Page 9 of Captive Prize

I stared at the photographic image Damien dropped on the table. And admitted I had my doubts at first, too.

A woman with vivid green eyes and golden blonde hair stared out of the picture. The expression on her heart-shaped face was a deceptive mask of innocence. She looked like she was pluckedfrom a fairy tale—not the real Russian fairy tales that warned children of the dangers of the world, but the commercialized ones where everything was beautiful and ended in a happily ever after.

“It’s her. I saw her. She was the one piloting the helicopter.”

I had been reluctantly impressed to learn she had a pilot’s license. Piloting was a unique and useful skill to have, especially for a woman in our world. It had been a smart move on her part. It granted her control over a formidable method of escape. Cars could be chased down; helicopters, not so much. As I learned the hard way.

“How could you possibly know that?” Artem asked, a lethal edge to his tone that questioned my word.

I would forgive him this time since his brother was the one whose life hung in the balance.

“If she was the pilot, then she was wearing a helmet, and it was dark and in the middle of a fucking thunderstorm. I know we all say you have the eyes of an eagle, cousin, but they’re not that sharp.”

They didn’t have to be that sharp.

She was wearing a helmet, but the visor was up, and I saw those eyes. Intense, emerald-green eyes that stared back at me that night, and in my dreams every night since.

I knew that color. It was the same color as the emerald hummingbirds my mother loved. It was a very distinct green, one that I had seen nowhere other than in those delicate feathers—until now, in her gaze.

“It’s her. I know it.” I popped another caviar-covered cracker in my mouth. The salt of the roe burned my tongue. I’d never learned to appreciate caviar like a true Russian. But I also hadn’t eaten in two days.

“Okay, so we know the girl was the pilot, but how do we know for sure that she’s Egor’s daughter?” Gregor asked.

Fighting the urge to snap at them, I fanned out the pictures and picked up one printed from a newspaper.

In the grainy black-and-white photo, she wore a white dress and stood next to a man old enough to be her grandfather. The caption below it read “Egor Novikoff weds his daughter Zoya to prominent businessman and twice-widowed Yelizarov Foma Makarovich.”

“Makarovich. Isn’t he the one who?—”

“Tossed his first wife into a freezing lake and left her there to die? Yes,” I answered, staring at Zoya’s face in her wedding photo, wide-eyed and tight-lipped as if she were struggling not to cry.

“She got herself out of the water and back to the house. He wouldn’t let her in, and she froze to death on her front porch. He was married to his second wife a week later.”

Kostya let out a low whistle.

“She is his second?” Artem asked.

“Third. The second died a few weeks after miscarrying a child. She was malnourished and abused. The official report said the grief killed her, but the coroner suspected starvation and lack of medical care had more to do with it,” I answered.

“So, Egor’s daughter was the one who survived?”

“She’s a widow,” I confirmed, laying the photo down and pulling out another one from the stack.

This one was a picture of the elderly man, his throat a gaping red smile.

“It looks like someone took care of her husband on their wedding night. Probably saved her a lot of pain.”

The men all nodded, staring at the grotesque image.

I leaned back in my chair, watching their expressions. “She is the reason Egor didn’t retaliate after you killed his sons.”

I had to admit the kill was efficient, but sloppy.

Whoever had carried out the hit on Makarovich had more determination than skill. There were hesitation marks, like they weren’t able to get a single clean cut.

The jagged lines meant the subject suffered. He would have bled out fairly quickly, but death wasn’t instant.

It wasn’t a clean kill. But it got the job done.

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