“Around the next bend of the road, I saw the first dead man.”
Dave closed his eyes. Anton was a statue in his chair. Sergei sounded like a dead man himself.
“Above me the sky was blue, the fields were golden with the harvest to come, and soon the dead were everywhere. I ran shouting after seeing the first body, but no one came. Instead, I met only more bodies with each new turn of the road – men, women, small girls and half-grown boys, all with foam and blood choking their mouths. I saw a dead horse lying on its back in a ditch, its stiff legs pointing at the sky. The bodies of men lay crumpled against fences and trees, and families lay dead in the fields where they had tried to run away.
“I found Milena lying in the street in front of her home, and she was no longer beautiful. Her eyes bulged staring from her face, her throat was swollen and purple, and blood crusted her lips. I held her against my chest, I called her name over and over, and she did not answer me. She just looked up at the clouds, her mouth hanging open and her eyes blank.
“All I could think was that I had not been there when my Milena needed me. All I could do was cry.”
Sergei paused.
Anton quietly shifted his chair closer to his uncle, and then leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped together. He stared at the sidewalk between his feet.
Then Sergei looked at me, his eyes cold and distant, as if all of this had happened to someone else. “Miss Hamilton, I have done many terrible things since that day. I have made so many others cry, but I myself have not cried since the morning I lost Milena, not once. I think I no longer can cry. I think perhaps I am broken.”
And then he shrugged. “The rest is simple. Two days later, as the first of many funerals began, Einar Dallstrom once more called from far away. His voice crackled over the line, faint with distance and static, and he apologized for the tragic accident that had befallen my Milena’s village. His company had been running a field test of a new chemical agent at a nearby facility, he said, and was it not sad that the wind had shifted?
“He also said that I should not be foolish, and that my failure to do the sensible thing and cooperate would result in additional field tests being conducted, and who could account for where the winds might blow? Would I not wish instead for my people to enjoy a safe and also profitable future?”
I understood, but I didn’t want to. “A chemical agent? What exactly is –”
Dave said two words. “Nerve gas.”
Holy Jesus.
I’d been in the same room as that man, I’d talked to him? I’d sat by his bedside while he was dying?
I didn’t know he was a monster, I swear. He’d looked like a man.
How could Dave even get up in the morning, knowing this?
But my Dave was not a monster – I loved him and he was not a monster. He couldn’t be.
Sergei talked on, mild and offhand. He might have been providing commentary for a particularly boring golf tournament. “So I agreed to work for Einar Dallstrom now and again, and I did many unofficial jobs for him here and there. In time, I took on such jobs for others as well, and I came to understand that there was no going back.”
He sipped his beer and set it down again. He scanned the street once more. He shifted his eyes over the other tables, he spared a glance for the planters full of red and white flowers that lined the metal railing next to our table, and he watched the people laughing and talking as they walked past the front of the restaurant.
Then he turned back to us. “And that is how I became what I am today, whatever you would wish to call me – a terrorist, a killer for hire, a mercenary, the words do not matter. Many of my people have since joined me in this life, and now it is all we have.”
I stared down at the meal that I couldn’t stand to finish. “But this happened years and years ago, right? So in all the time since then, you never once thought about killing Dave’s dad for what he did to Milena? Why the hell not?”
“I thought of this thing every day, I am assuring you. But I did not do it because I learned too late that David’s father was a man with a wicked sort of cunning – tell me, have you never wondered how it is that David is close to men such as us?”
“I figured your wit and charm and murdering skills won him over, or maybe it was the sheep.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dave staring at the metal surface of the table as if he expected to find the truth there, or at least an escape route.
Sergei allowed himself a sliver of a smile. “Years after my Milena died, on a day when Anton was fifteen and David a year younger, Einar Dallstrom sent word that his son would come to stay with us for the summer. He did not ask permission, he did not explain, he simply said the boy was to live with us and learn our ways. I was instructed to show him our work and treat him as my own.
“The matter seemed a puzzling thing – why send one’s child away to live with dangerous strangers? But it promised to be a much easier job than most we did for David’s father, and so I thought little enough of it. It was a busy summer and I had much to do, and what was one boy to me?
“At first I considered that perhaps that summer was meant to toughen David, to ready him for the day he would rule his father’s business and take on the work of a monster – but from the first day, I could see that was hopeless. David’s heart was too kind for our work or his father’s – but worrying about that was not the task I had been given. And he was only one thin boy, tall and clumsy and lost in the world, yes? What harm to take him in?
“Months later, I understood. That summer, the strange boy from far away became Anton’s best friend and like my own blood to me – and on the day he left us and went home, it came to me that David’s father knew this would happen.”
Connections clicked together, and I understood too. “He used Dave to buy his own safety – because once you fell for the big goofy kid, you couldn’t very well kill his father, right?”
“Just so. Einar Dallstrom used love as an insurance policy to protect himself, his family, and his company – a brilliant strategy, truly. A monster this man was, but he understood the human heart well enough.”
