“Me too.”
She sighed and pushed to her feet. “I’m going to go . . . do things.”
She left the room and shut the door behind her. Alessandro and I looked at each other.
“Explain the Cousin Sasha thing to me, please. How are you involved with the Imperium?”
He sighed. “How much do you remember about the change of the Russian dynasty?”
“Not that much. In 1916, the power balance in the First World War shifted in favor of Russia. The German Empire suffered heavy casualties and decided to assassinate Czar Nicholas II. I think they bombed his family’s motorcade during Easter. Only Anastasia and Alexei survived because they were not in the two front cars.”
“That’s right.” Alessandro nodded. “The murder created a vacuum. Alexei was too young and too sick to take the throne. The Imperium was in the middle of a war and required a strong hand. They offered the crown to a half-dozen people, but everyone refused.”
I had no idea the Russians had to play musical chairs with the throne of the largest empire on the European Continent. The history textbooks I’d read glossed over that part. Of course, in Texas the history of Texas took up more space in the textbook than the entirety of the rest of Western Civilization combined.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“Russia scrambled to find someone who was both suitable and willing to accept the crown. They chose Michael Berezin, who’d spearheaded the Russian offensive against the German Empire. Michael Berezin became Michael I, and his entire family rallied around him to make sure he survived. The country depended on it. They faced a war from the outside and civil unrest from the inside. Communists were still agitating the workers in large cities. They were mostly failing because by killing Nicholas II, Germany made him into a martyr. The Russians wanted a new monarch and they wanted payback.”
“That explains volumes about how Konstantin thinks. Family against the world.”
“Exactly. Michael I had a younger brother, Boris. He was an antistasi mage, like his mother, and a Communist sympathizer. He thought that Russia would be better off without the monarchy, so he conspired with his Communist cell to assassinate his brother. The Okhrana, the Imperial secret police, had planted an operative in the cell to keep an eye on him. The plot was exposed.”
“Plots often are.”
“Michael I couldn’t bear to kill his baby brother, so Boris was stripped of his titles and holdings and exiled instead. He ended up in the UK, where he bought a false identity, and married into a merchant family, the Winstons, who were willing to look past wobbly birth certificates and passports to add an upper-range Significant to their gene pool.”
“Your mother’s family.”
He nodded. “My great-grandfather was a very bitter man. He spent his life trying to regain his titles and status.”
“I thought you said he was a Communist.”
“That was before he became poor.” Alessandro laughed softly. “My grandfather was obsessed with titles as well, which is why my mother ended up in an arranged marriage to my father.”
His mother was a lower-level Significant antistasi. He’d told me before that she had the magic, but not the power or the training to use it.
“My maternal grandfather arranged that marriage for the title, my mother went along with it because she liked my father and wanted to escape her family, my father thought she was beautiful and they would make powerful children, and my paternal grandfather got a dowry out of it. Everyone benefited.”
His eyes were dark. Eleven years after his parents walked down the aisle, Arkan murdered Marcello Sagredo, and Alessandro’s life would never be the same.
I stood up and wrapped my arms around him. He sighed, quietly exhaling tension.
“Does the Imperium want you back?” I asked.
“It’s not me I worry about. Konstantin is dangerous.”
“I know. I will be careful.”
His phone chimed. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it. “Arkan pulled Sanders out of Alaska.”
Sanders was bad news. Of all the Primes in Arkan’s arsenal, he gave me the biggest dollop of anxiety.
Alessandro got up and kissed me. “I have to make a call.”
“I have to let a Russian prince know exactly where he stands.”
He held up his hand. We gave each other a quiet high five and headed out of the conference room, he to his office and I to the front door.
Konstantin sat on a stone bench outside our office building, exactly where I asked him to be after the meeting. A line of our guard dogs stretched from him. They approached one by one, led by their handlers, so they could memorize his scent. I wanted him properly tagged before he and Alessandro went out.
The sky couldn’t decide if it wanted to be overcast or flooded with sunshine, and the wind kept pushing the clouds back and forth. As I stepped outside, the clouds overhead slid aside and a ray of golden sunshine broke through and spilled onto Konstantin, setting his hair and skin aglow. He looked like an angel. Not one of those untouchable regal angels, but one suffused with warmth. It truly was a movie moment. I half expected him to turn to me in slow motion as a sappy soundtrack kicked in.
Konstantin held out his hand as Ranger, a huge German shepherd, sniffed him. “Kakoy horoshiy pios.”
“Do you like dogs?”
He nodded. “They are honest creatures. Unlike us.”
He would know.
The prince turned to me and smiled.
Wow.
“I didn’t realize you were good with a blade,” he said.
“There are many things about me you don’t realize.” And I would keep it that way.
“I am beginning to see that.”
The way he was looking at me . . . It was a little much.
“Why didn’t Arkan target Smirnov? He knew we had him. It was logical that he would be in the armory, and yet Buller walked right past it.”
Konstantin regarded me with his stunning aquamarine eyes. “Arkan lacks objectivity. He is sentimental, and he places value on friendships. Let’s take Xavier. He is undisciplined, volatile, and impulsive. Everything Arkan detests. But for reasons known only to him, he likes Xavier. He sees him as an apprentice of sorts. He lets him get away with things that would get most of his other agents terminated. In American terms, he plays favorites. Smirnov was the favorite. They met in basic training. They were both plucked out of it by Imperial Security, and they went through Miasorubka together. The Meat Grinder. Intense combat training. I suppose your SEAL program might be similar, except that SEAL candidates can quit and rarely die in training. People fed to Miasorubka die quite often.”
“What will happen when Arkan realizes you killed Smirnov?”
Konstantin grinned. “I imagine he will face the sky and howl like a wolf. I wish I could see it.”
He could call Arkan anytime and tell him that his best friend was dead. Yes, that would change the nature of the bait, but I was sure when Arkan found out that Konstantin murdered Smirnov, he would move heaven and earth to punish him. Konstantin was saving it for just the right moment.
The dog pack retreated, led away by their handlers.
“You are out of dogs.”
“Not quite.”
I clicked my tongue. The bushes to my left rustled, and Shadow emerged into the open. My dog did not like strangers. She was very good at not being seen when she didn’t want to be.
The prince blinked.
I scooped her up and pointed to Konstantin. “Bad.”
Shadow let out a quiet woof.
“Yes, we don’t like him. Bad, bad.”
“Is that a dachshund mixed with something? Scottish terrier, perhaps?”
“That’s not important,” I told him.
Shadow growled, picking up on the hostility in my voice. I set her down. She woofed one more time to let him know she meant business and wagged her tail. As I straightened, I saw two big shapes coming down the shaded path between the trees, a slender, short human between them. A fourth shadow trotted alongside, almost comically small in comparison. They moved silently, the shadows of the tree canopy sliding over their fur.