Page 82 of Sinner's Sacrifice

Sam walked a couple of feet from the base of the stairs and flipped the switch on. Before she forgot, she turned her phone off.

Some recessed lighting came on over a workspace along the far wall. The wall itself held so many screens she had to count them all. Twenty-four. Twenty-four screens and as she got closer to them, she discovered they were even labeled. Hotel positions. Public and employee.

Yvgeny hadn’t been kidding. She could see everything that was going on in the entire hotel.

Most of the screens showed only normal activity, but on the one in the elevator, Yvgeny’s apartment elevator, it showed a car full of people.

One of them was a woman who looked so much like Baz it was uncanny. Beautiful, but with a cold, hard expression she’d never seen on his face.

The elevator dinged on the monitor, and she realized it dinged on another screen too, one that was slightly set apart from the others. This one had a view of Yvgeny’s apartment from a position that had to be above the kitchen. It provided a view of most of the apartment. She could see the doorway to her room, the main living space, and Yvgeny approaching the elevator. He finished buttoning up a fresh shirt and tucked it in before the doors opened.

The woman and her six henchmen, or were they bodyguards? Walked into his apartment.

“Where is she?” The woman asked. Wow, no hello or how are you doing?

She was dressed in a pantsuit tailored to her. Her shoes were low heeled, and she wore a heavy necklace with a large stone pendant. Her hair was up in a complicated bun on the back of her head with two ornamental sticks shoved through it to keep it in place.

She wore tinted glasses and the most blank expression Sam had ever seen.

All the hairs on Sam’s arms stood up. This woman was dangerous.

“In a safe place,” Yvgeny replied. He sounded calm and in control. “It’s nice to see you in person again, my dearest aunt.” He bowed slightly to her.

Holy shit, this was his aunt? She looked so...young.

“You think any of us would harm her?” his aunt asked, looking around the apartment. “She is a treasure.”

“Someone has already tried,” he said, some of the calm leaving his tone.

“What?” his aunt focused on Yvgeny now. “Explain.”

“Someone blew up the car she’d been in, which caught the building she was in on fire. When she evacuated with everyone else, someone then kidnapped her out of a crowd of people. In an armored truck painted to look like an ambulance.”

His aunt’s jaw hung open, and the six dudes she brought with her shifted on their feet and looked around as if expecting attackers to leap out at them at any moment.

“I got into the cab of the armored truck and disarmed the driver, but he bailed, and the vehicle crashed.”

“Bailed?” his aunt asked.

“My apologies. It’s an idiom that means he jumped out or abandoned what he was doing.”

Oh, this wasn’t good. Yvgeny was using his how did you get to be so stupid? voice.

“It can also mean that you avoided doing your duty or a task you were responsible for.” He sighed audibly, but there was a tremor in it, as if he was trying too hard to appear unconcerned. “I guess not everyone is cut out for leadership.”

He was afraid of this woman. So why was he baiting her?

His aunt stared at him without speaking for several seconds. Finally, she said, “Is that the end of your story?”

“Not quite. I opened the rear doors, pulled the idiot off her, and tossed him into the street.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“No, but he smelled suspiciously like South America.”

It was his aunt’s turn to sigh. “South America? And just how does South America smell?”

“Like suntan lotion and too much cologne.”