I turned to Dave and he wouldn’t look at me. He hung his left arm over the back of his chair, he trailed his fork through his nearly full plate with his other hand, and he wouldn’t look at me.
“Dave?”
He talked to the table. “Cassie.” Flat, hopeless.
“Dave, I love you. But for the last time, what do they make at those factories in Poznań and Belogorsk? Is it the nerve gas?”
“No. The ingredients for the gas are made in three different locations in South America, and shipped separately to a fourth location on the Kamchatka Peninsula to be combined into the final product. I’m pricing it way over market value so no one will buy it for now, but that won’t last.”
He dropped his fork into the teriyaki chicken with a splat. “As for Poznań and Belogorsk, they manufacture a high-yield explosive laced with a chemical that makes it undetectable to bomb-sniffing dogs.” He picked up his fork and dropped it again. “Bad guys love that stuff, and three shipments of it are going out next month.”
“Then stop them!” I grabbed his shoulder, pulled him around, and made him look at me. “Shut those places down, shut all the evil shit down, and tell –”
“I did that and they killed my sister, remember?”
His voice skated up, he fought back tears and helpless anger both, and what were we going to do? “I have to work with them for now, I have to do business with the monsters until I can come up with a way to stop them – because the next time I put dreams ahead of real life, they’ll kill YOU! I can’t lose you too, Cassie – if I lose you, there won’t be anything left, don’t you understand?”
His eyes begged me to understand.
Traffic churned down the street, horns sounded, and air conditioners rumbled in the heat. The smell of summer-warm asphalt filled the air, and so many lives hurried past us in that single still m
oment.
Sergei sat on my left, arms folded, silent and watching. Anton watched as well, waiting, like a wolf stalking prey through the tall grass.
I lowered my voice. Making someone strain to hear you forces them to listen, truly listen. I needed Dave to listen in that moment and I needed him to understand right then, because I wasn’t going to get another chance.
“Dave, you’ve already lost me.”
His jaw dropped. He stared like a dead man. My heart skipped and I ignored it.
“Dave, lying down with the monsters makes you one of them. The next time you see footage on CNN of somebody like Milena coughing up their lungs in the street, guess what? You killed her. The next time a plane explodes into toothpicks in the air because somebody bought what you make in Poznań? You killed those men, women, and children. You, David Connor Dallstrom.”
I stood up. “A man who could do those things never had me in the first place.”
Dave looked up into my face, searching for hope and not finding any. None at all.
Deep breath, Cassie. Say this right, because this is well and truly it.
“Dave, I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to slay the monsters and do the right thing and also keep everybody safe. I don’t know any of that – I’m just a country girl from Kansas, and I don’t have the answers.
“I do know two things, though. I know I love my Dave, and I know he can find a way to make things right, somehow. So when he figures it out, you tell him to call me.”
I pushed my chair under the table. The tears I couldn’t hold back poured down my face, but fuck tears. We build strong women in the country, and I had to be strong.
Sergei spoke, his voice precise and formal. “Miss Hamilton, regarding the matter we discussed on the phone, I will look into it and see what arrangements might perhaps be made. It may take some time, please be patient.”
“Sounds good, I’ll wait.”
Anton watched Dave, but he spoke to me. It was the first and only time he used my name. “Cassie, I am also trusting my brother David. He will find a way, he is a good man with a big heart. He will fix all these things.”
“Thanks, Anton. You two be careful getting home, all right?”
Then I did the single hardest thing I have ever done in my life – I turned my back on Dave and walked away.
I loved him more than life, and I had no idea if I would ever see him again.
***
Cassie was gone when I got home.
I searched the penthouse from end to end, every room, every corner, but she was gone. She took her laptop and her purse and maybe an armload of clothes, and she left.
What did I expect? Of course she left.
She left the coward who’d spent his whole life hiding behind his father and being careful not to see too much, the boy who ran away and hoped that everything would magically turn out right on its own.
She left the starry-eyed moron with a stupid dream who’d ruined her life.
She left the idiot child who got his own sister killed.
She left the guy who wasn’t man enough to make it all right.
That would be me.
I couldn’t blame her. She was fierce and proud and honest and brave, and she deserved so much better than a coward.
That didn’t stop me from calling her, though. I called her dozens of times as I paced up and down the halls of my place, all the rest of that afternoon and into the evening. I called her while I opened the refrigerator and stared at all the brightly lit food I didn’t have the stomach to eat. I called her as I leaned against the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring down at the street and praying for a glimpse of her. I called her from the bathroom and I called her while I poked through her closet like some weird perverted stalker. I couldn’t stand to even look at the bed we’d shared, much less try to sleep in it, so that night I called her while I tossed and turned on the living room couch.
She never answered. Straight to voicemail every time, and I left messages until her phone stopped taking them. I called, I texted, I emailed, I begged and pleaded.
Nothing.
