Page 108 of Pas de Trois
But right away, I bonded with Lidia and she stood by me as I lost my fucking mind deciding to pursue a potentially useless search for Anya. We both felt that if there were any possibility that she was still alive, that we would leave no stone unturned to bring her back.
We got a small place together because she insisted that I needed her help with Brandon. I did, but really, she wanted to be close to him because just like me, he was all she had left of Anya. It turned out that the 5,000,000 Rubles of Russian currency Kostya had given us was about 70,000 American dollars. It was enough to get by on while I went crazy in my overseas search. Lidia stepped up to take care of her nephew when I had to be gone to chase a new lead.
I talked to some unsavory people and I did some things that I’m not proud of, but if I hadn’t, I never would’ve stumbled upon the underground group of rogue agents who had been trying to bring an end to the four families for two decades. It took me a couple of months to convince them of my story, to feed them the information I’d gathered about the four families so they could compare it to their own intel. Once I introduced them to Brandon and Lidia, that was it.
We partnered.
Their intel, military training and expertise, their insiders…they gave me access to everything they had to help me find Anya. They had a stake in finding her because undoubtedly, she could give them even better information than I had since she’d been temporarily the sole leader of the Mikhailov family.
Things were starting to fall apart for the four families. It had started with the Leblancs, formerly the Campbells. The insiders knew of the changeover in family leadership from the moment it happened—when the Campbells were punished for their role in killing Nikolai’s family.
The agents had someone on the inside—a girl named Callista Campbell, the granddaughter of Charles Campbell, niece of the murdered Head of House Chandler Campbell. She wanted out when Chandler was killed, fearing for her life, but I guess they had convinced her to stay, took her away for some time and trained her in the art of becoming a trusted confidante to the new Head of House, Leo Leblanc.
Apparently, Callista was making waves. Though Leo was her first cousin once removed—the son of her great aunt and uncle—he had a thing for her. And Callista was using it to her advantage.
With the Leblanc family slowly unraveling and intel that Murphy and Stella O’Shea have started decommissioning some of their factories, the time for this group to act was now. And that meant they were willing to help me find Anya, which is exactly what they did.
It’s why I’m flying across the Atlantic right now.
Lidia’s name appears on my video chat and I click to bring her up.
“Hey,” she says, a little out of breath, “sorry I’m a few minutes late. Brandon figured out how to get out of his diaper and took a shit behind the couch before I realized it.”
We both laugh.
“Where is my precious little fucker?”
“Hang on,” Lidia says, stepping away from the camera for a few seconds, returning with my boy, plopping him down on her lap. “Say hi to daddy.”
I wave at my little buddy. “Hey, baby. I miss you.”
Brandon babbles something incoherent at the screen and my grin makes my cheeks ache. Anya is the only other person I’ve loved as much as I love Brandon.
Lidia’s face turns serious. “How long before you land in Oslo?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“And how long before you reach the warehouse…the factory…whatever they call it?”
“It’s a warehouse, but they call it a factory. It’ll be at least another hour before we get there, but it’ll be longer than that before we have her. If she’s actually there.”
“She has to be there. I know it, Ezra. She’s my sister. I know she’s not dead, I would feel it.”
I nod a little. “I know. I promise you, the moment we know more, I’ll call you.”
The rogues have been watching Murphy O’Shea’s movements for months. They noticed him spending a lot more time away from his factories and a lot more time at home with his wife. He’s closed two factories over the course of the year. But they expected to have seen bodies moving—dead or alive—and being shipped to other factories. They hadn’t seen any such movement. It was like the girls they kidnapped and kept just disappeared.
I think Stella had something to do with it all. I think Murphy fell hard for her, and because she’s such a force to be reckoned with, something in him changed and shifted his perspective. I can only hope that’s why. Falling in love with a good woman can take a weak man and make him stronger…can take a worse man and make him better.
Whatever the case, the agents spotted a girl who matched Anya’s description living in the Oslo factory for the last six months or so, with no other signs of life there.
And we’re on our way there now.
“Ezra, let’s brief,” one of the group members calls to me from the back of the private jet.
“I’ve gotta go,” I tell Lidia.
“Call us the moment she’s safe. Make sure she’s safe, Ezra.”
