The Glass Alibi: Vows of the Vulture

Chapter 9: The Debt of Moscow

The safehouse was an austere slab of concrete that looked like it had been sunk beneath a rust-streaked warehouse on the Brooklyn docks, reeking of brine, diesel fumes, and something acridly metallic.

Silas shoved me through the massive steel door. My legs gave out beneath me. I expected stark efficiency but the room was luxurious-dark velvet, mahogany furniture, and a wall of monitors flashing live feeds from the Kremlin to Wall Street.

And in the center was the face I had tried to erase from my mind for five years.

Young, mid-twenties. Eyes that held the cruel weariness of an aging king. Dark hair. An easy, predatorlike pose, a glass of amber liquid in his hand.

“Mikhail,” Silas’s voice was tight, unnatural. “We’re here.”

He didn’t look at Silas. His dark eyes traced my muddy boots, my shaking hands, my face, and the moment they locked with mine, a jolt like an electric shock ran through me.

“Five years,” Mikhail’s voice was a low baritone that sent a shiver of pure terror straight through me. “Five years, three months, and twelve days since a girl in a red coat kissed me in Red Square and stole a piece of my soul along with my father’s encryption key.”

My lungs went dry. “Mikhail Petrov.”

Silas’s head snapped toward us, his eyes wide. “You know him?”

“He doesn’t know me,” I whispered, recoiling against the frigid concrete until my shoulders hit the wall. “He knows the girl I was pretending to be.”

He pushed up slowly, taller, broader than I remembered. He walked towards me with the slow, terrifying grace of a man who had finally caught the ghost that had been hunting him.

“I remember the taste of the cherry gloss you wore,” Mikhail murmured, stopping an inch from my face. The heat radiating off him was stifling. “I remember how your heart thundered against my ribs while your nimble fingers picked my pocket. You cost me two years of my life, Elara. In a Russian cage because my uncle wanted to use your ‘theft’ to purge my loyalists.”

“I was a detective,” I hissed, a spark of the old Elara flare igniting in my chest. “I was doing my job.”

“And I am a Petrov,” his eyes turned stormy. “We do not know jobs. We know blood. We know debt.” He glanced at Silas. “The Siren with her face is already heading for the Sterling estate. My men have intercepted her communications. She’s looking for the cufflink. If she finds it before we do, your alibi turns into a death sentence.”

“Then we move now,” Silas growled, reaching for his coat.

“No,” Mikhail said, holding up a hand. “You move, Silas. You go to the estate. You create the diversion. But the girl… she stays. With me.”

“That wasn’t the deal,” Silas’s voice was a low rumble of anger, his hand straying to the holster at his hip.

“The deal was she would be my guest,” Mikhail smirked. “And I have five years of catching up to do.”

Silas’s eyes darted between Mikhail and me, a fleeting expression of… what? Guilt? Possession? But a Vulture lived by the ledger, and tonight, survival was the only way to balance it. He looked back at Mikhail and gave a curt nod.

“Keep her alive, Petrov. If she breaks, the alibi breaks.”

Silas melted back into the shadows of the warehouse, the massive door clanging shut behind him.

I was alone with the man whose life I’d derailed.

Mikhail ambled over to a side table, his hand closing around a pair of heavy silver cuffs. No trace of anger, just pure, unadulterated satisfaction.

“You think you are a witness, Elara,” he said, strolling back towards me. “In this room, you are simply the payment of a debt.”

He reached out and brushed his fingers against the wildly hammering pulse at my throat. “Tell me… do you still taste like cherries? Or has the world turned you as bitter as it’s made me?”

I lifted my chin, meeting his gaze, my knees threatening to buckle. “Kill me and be done with it, Mikhail. I’m tired of running.”

“Kill you?” Mikhail’s laughter was a dark, melodic sound as he snapped the first cuff around my wrist. “Death is a punctuation mark, Elara. I am writing a sequel.”

He leaned in, his lips inches from mine.

“Tonight, you are going to help me finish what we started in Red Square. And this time, I will be holding the key.”