Page 15 of Exacting Vengeance

Where was Alex?

The last bite of oatmeal threatened to reverse course in her throat. The TV footage hadn’t shown him getting arrested. If Yuri was given a lengthy sentence for whatever he’d done, maybe she and Alex could have a chance together.

Another thought instantly brought tears to her eyes.

Had Yuri killed Alex for helping her?

A horrible image of him lying dead in a ditch or at the bottom of Lake Michigan with a bullet hole in the back of his head had those tears spilling from her lids.

Please, God, no. Anything but that.

Unable to watch more, she clicked off the TV and picked up a small hand mirror one of the nurses had brought her. Despite the fact half her face was still purple, she experienced something she hadn’t known in years––hope.

If Yuri was really in jail, he couldn’t hurt her anymore. With Marissa’s help, maybe she could get a divorce. But she couldn’t stop thinking and worrying about Alex.

The memory of him tenderly touching her bruises that day on the sandbar came to her. Nurses confirmed that he’d been the one to bring her to the hospital. Since then, he hadn’t come to visit her. She’d have gone anywhere with him. All he would have had to do was ask. But he hadn’t.

And he didn’t ever come back.

Chapter Eight

Ten years later.

“Chicago Russian Crime Boss Semyon Novikov Dies in Prison” was the headline that caught Kyle’s eye as he walked past the New York Times dispenser outside the deli.

Since he’d been the agent responsible for Novikov’s internment in Club Fed, the Bureau of Prisons had given him courtesy notification last night of the old Bratva leader’s death. Seeing it in print for the first time was a kick to the gut, triggering unwanted emotions that ate at him like acid.

Anger. Loss. Regret. Not for Novikov. It was for her. Always, for her.

Viktoria Petrova.

“Hell,” he muttered as hot coffee dripped onto his hands from the two Styrofoam cups he’d half crushed.

He didn’t know what had happened to her after he’d left Chicago, yet she managed to be just as distracting now to his sanity as she’d been back then.

Has it really been that long? Yeah, it had, and he’d never stopped thinking about her. Like many ghosts hovering in his past, she still haunted him and probably always would.

His polo shirt and cotton outer shirt quickly dampened with sweat from the hot, humid early October air funneling down Broadway, making him feel like a wet rat. And the day had only just begun.

He’d gotten no more than twenty feet from the deli when he froze, pinning his gaze on the beat-up sedan parked at the curb in front of the bank across the street. The driver kept looking over his shoulder. Considering it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, the knit cap the guy wore was a tad excessive. From this distance he couldn’t be sure, but the driver looked a lot like Ilya Sorofkin, a notorious wheelman for the Brighton Beach Bratva.

Kyle cursed himself for nearly missing it. Now that his mind wasn’t cluttered with useless emotions, it was as obvious as a fifty-caliber machine gun staring him in the face.

The bank was being robbed. He knew it as surely as if the silent alarm was hardwired directly to his brain. He hurled the coffee cups into a garbage can and charged to the blue Explorer.

“Hey!” Kyle’s brother, Deke, put down the phone he’d been texting on and growled through the open window, “Why’d you dump our coffee?”

He braced his palms on the ledge, never taking his eyes off the car across the street. “See the brown sedan parked outside that bank?” He jutted his chin in the direction of the vehicle.

Deke turned to look. “What about it?”

“The engine’s running, and the driver’s real fidgety. I think it’s Ilya Sorofkin, and he’s waiting for his buddies inside.”

“Shit.” Deke abandoned the text convo he’d been having and punched in 911. “I don’t know how you pick up on this so fast.”

Kyle nodded calmly, but inside, his guts were churning like an Iraqi sandstorm. “Warn them this may be the same crew that tried to rob the Manhattan Bank two months ago. We never nailed those bastards. Different car but could be the same guys.”

Deke held the phone to his ear, waiting to be connected. “Didn’t they shoot one of the tellers?”