by Anna Zaires
34
Yulia
An unnerving sensation wakes me up. It’s almost like someone’s watching me, or—
Gasping, I sit up in the armchair and gape at the petite, golden-skinned girl standing in the middle of Lucas’s library. She’s wearing a light blue sundress, and her shiny dark hair streams over her slim bare shoulders. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen her before, though something about her delicate features is familiar.
“Who are you?” I try to keep my voice level—not an easy feat with my heart pounding in my throat. I’m still weak from my illness, and though the doll-like creature in front of me doesn’t seem like much of a threat, I know looks can be deceiving. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m Nora Esguerra,” she says in unaccented American English. Her dark, thickly lashed eyes regard me with cool derision. “You’ve met my husband, Julian.”
I blink. That explains how she got into the house—she must have the same master keys as Rosa—and why she looks familiar. Her picture was in the files Obenko gave me in Moscow.
Also, I’ve seen those dark eyes once before.
“You were looking in the window the first day I was brought here,” I say, tugging Lucas’s T-shirt down to cover more of my thighs. Had I known I’d have visitors, I would’ve put on some real clothes. “With Rosa, right?”
The girl nods. “Yes, we looked in on you.” She doesn’t apologize or explain, just studies me, her eyes slightly narrowed.
“Okay, and you’re here today because…” I let my voice trail off.
“Because I’ve been waiting for a chance to talk to you, and this is the first time Lucas has left the house in several days,” she says, and approaches my armchair.
Feeling uneasy, I stand up. Though my legs still feel like cooked noodles, I’ll be better able to protect myself on my feet—if the need arises.
“What did you want to talk about?” I ask, keeping a careful eye on the girl’s hands. She doesn’t appear armed, but something about her posture tells me she might not need weapons to inflict harm.
She’s had some fighting training, I can tell.
“Rosa,” the girl says. Her small chin lifts as she gives me a hard look. “Specifically, what you’re going to tell Lucas and Julian about her.”
I frown in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“They’re going to want to know how you escaped and who helped you,” Nora says evenly. “And you’re going to say that it was Rosa acting on my instructions. Do you understand?”
“What?” That’s the last thing I expected to hear. “You want me to blame you?”
“I want you to tell the truth,” she says coolly. “And yes, that means telling everyone that Rosa was helping you on my request.”
“She didn’t say anything about it being your request,” I say, my mind racing. It sounds like the maid is in trouble, and Esguerra’s wife is trying to protect her by admitting her own involvement. Except—
“It doesn’t matter what Rosa said or didn’t say.” Nora’s voice tightens. “I’m telling you now that Rosa was acting on my orders, and that’s what you will say when Lucas and Julian ask you about it. Understand?”
“Or what?” I can hear the threat in the girl’s tone, but I want to see how far she’d go. “Or what, Mrs. Esguerra?”
“Or I will personally ensure that Julian flays every bit of flesh from your bones.” She gives me a cool smile. “In fact, I may do it myself.”
I stare at her, trying to recall what I know about the girl. She’s young—a couple of years younger than me, according to Esguerra’s file—and recently married to the arms dealer. Before that, she was supposedly kidnapped by him; there was an FBI investigation that lasted more than a year. But regardless of her background, it’s obvious to me that she’s not all that different from her husband now.
She’s not making an idle threat.
“All right,” I say slowly. “Let’s presume you did suggest to Rosa that she help me. Why? What would’ve been your motivation? Lucas will want to know.”
“He’ll understand my motivation. All you need to do is tell the truth—the full truth, including my involvement.”
My lips twist. “Right. And I assume the full truth doesn’t include your visit to me today.”
“Correct.” Her dark gaze is unblinking. “There’s no reason for Rosa to pay for my actions. I’m sure you agree with that.”
“I do.” If Esguerra’s wife wants her notoriously ruthless husband to think the whole thing was her idea, I have no intention of standing in her way—especially given this little chat. “Now, is that all, or can I help you with something else?”
“That’s all,” she says, then turns and starts walking away. But before I can exhale in relief, she stops in the doorway and looks back at me. “Just one more thing, Yulia…”
I lift my eyebrows, waiting.
“From what Julian’s said, Lucas seems… unusually enamored with you.” Her voice is oddly flat. “It’s fortunate for you, given what’s occurred.”
She’s talking about the plane crash, I realize. Esguerra’s wife would naturally blame me for that. At least I didn’t succeed in seducing her husband; I have a feeling if Nora knew Esguerra was my initial assignment, I might’ve woken up with my throat slit.
“I’m sure you were just doing your job,” she continues in that same flat tone. “Carrying out your superiors’ orders.”
I nod warily. I have no idea what she wants me to say. I didn’t know that my intel would be used to bring down her husband’s plane, but even if I did, I’m not sure that would’ve changed anything. I might’ve tried to get Lucas to stay off that plane, though he had still been a stranger to me at the time, but I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to save Esguerra. I still wouldn’t.
Given everything I know about the man, the world would be better off without him—and so would his wife.
“Good. That’s what Lucas told Julian,” Nora says. “It wasn’t personal, so to speak.”
