Page 14 of Wyatt

Her father.

A man who’d recently nearly been assassinated. A man whose daughter was probably a valuable pawn to nab, manipulate, and hold hostage.

Aw, maybe sheshouldhave said yes to Wyatt’s really bad but earnest escape-from-Russia plan.

She nearly did. Nearly stepped back into those amazing arms and let him rescue her.

Wake up, Kat.She didnotneed rescuing, thank you. She’d been on her own since she was eighteen, and frankly even before that had learned how to take care of herself.

Coco slid into the Lada parked down the street from the Intourist Hotel, locked the door, and sat in the darkness.

Stared at the hotel.

She could go back inside. Tell him the truth.I can’t leave Russia without my son. Our son.

She closed her eyes, imagining how that might play out.

Shock? Certainly. Anger? Most definitely—and rightly so. She should have told him she was pregnant five years ago, or three, or two or…anytime over the past year when he’d tried to chat with her online.

No,whenshe told him, it would have to be the perfect place and time.

And most importantly, when everyone wassafe.

She started the Lada and pulled out, driving down Karl Marx Street, turning off onto Lenin Street, then onto a side street toward one of the older buildings at the end of Lermontova, and parked in the lot. The nine-story apartment building was one of the newer ones, but she passed by a monument of a World War II or 2–era tank on her way inside.

These newer apartments came with security codes at the door, and she punched in the code and entered. The difference between the Russian streets and the apartments could be startling—going from crumbling buildings, weedy, broken parking lots, and trash-littered alleys to bright and shiny, clean and new apartments. She took the lift up to the ninth floor and hit the buzzer.

The inner door opened, and a blonde woman, her hair cut short in a bob, answered. She wore a pair of leggings and a flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows. “Hey,” Sarai Novik said through the window in the metal door as she inserted the key into the lock.

It whined open.

“Hey.” Coco stepped past her.

“You don’t look so good. You all right?”

Other than her puffy face and the fact she’d only stopped crying? “Yeah, I’m fine. I just…oy!” She stepped over the threshold into Sarai’s four-room apartment and was nearly mowed down by a five-year-old on a bike riding down the hallway. She caught the handlebars, dodging the front wheel.

“Vitya, I told you—no riding your bike in the house,” Sarai said and shooed him off the bike.

He could wreck Coco with his smile. Blond like his mother, with hazel-green eyes like his father, Roman, and a little older than Mikka.

Coco simply stared at him as he dropped his bike by the door and scampered down the hallway to his room.

“He’s got the energy of three boys,” Sarai said, motioning Coco to the kitchen. “Roman installed a jungle gym in his room, complete with a pull-up bar and a rope swing so he could burn some of it off. But he’s more exhausting than a roomful of trauma patients.” Sarai patted a kitchen chair. “Let me take a look at your wound.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sit down.”

“It’s healing fine,” Coco said, but sank into the chair, pulling off her hoodie. She tugged down her waistband enough for Sarai to look at her wound, now a bright, angry red scar.

“Want to talk about it?”

Coco sighed. “No.” Yes. “I saw someone from my past.”

Sarai probed the wound, then got up. “And…?” She turned the heat on under a tea kettle, the Russian way to solve every problem.

The door lock bolts slid back, and Sarai turned just as her husband, Roman, walked into the room. A former special ops soldier, he now trained militia and other spec ops types. Vitya ran down the hall, and his father scooped him up.

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