Page 40 of Heart's Temptation
“Not yet, little brother. Simo also has news that may help us find out where Niki has gone.”
I wanted to fight him, to get to Niki as fast as I could and by whatever means necessary, but I also knew the more information I had the better. “Fine, but I need to let Marko know. Give me a moment.”
A quick call to Marko brought him up to speed. I asked that he keep everyone there but wait to start the interrogation of the cast and crew at I-rock until I arrived. I hung up the call and entered the war room, ready to learn whatever I needed to find Niki.
“What did you find out, Simo?” I was beyond proper protocols in this room and as it was just the four of us, didn’t give a shit about the hierarchy bullshit.
“You won’t like it,” he warned. “But here is what I learned.”
Simon entered the room and brought the big screen to life. Simo walked us through the board members. “This woman here is Natalia Makarova. She’s been a New Yorker for the past forty years, but she doesn’t spend a lot of time there. Instead, she travels back and forth between the eastern U.S. and Russia.”
The hair rose on the back of my neck. “I thought we’d confirmed this is an Irish issue, not a Russian one.”
“It gets worse, brother. Makarova and Sergei Diaghilev are siblings.”
“And? I fail to see how this relates to Niki, who I need to find and rescue, by the way.”
I made a move to stand, but Tano's hand shot out and gripped my wrist to stop me. Ever the brilliant detective, he saw what I couldn’t.
“You believe it’s an inside job between the two for the Russian mafia?” Tano asked.
“Yes, and the Irish,” Simo answered solemnly.
I had no more fucks to give with this. “Get to the goddamn point, Simo. I gotta go.”
“Makarova and Diaghilev are not their real names,” Simon interrupted. “They are both Knyazev.”
Why did that name sound so familiar?
Beside me, Gaetano froze. “No, it can’t be.”
He seemed to know what they were talking about, but I was still scrambling and blaming the elusiveness of discovering the names importance on a lack of sleep.
“They are the aunt and uncle of one Ivan Knyazev, the Russian mob leader who kidnapped Gaby.”
“But he’s dead!” I shouted, trying to get to my feet but feeling like the floor had just tipped on its axis. I fell back down into the soft leather.
“He is,” Simon confirmed, adding, “but his son has taken his place. We think he was approached by Liam Kelly with a deal. Make him king and he would give them our shipping lanes once we were out of the way.”
Was it just me or was this a giant nest of conspiracy theories? “What proof do we have of any of this?”
Simon pulled up a photo of Sergei with his sister Natalia Makarova and another man who was the spitting image of Ivan Knyazev shaking hands in front of a restaurant.
“The son, I assume. How did you get your hands on that?”
Simon grinned. “I broke into the street cams and did a facial recognition scan. Look what else I found.” Another grainy black-and-white photo popped up on the screen. This one was a woman I’d seen a lot of in the past few weeks. Hetty, the newest principal dancer at Empire Ballet with none other than Liam Kelly and the young Knyazev.
“How the fuck did we miss this? Who is she really?”
“That's what I came in here to tell you. She’s Liam’s sister. There were zero records of her existence as Hetty Kelly. They covered their tracks extremely well. The only reason I know is because I accessed the data banks at the hospitals until I found a record of her birth. I guess when Liam’s parents were killed by the O’Connors he changed the last names of his two sisters and fostered them out.”
Simon continued, “My guess is he’s been in bed with the Russians since day one and used his connections with them to rise through the Éanna organization. He even married Hetty to Pieter Knyazev. He’s probably been providing the Russians with insider information on his clan, the O’Connors and us for years.”
This was way bigger than anyone could have envisioned. But everything Simon said rang true in my gut. Where would Liam take Niki?
“We need to gather our forces and make a plan," Romeo said.
“We do, but I must get to the studio. Simon, break into the street cams in Hell’s Kitchen and see if you can find where they took Niki. I have a feeling he’ll want to perpetuate that he took her for personal revenge. If that’s the case, he’ll take her to where it all began, her old neighborhood.”