Alessia
What, the ever-loving hell is going on?
Some leggy blonde shows up to our hotel room and Vlad is suddenly a different man. Angry. Enraged, even.
Clearly she’s his ex.
Clearly she still means something to him or he wouldn’t be so riled up.
He turns slowly and closes his eyes. “That was the woman who nearly got me killed. She’s a conniving bitch, that is all.”
“Obviously she means something to you or you wouldn’t be so upset.” I’m not feeling so calm and collected myself. I’m shaky and cold. My hands are clammy. My stomach is in knots.
“Nyet!” he explodes, proving my point. “She means nothing. If she were a man I would kill her for her trickery.”
He sucks in a deep breath, like he’s trying to get a hold of his temper.
“Is it true what she said? You have a child with her?” The woman said that much in English, obviously for me to hear.
I don’t know why that hurts me so much, but it does. It cuts right to the core. I guess because I can’t have babies. And maybe this afternoon I did conjure some stupid fantasy about Vlad and I adopting a child from that orphanage.
Vlad grinds his jaw. “No. She would say anything. I don’t believe her lies.”
My stomach twists even more. Something about this feels off. “But you don’t know for sure? Don’t you think you should find out? Get a paternity test or something?”
Vlad blinks at me. His usual blank expression is returning. “I don’t even believe there is a child,” he says. “Did you see a baby?” he waves his hand impatiently toward the door, but his brows are down, like he’s thinking.
Like he hadn’t before considered that it might be true.
But then a knock sounds on the door and Vlad answers to room service. He goes silent as we eat.
“Was she your girlfriend?” I can’t stop picking the scab.
“Not girlfriend,” he clips. “Just sex. Very short time. I didn’t know she belonged to a member of the brotherhood. We fucked all weekend. Then I didn’t see her for two months. I didn’t care. It was sex, nothing more. Then she shows up and says she’s pregnant and Zima will kill her and the baby when he finds out it’s mine.”
I set down my fork, horrified.
Vlad continues, “I said, how do you know it’s mine? She swore she knew, but I didn’t believe her. She was playing me. Asked me to kill Zima. I think maybe he was cruel to her-I don’t know. I refused. I gave her money, told her to run away if she’s not happy with him, but I wanted nothing to do with her.”
I sit staring at him, deeply unsettled. I’m definitely seeing two sides to this story. Yes, it does sound like this woman tried to use him to get away from a bad situation. And if she asked him to kill Zima, she is everything he says about her. But I also think Vlad had a responsibility if he fathered a child. And maybe he’s right. Maybe that was a lie.
He probably knows best.
But my friends back in college had a rule. Pay attention to how a guy talks about his ex, because that’s how he’s going to talk about you when it’s over. And the anger Vlad is showing disturbs me. He’s made comments before about women being conniving and manipulative.
I don’t want to get lumped into that group the day he decides I’m just like them.
“You don’t believe me,” he says flatly, then shakes his head and mutters something in Russian, getting up from the little table where we’re eating.
“What was that word?” I ask sharply.
“Women,” he snaps.
There it is.
Okay. He’s pissy. I’m not going to engage anymore. I’ll bring it up when he’s in a better mood.
I go into the bathroom and shut the door, then start the bathtub. I take my time soaking, giving him space. Taking my own.
Vlad
Mika comes in at nine, looking upset.
“What happened?” I ask.
He shakes his head, a little frown burrowed deep between his brows.
“Eat some food,” I tell him.
He goes to the table and uncovers the dishes, picking at them, still standing.
I give him a few minutes, then I go over. “Sit.” I tug out one of the chairs and drop into the other one.
Mika sits. I can read misery all over him. But getting him to talk is another thing.
“I grew up in the streets of Moscow, too,” I offer. “My mother gave me over to the bratva, like yours.”
He lifts his eyes, wary but listening.
“I still hate her for it.”
Alessia looks over from the couch where she was reading one of the romance novels she insisted I download for her.
Mika drops his head, chin wobbling .
I don’t touch him. Don’t want to stop whatever’s going to come out. It will do him better to speak it than to hold it in.
“Your mother is dead,” Mika comments. There’s a wobble in his voice. He remembers this because we were in the same house in Chicago when she died.
“Yes.”
“I wish mine was.”
“She did wrong by you,” I agree. Wait some more. When he doesn’t say anything else, I ask, “Did you go to your old home?”
A single nod.
“Do you have family there?”
He shrugs. Shakes his head. Then offers, “My grandmother.”
“Did you go in?”
His face crumples. “No.” He’s full-on crying now. “I saw her through the window. And I stood there. I stood there for a long time. But I didn’t want to go back in. I didn’t want to see her.”
Now I touch him. I lay my hand on his back. “You don’t have to. You don’t have to ever see her again, unless you want to. It’s your life. Your choice. You have me now. Me and-” I look over at Alessia, but then I stop.
I can’t keep her.
I can’t promise he has her when it’s a lie.
She’s going home.
Just as soon as I figure out how to let her go.
“You have me,” I say again. “And you have Alessia’s money. If something happens to me, it’s still yours. I’ll show you how to get it. And I won’t let Victor take you into the ranks again. He may try, but I won’t let it happen. I promise.”
Now I’ve scared the boy by voicing my own fears.
He stares at me with wide frightened eyes, but then he throws his arms around me and presses his head against my chest.
I gulp and rub his back.
Alessia gets up from the couch and comes over. She rubs Mika’s head.
He looks up and sniffs, wiping his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“Don’t,” I say more forcefully than I mean to. “Don’t apologize. Is better to get it out. Leave it behind. Leave it here, in Moscow.”
I meet Alessia’s sorrowful gaze over the top of Mika’s head, and I realize I’m deep in territory I never wanted to enter. The emotional realm. I haven’t bared my soul to anyone, much less a twelve-year-old boy, since I was a child. And yet here I am, doing everything I can to make sure Mika gets a better shot at being a decent human being than I had.
And it’s because of Alessia. She believed I could-counted on me to do it, so I have.
I may have shown her my worst side when Sabina showed up, but she’s also seeing my best. Which admittedly isn’t much, but it’s more than I’ve attempted in my entire sordid past.
I reach up and catch her hand and squeeze it and she squeezes back.
For one moment, I pretend we’re a strange and unlikely family: Alessia, Mika and me.
But I know it won’t last.
It can’t.
I already feel the ending screaming up to us without regard to what we accomplish here tonight.