“I always wondered why you taunted him while I cowered in the corner. I hated those nights when he went after you.”
Timur grinned at him, a show of teeth more than a smile. “You never cowered in the corner. The moment he laid his fists on me, you came out swinging.”
Gorya shrugged, a casual roll of his shoulders. “That never lasted long. I was on the ground with my head ringing.”
“It gave me the opportunity to punch him. I used that bastard as my punching bag. I actually pretended I was training.”
“You still do. Train, I mean. Every day.”
“We all do, you included. We know what’s coming and we know the war is going to be gruesome. You don’t like letting your leopard free, but that’s the reason we have to, Gorya. You say I can’t be like my father, but by holding your leopard at bay every second, we both are exactly like him. And like your father. And Lazar. Our leopards need freedom and, yes, the fighting as well. We have to train them until their skills are every bit as good as our own.”
Gorya shook his head, sadness in every line of his face. His handsome features revealed in that rare moment the torment Timur felt. “My leopard is a killer, Timur. I’m afraid if I let him loose, he will kill everyone before I can take back control. Mitya has this same concern. I work at getting stronger, more disciplined, so that my leopard will have no choice but to obey me. I am not there yet. He’s that strong.”
Timur swore and turned back to the window. Gorya was the most easygoing, good-natured one of them. He laughed more readily and would often calm Timur or Fyodor when they were angry with each other. He was the peacemaker, when they were the ones ready to fight at the drop of a hat. Yet now, seeing his cousin’s stark, raw, emotion, he knew Gorya fought, every single day, the same demons he did.
“There is no end to this, is there?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Gorya answered honestly. “Fyodor and Evangeline provided a small window of hope for me. I thought if he could find a woman who would take him as he was, then perhaps I could do so as well.”
“Evangeline.” Timur breathed her name with reverence. “I thought her the enemy, that she would get Fyodor killed. Sometimes, because she lives her life so filled with joy and happiness, I think she still may get him killed. She refuses to see the ugliness in the world. She lived with her own set of demons as a child, and yet to see her now, you would never know anything ugly ever touched her.”
“I don’t like having only a couple of men watching her. And she insists they take breaks and go walk around outside. She’s a bossy little thing,” Gorya said.
Timur swung around, frowning. “They take breaks and walk around outside?” His gut began to churn when he saw the truth on Gorya’s face. “Damn that woman. I’m going to talk to Fyodor. At least he’s taking his security more seriously. You should have told me immediately.”
Gorya nodded. “I just found out today and was waiting for the right moment. I knew this new woman was a big worry.”
“Having Evangeline’s guards leave her alone with Ashe when we don’t know a damned thing about her is more worrisome.”
Gorya again nodded his agreement. “You’re right.”
Timur glanced at his watch. “How far out is Jeremiah? Did he give you a time?”
Gorya consulted his phone and began texting. While his cousin asked the more pertinent questions of the kid, Timur made good use of his phone, texting two of the shifter guards, Kyanite Boston and Rodion Galerkin. Rodion had followed Timur and Gorya from the lair after Fyodor had killed all the males. They all knew their uncles would retaliate. Rodion and Kyanite had helped burn the bodies before they’d left and then come to the United States in the hopes of disappearing. Like Timur and Gorya, there was very little they knew how to do, other than to kill.
Timur trusted both men implicitly—well, as much as he trusted anyone who wasn’t part of his family. He pretty much considered both men in that category. He wanted them closer to home. They traveled with the team covering Fyodor, but he needed shifters covering Evangeline as well. The two men he’d had on her weren’t from his home lairs.
He and the other shifters known to him had been born in the Primorye region of southeast Russia. There, the Amur leopard still had a valiant foothold, but was close to extinction. There was a reason for that. The lairs were made up of the Amur leopards, and instead of finding the women who could complete them, they made certain they didn’t in order to show their loyalty to the bratya .
