Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(61)

“It’s not a scrapbook,” I say, softly. “It’s a trophy case.”

She looks up. “What? Oh my God, what?”

I swallow. “Eve, I think we better get out of here. Bring that.”

She nods and tucks it under her arm.

A shadow passes by the window. I grab Eve and pull her down to her knees with me, and creep along the floor. I can feel her heart hammering against me and she presses into my side. Just someone walking outside, I think. Then I hear the front door open and freeze.

Whispers pass back and forth. I can’t understand them.

Oh, they’re loud enough, but they’re in Russian.

I look at Eve. She looks at me. I motion for her to wait, and she goes stock still. I listen to the creak of feet on old floorboards. Three shadows, three men. I edge closer to the hallway, ready to spring.

All at once there’s a gun in my face, a sleek black automatic with along cylindrical suppressor.

“Stand up,” the gunman says, in lightly accented English. He’s wearing a ski mask, as are his two friends. One of them aims at Eve.

I put my hands up and stand.

“Put the book on the desk,” the other one says, indicating with his gun.

Eve rests the scrapbook on the desk and puts her hands up.

“Very good. You are coming with us now. Quietly.”

One walks in front and holds the door while the other two walk behind. I can practically feel the guns pointed at my back. There’s a nondescript gray van sitting out front, idling on the street. If somebody would just look they’d see three men with very illegal guns leading us outside, but in cities people have a way of not seeing, if there’s anybody to see at all. The street looks deserted. They push Eve in first, then me. I sit next to her and two gunmen sit a cross from us, pistols resting on their laps, ready to shoot us. The third drives.

“So,” I say. “Your place, or mine?”

“Shut up.”

Turns out they’re going to my place. I don’t mean the apartment. I know as soon as I realize the route we’re taking.

They’re taking us back to the estate.





Chapter Twenty





Evelyn





Oh God, oh God, Oh God.

Victor doesn’t move. His face is a frozen mask. I know my own is just as still, but I’m losing my mind. Please, not now. Don’t let me have so short a time with him and take him away again. I press against him as much as I can.

I don’t remember the ride back to the estate being so short. It feels like five hours. It feels like five minutes. When the van doors open into the dark and they push me out I stumble up the front steps, along with Victor, and into the house.

My father is sitting in a side chair in the foyer, as still as a statue. He might as well be cut from marble. Seated across from him, smoking a cigar, is a massive slab of a man, bald but with hairy hands and thick sausage fingers. Every one has at least one ring, and he’s wearing gold chains around his neck. Big, ostentatious ones. From the description that Victor gave me, he can only be this Vitali person. He looks at me with something his eyes that makes me shiver. I feel like I’m being undressed. His expression goes flat when my father turns and looks at him over steepled fingers.

“There you are,” Father says, in his usual expressionless tone.

“Hello, Martin,” Victor says, his voice edged with malice.

“You,” Father says. “You don’t know how to behave, do you?”

“Out,” says Vitali.

His three men leave, but Vitali pulls out a gun and rests it on his thigh.

“Do not be getting any ideas, boy.”

“What’s going on here?” Victor demands. He looks from one to the other. “What the hell?”

“You’ve been played,” Vitali chuckles.

“I was willing to let this farce continue. Now it must come to an end. This is your fault, Eve. I want you to understand that.”

I swallow.

“What is?”

“If you’d done as you were told, I’d have been willing to let you run off with him, until he was dealt with. Now you go behind my back, and force my hand.”

“You two are working together?” Victor says, incredulous.

“No,” Father says. “Vitali works for me.”

There’s something wrong with his voice. Father’s diction and enunciation were always so perfect, so practiced. He sounds like a voice coach when he speaks, but his voice… slips.

He says something to Vitali in Russian and they both start laughing. When he switches back to English, he has an accent.

“You,” he looks at Victor. “You are no end of trouble. So unpredictable. I should have known giving you two any time alone was a mistake, yes. I cannot have you two going behind our backs, trying to stop me. I had planned a more sophisticated means to deal with our problem, but you force my hand and brute force will have to do.”

I feel my legs shaking, trying to collapse under me.

“The problem is this. When Karen died, everything passed to you, as per her will, as Victor had been disinherited. Somehow she grew…” his eyes roll as he searches for the word, “Disenchanted with me and decided she would rather pass all the Amsel holdings to you. Necessitating that I waste years of time working through you. I had hoped to make better use of you. Perhaps even come to trust you, but like your whore mother you are useless and must be gotten rid of.”