Okay, Her Majesty the Honorable Countess Gen Finch-Hatten was fabulicious.
It was eleven o’clock at night in London but only suppertime back home in Atlantic City. She’d napped on the plane after getting plowed in the bathroom, and Kylie was wired and ready to talk.
Luckily, Gen was ready to talk back.
They talked, laughed, and destroyed the cheese and fruit platter on the stainless steel kitchen island. Micah had loosened up to the point where he was leaning on his elbows while he popped grapes in his mouth between laughs. He was still talking with that brisk British accent of his, which finally seemed appropriate now that they were in London.
Gen badgered Kylie into telling her whole story about how Kylie had met Micah.
“And then this wiseguy shows up in my section when I was waitressing again.” Kylie backhanded Micah, who chuckled and ate another sphere of mozzarella from the board between them. “And I, like some ditz, was like, ‘Surely nothing bad will happen to me if I trust him again.’”
Gen laughed with a loud Texas chortle. “What could go wrong?”
“Right? And so, everything got more complicated from there.”
“As it does.”
“Yeah, it did.”
Kylie was just about to spill it all when Arthur strolled into the kitchen, his hands in his trouser pockets and a grave expression that stopped the conversation dead.
“Arthur?” Gen asked.
Micah straightened. “What did you find?”
“Enough,” Arthur said.
“Did you find my sister?” Kylie asked him, hoping and almost hoping not, wishing Rachele was somewhere untraceably safe. “Is my mom with her?”
Arthur pressed his lips together and looked down at his shoes, hesitating before he said, “I think they are together.”
“Where?” Kylie rounded the kitchen island and strode over to him. When a terrifying thought assailed her, she almost stumbled but held herself upright because the women in her family didn’t fall apart in front of others. “Are they alive?”
Arthur nodded but didn’t look up. “As far as I can ascertain, they both appear to be alive.”
“And together?”
“And together,” he agreed.
Relief flooded Kylie, tinged with the loneliness and jealousy of those left behind. “And they’re okay?”
“That, I don’t know,” Arthur said.
“I’m tired of this twenty-questions guessing game,” Kylie said. “Just goddamn tell me already. Should we come to look at your computer or something?”
Both Arthur and Gen said, “No,” in unison.
Interesting. “Then what is it?”
Arthur had grabbed an orange section from the mostly depopulated snack board and was chewing it.
They waited.
He swallowed. “A few years ago—”
“Oh my God,” Kylie said, flopping forward like a dropped marionette. “I can’t handle this. Tell me the name of the country or state they’re in or something.”
Arthur said, “Monaco.”
Micah rolled his eyes. “Of course, it’s Monaco. It’s always goddamn Monaco. How does so much mayhem happen in that postage stamp of a country that isn’t long enough for a proper jog?”
Arthur raised one dark eyebrow at Micah.
Micah’s eyes drifted up in what looked like a repressed eyeroll. “Yes. Quite.”
Kylie had heard enough of this yammering. “This is my sister and my mom we’re talking about. Will you goddamn make sense?”
Arthur nodded. “I apologize. Of course, but there’s a lot to it. How much do you know about the Russian mafia?”
“Russian mafia?” Kylie repeated and thought herself stupid. “Russians bratvas aren’t Mafia. Russian crime organizations aren’t La Cosa Nostra, this thing of ours. A lot of LCN syndicates specify you have to be half Sicilian to be made. Not the Camorra, of course. They’re from Napoli. For them, it’s just half-Italian. If they’re Russians, they aren’t Mafia. They aren’t family. I mean, I know bratvas exist. I know they do things like drugs, prostitution, and human trafficking that, traditionally, Italian families wouldn’t touch. The Italian organizations do business with the Russians when necessary, not that I know anything about the Russian bratvas or the Italian Mafia or anything like that.”
No, that sounded stupid.
She added, “I mean, I didn’t finish high school. I was studying to get my GED. I really don’t know anything about anything. Especially the Mafia.”
Arthur finished chewing a chunk of something white-fleshed with black seeds and looked up at her with his silver eyes. “You don’t have to pretend with us, Kylie. My ancestors are pillaging marauders and genocidal murderers back to the Norman Conquest, which is how I inherited unfathomable wealth.”
Gen, standing beside her husband, rolled her eyes. “He actually inherited a crumbling earldom, which, with one wrong move, would have gone bankrupt and vanished. He did a hell of a job rebuilding it. Ask him about the bricks on his manor house sometime.”
Arthur patted her hand and smiled softly. “But my point, Kylie, is that you are who you are, and having certain knowledge gleaned from one’s family isn’t a crime.”
Micah was watching her, too.
Kylie examined a fat red grape, mottled with green, that she held in her fingertips. Behind it, the three adults staring at her were blurred to smears of color. “I know some stuff about Salvatore Grande’s Philly operation. I know that he murdered my father for being a rat, even though my father wasn’t a rat. Somebody fingered him when he hadn’t done anything wrong, maybe so they could move up in Grande’s organization. But I don’t want to know anything else. I want to leave Philly and never go back. But whatever I do, I have to know where my mother and Rachele are.”
She refocused her eyes past the grape.
The rest of the kitchen and Arthur sharpened into view. He said, “So you don’t know anything about Russian organized crime.”
“My father wouldn’t have done business with the Russian bratvas. He was traditional.”
Arthur nodded slowly. “A Russian bratva colloquially known as the Chekhovskaya bratva operates in that region. Your mother and sister have been seen in the presence of men who are associated with the Chekhovskaya bratva and traveling in cars registered to people known to be associated.”
“So, they’re just hanging out in Europe?” Kylie asked, her heart falling apart.