“Nothing like killing a mother in front of her sons to make men out of them, right, Gorya?” Timur whispered bitterly. He would never get over that nightmare. It would never stop moving through his mind, day or night. He didn’t know how many times he’d replayed that gruesome scene in his head. His father’s cruel smile as he’d killed her, making her suffer as much as possible, all the while telling Timur and Gorya they would enjoy this if they let themselves. He had tried to call their leopards out to feast on her blood.
Gorya leapt out of his chair and punched at the wall. Sheetrock and paint cracked beneath the powerful blow. “Stop. You have to stop thinking about it.”
“You tell me how I’m supposed to do that,” Timur said.
Before Gorya could answer, the heavy oak door swung open and Jeremiah hurried in. He had the collar of his coat pulled up as high as possible against the cold. A wind blew in with him, cooling the overheated room. Timur didn’t want the door to close. The taste of his mother’s blood was clinging to his mouth and staining his chest. The scent was in his nose and the horrendous sound of her screams in his ears.
He turned so neither man could see his face. Jeremiah shut the door hard enough that it was jarring. He bit down on his tongue, refusing to give in to the temptation to yell at the kid. Gorya was right. He didn’t want to be anything like his father, and his father would never have waited to hear what he had to say.
“I followed him all the way into the city, Timur. It wasn’t easy either. He spent a lot of time backtracking. I thought he might have made me at one point, but I was wrong.”
Timur watched Jeremiah remove his coat and, with a small shiver, stomp over to the fireplace. He held out his hands to the warmth. He remained silent. Waiting. There wasn’t going to be a lecture on safety, or any asking of questions such as “Are you certain he wasn’t on to you?” He was going to be reasonable …
“You sure you weren’t followed back here?” Gorya demanded. “Did you check?”
“Of course, I checked,” Jeremiah defended, a note of belligerence creeping into his voice.
Timur sighed and gave a slight headshake toward Gorya, indicating to his cousin to back off. First, he’d given Timur a lecture about jumping the gun and sounding like his father, and then he’d done it himself.
“Give me whatever info you managed to collect on this man,” Timur intervened.
Jeremiah gave Gorya another glare and then hurried with his report, the words stumbling over one another as he attempted to talk fast. “His name is Apostol Delov.”
Timur’s heart sank. His breath caught in his throat.
“The messenger,” Timur and Gorya said simultaneously. They exchanged a long look.
Apostol Delov was a name taken by men—shifters—trained to track and find whomever Lazar pointed them toward. They found their prey and then called in the killers. They were men well trained in the art of survival. Timur thought of them as very cunning weasels.
Jeremiah rubbed his hands together. “Whatever he is, he’s a scary son of a bitch. I watched him through the window. He stripped off his clothes and began working out. Doing forms made up of karate moves. He was smooth and fast, and he had muscles in places I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to have them.”
“What else did you find out?”
“I snooped through his garbage can and his mailbox. No mail other than a bill for his electricity, which I brought back with me.” He tossed it on the table. “That’s where I got his name. I hung around, up on
the roof of one of the houses across the street. His home backs up to a large field that runs into a park. It’s just a street over from a little cul-de-sac and—”
“Wait. Wait. Wait.” Timur spun around to stand directly in front of Gorya. “Evangeline’s house. That’s on a little cul-de-sac. What’s the address, Jeremiah?” He snapped his fingers. “The address. Have you ever been to Evangeline’s house?”
“Well, yeah, but Evangeline lives here now. Her house is empty,” Jeremiah said.
The door opened, allowing the cold in, and Timur stepped into the stream. He liked the cold. He’d been born and raised in it. Jeremiah was from the humidity of the rain forest. He moved closer to the fire.
Kyanite and Rodion came in. Neither wore a coat, a testament to the fact that they preferred the colder weather as well. “Got your message, boss,” Kyanite said, unnecessarily since they had come in answer to his summons.
“Pull up a map. Jeremiah, give us that address.”