I nod again, hoping she gets to the point soon. The lingering tiredness from the illness is making my legs tremble, and I’m sweating from the exertion of standing for so long. I don’t want to show vulnerability in front of Esguerra’s wife, though. It would be like baring one’s throat to a small but deadly she-wolf.
“Okay, Yulia…” The she-wolf’s eyes gleam with a peculiar light. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, for your sake, I hope you share Lucas’s feelings. Because if he ever withdraws his protection…” She doesn’t complete her sentence, but I understand her perfectly.
My brother is not the only one who doesn’t belong on this estate.
“Understood,” I manage to say calmly. “Anything else?”
She gives me a tight smile. “No. That’s all. Hope you feel better soon.”
She turns and disappears through the doorway, and I collapse back into the armchair, as exhausted as if I’d just fought a war.
35
Lucas
It takes me longer than expected to catch up on everything I’ve neglected over the past several days, and by the time I get home, it’s almost seven-thirty.
The first thing I do upon entering the house is go to the library. To my surprise, Yulia is not there.
“Lucas?” she calls out, and I realize her voice is coming from the kitchen. Frowning, I backtrack and go there.
“What are you doing?” I say when I see her carrying two spoons to the kitchen table. Approaching her in two long strides, I grab the utensils from her hand and clasp her elbow. “You need to be resting.”
“I’m all right,” she protests as I guide her to the table. “Really, Lucas, I’m much better. I got tired of sitting on my butt all day and wanted to set the table for dinner.”
“Tough shit.” I pull out her chair. “Sit, and I’ll take care of that. Your only job right now is to recover, got it?”
Yulia gives me an exasperated look but obeys. For the first time since her illness began, she�
�s wearing her normal clothes—a pair of jean shorts and a tank top—but the skimpy outfit only emphasizes the severity of her weight loss. Her stomach is concave, and her arms are reed thin. I don’t know why she’s pushing herself so hard, but I don’t like it.
“You are not to move a muscle,” I say as I wash my hands and take out a pair of bowls. Yulia must’ve already turned on the stove to warm up the stew, because when I check, I find it simmering on a low setting. I pour each of us a generous portion and bring the bowls over to the table. “I don’t want you to have another relapse,” I say, sitting down across from her.
She sniffs at the stew instead of replying. “You made it?” she asks, looking up, and I nod, curious to see what she’ll think. I tasted it earlier and liked it, though I still have far to go before I can rival Yulia in the cooking department.
She dips her spoon in and tries a little of the broth surrounding the veggies. “It’s good, Lucas,” she says, and I can’t suppress a smile at the surprise in her voice.
“I’m glad you like it,” I say, digging into my own portion. “It wasn’t difficult to make, so I should be able to repeat it.”
Yulia begins eating with evident enthusiasm, and I watch her, pleased to see her enjoying my efforts. There’s something oddly satisfying about seeing her at my kitchen table, eating the food I made and wearing the clothes I got for her. I never thought of myself as the nurturing type, never considered that I might want to take care of someone, but that’s precisely what I want to do with her. It’s particularly strange because, this illness aside, Yulia is one of the most capable women I’ve met.
She’s quiet as we make quick work of the stew, and I let her eat in peace, worried that even this meal might be too taxing for her. When we’re done, I clean up and make Yulia a cup of her favorite Earl Grey.
“How are you feeling?” I ask when I bring it to the table, and she smiles, patting her flat belly.
“Extremely full. The stew was amazing. Thank you for making it.”
“My pleasure.” I grin as she stifles a yawn before sipping her tea. “Sleepy?”
“Just food coma, I think,” she says with another almost-yawn. “I can’t possibly want to sleep. I’ve slept enough for a lifetime.”
“Your body needed it,” I say, my amusement fading as I recall her near-catatonic state after Kirill’s attack. “You’ve been through a lot.”
She looks down at her cup. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Yulia…” I sit down and reach across the table to cover her hand with mine. “What happened? How did you end up with Kirill?”
Her slender fingers twitch under my palm, but she doesn’t look up.
“Yulia.” I squeeze her hand lightly. “Look at me.”
She reluctantly meets my gaze.
“Do you have any other siblings you’re hiding from me?”
She shakes her head.
“Anyone else you’re trying to protect?”
She blinks. “No.”
“Then tell me what happened. Why were you in that cell? Did they think you double-crossed them?”
“They… it… It’s complicated, Lucas.” Her lips tremble for a second before she presses them together.
“I see.” I get up and walk around the table. Yulia gives me a startled look when I pull her to her feet, but I just pick her up and walk to the living room, carrying her cradled against my chest.
“What are you doing?” she asks when I sit down on the couch, holding her on my lap. She’s disturbingly light in my arms, as breakable as after her stint at the Russian prison.
“I’m getting comfortable so you can tell me your complicated story,” I say, settling her more securely on my lap. Even after her weight loss, her ass is soft and curvy, and her hair smells sweet, like peaches mixed with vanilla. My body reacts instantly, but I ignore the spike of lust. Keeping one arm around her back, I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear with my free hand and say softly, “Talk to me, sweetheart. I won’t hurt you or your brother, I promise.”
