Dmitri was on the floor. His face was bloody and one of the men was trying to pull him up. He saw me and told the other man, ‘Take care of her.’ The second man started to come toward me. He was reaching into his coat and I thought he might have a gun.” She swallowed hard. “I ran before he could catch me and went out the back door. I got away.” Leaving Dmitri behind, she thought guiltily.
“Two days later Dmitri was found dead outside the city,” Viktor said. “He’d been tortured.”
“Did you know your husband was stealing from his boss?” Luke Hubbard asked. It sounded like an accusation.
“No,” Karina said firmly. His expression didn’t change. She couldn’t tell if he believed her.
“There’s more,” Viktor said. “There have been rumors for a long time that Solokov has connections to organized crime. The mafia. They have never been proven, but most likely only because he has connections with the police, as well.”
“You think the Russian mafia is involved?”
“It is possible. If Solokov was laundering money for the mafia, then some of the money he stole might be theirs.”
“Do you even have any evidence beyond the comment she overheard that Solokov was involved?”
“Everything else that happened is my evidence.”
“What else?”
“My father’s death, for one thing,” Viktor interjected.
“According to the news, your father fell victim to a drive-by shooting, most likely by gang members who were shooting at someone else.”
“A lie,” Viktor said, anger darkening his face. “A cover-up to conceal the truth.”
“What makes you think this Solokov was involved?”
“Karina contacted my father after Dmitri’s death. She has no other family. She knew how powerful Solokov is and didn’t know who to trust. Using his diplomatic status, my father arranged for her visa through the embassy and for her to travel to the United States via private jet. He suspected she wasn’t safe there. Solokov’s reach is too great. But now that my father is dead, her situation has changed.”
“How so?”
“Yesterday my visa was revoked,” she said. “Without my godfather to intervene, I am being sent home.”
“It is Solokov’s doing,” Viktor said harshly. “He has political connections, as well. Her visa was revoked too quickly to be a coincidence.”
“You believe Solokov had your father killed?”
“It certainly makes more sense than him being mistakenly targeted in a drive-by shooting by a random gang member, as your country is suggesting. And he had no other enemies, no reason why anyone else would deliberately kill him. There is only Solokov. As long as Karina was in his home, she was safe from Solokov. He’s trying to force her back to Russia, where there is nowhere she can run where he cannot find her.”
“For what purpose?”
“He must believe she was aware of what Dmitri was doing. If Dmitri didn’t tell him where the money was, then she is his only means of getting it back.”
Luke Hubbard nodded. “So you’re looking for legal advice? Help with how to stay in the country? That’s really not my expertise, but I can certainly recommend some good attorneys who specialize in immigration matters.”
Her gaze flicked to Viktor’s, reading the same touch of embarrassment in his eyes that she felt rising in her cheeks. It had been his idea, yet now that the moment was here he seemed unwilling to voice it.
“No,” Viktor said simply. “That’s not why we are here.”
In the silence that followed, Luke Hubbard’s eyes narrowed, shifting from Viktor to her and back again.
“What exactly are you here for?”
So be it, she thought. If anyone should make the request of this complete stranger it should be her. It was her life. She shouldn’t rely on anyone else to beg for it.
“Viktor believes the best way for me to remain in this country is to marry a United States citizen.”
She lifted her chin and met his cold stare.
“We are here to ask you to marry me.”
LUKE HAD YEARS OF EXPERIENCE at schooling his expression to reveal absolutely nothing, but the woman’s ridiculous statement nearly managed to crack his composure. It was sheer strength of will that kept him from flinching at her words.
Marriage. Even the idea sent a jolt of pain through him, the heat of it searing his insides until it felt like he was being burned alive.
Instantly, Melanie’s face rose in his mind, the same image that always did. The way she’d looked at her happiest, her head thrown back in laughter, her smile wide, her eyes fixed unerringly, so lovingly, on him and him alone.
The way she’d looked just before she died.
Another sharp pain, harder than the first, shafted through him. He swallowed slowly and blinked the image away, entirely too aware of the two people sitting across from him, watching him intently.
There was only one woman he’d ever wanted to marry, and in the years since her death he’d never once considered taking that step with another. Hell, he’d never been tempted to do so much as let a woman leave a toothbrush in his home. If he had been tempted to take another walk down the aisle, it certainly wouldn’t have been with some woman he’d met less than five minutes earlier.
She was pretty in a pale, delicate way. Chin-length black hair. Finely carved features, perhaps sharper than they should have been thanks to what he suspected was an unnatural thinness. Looking closely, he finally noticed the weariness in her eyes. She was young, most likely in her late twenties. Her voice carried a trace of an accent he would have pegged as Eastern European even had he not known where she was from, though her English was impeccable.
“You’re proposing a marriage for green-card purposes?” he said coolly.
“It is the best way to keep Karina in the country,” Viktor said.
“Surely there are less drastic measures available.”
“If there were, we would pursue them. As you said, we have no real evidence that Solokov is responsible for the deaths of Dmitri and my father. And even if we were to pursue other avenues, if we failed and then resorted to marriage it would look suspicious. Better to do it now.”
“So you’re going straight to the nuclear option?”
“As I said, it is the best way.”
“I took an oath to uphold the law. What you’re suggesting is illegal.”
“So is murder,” Viktor shot back. “And the crime is much greater. That is what will happen if Solokov captures her. Once he realizes she knows nothing,