“It seems that your sister and mother are in some way associated with the Chekhovskaya bratva, or in the same location as them.” He paused. “Or they’ve been detained by them.”
Shock popped through Kylie. “Detained? Like, kidnapped?”
Micah, meanwhile, sighed more heavily. “The Chekhovskaya? They’re powerful. They took over much of that region when the Sokolovs had those setbacks last year.”
Arthur nodded as he answered Micah. “Bratvas are notoriously nimble. When an operation loses influence, a few months of chaos results until power consolidates in another organization. The bratvas recruit members based on talent and vileness rather than by nationality, which is why they’re expanding so rapidly. They control most of the former Soviet bloc states utterly. Their syndicates are wiping out Italian Mafias all over the world. The Italian Mafia will cease to exist within twenty years, probably ten. They might not be entirely wiped out in Sicily, maybe. Or a bratva may want to make a statement and do it.”
Kylie leaned in. “Hey, duke of earl. My mom and my sister. Kidnapped or not?”
Arthur shook his head. “I don’t know. The language is unclear as to whether they’re being held as guests, assets, hostages, or prisoners.”
“But they’re being held?” she asked for clarification.
“There seems to be some talk of restraint or limitations,” he admitted.
“You found this info on Grande’s computer?”
Arthur Finch-Hatten nodded, still grim.
Steel-cold rage iced her veins. “Is Salvatore fucking Grande involved? Did he set these Chekhovskaya up to kidnap my family?”
“That’s possible. Initial communications between Grande and the Russians began about a month before the date they went missing. That’s the right time frame. The communications have continued since.” Arthur glanced at Micah for some reason. Micah was staring at the cheeseboard remnants on the kitchen island, so Arthur looked back at Kylie. “But the communications have continued. It appears to be an ongoing relationship.”
Images of her mother or sister lying cold and dirty in a Russian basement assailed Kylie. She’d been mad because they’d left without her or that Grande had relocated them and not her.
Maybe Kylie had been terribly, horribly wrong.
But they’d taken clothes. And a suitcase. And her mom’s purse and their passports.
It wasn’t clear-cut.
Kylie covered her face and sank to her elbows on the kitchen island. “Oh my God.”
Feminine hands patted her and wrapped around her shoulders. Gen said, “I’m so sorry. We’ll do everything we can to get more information. Won’t we?”
That last part seemed to be addressed to the other side of the island.
Micah asked, “Their kidnapping couldn’t have been in retribution for anything, could it?”
Kylie dragged her hands down her face to see Arthur and Micah exchanging volumes of conversation without a word.
Arthur shook his head, an efficient gesture with no subterfuge in it. “Time frames don’t match in the slightest. Kylie’s mother and sister disappeared four years ago. Your prior scuffle with the Sokolovs on Maxence’s behalf was less than a year ago, and you met Kylie only recently. Nothing adds up. It’s not you.”
Kylie said, “It was retribution for my father being a rat, or rather because they thought he was a rat, but he wasn’t. That’s what it had to be. His murder was a message job through the mouth. Grande’s been exploiting me for years in revenge for it and threatened worse. Are you sure they’re still alive?” she asked Arthur.
“That’s the odd part,” Arthur said. “The communications, even recent ones, refer to both of them in the present tense. ‘They are. She is.’ They’re likely both alive and in or near Monaco.”
“Because?”
“Monaco and the surrounding areas of France are the Chekhovskaya base of operations now. They described a certain warehouse district as a possible location for them.”
A warehouse. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Micah asked Arthur, “Can’t we just get Maxence to pick up the country and shake it and see if they fall out? You’re his friend, and he owes me.”
“This is more than Maxence can do,” Arthur told him and included Kylie in the conversation with a glance. “It’s too soon. There’s been too much chaos. Maxence’s position is far from secure. He was just enthroned as the Sovereign Prince of Monaco.”
“I beg your pardon?” Kylie asked. “This guy is what?”
“It’s the boarding school I went to for high school, again,” Micah said. “Maxence was the younger brother of the heir to the throne of Monaco, but he ended up with it. Half the royalty and billionaires in the world sent their kids to Le Rosey to get them out of their hair and keep them safe from whatever was after them.”
“So, how did you get into that school?” Kylie asked him.
Micah shrugged. “Scholarship.”
For just a fraction of a second, Arthur’s glance at Micah hardened, and his eyes narrowed. The look on his face smoothed to neutrality almost before Kylie recognized what was there. If Arthur hadn’t been standing so close to Micah, she wouldn’t have caught the change out of the corner of her eye.
That wasn’t a sudden quiver of realization. Arthur knew something about Micah and didn’t like whatever it was.
But Micah had seen it, too. “If Max can’t help, I know my way around Monaco. We can stay with Twist on his boat while we ask around.”
Arthur’s reply was so light that Kylie was instantly suspicious. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
“Absolutely,” Micah said.
Kylie asked Micah, “So, how soon can we use this shiny new passport of mine and get to Monaco?”
“As soon as we have a plan in place,” Arthur said. “A few days at most. It takes a bit to refuel and maintain the jet.”
“Okay, I should probably sleep,” Kylie said. “If we’re going rescuin’ tomorrow.”
“I’ll show you to a guest room,” Gen said, steering her out of the kitchen.
When they were in the hall, Kylie asked, “What was going on between those two?”
Gen Finch-Hatten shook her head, her lips pressed in a hard line. “I don’t know. There’s something, though. But Arthur can’t tell me everything, even if he wanted to, and I couldn’t pass it on if I wanted to.” She looked back at Kylie. “It’s part of his job.”
Oh.
And that made Micah . . . what, exactly?