Page 164 of Lethal Abduction

“Step away, Leon.” Dimitry’s voice is getting stronger, as is the fury slowly rising inside me. “This man is mine to kill.” He gives Leon a look that, even in profile, could freeze the Arctic. “I don’t know what the fuck you were trying to pull by coming here tonight,” he says softly, “but it’s over now. I suggest you leave while you still can.”

Leon’s face hardens. The two men stare at each other, their expressions so similar they could be two coins struck from the same die. And suddenly, it clicks into place.

Why Leon has always seemed so oddly familiar.

Why I instinctively trusted him, without even knowing him.

Why he was so ready to help us.

I suck in my breath sharply, covering my mouth with my hand to stifle my exclamation. Roman glances at me, frowning, but I can’t speak.

All I can do is watch.

“Well, now. This is something.” Yakov sits back in his chair, his dead smile slowly returning. He raises his mangled hand, dripping with blood, and gestures between the pair before him.

“Dimitry doesn’t know, does he?” He shakes his head wonderingly. “And yet you’re here together. Tell me, Leon. How long have you been lying to your son?”

Roman starts abruptly next to me. His eyes narrow as he stares between the two men. Then he looks at me.

I nod.

Understanding dawns in his eyes. “Christ,” he murmurs quietly.

Dimitry is still as marble, his face entirely unreadable.

“He’s trying to stall,” Leon says fiercely, staring at Dimitry, “because he knows this place is wired to blow. He’s just trying to keep us talking so we go down with him. Please.” His eyes search his son’s. “You have to trust me, Dimitry.”

Without waiting for an answer, he turns back to the man I knew as Jacey.

“Tell me what happened to her.” He cocks his pistol. “You know you’re going to die here, one way or another. After everything, you owe me that, at least. Tell me what happened to my wife.”

Dimitry stares at him. “Your wife,” he says blankly. “My mother.”

“Jesus,” I hear my father murmur behind me.

Leon nods, still staring at Jacey. “Ekaterina,” he says, the name rasping in his throat.

“I can tell you that.” Dimitry’s voice is hard as cut glass as he nods at the man in the chair. “She went to findhim.”

“Oh, she found him.” Leon leans forward, looming over Jacey, his gun pressed against the man’s chest. “I want to know what happenedafterthat. I want to know what happened on that yacht.”

Dimitry frowns. For a moment I think he will ask another question. Instead, he glances at Leon, his eyes narrowing. Whatever he sees in his father’s face clearly forestalls his question, because instead of asking it, his fist crashes brutally into Jacey’s face, crushing his nose and sending blood down his face.

“Answer my father,” he hisses furiously. “Before I break every fucking bone in your body.”

Jacey doesn’t react at all. It’s as if he doesn’t even feel the pain. He just licks the blood off his lips and smiles his dead smile up at Dimitry.

“You always were a tough little fucker,” he says silkily. “You’d never cry, would you? No matter how many times I burned you or raped your mother in front of you, still you refused to fucking cry. It used to drive me mad.”

Leon moves forward like lightning, shoving his knee down onto Jacey’s mangled stump. “Talk, you bastard,” he snarls.

But Jacey just keeps smiling. “You gave them to me, Leon,” he says softly. “You told me they’d be my family. But they never were, even though she was mine long before she was yours—”

“I told you tolook aftermy family. To treat them like your own. I trusted you.” Leon’s voice is low and lethal. “But Ekaterina was never yours. Never. She didn’t want you, Yakov, did she? Not even after you supposedlyrescuedher.”

“Don’t fucking call me Yakov.” For the first time, Jacey’s control slips.

Roman shifts uneasily beside me, his finger tightening on the trigger again.

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