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point to two UUR field operatives and a location in Kiev.
    Smiling grimly, I write a reply and put away the phone. It’s only a matter of time before we take down Yulia’s organization. And once we do, she’ll have nowhere to run, no one to help her.
    No lover she could return to.
    My teeth clench as violent jealousy spears through me. Yulia could be with him already, with this Misha of hers. He could be holding her at this very moment.
    He could even be fucking her.
    The thought fills me with blazing fury. If I had the man in front of me right now, I’d kill him with my bare hands and make Yulia watch. It would be her punishment for this latest betrayal.
    A buzzing vibration from my phone cuts into my vengeful thoughts. Grabbing it, I read Esguerra’s text, and my blood turns to ice.
    Nora and Rosa attacked , the message says. Rosa taken. I’m going after her. Alert the others.

8
    Y ulia

    T he familiar smell of car exhaust and lilacs fills my nostrils as the car weaves through the busy Kiev streets. The man Obenko sent to pick me up at the airport is someone I’ve never seen before, and he doesn’t talk much, leaving me free to take in the sights of the city where I lived and trained for five years.
    “We’re not going to the Institute?” I ask the driver when the car makes an unfamiliar turn.
    “No,” the man replies. “I’m taking you to a safe house.”
    “Is Obenko there?”
    The driver nods. “He’s waiting for you.”
    “Great.” I take a steadying breath. I should be relieved to be here, but instead, I feel tense and anxious. And it’s not just because I screwed up and compromised the organization. Obenko doesn’t deal kindly with failure, but the fact that he extracted me from Colombia instead of killing me eases my worry in that regard.
    No, the main source of my anxiety is the empty feeling inside me, an ache that’s growing more acute with every hour without Lucas. I feel like I’m going through a withdrawal—except that would make Lucas my drug, and I refuse to accept that.
    Whatever I had begun to feel for my captor will pass. It has to, because there’s no other alternative.
    Lucas and I are over for good.
    “We’re here,” the driver says, stopping in front of an unassuming four-story apartment building. It looks just like every other building in this neighborhood: old and rundown, the outside covered with a dull yellowish plaster from the Soviet era. The scent of lilacs is stronger here; it’s coming from a park across the street. Under any other circumstances, I would’ve enjoyed the fragrance that I associate with spring, but today it reminds me of the jungle I left behind—and, by extension, the man who held me there.
    The driver leaves the car by the curb and leads me into the building. It’s a walk-up, and the stairwell is as rundown as the building’s exterior. When we walk past the first floor, I hear raised voices and catch a whiff of urine and vomit.
    “Who are those people on the first floor?” I ask as we stop in front of an apartment on the second floor. “Are they civilians?”
    “Yes.” The driver knocks on the door. “They’re too busy getting drunk to pay us much attention.”
    I don’t have a chance to ask more questions because the door swings open, and I see a dark-haired man standing there. His wide forehead is creased, and lines of tension bracket his thin mouth.
    “Come in, Yulia,” Vasiliy Obenko says, stepping back to let me enter. “We have a lot to discuss.”
----
    O ver the next two hours , I go through an interrogation as grueling as anything I’d experienced in the Russian prison. In addition to Obenko, there are two senior UUR agents, Sokov and Mateyenko. Like my boss, they’re in their forties, their trim bodies honed into deadly weapons over decades of training. The three of them sit across from me at the kitchen table and take turns asking questions. They want to know everything from the details of my escape to the exact