Page 34 of Blazing Embers

I pace the alley, sharp shoes rasping over slick cobblestone, a chill creeping through the expensive wool of my coat and making my flesh shiver. My eyes dart from the puddles pooling under broken pipes to the lone bulb over the loading dock, flickering like a dying moth. There are places in Moscow where shadows don’t just linger—they have names, debts, old scores. This is one of those places.

I check my watch for the tenth time. Clyde is almost ten minutes late. I mutter a curse—“blyad”—and the cloud of my breath hangs in the air, thicker than the cigarette smoke clinging to the bricks.

My mind wanders back to Tara. She’s still in that fucking hospital. The words rattle through my head, relentless, like a broken bell that won’t stop ringing.

I rub my thumb against the inside of my wrist, where the nurse had fastened the hospital bracelet. “It’s just for visitor access,” she’d said, but the imprint burns like a brand. I spent two wholenights at her bedside—her face gray, her pulse thready, her lips mouthing something I couldn’t hear. The doctors said she’ll live. The doctors also stated that Tara will never be able to have children. The doctors said a lot of things, and every syllable hit like a hammer.

Now she’s asleep, sedated, and I’m alone in the dank, smelly alley, waiting for a ghost who may or may not show up.

A distant car alarm wails. A tram clangs somewhere far off, steel on steel. And in the in-between, my mind works through the problem of Tara: how she survived, why she almost died, what it means for us, what it means for me. The weight of it gnaws at my gut. Her “infertility” is a problem, but not the problem I want to solve tonight. As the Dragunov, I will need an heir. My jaw clenches, and I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Fuck,” I spit. Is this karma bitch slapping me for pushing my sister into doing the exact same thing to the Mirochins that they did to me? Send a spy to get close to Gavriil, marry him, and produce an heir. Then flee, under the guise that her husband, Gavriil, was trying to kill her. Just like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had done to their wives once they’d served the purpose of producing an heir. Boris Mirochin's grandfather, Gavriil, had sent my wife to get close to me. As close as it took to get a ring on her finger and a Dragunov heir in her belly. But the old fuck never expected Alisa to fall in love with me or betray him the way she did by coming clean and telling me everything. Something that had gotten her and my daughter, Eva, killed on her first birthday.

My jaw clenches as the memory hits, brought back by watching Tara bleed out in my arms. The wave of fear and panic washes over me, and I breathe through it. It’s over. Tara’s alive. The restI’ll deal with as we get to it. I glance at my wristwatch again. Clyde is now fucking well twenty-minutes late.

My eyes scan the alley and the road in front of it. A tingling starts to creep up my spine—I’m being watched. I sure as shit hope this isn’t a setup or some sort of ambush. Actually no, fuck that, I hope it is. I need to hit something, and what better something to hit than men I have to defend myself against.

I turn and look over my shoulder, scanning the buildings around me. There’s no one. The alley is strangely quiet. Maybe too quiet, I realize. The kind of quiet that happens when animals know a storm is coming, so they take cover. Anger spurts through me. Fuck! I came here to get answers about Tara’s alleged miscarriage, and I intend to get them even if I have to hunt Clyde down. I may not know where he is, but I know he arrived in the country in the early hours of this morning. He’d looked right at a security camera as if he wanted me to know.

The fucker was telling me he was here to get Tara and take her back to America. Then Konstantin got his number from his sister, who obviously knows Clyde.

Konstantin’s voice rattles through my mind. “I’ve got Clyde’s number. Petra tracked him. It shouldn’t have been possible. But the girl’s a genius, even if she’s batshit crazy.” The old fear and loyalty warred in his eyes, but he’d shrugged, and that was that. His sister Petra was one of them. A test subject of the Jewel Initiative Project. She was Subject #7, taken from the Romanovs as leverage to convince Konstantin and Petra’s father to represent the RMSAD in a court case. A court case they knew only Armen Romanov could win.

Petra had not been the same since the RMSAD eventually let her go back to her family. She changed and then eventually ran awayfrom home at the age of sixteen. But Petra didn’t just take to the streets. She found a way to inherit the money left to her by her mother and then invested it, making a fortune. After that, she became a black hat known as the ghost in the wires. I don’t think there is a watch or most-wanted list in the world that Petra is not in the top ten of.

I recheck the time. Fuck. I pull out my phone and find the number Clyde called me on and hit dial. There is no such number. Figures.

My senses go on high alert as I sense danger. I flex my fists, blood racing, fight-or-flight sharpening every nerve.

A long limo with blacked-out windows rounds the corner, tires hissing through the gutter. My pulse ticks faster.

I brace my feet, jaw set.

The car stops. There’s no sound except the slow tick-tick of the engine cooling.

The door opens, and I watch as a brute of a man wearing a chauffeur's uniform steps out and walks toward me.

“Mr. Dragunov,” he stops in front of me, his face expressionless. “My lady would like to have a word with you.”

“Who is your lady?” I crane my neck to see in the car, but the windows are entirely blacked out. “Is she a vampire that the windows need to block out the light?”

“If you would be so kind as to come with me, Mr. Dragunov,” the man states, ignoring my chirps. He moves his jacket, and there is a gun holstered by his side. “And before you think of trying anything, look at your chest.”

I glance down—a red dot. My head lifts, and a glint of scope on top of a building catches my eye.

“Trust me, my man is the best and has never missed a shot,” the chauffeur warns me. “Now, if you would please turn around.”

He holds up a cable tie.

“What the fuck is that for?”

“Just to ensure nothing untoward happens when you meet my lady,” the chauffeur tells me.

“Trust me, I won’t hurt whoever she is as long as she doesn’t threaten me. Cable ties are not necessary,” I tell him.

“It’s not for my lady’s safety, Mr. Dragunov, it’s for yours.” His words make me stiffen. “Now, please don’t make this more difficult than it has to be. You have my word, my lady just wants to talk.”

I turn and put my hands behind my back. “Then why all this?”

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