Chapter Thirteen

Crushing boredom. I should have welcomed it after the events of the past few days but instead I was as restless and irritable as a caged cat after only a couple of hours in my own country. Kirill was no help, either; he sat on the sofa with an utterly impassive face, his dark eyes following me as I paced up and down the length of the living room. At last I stopped and sat down in a chair opposite him – I was determined to have answers to some pressing questions.

'So tell me,' I started. 'What's been happening with my father's business since he was arrested?'

He gave me that level look that somehow said I was an idiot for even asking. 'I'm a hit man, not an accountant.'

I glared. This wasn't a promising start. 'You'll still know more than me.'

He sighed, presumably in frustration. 'I believe your uncle has been running things on behalf of Gretkov.'

'Sergei?' I exclaimed, startled.

He nodded, once, and I pondered that for a while. I hadn't seen my father's step-brother in years – he and Father had never really gotten along and it was interesting that he had been called in to take the reins of the empire he had for so long coveted. My father must have felt that blood, even only half-shared, was more likely to remain loyal than his other men – perhaps there was treachery amongst those who had once been his most trusted lieutenants.

Although I was certain that those very same men would be placed close to Sergei, watching, listening – perhaps waiting for him to slip up so that they could dispose of him with my father's blessings and take control themselves. They would be rewarded well for their efforts in maintaining Pekos when Father was finally able to walk free.

'When will my father be out of prison?' He had been sent away for more than twenty years but I knew better than to believe that that would stand.

Kirill shrugged. 'Soon.'

'How soon?'

Another shrug. This was getting irritating.

'Alright then,' I said through gritted teeth, struggling to control my temper at his evasiveness. 'Explain the nature of the threats against me.'

'I don't know.'

'Bullshit. You told me in Paris that others have eyes to the wealth of Pekos. The business must still be worth a lot, if that is the case.'

Kirill was now refusing to look at me. He had an annoying habit of talking with his eyes focused not on me but on some inanimate object on the other side of the room, only glancing over when he had a particularly crushing observation to make.

'Gretkov has men in prisons across the country, but so do others. And one in particular has been growing restive after Gretkov refused to sell him the drilling rights in the Caspian sea.'

This was verbose, for Kirill, although each word left his lips reluctantly.

'Who?'

'His name is Pavel Koretsky.'

'Koretsky.' I rolled the name around in my mouth, thinking. 'I've never heard of him. Is my father at risk?'

A stupid question – my father was always at risk, that I knew. My real question was whether Gretkov stood in imminent danger of being assassinated – a knife in the back in prison late at night, a pair of strangling hands in the shower, a quick shove down a set of stairs or over a railing… Whatever issues I had with my father, I still had that fierce instinct to look after my own. I could hardly bear the thought of such an ignominious end for him.

'He's protected.'

'Oh, how you've put my mind at ease,' I replied with heavy sarcasm.

Kirill said nothing but I wasn't about to let him off the hook that easily. We were home now, and his role had changed from that of captor to protector. He was damn well going to answer me even if I had to drag each word from his mouth.

'You mentioned another, an American. By the name of Bourne, I think.'

The muscles of Kirill's jaw flexed but he remained otherwise relaxed, his gaze still directed somewhere over my right shoulder. He had such dark irises and hair; they made the whites of his eyes seem very bright and clear, which was strange considering how tired he had to be – and there was still the probability of concussion following that skirmish with the would-be assassins in the streets of Paris.

'Well?' I added, when it became apparent that he wasn't going to offer anything of his own volition.

'Bourne is… back.'

'Back?'

'He flew into Turkey three weeks ago. Twelve hours later he booked flights to Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany… and France.'

I felt a cold chill down my spine. 'That's when my father decided to get me out of Paris?'

Again, that infuriating shrug, and then I did something very stupid. I had a tendency to antagonise people whom I actually wanted to like me – it was as if I just couldn't help stupid things from slipping out of my mouth, and they always ended up sounding nothing like what I had intended them to. Perhaps it was a nervous thing.

'You once said that Bourne was better than you.'

