It won’t do him any good.
Not this time.
“You better hope so,” Andrei is cold, his tone dropping dangerously as he continues. “I’m flying down there. You better pray I don’t find any more evidence of foul play,brat.” The sarcastic edge to the Russian word for brother is not missed. It seems tension between the two has been riding high for a while.
“You won’t,” Kirill swears. “I promise you that.”
Then the line goes dead.
“Well,” Dima’s brow shoots up. “I expected something a bit more.”
“Don’t go anywhere just yet,” Mark tells us. “He’s making an outgoing call.”
“To where?” Ivan questions. A few more clacks of the keyboard later and he has it.
“Seattle.”
There is ringing and then, “You better be calling for a good reason.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands up in awareness at the harsh, feminine voice on the other end. It sounds familiar. Too familiar, but I can’t place where I have heard it before.
“We need to move up the timeline.” Kirill’s voice is shaky, unnerved. He is afraid of this woman, whoever she is. “Someone is working against me. Sending him information.”
“It isn’t my responsibility to clean up your messes, Marius,” the woman hisses. The way she tilts her words tells me she has an accent she is attempting to hide. It is slight and I can’t place it, but one is certainly there.
Where the fuck have I heard this voice before?
“My messes are your mess, Caesar,” he growls. “Remember that. If I lose my position here, we no longer have the foothold we need to the docks.”
Caesar? Marius?
“Fucking Roman general names, really?” Dima mutters beneath his breath. I shoot him a look. He shrugs. “What? I paid attention in school.”
Ivan’s soft laugh filters through the comms.
“Don’t threaten me,” the woman snarls. “If you hadn’t been so careless this wouldn’t be an issue.”
“Just send one of the legionaries.” Kirill sighs heavily. “It must look like an assassination. Otherwise, there will be too much digging when I ascend as leader.”
Ascend. What a pompous asshat.
“And what about your nephew?” The woman questions. “Ivan? He is next in line to inherit.”
Kirill brushes her off. “He is nothing,” he insists. “Nothing but a disgraced outcast who hasn’t been heard from in years. I make sure he appears to be nothing more than a disgruntled son after his father’s money. Andrei cut him off.”
“But he didn’t cut him from his will,” the woman points out. “Or from succession.”
Kirill brushes her off. “It is nothing. He is nothing.”
Or so Ivan let him believe.
“You better hope so, Marius,” the venom dripping from the phone line is obvious. As is her disdain for him. “Otherwise, you might regret what is coming for you.”
“And what is that?”
“Ghosts of the past.”
“All of my problems are dead,” he gloats. “Your legionnaire made sure of that.”