Gabriel froze, his leg comically raised midair because he’d been in the process of hooking his ankle on his knee. He slowly lowered his size fourteen Ferragamo and blinked for a minute as if waiting for a punchline.
“Your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“Yours.” The Italian’s tone was heavy with suspicion.
“Yes.”
“You wanna tell me when the hell you had a kid? And how the fuck do we not know about her?”
The kid in question was actually a grown woman. Evangeline was as captivating as her mother, although in looks she was much more Vasily than Kathryn…
Coughing through the agony his love’s name caused as it drifted through his thoughts, he pushed out more words. “No one knows about her. Or they didn’t, until recently.” The reminder that his enemies now knew of Eva’s existence turned his heart to stone. “I filled the boys in earlier, so if for some peculiar reason you’re in need of a hand, they’re now informed.”
Gabriel’s head was bobbing. “Yeah. Okay. Unless you want to see my head explode, you have to start from the beginning. Because I’m in the Twilight Zone. You have a kid.”
The beginning. If only he could go back there, he thought, imagining the charred remains of the woman he’d loved and had created a child with so many years ago now laying in a cold, silent morgue in Seattle. He’d have done so many things differently.
“I’ll get to the details in a minute.” No, he wouldn’t. “First, I want your word that you’ll see this through for me.”
Gabriel waved his hand impatiently. “You have it.” As if it were a stupid request. “Of course you have it. Goddammit, Vasily.” He shook his head. “Out of curiosity, why are you putting me on this? What about Maks or Alek? We both know they’re more than capable. Not to mention here. She is in New York, isn’t she? Who’s taking care of her now? How old is she? Is she even out of diapers? And, again, just out of this raging curiosity that’s kicking my ass, why the hell isn’t she in your life?”
“At any other time, I would trust my nephew with this, but not in the shape he’s been in since Sacha left. Maks? Of course, but I just don’t want him.” The idiot would try to have sex with Eva—who, at twenty-three, was very much out of diapers—and Vasily would have to permanently maim his beloved Avtoritet. Perhaps castrate him. He didn’t want to do either. “Anyone else in our circle will lead the Baikovs right to her. It has to be you.”
“Ah. They’re the threat.” Gabriel’s eyes frosted over at the mention of the bratva responsible for destroying what little happiness Vasily had known. “Alek mentioned you recently shaved them down a few members. I can’t believe they’re still fucking with you.”
The conflict between the Tarasov and Baikov syndicates had been there since Vasily was a child. But this? This cold-blooded murder put things on a whole new level.
And that’s why they were here tonight. Gabriel receiving this assignment came down to one thing. His ability to get the job done, no matter the level of difficulty. He was intelligent. Voracious. Dangerous. He could read a situation in the blink of an eye and react accordingly. Harshly. And that’s what Vasily needed.
Coming in closer, he loosely clasped his tattooed hands on the table in front of him. “They’ll always fuck with me, just as I will now forever fuck with them.” Their eyes locked. “While I’m doing that, I am placing my daughter’s safety in your hands.” As the club’s patrons chatted and drank and laughed around them, a deep understanding was shared between Vasily and this Italian he’d watched grow into the man he was today.
He sat back to break the moment and confirmed, “She is here in New York, attending Columbia, as a matter of fact.”
Gabriel, too, sat back, his stare steady and focused. Annoyed. “Columbia. She’s old enough to be in college. Christ Almighty. How’d you do this? How the fuck did you keep a secret like this for so long? I mean…Maks.”
Vasily chuckled a little. Maksim—another cherished member of his inner circle—and his need to know everything did indeed make it near impossible to hide anything. But keeping Kathryn and Eva’s existence under wraps had been necessary to protect them.
Yet here they were.
He moved on without addressing the whys. “Her name is Eva. She’s twenty-three. She’ll be returning home to Seattle when she finishes school in a few weeks.