Finally, I had his attention. Those dark eyes bored into mine and he lifted an eyebrow – he might as well have said "so?".

'What good will your presence be if he finds me here? You said that he was after you as well. Maybe you shouldn't wait for Alexei to get here. Maybe you should start running.'

That did it. I refused to let myself quail as his face assumed that cold, quietly murderous mask that indicated he was angry. I told myself that I was glad that I had finally pierced his armour and let him know what it felt like to be belittled and humiliated – but deep down I was sorry to have done it and already regretting having alienated him further.

Fiercely, I tried to squash those feelings. He already disliked me, if anything – why shouldn't I say what I wanted? There was no point being nice to him, trying to get him to like me; I would never succeed. I may as well match him in his aversion rather than be left sighing over him like a school girl over Orlando Bloom. Not that I liked him, of course! I hated him, I told myself sternly. It would be beyond folly to like a man such as he, with no conscience and no warm emotions that I could discern.

'Run? You think I would run from him?'

I tried not to gulp in fear like they did in cartoons but it was remarkably hard. Kirill reminded me of a hissing cat as his face suddenly crumpled into open fury – gone was his mask and impassive reserve, and I wasn't sure whether to glory in my victory or apologise abjectly.

'As soon as your guard gets here I will find him. And when I do, I will kill him.'

With that, Kirill stood and marched into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Silence fell over the dimly-lit apartment and I sat there in the dark for a long time as night fell over the city, thinking.

Kirill was going to go hunting for this Bourne, the man who had caused him great injury in the past. I wondered if my father would be able to stop him, to order him somewhere else – until I realised that Gretkov was more than likely paying Kirill to go after the person who had helped put him in jail.

I found myself hoping that this time Kirill would be the one to walk away, leaving behind not a battered and bleeding body but a cold and lifeless corpse. And it wasn't because Bourne might be coming after me, the daughter of the man who had tried to have him killed and had also caused the death of his girlfriend.

It was because I had seen something dark and tortured and twisted in Kirill's eyes when he spoke of the American. He wanted revenge, to prove his own worth and stop the self-doubt which I suddenly knew, with crystal clarity, had been preying on his mind ever since. I had nightmares of being helpless at the hands of Lucas – Kirill, I was willing to bet, had similar ones about Bourne. How galling it must have been for such a proud man to be beaten so!

I hoped that Kirill would be the victor – and I refused to ask myself why I wished the outcome would be such. I wasn't quite ready to face that answer.

: - : - :

Kirill shadowed my every step like the guard dog he was. He was no more talkative than he had been in Paris and scarcely any less forbidding, but it was I who was making the decisions for a change. And I decided that I was going to make him pay for how much he annoyed me, no matter how petty that seemed.

It began with a round of shopping at some of the more exclusive boutiques Moscow had to offer. I possessed only the clothes he had bought for me in France and the ones I had abandoned when I left home four years ago, and I decided to give the credit card my father had arranged for me a good work out.

Whether Kirill would have been any use in a crisis remained doubtful – his arms were heavily laden with bags of new clothes and, as he had stubbornly refused to see a doctor, I had no qualms in treating him like a pack mule. We had had a reversal in positions once we'd entered Russia and I was determined to lord it over him.

'Oh, look!' I exclaimed in a falsely surprised tone, peering in through a shop window. 'Fallen Angel lingerie. My very favourite shop!'

I thought gleefully that I detected a hint of horror in Kirill's eyes at that pronouncement – they certainly widened in protest as I sailed straight in through the doors and he had no choice but to follow. A blush would have been too much to hope for but he was definitely uncomfortable, if the stiffness of his back and the set of his jaw were anything to go by. And those eyes of his really glinted when he had them narrowed in annoyance.

Matters were hardly improved – for him, at least – when the very helpful shop assistant assumed that he was my boyfriend, and I made no move to disabuse her of the notion. She directed us into the change rooms, which were decorated in the same black lace and fuck-me-red colour scheme as the rest of the store and, sensing a customer with unlimited funds, devoted herself to finding all the sizes and styles I might possibly need.

