Yuri didn’t love Dominik. Like any narcissistic parent, Dominik was an accessory. A prop. A means to an end.
Eija drew in and released a sigh that pained her lungs. “Yuri has a buyer. He’s lying low from the CIA, reneging on his agreement. Someone, either with more money, power, or influence, wants those plans.”
Pavel handed her a gun that she tucked under her shirt.
“Call Linda,” Dom said. “Tell her we ‘know’ Yuri’s in Astrakhan. They’ll arrange an immediate flight out.” He turned to Pavel. “Eija’s walking out of here with us, so I need you to clear a path. Ludmila, Manya…all the staff, they stay unharmed, but if anyone takes a shot—”
“I’ve got it.” Pavel readied a shotgun. “It would be my pleasure.”
Chapter 28
Eija, Dom, and Pavel touched down in Astrakhan a little under three hours later with Colin, Linda, and Randy. On the way, Randy had gotten in touch with INTERPOL, and Linda had coordinated with the local police. Anyone who matched Yuri’s description was to be stopped and detained, no questions asked.
A few minutes after they’d landed, they’d gotten an alert that someone fitting Yuri’s description was outside the airport, so they’d had to organize a strategy for preventing him from boarding his flight on the go. It didn’t take long so, less than a half hour after landing, Eija found herself staring at Yuri waiting in line to get to the front desk. She’d expected him to be in the business lounge, having grown used to living life in the lap of luxury. But he wore no designer labels. A baseball cap covered his always perfectly cut silver hair, and the man was wearing gray cargo pants and a T-shirt. He even had a backpack slung over his shoulder. Had they not been looking for him, she was sure they would have never guessed this was Yuri Sokolov.
“I’ve got eyes on the king,” Eija said.
Dom groaned in her ear. “Don’t call him that.”
“If you’re the prince, that makes him the king.”
Yuri finished at the check-in desk, thanked the woman standing behind it with a smile, and started off. Eija couldn’t tell the last time she’d spoken to someone at a check-in desk. If she ever ran late for a flight only to realize she’d forgotten her phone, she’d have to skip the entire trip.
He weaved through the crowd, headed toward his gate, in her direction.
A local uniformed officer stepped from the crowd and followed.
“Can somebody call him off?” Eija asked.
It was too late by the time she asked. The officer wasn’t being nearly as discreet as he thought he was, and Yuri never took more than three steps without looking over his shoulder. He was an expert at both looking over his shoulder and slipping through tiny cracks.
Yuri picked up his pace.
Colin stepped between Yuri and the officer to redirect the officer’s attention.
Eija cocked the hammer on her gun and stepped from her hiding spot just as gunshots echoed through the terminal.
Chaos ensued.
People sprinted and dashed in all directions, screaming.
They bumped into her, creating a moving blur, blocking her path to Yuri. Then she saw the officer on the ground, prone and unmoving. Colin kneeled next to him, red dots dripping to the ground, but his back faced her so she couldn’t see where he’d been hit.
“Colin?” She stepped through and around bodies, headed in his direction. “Colin, talk to me, babe.”
“I’m okay, E,” he said, and she did a quick assessment of his voice through the speaker. “He hit the vest. Looks like he’s one of Yuri’s. And I don’t mind when you call me babe.”
The officer taking a shot at Colin meant Yuri had been one step ahead of them—again. He’d known they were coming the minute Linda contacted local police.
At the far end of the terminal, two more uniformed officers lay on the ground. Pavel stood over them, his firearm in his right hand.
“Miss K…” Hard steel cooled Eija’s temple. “I didn’t expect to run into you all the way down here.”
She held up her hands. The gunshot had cleared the terminal, except for the check-in staff who’d taken cover behind their desks. Without the sea of bodies, she had a direct line of sight to Dom approaching them, gun raised. Randy approached from Dom’s left while Linda went to check on Colin. Colin shoved her away and stood, turning his attention to where everyone else’s had fallen.
