That’s strange. She’s supposed to be back in the city, overseeing the teams in charge of tracking down Adrian. She pulls off her sunglasses and glances at me anxiously.

“What happened?” I ask, dread pooling in my gut because I know the answer even before she says it.

“I’m sorry,” she sighs. “We thought we had him, Kolya.”

“Motherfucker!” Turning, I punch a hole through a sheet of plywood stapled up over a gap in the wall. The splintering and the pain is satisfying, but only for a fleeting second. Then the dread comes rushing right back in. I turn to Milana. “Tell me what happened. Now.”

“We had a team tailing him. It appeared he was leaving New York—”

“To go where?” I ask urgently.

“I don’t have an answer to that.”

“Did you see him?” I demand. “In the flesh?”

“No, but a few of the men said they got a visual. Not close enough for a picture, unfortunately.”

“So it could have been anyone.”

She lets loose an agonized breath. “Kolya, we will find him. But it turns out he has a lot more friends than we realize. Powerful friends.”

“How powerful can they be if they left him to rot in a laundromat like a fucking rat?”

Milana is unconvinced. “That could have been a calculated move on Adrian’s part. If he had accepted their hospitality or money, he might not have stayed dead for as long as he managed to get away with.”

She’s right, which I fucking despise. Snarling under my breath, I start pacing up and down the foyer. My boots clack on the cold marble. “Both teams lost him completely?”

“We have leads,” she assures me. “It’s just going to take time.”

I shake my head. “If he left the city, it’s for a reason. And I’m guessing that reason is to do with June.”

“We can only guess at this point. But if I were you, I’d find another place to crash for the time being. Or at least beef up security here.”

“And give Adrian the impression that I’m scared of him? I don’t think so.”

She sighs. “This takes sibling rivalry to a whole new level.”

She folds her sunglasses and tucks them carefully in the crook of her white silk blouse. She looks troubled. Uncertain. It’s not an expression I’m accustomed to seeing on her face.

I stop my pacing right in front of her. “What else are you not telling me?”

Her reaction, by her standards, is way over the top. To anyone else, it would like the subtlest pulse in the vein above her temple. But I see it for what it is: something akin to panic.

“I-it might be nothing…”

“That’s not your call to make,” I growl. “Whatever you find, you’re meant to report back to me. Immediately. So go on then—report.”

She scowls at me, her eyes narrowing into thin little slits. She’s never liked it when I speak to her the way I speak to all my other men.