I had, by now, realised that although Kirill might not relish the position of bodyguard – especially to me! – he was more than thorough in his attention to the task, and would not allow himself to be so much as one room away from me when we weren't in the apartment. The effect was something like having an extra shadow, and a silently disapproving one at that. His frown had increased with each shop we had visited and each bag I had loaded onto his arms – and we had already had to return to the car twice to stash my purchases in the trunk.

I was tempted to really push my luck and waltz out of the velvet-curtained changing cubical in nothing but the underwear and oh-so-casually ask his opinion, but I was all too aware that that would do nothing to increase my standing in his eyes. Taking pity on him, I was as quick as I could be in selecting my purchases, and there was palpable relief on his part when I announced that I'd had enough and it was time for lunch.

Off to a trendy café we went, where Kirill led me straight to a table in the back part of the store and sat where he could keep an eye on the staff behind the counter and also the street outside. There was no conversation and when our meals arrived Krill only picked over his, as I'd discovered was his custom, and his eyes never stopped taking everything in. I rolled my own and was about to comment that I didn't think I needed to fear assassins over my chicken salad when I saw his eyes narrow and his hand suddenly dive into his coat.

My heart skipped a beat and I turned to look over my shoulder, more than half expecting to see an enormous, muscle-clad man bearing down on me with gun drawn – but instead I saw two young women, both with very familiar looking faces, running towards me as fast as their perilously high heeled shoes would allow.

'Katya!'

It was none other than Ira and Lena, two of my very best friends from before I had left home. We had initially kept in contact by email following my move to Paris, but over time our correspondence had become more and more infrequent until it had at last ceased altogether about two years ago. That didn't matter now, however, and I leapt up to return their enthusiastic hugs; it was like coming home to two very large, boisterous puppies.

'When did you get back? How long have you been here? Have you run into anyone else yet?'

That was Ira, babbling away at a hundred questions a minute, practically dancing with excitement. She was a tall brunette, bubbly and cheerful with smiling brown eyes and the lithe body of a serious tennis player.

'Ira, let her breathe! And as if you didn't tell us you'd returned!' Lena said, rolling her enormous blue eyes at me but smiling all the same.

Their colour was startling against the black mascara and eyeliner which she applied liberally. She was the more serious of the pair, although given to melancholia and substance use – or at least, she had been when I'd last known her. I'd always worried she'd end up a heroin addict or something but she had always laughed off such concerns with a wink and a comment about how it was expected of her; after all, she had to find some way to spend her father's immense fortune, amassed through intelligent (and not always legal) play on the stock market.

'I only arrived yesterday,' I said, smiling so hard my face hurt; I was out of practice at the expression. 'I should have known you'd be around here! How are you both? What's been happening?'

They joined me for lunch, of course, and Kirill abandoned his meal to stand against the wall behind my chair in the accepted way. I was soon lost in conversation with the two girls who had been with me all the way through high school, but there was a part of me that remained remote and detached from the conversation.

Somehow shopping, the gossip of Moscow's rich and famous and enthusiastic discussions about what to do now that I was back just couldn't occupy the whole of my mind. I knew it was snobbish but I couldn't help but feel a sudden swoop of disdain for the pair. They had never known what it was to work for their rent and food, to face guns and men intent on using them to deadly effect, to flee for their very lives, and I didn't feel able to tell them about the circumstances under which I had returned home. They certainly would not understand, and I just couldn't face the indignant and sympathetic squeals of shock and horror I knew would follow such a tale.

I realised now that I couldn't go back to the cosseted existence I had once taken for granted, and I shied away from the thought that I might once have been just as blinkered and frivolous as the two girls sitting before me. I smiled and replied and made all the appropriate comments as Ira and Lena prattled on, but my heart wasn't in it. I was conscious of an ever-increasing kernel of worry in the pit of my stomach; what on earth was I going to do with myself now that I was back in Moscow?

AN: I have to admit that I get all my Russian names from the credits of the movie... I'm not very inventive. As always, a HUGE thank you to all the lovely people who read and review; you guys make failing uni worth it just so I can write this stuff ;) Now, I know this wasn't the most riveting chapter ever, but the next one is where the fun really starts! *wink wink*