CHAPTER SEVEN
In Yuri’s conference room the next morning, Barshan brought Yuri up to date on Talli’s remembering before Ivan and Demi arrived.
After he reported what they had talked about in the middle of the night, Yuri stared at him for a moment then stepped away and ran his fingers through his hair. “Oh my god,” he whispered. “If something like this had actually happened eleven years ago we have to ask why Rizvan would do something like that. Did he leave something with Christophe? Is it still there?” He turned his head to watch Talli. “Would she know where the item or items are held?”
“Da, I think she knows more than she is willing to tell us.” Barshan nodded. “I think she knows where the safe is hidden. She may be reluctant to reveal it because not even she knows what’s in there. And whatever is in there has been hidden away since before her father died, so it has been undisturbed for ten years. Christophe’s safe can only be opened with his or Talli’s fingerprints,” Barshan reminded his friend. “But I think this Russell person has already made at least one attempt on her life.”
“How so?” Yuri asked.
“A month ago, shortly before her mother died, Talli loaned her car to her best friend, a woman named Julie Morgan. Julie was on her way to the mall when she was struck and killed by a hit and run driver. The other driver was never found but Julie was killed. I think Russell was the driver and he killed the wrong woman.”
Yuri whistled softly. “If that’s true, she’s in danger. That would also mean the robbery the other night might not have been a fluke. Russell might have been after her again and botched the job a second time.”
“Callen stopped by last night and dropped off one of his dogs for her protection.” Barshan agreed with Yuri’s assessment. “I think even with the dog, she needs us twenty four seven. If he gets to her first, she will not survive and he has no clue about the fingerprint needed for the safe.”
“I think we need to call in Nikoli and Sergi. This is too big for just us to handle, especially if it could involves the Russian royal family.” Yuri nodded as Ivan and Demi came into the room. “You can fill them in while I get a hold of Nikoli. He’ll need to call in his people as well.”
After Barshan told the others about the new wrinkles in the saga, Demi exploded. He turned to Talli. “Is this all true?”
Talli shrugged. “It is possible. We may never know the true answers. My parents are dead and there is no one left who knows what really happened that night.”
“Rizvan Dreususs is still alive.” Demi growled. “All we have to do is find him and bring him here to confirm what we think we know.”
“I have informed Nikoli Silvanic of what we think we know,” Yuri came back into the room. “He’s going to call Sergi Constantine. He’s sure Sergi will want to be here when all is revealed.”
“Da, I think I should call in my people as well,” Demi told them. “We have as much at stake as your people do in this matter.”
Yuri nodded. “We all need to remember we are working together for the common good of both groups. Barshan has claimed Talli as his own and there is nothing anyone else can do about that.”
Ivan growled. “This is unacceptable to me. I had first contact with her. She should belong to me.”
Barshan took a step toward him. His eyes blazing.
Talli stiffened in anger. “Stop this. Stop it right now. I will not be fought over like I’m some prize at a county fair. I am a person with rights and it is my choice who I belong to. If this continues, I will choose not to cooperate with either of you. This quest will end now, right here right now.”
Demi snorted. “You won’t have a choice once Felix and Travern get here. You will cooperate or die.”
“Then the man known as Russell Jerome wins and both of your groups lose. None of us knows yet what is hidden or why it was hidden all this time. We don’t have the answers we need yet but if this continues we will never have them,” Talli reminded everyone in the room. “Barshan offered me protection and I accepted it. Now so must you. If my father put something in his hidden safe, only my fingerprint will open it now that he’s gone. If we all work together, we can get to it but if there are any problems I won’t allow that to happen and whatever is in there will remain hidden forever. From what I could see, Russell has been searching for the safe but hasn’t found it and neither will anyone else, if you force this issue. So far, we’ve worked together and shared all the information available. We can continue to do so but I will refuse if there are any problems with the new members of your organizations coming in. Think about that before you start to fight about who I belong too. Barshan may have claimed me but only, I will say if he has that right and for now, he has it.”
