83
IVAN
Yasha screeches to a stop in the parking garage. Leon separates from the cement wall, leaving his post next to the back doors. His brow is furrowed like he has no clue why we’re there.
I fly out of the car, already running towards the building. “You haven’t been answering your fucking phone,” I bark.
Leon’s expression filters through every emotion before he digs his phone out of his pocket. His jaw clenches. “No signal. Fuck.”
The signal was jammed. Whoever did this planned ahead.
Yasha comes running up fast behind me, but I get to the back door first. I throw it open and head inside as Leon calls, “What should we do?”
If Yasha responds, I don’t hear him. I don’t hear anything.
My entire focus is on getting inside. Getting to Jorden’s apartment. Getting to Cora.
Even though some part of me already knows she won’t be there.
What I heard on that phone call told me enough. They were dragged out of the apartment screaming.
We skip the bank of elevators in favor of the stairs, leaping up them three at a time. We exit on the third floor landing and immediately, my stomach drops.
Jorden’s door is open.
More specifically, it’s open because someone kicked it in with enough force that the trim ripped off the wall.
“Shit,” Yasha spits.
I hear his gun slide out of his holster, but I don’t even reach for mine. I know I won’t need it.
They’re already gone.
I push the door open and storm inside, stomping over spilled papers, an overturned stool, and the remnants of someone’s burnt toast.
“Careful, Ivan. Let me clear the apartment before—”
“They aren’t here.”
There was a struggle, I can tell that much. The closet in the hallway is open and hanging off its hinges.
I imagine someone dragging Cora down the hallway in my mind’s eye. I envision her fighting, helpless to stop whoever had a hold of her.
My fists clench at my side as I move back to the bedroom.
The blankets are hanging off the bed and the nightstand is knocked over, but my eyes are locked on the closet. On the clothes and hangers piled in the middle of the floor. At the closet rod ripped from the wall.
“This is where they were when she called.” I know it’s true. I can feel it. The scene is playing out like a horror movie in my head, and I know I’m right.
I should have been here.
As soon as Cora told me Francia was missing, I should have brought her back to my house.
Better yet, I never should have let her leave in the first place.
That’s when I see Cora’s phone on the floor. It’s the phone I gave her when she arrived at my house. The one I had a tracker installed in. It’s useless now.
I pick up the phone and slide it into my back pocket.
Yasha has cleared the bedroom and the bathroom already. Now, he is moving back into the living room.
“Ivan! In here,” he calls a minute later. I follow his voice into the living room. He’s standing by the window next to the couch.
“The window was unlocked and cracked open. I think this is how they left.”
I peek out the window and see the rusted remnants of a fire escape. “Do you think someone could have carried them down this fire escape?”
Yasha looks out the window, assessing. Finally he nods. “Yeah, I do. Why?”
“Because if I was in charge of getting two women out of this apartment without being seen, I would have drugged them inside and carried them down the stairs myself. Fewer variables that way.”
“You think it was a two-person job?”
I nod. “That’s a possibility. Or…”
Yasha spins around, brow furrowed. “You’re not really saying what I think you are, right? I watched that girl around you for two weeks. If she is guilty of anything, it’s not spying; it’s being in love with you.”
I shake my head and grit my teeth. “Or she was just a good fucking actress.”
“This is ridiculous. Look around, Ivan. Look at this place!” Yasha throws his arms wide. “I don’t think you’re seeing this clearly. The place is trashed. We both heard that screaming.”
The sound of it is still echoing in my ears.
So is the thought that something isn’t right.
“Francia went missing. As we were checking on that, Cora and Jorden go missing. And all three of them are gone without a trace. Without any witnesses. Without anyone seeing anything.” I shake my head. “How could someone do this without help them from the inside?”
Yasha snorts. “Who exactly would Cora be working for? Need I remind you, we found her when she was a waitress in a diner. I’ve been looking into her family and the biggest bombshell I’ve found is that her stepdad shares a few acquaintances with you. Not exactly surprising considering you know everyone.”
As Yasha is talking, a thought occurs to me.
“What’s her stepdad’s name?”
“Alexander McAllister.”
“Look for a connection between him and Mikhail Sokolov.”
Yasha pulls out his phone, but I can tell he thinks I’m just jealous and overprotective. Mikhail cornered Cora in a club one night—so what? It’s not a big deal.
I’m half-convinced that he’s probably right. Maybe it’s easier for me to think that Cora left of her own free will than to face the fact that I failed her.
I watch Yasha scrolling and typing away. Then, suddenly, he goes still. The blood drains from his face.
“I—” He swallows and starts again. “I kept searching for Cora’s name alongside Alexander’s, but nothing appeared. No one had any clue who she was and there were no red flags with her stepdad. It all seemed normal…”
I bounce on my heels, waiting for the “but.”
Yasha shakes his head. “But you’re going to want to see this.”
He holds his phone out to me, and I reach for it with numb fingers. I’m operating on autopilot. I’m floating outside of my own body, watching myself move through the motions.
The screen is lit up, filled with some throwaway article from a boring socialite-style gossip rag. But there’s a photo in the center.
Of Cora.
She’s in a frilly pink and white gown that makes her look like Little Bo Peep, and she’s standing next to a man. She’s standing next to…
“Mikhail Sokolov,” I grit out. “How the fuck didn’t we catch this earlier? She knew him.”
And she didn’t tell me.
I dragged Mikhail off of her and had him thrown out of The Coop, and Cora didn’t breathe a word. She never told me she knew him. Mikhail didn’t mention it either when I was at the Sokolov Estate. Konstantin said that Mikhail had the pleasure of meeting my fiancée. He didn’t mention they’d already met.
“Like I said, I searched for Cora’s name,” Yasha repeats. Then he tips his head to the phone. “Read the article.”
Beneath the photo, the first paragraph of the article reads: “Earlier this week, Konstantin Sokolov and Alexander McAllister announced the engagement of their children. Mikhail Sokolov, the oldest son of the elder Sokolov and heir to the Sokolov fortune, is marrying a relative unknown. All we were able to dig up about Alexander McAllister’s stepdaughter is her name: Cordelia St. Clair.”
I look up slowly, and Yasha is shaking his head. “I didn’t know it was a fake name. Cordelia didn’t appear as Alexander’s stepdaughter anywhere and there was nothing at all about Cora before a year ago.”
I stare down at the picture. At the woman who is clearly Cora—Cordelia, I suppose—with a beaming smile on her face and her arm wrapped around Mikhail Sokolov.
If she lied about her name, what else did she lie about?
If she did this, what else has she done?