files at the base of a bookshelf. They were tucked behind a couple of old books. It was not an obvious spot to hide something. I don’t even know why I looked, but I hoped that whatever had driven him away from his office would keep him away long enough for me to read the files. I remember the folders were bright red. I didn’t see anything in there except pictures of young women, and your sister was one of them. It looked like statistics sheets, but my written Russian is so limited I only recognized one word.”

  “What word?”

  “Krasnyy. Red. It was typed at the top of every paper.” She suddenly opened her eyes. “Give me a sheet of paper.”

  He opened the nightstand by the bed and handed her a pen and a pad of paper. She focused on the shapes of the second word that had accompanied red every time she had seen it.

  “It looked something like this.” She drew the symbols as best she could, then handed it to him. He was silent a long moment and drew a similar pattern and held it up.

  “Was this what you saw?”

  Elena studied the words and slowly nodded. “What does it mean?”

  Maxim’s eyes were stormy as he gazed at the wall behind her. “It means . . . sparrow school.”

  “Red sparrow school? What does that mean?”

  “It is an old school from the Cold War era. We believed it had been closed.” He met her gaze. “Young men and especially young women were trained to be spies there. They used manipulation, especially sexual, to gain information from their targets.”

  Elena couldn’t hide the look of horror upon her face. Maxim’s face hardened, and he cursed to himself in Russian. His hands curled into fists.

  “I’m so sorry, Maxim. What will happen to her?”