Demi frowned. “My people aren’t going to like this.”
Talli met his eyes with hers. “None of us like this. My father always told me to never take one side or the other, never associate with one group over the other and until now, I never have. Neither group will get what they want. I’m with Barshan not the Russian Bratva or the Ukraine mob. No one will tell me who I can associate with or not associate with. My father’s wishes will hold in this matter. No one can break his will and I will fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening. Even when one day I marry, my husband will never have part of the shop my father created. If and when I die, the shop will be sold and the proceeds will go to a place in New York my grandfather was raised in. Maybe if my mother had told Russell about that she might still be alive. I begged her to tell him about the will but she told me he didn’t care about that. I think he did and that was why she died. I also think he had a hand in what happened to her but I can’t prove it. He made sure of that. Who knows he may have been behind my father’s death eleven years ago. I don’t know what he wants yet, but whatever it is he isn’t going to get it.” She motioned at Demi. “Call your people in but tell them to behave or they will lose everything. There may even not be anything to find but they will only know if they are willing to work with everyone.”
Demi frowned. “I’m not sure they will find that acceptable but I can try. They will insist on being present with you at all times from this moment on though. They will want to protect your person and what secrets yet to be discovered.”
Talli stiffened. “No, I feel safe with Barshan. I don’t want or need anyone else around me. I have protection twenty four seven now between him and the dog and that will be enough.”
“Dog?” Ivan sneered. “What dog?”
Talli snapped her fingers and Rugar got up from his place under the table. The dog stood as high as her waist. Every man in that room watched as Rugar stood at her side watching them as carefully as they watched him.
Demi lifted his head swinging it over to observe Barshan and asked, “You went to Callen didn’t you? That is his dog Rugar.”
Barshan nodded. “I wanted only the best for her protection.”
Ivan scoffed. “A dog is just a dog.”
Demi shook his head. “Callen Rashon only raises and trains the very best dogs. I have heard so much about him and his animals. His dogs are very much in demand. This animal will kill to protect her now. No one will be able to get close to her unless she wants them to. This dog is legendary for he is the best of the best.”
Ivan laughed briefly. “A bullet can stop him.”
Demi growled. “I suggest you don’t go anywhere near your weapon. This dog is faster than you could even think to be and he will rip your throat out before you can even get your gun clear of the holster.”
“Felix and Travern will never allow this,” Ivan insisted. “You said so yourself.”
Demi snorted. “They, like us, no longer have a choice. Barshan has locked us out of this situation.” He turned and glared at Yuri. “You knew of this didn’t you?”
Before Yuri could say anything, Talli shook her head. “No one is shut out of anything. Barshan thought only to protect me at all times. They are cooperating in every aspect with you in this matter. They are looking for the same answers you are. Like I said before, if you start pushing your will on this matter everyone will lose.” She motioned to the phone in his hand. “Call your people, get them on board but this fighting must stop.”
Demi moved away from the crowd and made his call. He kept his voice low but everyone could hear him and there did seem to be some conflict in his words. When he finished, he returned and there was a bead of sweat rolling down his face. He looked at Yuri and informed him, “When I called Travern to catch him up on this, he told me Felix is expected within a few hours. He was on his way for a visit anyway but as soon as he arrives, both men will come immediately. They will want to talk to Talli and get her own words for what is happening.”
Yuri nodded. “When I spoke to Nikoli earlier, he said Sergi would move his plans up to be here as soon as possible. He should be here as soon as tomorrow as well.”
Demi frowned. “Why would Sergi be coming again, so soon?”
“Both him and Misha are coming to the city to be with Misha’s daughter when she gives birth to my child,” Yuri informed him.
Demi scowled. “You have ties to Sergi and Misha Constantine? How did that happen?”
“I married a woman I didn’t realize was related to Misha when I met her,” Yuri explained. “By the time I realized it, she carried my child and I couldn’t let her go.”
