As I wake up on the couch to the annoying sound of my ringtone, I reached over to answer it but just missed the call. As I focused in on the screen, I can see that it was Nikolai, and supposedly I already slept through a few of his calls. As I began to groggily piece together what happened the night before, my phone started to ring again from a number I didn’t recognize.

“Hello,” I said.

“I need your help,” the man said into the phone, without bothering to say hello or introduce himself. He was Russian, at least, but that didn’t really help me narrow things down. It wasn’t one of my immediate family members, I knew that much at least. I frowned, trying to place the voice. It was one I was familiar with, but I was at a loss.

“Who is this?” I finally asked.

The man made an impatient sound. “Gregor Gregorovich—Yulia’s father,” he snapped. I blinked, surprised that I hadn’t recognized his voice. But then again, it had been a number of years since I had spoken to the man. He had taken my departure from St. Petersburg as a personal slight against him, his daughter, and his whole family.

Really, it had been just business. But I’d never been able to explain that to him.

I sighed and shook my head, wondering why he was calling me now. “What do you need my help with?” I asked, wondering how Evgeni had attempted to screw the man out of his share of the arms deal—because that was the only thing that came to mind.

“It’s Yulia,” Gregor said, and I felt my heart constrict.

I thought back to the previous night at Ritmo.

As soon as I’d seen her, I knew she was in there looking for trouble. God, that dress that she’d been wearing—if you could even call it that. It looked more like lingerie than a dress. Some skimpy nightgown, something you should only wear for your lover.

But then again, I suppose she had been wearing it for me. To taunt me, as she went off with someone else.

I’d intended to go over there and punch the guy’s lights out. To ask Yulia what in the hell she thought she was doing with him. Picking up a Spaniard, right there on Volkov family territory, in the club that our family owned. I couldn’t believe she had the guts to do that.

I was kind of impressed, actually. Watching her flirt with someone else, watching her know how hot she was… Well. There was definitely something interesting about that, something that made me a little tight in my slacks as I watched her.

I’d sat there clenching my fists until my tattoos stood out sharply against my forearms. But I hadn’t moved into action until I’d seen what the asshole did at the bar.

Yulia’s eyes had been turned towards our table—she was watching me smugly, making sure I was watching her every move. She should have been watching her date, though. Instead, she missed the part where he slipped something into her drink.

She had turned back to him, lifting the glass to her lips, and that had been the final straw. Whatever my feelings for Yulia were, no matter that she had come there looking for trouble, I wasn’t about to watch her get drugged and dragged off into some back alley like a common whore.

I was halfway to the bar when Nikolai intercepted me. “Alexei, you know you can’t do that,” he said disapprovingly.

“That asshole spiked her drink!” I protested. “I can’t let her just-“

“That asshole,” Nikolai said, lowering his voice, “is a member of Audaz, in case you hadn’t noticed. One of their higher-ranking guys, too. If you start a fight with him in here, on our territory, there will be no question about provocation. The last thing we need is to have this place shut down--or worse, for the police to really crack down on our whole family."

“So what, I just have to sit back and watch them?” I asked bitterly.

Nikolai gave me a sympathetic look. “We’ll look out for her,” he promised. “But I think for right now, it’s best that you get yourself home. You’re too involved to think clearly.”

“Fuck off,” I snarled, anger still pulsing hotly through my veins. I couldn’t even think straight anymore.

The guy from Audaz had his hand on her lower back, and just the sight of it made me sick. I spun away from Nikolai and stalked towards the door, heading out into the night and trusting my cousins to watch out for her…

I shook my head and came back to the present, where Gregor was babbling on about Yulia not coming home the night before.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I told him bitterly. I just hoped that she was sleeping it off somewhere. I was sure that Nikolai must be looking out for her. She wouldn’t really be abandoned in some alleyway. I only hoped she was okay, other than the come-down.

“This isn’t like her, though,” Gregor fretted. “She would normally at least send me some sort of message. We were supposed to go to brunch together.”

I frowned, looking at my watch. It wasn’t too late in the day, but it was late for brunch—just past noon already. I shook my head. “Stupid girl,” I muttered.

“Alexei Ivanovich-“ Gregor started.

“Well, she is,” I interrupted heatedly.

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Alexei, you must help me,” Gregor said finally, and even from his voice, I could tell that he had gone ashen on the other end of the line. “I’m sure you know about my business here in the city—the arms deal. And I’m sure that you realize Audaz would want those contacts for themselves if they’ve heard about it. They must have heard about it.”

He paused for a long moment, and I waited for him to continue. “They will know what a key player I am in the deal, and they might be trying to hold Yulia for ransom. Alexei, I cannot pay a ransom.” He cleared his throat, sounding embarrassed. “It is why Yulia and I are here in Barcelona: I need this money. She doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know about…” He trailed off, sounding upset.

I frowned, trying to put it all together. So Gregor had come to Barcelona because he needed the arms deal. No doubt Yulia had been brought along to provide some sort of cover for him. A reason for him to be there in Barcelona. As he said, Audaz would have to know about the arms deal. It was a small world when it came to that sort of thing, and we all knew that Audaz must have its spies, always keeping tabs on us.

And if Audaz knew what they were doing here in the city…

I felt my blood run cold, remembering the guy spiking Yulia’s drink the previous night. It would all be too perfect.

But then again, none of that was entirely logical. I understood why Gregor was worried, but Yulia had been the one to pick out the Audaz guy at Ritmo. There had been hundreds of other eligible guys in there the previous night, and he hadn’t really done anything to even catch her eye. It was entirely possible that she could have gone off with someone else instead—clearly not a plan on their part.

And besides, why would they hold her for ransom? Audaz wasn’t after money; they had plenty of that. We’d had fights with Audaz in the past, mostly over territory but also over certain key deals in the city. They had never been after our money.

What they would want was information. And they had to know that Yulia couldn’t provide them with that information. I doubted she had more than a vague idea of what was going on, of what her father was doing there in the city. She wouldn’t have any information about the contacts. I doubted she even knew where the contacts were located.

“Gregor, I need you to stay put where you are so that I know I can contact you,” I said, using my most authoritative voice. “I’m going to get in touch with some of my contacts. But I’m sure Yulia is fine. She probably just had an…interesting night, and she overslept this morning. I’m sure she’ll be really sorry that she missed your brunch.”

Gregor sighed heavily. “Thank you, Alexei,” he said, his voice warm and full of gratefulness. “Please let me know when you find anything out.”

“I will,” I promised, hanging up the phone.

I stood there for a long moment, trying to decide what to do. I almost wanted to ignore the situation. Let Yulia sort things out on her own. Let her make her own apologies. As I had said, she was probably just still sleeping. Especially if she’d been drugged the night before, who knew what kind of shape she was in that morning.

But something about the whole situation didn’t sit right. Maybe it was just that I felt like I still owed some debt to Gregor. Or maybe it was something about the way Yulia’s eyes kept slipping towards me the previous night, as though she had never intended to go home with the Spaniard in the first place.

I shook my head and dialed Nikolai’s phone number.