“I like to travel,” Eija said. “And I heard the farther south you go in Russia, the better the weather. No frozen eyelashes.”
Yuri laughed. “I did always like you.”
“How do you think this is going to play out?” Dom questioned. “You can’t possibly think we’re just going to let you walk.”
Yuri’s gaze flashed first to Randy, then Linda. “You can’t kill me. Your bosses here made that clear.”
“I don’t have to kill you when I shoot you,” Dom said. “And you know I can make this shot.”
“You also know, the minute you pull that trigger, I’ll move Miss K in the path of your bullet. You wouldn’t be able to survive accidentally killing the love of your life.”
Dom made no move to lower the gun.
“It’s Barrett, by the way,” Eija said. “Eija Barrett. You don’t really have to call me Miss K anymore.”
Another laugh rumbled against Eija’s back from deep in Yuri’s chest.
She caught Dom’s gaze and silently conveyed what they both knew needed to happen. Her calf was sore, but it wasn’t a broken bone. She wasn’t a helpless damsel in distress. This was a situation she could get herself out of with the right timing. Being trigger happy wasn’t the right timing.
Colin raised his weapon.
“Old friend, you look like all of your years,” Randy taunted. “I guess it was the expensive haircuts and clothes keeping you up?”
“And you look like her,” Yuri said. “Anya. It’s funny how someone who grew up in such a religious household so easily spread her legs for me. That woman never did a single good thing for me.”
“It’s Aani,” Randy corrected.
Dom’s forearm flexed.
Eija narrowed her eyes. Yuri was a shit-talker, and he’d been a shit-talker longer than the last five minutes. He was obviously trying to get under their skin, get them to pull the trigger so he could use a bullet in her skull as a distraction. Dom might not have cared about Yuri the way a son cared for his father, but it would have never been easy to hear that sentence leave Yuri’s mouth. Once this was over, she’d remind him, every day, that it didn’t matter; he was a good, great, and amazing part of her and Shiloh’s lives. Fuck Yuri Sokolov.
“Put them down,” Eija instructed. “He’s right. You shoot, and I’m dead.”
They all knew Yuri wouldn’t risk his own life by shooting her. Not with his freedom and, quite possibly, billions on the line.
Randy dropped his weapon.
Dom and Colin stayed the course.
Randy laid a hand on Dom’s forearm. “Come on, Dom. Do what Eija says.”
Dom tightened his grip.
Eija turned to Colin. “Colin, help me out here. Drop it. It’s the only way right now. He made us. We just have to accept that.”
“Do what she says, Colin,” Yuri goaded. “This here is a smart woman. Hell, I might just take her with me. Would you like that, Miss Barrett?”
“That depends. Where are we going, Fiji?”
“After, perhaps. I have a stop to make first.”
Dom’s jaw clenched, turning his face into granite. She saw him trying to read her, read the situation.
“Baby,” she softened her voice, “please lower the gun.”
Dom’s arm slowly fell.
She breathed a sigh of relief and, in one movement, slipped out of Yuri’s hold, pushing the nozzle of his gun up to the ceiling.
A single shot rang out.
By the time Yuri realized he no longer had his human shield, she already had a gun on him.
“Set it down or die, Yuri,” she instr
ucted.
Yuri, both hands in the air, lowered the gun to the ground.
“You can’t shoot him, Eija,” Dom warned. “But I can.”
Three shots whizzed through the air, but by the time she heard them, Yuri was already on his back. The smell of gunpowder exploded like a cloud. A smaller pistol fell from his fingers. Two of the shots had come from Dom, but if Dom hadn’t taken the opportunity—she noticed Pavel tucking away his gun—Yuri still wouldn’t have lived through the standoff.
Linda hurried over to Yuri, speaking rapidly into her phone, but there was no paramedic on Earth who could save him.