Four a.m. arrived with a thudding headache, and I wandered into the kitchen and sat down at the island counter where we’d eaten together on her first day in Chicago. I held my face in my hands, I thought about calling her for the five millionth time – and I didn’t.
My exhausted brain called a halt and said it was time to think this thing through.
Cassie had not changed her number – not yet. She probably would, if I kept harassing her day and night, but she hadn’t done it yet. That had to mean there was hope, right? Was she leaving the door open for me, just barely?
I wanted to believe that because I loved her.
And of course I loved her, because how could I not? I couldn’t help it, whenever I looked into those blue eyes and pressed my face into that chaotic red hair and counted all those freckles and felt her warm curves trembling beneath my hands – I loved her, and with her, everything was right and true and good.
And it didn’t make a dime’s worth of sense, but she loved me, didn’t she? And if a woman as tough and loyal and honorable as Cassie could feel that way about me, then maybe I wasn’t a total shit after all – maybe I was even a man who could kill the monsters, somehow. After all, she’d said she knew her Dave could make all this right, and I trusted my wild prairie woman to know what she was talking about, always.
I just had to figure it out.
I slept for the next six hours. When I woke up, I brushed my teeth, showered, downed a glass of orange juice, and sent Cassie one text.
Working on how to fix things and kill monsters, will be in touch once I figure it out. Please wait, I love you.
Next, I called around to every company office in town and told them I’d be working from home for a few days. I directed them to move my appointments back to next week or later, and the trips I had coming up would have to be postponed – nothing to worry about, just a little stomach virus, I’d be fine as long I got some rest. I called the major overseas divisions and reassured them everything was business as usual, I was just taking it easy for a bit and I’d be available by phone if they needed me for anything.
I even sent word to the monsters that everything was swell and profitable and just like it had always been. I lied that they had nothing at all to worry about from me. I wanted to climb through the phone and strangle Szörnyeteg when he congratulated me on being “a sensible boy,” but instead I smiled and thanked him.
For the next solid week, I stayed in my apartment and did nothing that looked remotely like work. I lived on take-out. I watched movies but didn’t see them. I paged through books but didn’t look at the words. I scribbled out sketches for buildings and floor plans and random ideas, and tossed them all way.
I did not call, text, or email Cassie. I did not contact her once, not in any way.
On the outside, I was doing nothing. On the inside, I cleared my head and went into that space where you think about nothing and everything. My best ideas always come from there.
The solution came to me six days after Cassie walked away and melted into the passing crowd outside that restaurant. It was three in the afternoon, I was binge-watching Adventure Time and eating egg rolls, and when it hit me … it was so simple. So simple, so obvious, so perfect.
So terrifying.
It was the one and only way. It would absolutely work. It would kill all the monsters and keep everybody safe, and it scared the hell out of me.
The only thing that scared me more was the idea of losing Cassie.
So I decided to do it.
I didn’t get in touch with her, not right away. This would take time to set up, at least two or three weeks of research and planning and preparation – so I decided to hold off on contacting her until the final moment, until everything was ready and all the dominos were set to fall.
Until it was too late for her or anyone to stop it.
There was one line that
even Dad never crossed, and this was it.
Once I stepped across this final line, I might never see Cassie again – but if I did, at least I’d be able to look her in the eye.
Maybe she’d even forgive me.
27
I didn’t know where to go.
I grabbed a few things from Dave’s place, I cleared out of there before he could show up, and I took off with no destination in mind. None.
Where could I go? I was homeless now. I’d lived with Dave since I’d come to this huge, confusing, alien city, and there was nothing left in Kansas for me to go back to – except stares and smirks and questions from people who’d known me all my life. You had the perfect guy and you blew it, huh? Don’t worry, Cassie, we’ll take you in – welcome back, failure!
I’d rather sleep in the gutter.
And maybe Dave was lost in the dark with the monsters right now, but he’d find a way to beat them – I knew in my bones he could do it. Sure, saving the day and making everything right was impossible, but my guy specialized in being crazy and impossible, right? I had to stick around and give him a chance.
Step one was finding a place to live, but where and for how long? Dave might come up with his miracle in six hours or six months, there was no way to know. And while I did happen to have a credit card with no limit on me, I am not the kind of mercenary bitch who walks out on the sweetest guy in the world and then lives off his credit card. It didn’t matter that I knew Dave would be perfectly okay with me doing that – I wasn’t okay with me doing that.
My checking account was overflowing with money, though. And sure, since all that sweet cash came from my job as personal assistant to Chicago’s sexiest Jedi knight, maybe using it also counted as living off him – but I had to start somewhere.
Somewhere ended up being a Days Inn near downtown. I checked in a couple of hours after the world dropped out from under me, and I paid for a week in advance because why not? I had a vague idea I could renew after the week was up if I had to, and after that? Eventually, I’d need to find a micro-mini apartment I could afford on the bartending job I would have to get if Dave couldn’t make things right soon … or ever.
No Dreams Allowed: A Billionaire Romance Page 29