I took pity on him. “Go. We can’t do anything till Alexei comes back anyway, but hurry the fuck up.”
There was a Nash shaped hole in the door.
A laugh finally breached the tension binding my entire body. “You think he’s gonna wife her?”
“Up to Orla, ain’t it?” Rubi dead-eyed me, hurt and misery rising in his gaze before he evaded my raised brows and turned back to his notes.
Nash returned, my sister’s red lipstick on his fucking mouth. Before anyone could speak, Alexei slipped through the door behind him, shutting it with a quiet click. He looked the same as when he’d left.He looks the same. He looks the same. He looks the same.
But he didn’t, and Saint saw it. He sat up straighter, automatically reaching for Alexei, all the peace he’d brought us both fading before our fucking eyes, but Alexei stilled him with a stare that chilled my blood. “Gianni Sambini knows more than he wants to, but his father forbade him from speaking with you.”
His father. The overlord of the Sambini organisation. A man we’d already crossed by kidnapping his son and disabling their entire operation in South West England. “Are they involved?”
“No, but they are aware and they chose not to tell you. It does not technically breach their agreement with Sidorov.”
Technically.I hate that word. “What does he know that we don’t? Did that Russian cunt tell you?”
Alexei returned to his position at Saint’s shoulder and placed his hands on the back of his chair. It was an unconscious sign of unity, but I had no time to revel in it. Alexei spoke directly to me. “That Russian cunt is Viktor, the man Sidorov put on the ground to watch over his interests.”
“I know. We’ve met. But he never told me he had interests outside of the deal that was made over my fucking head.”
Saint frowned, absorbing the sharp tone lacing my words. Confused. Cautious.
Alexei didn’t blink. Perhaps he knew me better than I knew myself. “Sidorov always has interests beyond what the rest of the world can see. The only thing I can tell you with any certainty is that it is not trafficking flesh and bone.”
I knew that already. Couldn’t remember how. Just that I did, and whatever fucked-up bullshit I was running with was wasting valuable time.
Time we didn’t have.
I took a breath and gestured for Alexei to keep talking.
“You were right about the shipment,” he said. “It will not be in the truck by the time you intercept it. Instead, you will be met with armed men instructed to kill as many of you as possible. As we have already said, it is a fight they are expecting, and they expect to win.”
“How many?”
“Men? I do not know, but it will be more than you have if you go as you are.”
“As we are?”
Alexei squeezed Saint’s shoulders, then blinked as if he hadn’t meant to do it.
A pause flooded the room.
Saint reached up and rubbed Alexei’s hands, a sweet gesture I’d seen him make a thousand times, but it hit me like the first all the same. Or maybe like the last. The foreboding I’d carried for what felt likeyearspunched me in the gut. Fire ravaged my blood, burning the love we shared and leaving embers in its wake.
Phantom smoke filled my lungs.
I couldn’t fucking breathe, but Ihadto, or we were all going to die.
Rubi lit a cigarette.
It broke the silence. Alexei came back into himself and took a breath. “Viktor will fight with you if it is assistance you can live with. He has men loyal to him, weapons, and the ability to mobilise within the hour. If you want to finish this invisible war, all he needs is a location.”
Invisible war. I supposed it had been. Enemies we didn’t know we had. Running battles that never truly got started.
And long periods of quiet that had gifted me precious time to fall harder for two men I didn’t fucking deserve. “I don’t understand why he wants to help us. Is it because of you? Is Sidorov supporting you?”
“No. I told you before that relationship is over. Sidorov may want something from his actions, but it is not me. I am dead to him, as I wish to be. With Viktor...” Alexei’s eyes glazed, brief and violent, before he was back in the room. “I believe it is personal for him.”