“He’s staying at a house at 1222 West Elm.”
“The house Evangeline owns is 320 Cherry Blossom,” Timur said. “How close are those two streets?”
“Right on top of each other.” Rodion had his phone out and showed the map. “One street over. You want to tell us who we’re going to kill?”
That was always going to be the first solution they thought of. Timur detested that it had been his first thought as well. “We’re not killing anyone yet. A man showed up outside of the bakery. I just didn’t like the look of him and had Jeremiah follow him. He found a bill with a name on it. Apostol Delov.”
The two men exchanged a long look. “The messenger,” Kyanite said. “He’s come.”
“He works for Lazar.” Timur gave Jeremiah an explanation about shifters taking that particular name. “Lazar always liked to send a messenger first, before he showed up. The fact that a messenger turned up when we have a new employee at the bakery, and that employee lives in Evangeline’s old home, cannot possibly be a coincidence.”
He hated that even more than the fact that he thought killing was a solution. He didn’t want Ashe to be involved in any way. “Did she have any kind of accent that you heard, Gorya?”
Gorya shook his head. “Southern maybe. I didn’t hear Russian, but then we all learned not to speak with accents.”
“We can get it out of her if she’s here because of Lazar,” Rodion stated.
Timur’s leopard went insane. He felt the itch running over his skin. His muscles contorted. The need to kill was strong, the leopard pushing for supremacy, the need to shed blood. Timur fought him back, just as determined to stop him. These men are with us. Our friends. Our allies. He tried to calm the raging beast.
The leopard’s mind was frenzied chaos, so much so that Timur couldn’t break through to soothe him. He had to settle for pure brute strength and discipline to keep the leopard from forcing him to shift. Taking several deep breaths to help him fight off the cat, he faced the others. All of them had contended with a fighting leopard at one time or another, so they waited patiently, depending on him to keep the animal under control.
Part of the ability to control a furious, bad-tempered cat thirsting for blood was knowing one’s companions in jeopardy believed you could. Timur settled the leopard with harsh skill and then looked straight at Rodion, letting him see that the fierce anger was all from the cat.
“I’ll handle the woman. No one else will be going anywhere near her.” Even as he stated it, he knew he meant it. He also knew it was a very bad idea for him to get personal about Ashe Bronte. He was going to blow it if he wasn’t careful. One never got involved with or allowed feelings for a potential hit.
More and more, it looked as if Ashe was their enemy. He was responsible for the lives of his brother and Evangeline. He loved them both. He owed Fyodor. He wasn’t throwing that all away for a woman he’d only just laid eyes on. Still, if she was going to die, she wasn’t going to be tortured first for information.
“I want eyes on the messenger. Stay well back. No one take any chances. Jeremiah, you earned yourself a spot on the team. Kyanite and Rodion, I want you on the bakery. I don’t care what Evangeline says or how she bribes you. I don’t care if Fyodor gives you a direct order, you aren’t going to fuck up and leave them even for a few minutes. If anything happens to either one of them, I will hold you personally responsible. I’m giving the job to the two of you because I trust you.”
“Consider it done,” Kyanite said.
Jeremiah frowned. “Wait a minute. The bakery was my old job. I know everything about it. I know the rooftops and alleyways. I know customers. I’m the best man for that job.”
“You wanted out of it,” Timur reminded him. He detested being questioned, and no other man under his command would be stupid enough to do so. “You wanted off Evangeline and the bakery because it wasn’t exciting enough for you. You don’t get to jump back and forth as it suits you. You don’t keep your mouth closed, you’ll be pulling kitchen duty instead of being part of the team watching the messenger.”
Jeremiah’s mouth closed. He even pressed his lips tightly together, which told Timur the kid knew he’d had his share of passes.
“Tell us what else, if anything, you found.”
Jeremiah nodded. “When his leopard went for a run, I went through the garbage. There was pretty much nothing, but I did find partially burned papers. There wasn’t a message I could read, but the fact that he’d taken the time to burn them in the first place bothered me. There were several pieces of paper that looked like correspondence.”