Yulia looks at me for a few moments, and I know she’s debating how much to trust me. I wait patiently, and finally, she murmurs, “Where do you want me to start?”
“How about at the beginning? Tell me about Michael. When did you both get recruited by the agency?”
Yulia takes a deep breath and launches into her story. I listen, my chest aching as she tells me about a ten-year-old girl whose parents left her to watch her two-year-old brother on an icy winter night and never returned, about the police visit the next morning and the horrors of the orphanage that followed.
“Nobody paid much attention to me—like I told you, I was skinny and awkward at that age, a real ugly duckling. But Misha was beautiful,” she says in a raw voice. “He could’ve starred in baby-product commercials. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. The headmistress kept bringing him to her office, and I’d see men, different men each time, go in. I don’t know what they did to him, but there would be bruises on him, and blood occasionally. And he wouldn’t stop crying for days afterwards. I tried to report it, but nobody would listen. The country was in disarray—it still is—and nobody cared about the orphans. We were out of the way, and that was all that mattered.” Her eyes glitter fiercely as she says, “I would’ve done anything to get Misha out of there. Anything.”
Fury is a pulsing beat in my skull, but I keep quiet and continue listening as Yulia tells me about a visit from a well-dressed man whose cold hazel eyes both scared her and gave her hope.
“Vasiliy Obenko offered me a deal, and I took it,” she says. “It was the only way I could save Misha. We’d been at the orphanage for less than a year, and he was already a mess: acting out, crying at random times, disobeying his teachers… Even if a good family had come along, they wouldn’t have wanted to adopt a child with those kinds of behavioral issues, no matter how beautiful he was. I was so desperate I considered taking Misha and running away, but we would’ve starved on the streets or worse. The world isn’t kind to homeless children.” She draws in a shuddering breath, and I stroke her back, trying to keep my own hands from trembling with rage.
I’m going to find the headmistress of that orphanage and make the child-pimping bitch pay.
“So yeah,” Yulia continues after a moment, “when Obenko came to recruit me in exchange for his sister and brother-in-law adopting Misha and providing him with a good home, I jumped at the opportunity. I knew there was a chance I was making a deal with the devil, but I didn’t care. I just wanted Misha to have a shot at a better life.”
Of course. That explains so fucking much: her bizarre loyalty to an organization that abused her, her willingness to carry out “assignments” after what happened with Kirill. It was never about patriotism; all along, she’d been doing it for her brother.
“And did Obenko uphold his part of the bargain?” My tone is relatively calm.
“Sort of—well, I don’t know.” She bites her lip. “I’m still trying to untangle the truth from the lies. Misha was supposed to have a normal life, and it seems like he did—at least until a couple of years ago. His adoptive parents have nothing to do with the agency; Obenko’s sister is a nurse, and her husband is an electrical engineer. Part of the bargain was that I stay away from Misha and his new family, so I only saw him in pictures. I didn’t realize my brother had been recruited by UUR until I followed Obenko to a warehouse on the outskirts of Kiev and saw Misha there, being trained by Kirill along with the other youths.”
“The Kirill you thought was dead?” My rage intensifies as I picture her reaction to this double blow—to a betrayal so cruel even I can’t fathom it.
Yulia nods, her gaze hardening as she tells me about her capture and subsequent interrogation at the hands of her own agency. “They thought I’d been turned, you see,” she says. “That I betrayed them.”
“I don’t understand something.” I slide my hand under her hair and rest it on her nape, managing to keep my fury under control. “What prompted you to fol
low Obenko to that warehouse? Did you suspect something?”
“No, not at all.” Her blue eyes are shadowed. “I started following Obenko in the hopes that he might eventually lead me to his sister’s family—to my brother. I wanted to see Misha just this once before—” She stops, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip.
“Before what?”
Yulia doesn’t respond.
“Before what, beautiful?”
“Before I left for another assignment,” she whispers, blinking rapidly.
Her words fill me with such violent jealousy that I almost miss it when she adds, almost inaudibly, “And disappeared for good.”
“What?” My hand tightens on the back of her neck. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”
She winces, and I gentle my grip, massaging the area I just abused. She still doesn’t say anything, however, and the seconds tick by, each one adding to my fury.
“Yulia…” Only the knowledge of what happened the last time I let jealousy blind me stops me from exploding on the spot. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. I was just—” She closes her eyes for a second before opening them to meet my gaze. “I was going to walk away, okay?” Her voice shakes. “I couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t carry out another assignment for them. I was going to use the plane tickets and the identities they gave me to disappear and start over fresh.”
“You were?” I lower my hand to the small of her back, some of my anger cooling. “Why? Why after all these years?”
She gives a tiny shrug and looks down, avoiding my gaze. “I figured my brother was safe at this point—it’s not like his adoptive parents would put him back in the orphanage after eleven years.”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t have put him back after five years either.” I grip her chin to force her to look at me. I can feel her discomfort with the topic, and it makes me even more determined to unravel this mystery. “You didn’t know about Kirill and your brother yet. So why did you decide to run?”
She remains silent.