Linda and David had compromised an entire team of officers, Randy included. They’d kept them out of the loop, sent them in on dummy missions. Yuri was responsible for the deaths of thousands. As far as Eija was concerned, they’d intercepted him taking the nuclear plans to his mysterious buyer. They’d done their part. Her objective had been to prevent it from getting into the wrong hands. Dom’s had been to take Yuri down. Pavel was a lone wolf, and even he’d gotten a slice of revenge pie.
Linda’s scream echoed throughout the terminal. “Son of a bitch! Sokolov, do you know what you just did?”
Dom didn’t spare her a glance, staring at his father as though expecting Yuri to rise from the dead just to be killed again.
“Randy, cuff him,” she instructed.
Eija’s head snapped around. “Excuse me?”
“He disobeyed a direct order. Randy, I said cuff him before I have someone else, who won’t be as gentle, handle your damn nephew.”
“This is bullshit,” Eija spat, standing in front of Dom, arms outstretched. “Yuri had a gun in an ankle holster.”
“We’ll never know now if he was going to use it, will we?”
Dom handed over his gun and held out his wrists, in front of him.
Randy slapped on the metal bracelets.
“You assholes went full Smokin’ Aces on us, playing with our fucking lives,” Eija said, on the brink of snapping and shooting Linda herself. “You expected Dom to yield when he saw Yuri was about to shoot the mother of his child?”
Allegedly.
Her coded message to Dom had been to let him know Yuri had a “lower gun” which had brushed her ankle when Yuri had crept up behind her. Whether or not he’d reached for it, Dom would have shot him. Pavel would have shot him. Colin would have shot him. Yuri was lucky he hadn’t gone out like Scarface.
Randy reached out and pulled her into an embrace. “I’ll take care of this, Eija.”
“Can I say goodbye?” she asked.
“It won’t be goodbye.”
She nodded and covered her mouth, swallowing a cry as she faced Dom.
He bent. She pushed onto her toes and wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck. Their lips came together, her tongue slipping into his mouth, tasting every nook to hold her over until she saw him again. There was no way in hell she wouldn’t see him again.
“Come on,” Linda said, walking over and grabbing Dom by the cuffs. “Enough of that. You don’t get to fuck my entire operation and then expect to go fuck.”
INTERPOL taped off the scene.
Colin walked up behind Eija and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. His other hand cradled his lower abdomen.
“You should get that looked at,” Eija said.
He groaned. “It’s a minor flesh wound. Plus, I’m ready to go home and see my girl.”
They started off, Pavel trailing behind them.
“April took you back?”
“It’s a conditional offer. We’re in a trial period.”
She glanced over at him.
“I’ll be good! You’ve inspired me with your love story.”
“Whatever.” She gently elbowed him. “But, I think I might be done with this. Think I’ll retire early and be a stay at home mom until Shiloh starts school.”
“What’ll you do after that?”
She shrugged. “Who the hell knows?”
But she wouldn’t be doing it alone.
Randy squeezed his forehead and studied Dominik through the car’s rearview mirror. Next to him in the passenger seat, Linda chatted with David on the phone. He didn’t know what they were going to do with his nephew. It wasn’t like Dominik could go into Yuri’s mind and reveal the secrets they’d lost with Yuri’s death. But the way Linda made it seem, and from the information she relayed to David, it was like she believed Dominik had obtained clandestine information from his time undercover. She was treating Dominik like he truly had been Bratva.
They’d flown back out to Moscow right after the terminal incident. The entire way, Dominik didn’t speak. All he’d done was stare at Eija.
She’d done the same.
At the airport, they’d separated. Linda hadn’t wanted to wait to get Dominik stateside for interrogation, and that probably was her biggest weakness. Since he’d known Linda, she’d always been impulsive. Brash.
“Randy!”
“Shit!” He stepped hard on the brake pedal seconds before he would have slammed, front bumper first, into a large truck.
Linda glared at him. “Where’s your head?”
Randy shoved his fingers through his hair. “Sorry.”
He took another glance in the backseat.