Demi grinned. “And now you have to deal with those two on a regular basis? I’m not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.” Hesitating he asked, “And did I not hear Nikoli’s son was finally returned to him? You found him after twenty years being missing? That my friend was fortune on your part.”
Yuri shook his head. “Not really, the fortune was all on my wife. She took care of the boy his whole life.”
“Gentlemen, we are forgetting one person we need to contact,” Barshan reminded them.
Yuri turned and nodded. “Da, we are, we must contact Rizvan Dreususs and get him to join us. We have questions only he can answer.”
Demi checked his watch and noted the date on the face. “It is Thursday today and he is presently in London. I can send a man to ask him to join us. He could be here as soon as Monday perhaps.” Then he looked at Yuri. “Maybe we both could send a man to retrieve him.”
Yuri nodded. “I can work with that. I can send my brother Roman.”
Talli watched both men and she could see that didn’t please Demi but he was stuck with the suggestion. They weren’t working well together but she knew it was Demi who was fighting the situation. If he didn’t like it, she was certain his boss’ would hate it. She took a deep breath and prayed there wouldn’t be a blood bath when everyone came together in the next few days.
Rugar nudged her hand and without thinking, she rubbed a spot behind his ears. He stood between her and the group of men in the room and she had no doubt if any of the them moved closer to her, Rugar would be alert to their new positions and would act accordingly. The only one of them he would allow close to her would be Barshan and she knew Barshan would never hurt her.
Talli sat down in her chair and rubbed her sore temples. The headache that began yesterday was back in full force. She knew it was mostly tension from the situation and the bump she took the other day but that couldn’t be helped. The men around her were working on the problem but she also knew that getting the two groups together might not be a good thing. They were both very strong units by themselves. Each group had their own set of values and strengths. Maybe it was a mistake to bring them all together and expect there would be no problems. That concern was no longer viable. At this point, neither unit was willing to let it go.
Sazon, who had been inside the room the whole time, carried a cup of fresh coffee toward her, along with his own coffee. He stopped a distance back and waited for her to motion him forward.
When she did, she grabbed Rugar’s collar and allowed Sazon to join her.
Setting the cup down in front of her, he waited for her to motion to the chair next to her before he sat down. “You have heard everything that’s going on here, what do you think about all of this?” She finally asked.
Sazon shrugged. “I think this is one very big mess.” He paused and lifted his own cup of coffee to his mouth. Taking a sip, he motioned to the others in the room. “You do realize these men do not like the others. They’re rivalry goes back to when they were living in the old country. None of them play well with the others and that includes my blood brothers. This meeting is unusual only because they all hate the other one. None of us is willing to give more than an inch and Ivan is mad about the fact that Barshan claimed you. But he’s only mad because Barshan got to you first. When the others join us, this situation could become volatile very quickly.”
“I understand that.” Talli nodded. “I also understand something else. Both groups need me unharmed and not threatened. Whatever my father may have hidden will stay hidden forever if anything happens to me. Only I know where the safe is and it won’t matter if your group or the other one touches me, any pressure from either side will end this before any of us gets answers.” She paused then added, “Ivan can go to hell. I would never be with him. Barshan has been very considerate toward me from the beginning and I feel safe with him. With Ivan not so much. With him, I would be looking over my shoulder for the knife he’d plunge into my back when I wasn’t looking. That is not a feeling I would want to have ever.”
Sazon snorted in amusement and raised his coffee cup a bit in a toast. But he didn’t say the words he was thinking. “You wouldn’t be so wrong about that.” Leaning forward he asked, “Do you have any idea what is in your father’s safe?”
Talli shrugged. “At the moment I have no idea. He showed me the safe when I was but a child. He told me that someday, I would be curious about the items he placed in there but that I should wait to see them. He said I would not understand them yet and that one day he hoped I would. He told me he would explain everything when I was older but he never got the chance. After his death, I didn’t think about it anymore. I had to keep my father’s business going and be there for my mother. Then I got so busy I forgot about the safe.” She turned her head and stared at Barshan. “But I think now that Russell Jerome is looking for something he thinks is in the safe. What he thinks it is I have no idea. I cannot even imagine.”