Timur’s heart began to pound. At last. Real evidence. “Did you think to bring those papers, burned or not?”
Jeremiah nodded. “Yeah, I thought you might like to see them.”
Timur had always been curious. He liked to study and he liked chemicals. He also liked experimenting. He knew most people wrote on paper with fountain pens or ballpoint pens, sometimes gel pens. The charring of the paper hid the message from a white light illumination, but the original content was still there.
“I brought it with me,” Jeremiah reiterated.
Timur let him see that he was pleased. “Nice, Jeremiah. Burned paper crumbles easily. Put it carefully on my desk in the other room.”
Jeremiah nodded. “I tried reading it, but he made certain to burn the contents.”
“We may still be able to recover something if the part with the message is still intact.” He couldn’t imagine being so lucky. Having the correspondence was a stroke of luck that couldn’t be foreseen by either party. The messenger had no way of knowing Timur had spotted him. It had been instinct alone. Nothing had given the big man away.
“When are you going to talk to this woman?” Kyanite asked. “Do you at least want company so that if the messenger comes snooping around, we can warn you?”
Timur thought that over. He wanted to be alone with Ashe to give her a chance to come clean with him. It was possible Lazar was holding her family hostage unless she did as he said. Lazar would kill them anyway, but she wouldn’t know that. He almost hoped it was something like that. If she came clean, he would spare her. He’d try to turn her to their side and offer her every opportunity to make amends for attempting to spy on them or even possibly trying to assassinate Fyodor or Evangeline.
He had made certain Fyodor knew to question Evangeline about her relationship, if any, with the woman. They looked as if they had worked together at some point, but if so, it was long before Evangeline had become Fyodor’s wife. That made no sense. It would be too big of a leap to think Lazar knew Evangeline and Fyodor would meet and fall for each other.
He wanted to know everything there was to know about Evangeline’s relationship with Ashe before he questioned the woman. Her life hung in the balance and he wanted to give her every opportunity he could to tell him why she was there.
He glanced at his watch for the millionth time that evening. It was late. Very late. The hours had slipped away while he plotted to sen
d his men on a raid of a territory that belonged to a crime boss, Ulisse Mancini. He’d been running his counterfeit money with Emilio Bassini’s weapons. They wanted to keep Emilio’s business just steady, not thriving, and Ulisse was becoming such a problem; bosses in other states were beginning to worry about his greed.
Drake Donovan had begun to suspect Ulisse was the man behind a large human trafficking ring and that he was in partnership with Lazar Amurov. If Ulisse had tied himself to Lazar, eventually he would be their biggest enemy. Timur needed to find out one way or the other. Fyodor and Mitya would both be threatened if that happened.
Timur had to take the plan to Fyodor for his approval before they could implement it, and he also wanted to know what Evangeline had told her husband. He left the others to go down the hall separating their quarters from the main house. It was huge. Fyodor had been given the estate by Siena Arnotto after her marriage. She’d given him not only the estate, but all of her grandfather’s businesses other than the winery and vineyards, which she ran herself.
The house was an amazing mansion. Timur had seen some beautiful homes, but nothing he’d seen compared with the one deeded to his brother. It was two stories and had so many rooms, Timur thought his brother had better start filling it with children soon or it would start echoing in protest. The main room was enormous with a staircase that wound dramatically up to the second floor. Wood gleamed and banks of windows let in the sun or the starlit night, but also provided spectacular views.
He found Fyodor in his office, waiting. He was sipping scotch and had already poured a small amount into a crystal glass for his brother. “Everything all right? Jeremiah back?” He indicated the chair across from his wide desk.
Timur sank into the leather. “He’s back. He followed the man I told you about, the one who gave me such a bad vibe.” He picked up the glass and swirled the amber-colored liquid gently. “His name is Apostol Delov.”
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