Today, Linda’s impulsivity would be her downfall.
She spun around in her seat. “Where’d he go?”
Randy checked the backseat as though it was his first time looking. “Fuck! How’d he get out of the cuffs?”
A smile clawed at his cheek, but he pushed it back.
Eija.
She’d snatched the handcuff key from his pocket. No wonder that last kiss had been especially sloppy. No wonder Dom hadn’t said a single word on the flight. She’d slipped the key into his mouth.
“Randy, I swear to God if you had anything to do with this,” Linda threatened, scrolling through her phone. “He can’t hide. Doesn’t matter where he goes, I’ll find his ass.”
Randy tightened his grip on the steering wheel and allowed the smile to bloom on the side of his face Linda couldn’t see.
Chapter 29
Six months later
“Shi?” Eija walked through the house, down the hallway, picking up toys like a trail of breadcrumbs. “Sweetheart, Mommy’s going to teach you the clean-up song.”
It had been around six months since she’d last heard anything from or about Dominik. Colin, now in a steady relationship with April, went back to French intelligence. He still sent her coded messages, and the last one indicated he and April had finally agreed to move in together. This time, there was no cold feet.
Pavel took Nikolai into his custody and fell off the face of the map which, was exactly what Pavel had wanted.
Linda, David, and Randy had spent hours interrogating her about Dom’s location, but she had no idea where he was. They hadn’t discussed where he’d go if they’d had to split up, and it was that plausible deniability—and a little training—that had helped her pass polygraph after polygraph.
Eventually, they left her alone.
Since before the Yuri incident, Dom had set up an offshore account for her to access, and the first time she had, she’d been expecting only enough money to tide them over for about a year or so. Get them set up in their new spot. When the bank manager gave her the balance, she’d realized “venture capital” had meant more than she’d expected. This was “change your life” money. “Leave the country and start over” money.
So, she had.
She retired from the agency and moved to Panama City with her baby girl.
Six months had felt like six years, all because she didn’t know if Dom was okay. It was hard to believe he’d willingly stay away as long as he had. Maybe something had happened to him. Maybe Linda and David truly had him locked up somewhere. Every night, some variation of those fearful thoughts kept her awake for hours.
“Shi? Baby, where are you?”
Shiloh hadn’t gone from
crawling to walking. She’d gone from crawling to Usain Bolt.
Eija found her daughter in the living room, staring out at the backyard through the French doors that led to the patio. When Shiloh heard her approach, she looked up then turned back to the doors and pointed.
“Dada.”
Eija crouched next to her. “You want to go upstairs and look at more pictures of Daddy?”
“Dada,” Shiloh repeated. Then she took off toward the doors.
“Wait, baby—”
“It’s okay. I’ve got her.”
Eija froze.
Had he always been this beautiful? In six months, he’d managed to grow out a good deal of his hair. Now that there was no further threat of a torture-style interrogation, she was fine with it being longer again. He also seemed taller. Perhaps it was because he was holding Shiloh in his left arm. It was also possible she was emphasizing his most attractive traits because she’d missed him.
Shiloh grabbed his face. “Dada.”
“We look at pictures of you,” Eija said, voice shaking. “Every night. She knows your face.”
He placed a loud smack on Shiloh’s cheek, teasing out a screaming giggle. “Eija, why are you all the way over there when you should be,” he tapped his chest, “right here?”
“I’m afraid I’ll walk right through you.”
“You won’t, baby.” He extended his right arm. “I’m finally here.”
She walked over and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Yes, you are. And, now that you’re here,” she smacked his hard stomach, “six months, Dom? Do you know all the ways you died in my mind in six months with zero contact? One of them involved a very agitated Silverback gorilla.”
He laughed, stroking her back. “I know. I’m sorry. I had to lay low for a while, but this was as long as I could last. I missed my girls.”
Eija stepped back and motioned around. “You like it?”
Prince of the Brotherhood: A Mafia Romance Page 24