“I understand you believe he killed your mother.” Sazon took another sip of his coffee.
Talli nodded. “Of course there is no proof but I know what I feel. As soon as he put a ring on her finger, he began isolating her from me and her friends. She was looking for companionship, someone to love her and he took advantage of her. When he did allow me to see her the last few weeks she was alive, I could see the fear in her eyes. She would never say anything bad about him but she was my mother. I could read what not many people could see about her. Then she got sick and he wouldn’t even let me in her house to visit with her. The next thing I know the hospital is calling me to let me know they don’t think she’ll make it through the night.
Sazon reached out and patted her hand. “I’m so sorry.” He moved slowly and barely touched her because when he got close to her, Rugar raised his head and watched him carefully.
Talli dug her fingers into Rugar’s thick hair in a way to calm them both. “Russell searched the entire house, both my mother’s and mine. He tore holes in the walls and wreaked havoc destroying everything he could, looking for the safe.”
“Did he ever find it?”
Talli had a small smile on her face. “No and he never would have found it on his own. My father was a clever man. He hid the safe in plain sight and had it set up so only he or I could open it. Even if Russell found it, he would never get it open.”
The other men settled at the table and Demi told them, “I called Travern in New York and he is going to call Felix in Kiev. He was confident they both would want to be here. I told him Nikoli and Sergi were on their way as well. He thinks we should wait until they can get here to move forward.”
Yuri nodded. “It will take some time to collect Rizvan anyway. Our men can leave tonight and return as soon as they find him. That will give time enough for Felix and Travern to get here. I don’t think we can do much else until everyone is here. I do think we can dig into Russell’s background a bit deeper. I feel we need to know as much as possible about the man himself. Maybe then, we can figure out what he is after. In the meantime, we keep Talli protected and we watch over our city.” Yuri looked over at Barshan. “Regarding the men outside the mall yesterday, we followed them home and spoke to them. They admitted someone hired them to harass Talli, they were only supposed to scare her into running, but who knows how far they would have taken it.”
“Did they ever say who hired them?” Barshan asked.
“Da, they said it was an elderly man but he never told them his name. When I showed them a picture of Jerome, they confirmed he was the man that hired them.”
“So he’s still here then, hiding out somewhere in the city.” Talli sneered. Her fingers curled into Rugar’s fur and she felt her body shudder in disgust. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Demi turned to her and studied her for a long moment. “You have no idea what this man could be after?”
Talli shrugged. “I have no clue.”
“Why do I doubt that very much,” Demi replied. “I have a feeling you know exactly what he’s looking for.”
Talli shrugged. “I did overhear some of an argument a man and my father were having just before he was murdered. Most of the words were mumbled but then I wasn’t in the same room they were in. They were arguing in my father’s office at the shop and the door was closed. This man was arguing with my father about something priceless, something that had been lost for almost a hundred years, and something that could prove his connection to the royal family. That’s all I heard before my mother took me out of the shop. By the time we returned, the man was gone and my father was alone. It was shortly after that when my father was murdered. I told the police about the visit but I didn’t see the man my father was arguing with, so they couldn’t do anything about it. I only heard them shouting at each other.”
“Yuri tells me your father met with a man in secret that could have been Rizvan Dreususs. He said your father called him a Prince, what do you remember about that?” Demi wanted to know.
“Just what I told him earlier. I didn’t see the man except in profile but he wasn’t anyone I’d ever met before. I only caught a glimpse of him before my father closed the door and I haven’t seen him since. If he ever came to my mother, she never said a word about it. She knew about the hidden safe and she also knew only I could get into it.”
“Did she know where the safe was located?” Ivan asked.
