In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(73)

A scrawled signature later, she was being handed into the plush leather interior of a sleek silver Audi, waiting right outside. “What rental agency has cars like this?” she demanded, when he got inside.

“Do not give me any shit about that, or anything else for a while,” he said. “Driving in Rome takes up a lot of disc space. I don’t have any left to navigate your convoluted thinking process. Today is a good day to die, Sveti. Tell me where the merciless mafiya vor lives.”

Sveti pulled the address from her phone and passed it to him.

“He doesn’t live here,” she said. “He bought this house for his wife, Marya, but he never lived here. He’s always off on business.”

Sam snorted. “Business? Nice euphemism.”

“Sam, I have to make sure Sasha is okay. I don’t have a choice.”

Sam guided the car through dense traffic. “Being compelled to do something crazy and self-destructive, against your better judgment?” he said, finally. “Yeah, I can relate to that. But I don’t have to like it.”

Her chin went up. “Feel free to leave,” she said. “I’ll get a cab.”

“You’re missing the point,” he said grimly. “It was never a choice.”

Sam was quiet for the hour and a half or so that it took to get out of the airport and through the morning rush hour in Rome. Sveti was nervous, too, but she could not afford to admit it to him. Her last visit here had been disquieting. Pavel Cherchenko had been absent, to Tam and Val’s relief, but she’d met Sasha’s mother, Marya. A thin, grayish woman who reeked of alcohol and never looked anyone in the eye. She’d died of liver disease not long after. Sveti had been unsurprised.

They parked two blocks from the lavish eighteenth-century palazzo. Sam followed her to the door. She buzzed the bell, which bore no name.

“Chi e’?” someone barked.

“I am Svetlana Ardova,” she said. “I’m looking for Sasha.”

The pause was so long, she’d reached to buzz again. The door lock suddenly released. Sunlight spilled through arched windows into a large entrance hall, making the pink veined marble walls glow.

An elevator began to hum. Someone was coming down.

Sam jerked her closer to his body as the silver doors slid open.



A thick, slab-faced guy glared out at them. He wore an expensive suit. A weapon bulged beneath it. Sam’s head was aching from clenching his teeth so hard. He hated being unarmed. Not that he could have carried a gun into Pavel Cherchenko’s lair in any case, but still. The man barked out something inquisitive in Ukrainian.

Sveti replied in the same language, asking again about Sasha.

Another query, and the guy jerked his lantern-jaw toward Sam.

“I’m Sam Petrie,” he said. “Her boyfriend.”

“I have to search you,” the man said in thickly accented English.

Sam submitted to the pat down, but stiffened when the guy approached Sveti. “Watch where you put your hands,” he growled.

The menace in Sam’s voice froze the guy. He searched Sveti, with careful, gingerly gestures, and then gestured toward the elevator.

Sveti asked about Sasha again, but Slab Face ignored her.

The elevator opened directly onto a lavish salone. Spindly baroque furniture, Persian rugs on a vast expanse of gray-veined, gleaming marble. A pallid, sullen boy with longish dark hair waited for them.

Sveti gasped. “Sasha?”

Sam was taken aback. That couldn’t be right. This kid was Rachel’s age, and Rachel had been a toddler in the Zhoglo days.

“That is not my name,” the boy said in British-flavored English.

“Oh, of course. You’re Misha,” she said, also in English. “I’m sorry. You looked so much like Sasha when I first knew him.”

“I am nothing like my brother,” Misha said.

“Of course you’re not,” she said warmly. “You’re your own person. Sasha told me about you. He’s so proud of how talented you are with computers. He told me you’re a genius.”

“He lied,” Misha said icily. “Drug addicts always lie.”

“He wasn’t lying about you,” Sveti said.

“Shut up about Sasha. Andrei didn’t want to let you in. I made him, because I wanted to warn you to stay away from Sasha.”

Sveti’s smile faded. “I was hoping you could help me find him.”

“Why?” Misha demanded.

“I love him,” Sveti said quietly. “He’s my friend.”

“Stop loving him. Find a better class of friends. He’s junkie scum, and a traitor, too. He’ll be dead soon. Don’t waste love on a corpse.”

Wow. Brotherly love at its most warming. Sveti pressed a hand against her belly. “Why do you say that? What has he done?”

“None of your business. I’m doing you a favor, and I don’t owe you any favors. Stay away from my brother. Forget he exists.”

Sveti stared into the boy’s face with that look, as if she could see a million miles inside him. “A heart can’t forget,” she said.

“Such a stupid heart might get a bullet right through it.”

“Time to go, babe.” Sam took Sveti’s arm. When the threats of deadly violence started to fly, that was their cue to f*ck off, pronto.