Dark Desire by Lauren Smith (an ebook reader txt) 📗

A losing position. Yes, she was all too aware of that. While she was nervous about the lessons, she knew she needed them.

“Okay, I’m in.” That earned a smile from Maxim, but she had a feeling he was going to be her most challenging teacher.

The more time she spent around them, the more she saw how different each of Dimitri’s friends were. Nicholas and Leo were more fun, if fun was the right word. More relaxed, perhaps. Maxim and Dimitri were more tightly wound, but when all four were together, they interacted seamlessly. She supposed if anyone had trained together pretty much their whole lives, they would be that accustomed to each other.

After they finished breakfast, Elena returned to her room to pack her suitcase. She suddenly had that eerie feeling of not being alone. She looked over her shoulder and saw Maxim in the doorway. He stepped into the room, tension practically radiating from his dark-brown eyes.

“Your Gra—”

“Elena,” she corrected firmly.

“Elena. When you were with him . . .” Maxim avoided saying Vadym’s name, but his tone made it clear who he meant. “Did he ever mention a girl named Katya?”

Elena sat on the edge of the bed and drew a deep breath. She worked so hard to not think about those days. “Katya . . .”

A flare of hope lit Maxim’s eyes. “She is my little sister.”

Elena didn’t give any sign that might let him know she already knew about his sister. She didn’t want him to be mad at Dimitri for sharing such a personal story. “I don’t think so . . .”

He pulled his wallet out of his jeans pocket, dug through the contents, and held out a photograph. It was worn at the edges, as though it had been handled frequently. A dark-haired young woman with lovely light-brown eyes grinned from the photo. A sudden, violent memory came back to her, making her gasp.

“What is it?” Maxim came closer, his voice soft and urgent.

“I . . . I didn’t know her name . . .” She tried to summon up every detail of that memory. “I was in his office . . . He had left my cell door open. I thought it was a trap at first . . .”

Her cell had always been so cold, and she only ever wore a thin black shift as clothing. She had been starved for warmth, and his office had been cozy compared to her cell. “I crawled into his office. My chains had been attached to the wall. He had left me in a hurry.” She continued, desperately trying to pull every detail back, knowing it was a terrible idea, but she had to tell Maxim what she had seen. Her hands tightened into fists as she delved deeper into her memory. Her skin turned clammy, and she had to swallow down bile.

“I hid in the corner of his office, and I noticed a set of files at the base of a bookshelf. They were tucked behind a couple of old books. It was not an obvious spot to hide something. I don’t even know why I looked, but I hoped that whatever had driven him away from his office would keep him away long enough for me to read the files. I remember the folders were bright red. I didn’t see anything in there except pictures of young women, and your sister was one of them. It looked like statistics sheets, but my written Russian is so limited I only recognized one word.”

“What word?”

“Krasnyy. Red. It was typed at the top of every paper.” She suddenly opened her eyes. “Give me a sheet of paper.”

He opened the nightstand by the bed and handed her a pen and a pad of paper. She focused on the shapes of the second word that had accompanied red every time she had seen it.

“It looked something like this.” She drew the symbols as best she could, then handed it to him. He was silent a long moment and drew a similar pattern and held it up.

“Was this what you saw?”

Elena studied the words and slowly nodded. “What does it mean?”

Maxim’s eyes were stormy as he gazed at the wall behind her. “It means . . . sparrow school.”

“Red sparrow school? What does that mean?”

“It is an old school from the Cold War era. We believed it had been closed.” He met her gaze. “Young men and especially young women were trained to be spies there. They used manipulation, especially sexual, to gain information from their targets.”

Elena couldn’t hide the look of horror upon her face. Maxim’s face hardened, and he cursed to himself in Russian. His hands curled into fists.

“I’m so sorry, Maxim. What will happen to her?”

He was silent a long moment. “If she is still alive, she will be broken down and rebuilt into a heartless killer.” His voice softened. “She will be a tool of the state, willing to betray anyone she loves without a second thought. A creature better off dead than alive.”

Elena’s throat suddenly ached as she wanted to cry for Katya, and for Maxim. She placed a hand on his arm. It was the first time she’d willingly touched a man other than Dimitri since she had been rescued. It felt good, even during such a terrible moment, to show support and affection to another.

“Thank you,” he said. “At least now I have some idea of what happened to her.”

“Will you go after her? Maybe it’s not too late.”

“The moment she arrived at the school, it would have been too late.” He covered her hand with his, a sorrowful expression in his eyes that nearly broke her. “You should pack. We must leave soon.” And then he was gone.

Elena collapsed onto the bed, her hands shaking. She had gone back to the dark place in her mind, but then she’d come out again and she was okay. Relief nearly overwhelmed her. Maybe it would get easier and easier to face the past. She knew it might not, but she could hope.

Five hours later, the pair of Range Rovers pulled into a resort’s driveway. Dimitri and