Talli shook her head. “Only my father and I knew that. My mother didn’t want to know and my father protected her by not telling her where it was. She was okay with that, in fact she preferred it that way. She was a warm and caring person and she loved my father deeply. The two of them shared a secret that I wasn’t privy to and while that hurt when I was a child, I knew that my father held the secret to protect me. He didn’t want to put me in any danger by sharing this secret so I learned not to ask.”
“There will be more questions when our people arrive, I hope you realize that” Demi warned her.
“I can’t tell you any more than I already have I hope your people understand that.” Talli assured them. “I won’t disrespect them as long as they don’t disrespect me.”
Demi snorted.
“Hey I didn’t ask for any of this.” Talli frowned. “I’m not the one who forged the papers and I’m not the one who stole the money. None of this is my fault. If you and your people want answers, find the little worm that caused all the problems and get your pound of flesh out of him. Cuz at this point, I’m about done with this whole mess. I am so ready to tell you all to go to hell.”
“Please don’t do that,” Yuri asked her softly. “We need your help to solve this mystery and we are doing our best to protect you in the meantime. We are still looking into this Russell Jerome and what we are finding is not good. Nothing we think we know about him is true. Our manners might not be what you are expecting but this is the way we do our jobs. We deal with less than savory people at times and we may be rusty in our manners but this is something we need to solve.”
“I can understand that but you must also understand something. I haven’t done anything wrong and I feel you and those two…” She motioned at Demi and Ivan. “You guys are treating me like a criminal and I don’t like it. Then he threatens that his men will demand answers with the use of force and tells me that they will not ask but demand my cooperation. That doesn’t tell me they will be reasonable in their dealings with me.”
“I apologize if I implied that.” Demi shook his head. “As Yuri said we aren’t used to dealing with people like you. My people will be tough but they do respect the fact that you are an innocent here. They will demand what we have been able to find out about this man but they should be fair in their treatment of you.”
“I guess we’ll see when they get here then won’t we?” Talli rubbed Rugar’s ears.
“Let’s go back for a moment,” Yuri stated. “You said yesterday that this Leon Pavel claimed to be related to Rizvan Dreususs, a cousin or something.”
Talli nodded.
Yuri looked at Demi and then back to Talli. “Could your father have been holding something for Rizvan? Something that Russell would think he could claim by being a cousin to one of the last members of the royals?”
“Like what?” Talli asked.
“It’s been said that some of the royal jewels went missing just before Nicholas was arrested.” Demi mentioned the fact, as he knew them.
Yuri nodded. “I heard that as well. Those jewels have never been found. It was claimed that several members took the jewels to safeguard them from the people that stormed the palace.”
“It is said that the real family jewels were switched over to fake jewels to protect the stones,” Demi commented.
Talli shrugged. “But all this happened almost a hundred years ago. Most people have forgotten all of this.”
Demi growled. “This is our history. True Russians will never forget what happened that day in 1917. Nor will they ever forget the day the infidels murdered our true king. Yes, things were bad under his rule toward the end but he was still our king.”
“Russia is nothing now, our power is gone and our people are living hand to mouth.” Yuri shook his head. “Our people are starving in the streets, our women are selling their bodies just to survive. So much for the reform we were promised.”
“But what would having possession of the jewels prove?” Talli had to ask. “There is no more Russian Royal family and after this long, whoever did have royal blood wouldn’t be able to prove it anyway. The line would be too muddled with foreign blood to be considered pure anyway.” She shrugged. “I guess I just don’t see it.”
Yuri glanced over at Demi. “We’ll just have to wait until our people get here to figure this out.”
Talli checked her watch and got to her feet. “I have to get to work. I have someone coming in for a special order.”
Just then, her phone rang and when she looked at who was calling it was the police. “Hello.”
Listening for a moment she grew pale and then finally plopped down in her chair. Her gaze went vacant for a moment then she hung up the call.
“Sweetheart, what is it?” Barshan knelt down beside her chair.
Talli glanced over at him and whispered, “Someone threw a firebomb at my shop.”
“What the hell?” Demi swore.