This level of security is designed to keep out ordinary criminals, not former Spetsnaz assassins.
The difficult part will be the security at Arslan’s mansion. Though the place masquerades as just another residence in this wealthy community, it’s protected with everything from motion detectors to a small army of bodyguards. Retina scanners, weight sensors, silent alarms, backup generators—there are redundancies upon redundancies in the security of the place, and for a good reason.
When you double-cross the ruthless oligarch who put you in power, you know to prepare for the worst.
Once we’re inside the gated community, we head toward Arslan’s mansion, making sure to keep out of sight of cameras placed strategically at intersections and in front of the majority of the sprawling luxury homes. Our target’s neighbors—other crooked politicians and wealthy Turkish businessmen—have enemies too, though none as powerful as the Ukrainian oligarch who is our client.
We don’t go up to Arslan’s property—the cameras there would be impossible to avoid—but we don’t need to. It takes us only a few minutes to disable the alarms on the three-story house on the far end of Arslan’s street—the residence of a real estate magnate who’s currently vacationing in Thailand. Once the alarms are off, we go up to the roof and set up a long-range camera, so we can observe everything going on at our target’s place. We then repeat this process with a mansion on the opposite end of the street, and then two residences a block over, so we have a 360-degree view of Arslan’s mansion.
The simplest, and safest, way to kill the politician would be to take him out with a long-range sniper’s rifle. Unfortunately, the windows of the mansion are bulletproof, and whenever our target is in the open, he’s surrounded by bodyguards. The next best thing would be to wire a bomb into his car, but he switches vehicles regularly and without any detectable pattern—plus the cars are always heavily guarded, even when they’re just parked on the street. Every delivery to his place is thoroughly checked too, as is each person entering and leaving the mansion.
At first glance, Arslan’s security is impenetrable, but we know better. Home is always where everyone feels safest—and that’s a weakness in itself.
Leaving the cameras in place, Ilya and I make our way out of the community and to the intersection where Yan and Anton pick us up. For the remainder of the night, we go to a private house we rented under false identities and organize shifts to watch the footage from the cameras we set up.
Yan is up first, followed by Anton, so I get a solid six hours of sleep before getting up to do my three hours of camera monitoring. Ilya, the lucky bastard, got the long straw this time, with a total of nine hours of shuteye.
It’s during the middle of my shift that we notice movement inside the house. Even with the shades on the windows drawn shut, we see the lights come on in the master bedroom on the second floor, followed by more lights downstairs.
Arslan’s household is waking up.
He keeps his domestic staff lean, with just a housekeeper, two maids, and one butler/bodyguard living on the premises. Their rooms are downstairs, which works well for our plan. The other guards—all twenty-four of them—are stationed in a guardhouse in the back. To look unobtrusive to the neighbors, they come out in small groups at random intervals to patrol the street and the beautifully landscaped yard surrounding the mansion.
Watching the cameras, I jot down the time and mark the pattern of the lights upstairs. People are creatures of habit, even those who were instructed by their bodyguards to be as unpredictable as possible.
“Keep an eye on his departure time,” I tell Ilya when he comes to replace me. “We know he leaves the house at a different time every day, but I want to see how much time passes between those lights coming on and his departure.”
Ilya nods and sits down in front of the computer while I go into one of the bedrooms to take a nap. My temples throb with a tension headache, and I need to rest so I’ll have my wits about me as we plan this attack.
The moment I close my eyes, however, my mind turns to Sara and our tense parting. I’ve been trying not to think about it, to focus solely on the job, but I can’t help recalling the wounded look on her face when I admitted my intentions… when I confirmed that the forgotten condoms were no accident.
I didn’t realize it myself until that moment, didn’t know I’d given in to my deepest desires until I heard the words coming out of my mouth. The moment I said it, though, I knew it was the truth. It might not have been a conscious decision to impregnate her, but it wasn’t a careless error either. On some primitive, instinctual level, I chose to fill her with my seed, to make her mine in the most visceral way possible.
The only time in my life I was careless with contraception was in Daryevo all those years ago, when Tamila seduced me before I woke up.
Opening my eyes, I stare at the ceiling in the unfamiliar bedroom. Despite Sara’s reaction, I feel lighter, as if a weight has been lifted off my chest. It’s liberating to embrace the worst part of myself, to let go of the last of my moral qualms. I don’t know why I resisted for so long, why I tried so hard to fight for her love when she’s determined to cling to hate.
It’s obvious to me now that no matter what I do, Sara won’t let go of the past, and if that’s the case, she might as well have another reason to hate me.
Resolved, I close my eyes and force my tense muscles to relax.
When I return, there will be no more condoms. One way or another, Sara is going to have my child.
If she can’t love me, she’ll love a part of me.
43
Sara
* * *
It takes me several minutes to compose myself after Peter leaves, and by the time I head into the kitchen to talk to Yulia again, Kent returns and politely but firmly ushers me to my room.
“You should get some sleep,” he says, and from the implacable look on his face, I can tell he’ll use physical force to make me obey if he has to.
He has no intention of helping me, of that I’m certain.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” I say evenly when we get to my room, and he nods, his pale gaze inscrutable.
“Good night, Sara,” he says, and as he closes the door behind him, I hear the faint click of a turning lock.
I wait thirty seconds, then try the door handle to confirm my suspicions.
Sure enough, I’m locked in.
Taking a breath to calm myself, I walk over to the big window. It looks like the bottom portion should open by sliding up, but no matter how hard I try to push it up, the thick glass doesn’t budge. It’s either sealed shut or simply too heavy for me to lift. Some kind of bulletproof glass, maybe? That would make sense given Kent’s profession.