Chapter 21

Emma

Ifell asleep as a gangster’s captive and tentative ally.

I woke up as a gangster’s girlfriend, deciding that it was time to end the ambivalence and do what was right for myself and my son.

It was crazy early, and Viktor was still asleep beside me. He’d made love to me three times last night, between naps and cuddling sessions and sleepy conversations. Somewhere in the middle of it, he’d called out for Leon, his brother, and I’d spoken to him softly and stroked his hair until he settled down again.

I got up to shower, get dressed, and deal with my hopelessly tangled hair, which had fallen out of its braid somewhere during the night. I was aching in a lot of unfamiliar places, and stiff in even more. I did some yoga on the living room floor to try and get rid of the worst of it, before getting back up to make us coffee.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt such pleasure. Certainly I’d never felt it with a man, or even with some of the toys I’d tried. I felt like I’d just learned some big secret of life that I’d been robbed of before, during all those years of bad dates while I’d worked toward my degree.

I could have been bitter about it. I certainly had reasons to be. But instead, I just smiled, and thought about how much fun it would be to make up for lost time with Viktor.

Afterglow was a hell of a drug. It even made me able to cope when my brain woke up enough to remember Viktor’s news from last night. My uncle, the schemer, the murderer. The one who made me and my sister orphans. And all for his goddamn wallet. His bottom line.

It made me want to beat him to death with my bare hands. If there was anyone in the world who had more right to hate him than Viktor, it was me.

I poked through my phone, looking at my day’s itinerary. Tomorrow, I would be dropping into the clinic, one of my colleagues had agreed to take on my patients temporarily, but I knew I had to elaborate further than just saying it was a family emergency that had taken me away for the last two weeks. The story we’d settled on was loosely based on the truth, there had been a shooting near my house, gangbangers. Nick and I were unhurt but had gone to stay with my uncle, who’d then been taken ill. Soon, I would be able to start taking clients again. Nick could go back to school, see his friends, and aside from my new and extremely important side job, and my lover’s occupation, everything would return to normal.

Except that deep down, nothing would. I could never go back to the days before I knew what I knew. I could never go back to thinking of my uncle as a good man—or thinking of Viktor as a bad one. My entire life had gone from black and white simplicity to the million shades of gray that I’d mostly encountered in my professional life.

I heard the coffee pot gurgling and the aroma of coffee brewing permeated all through the penthouse. I went to gather mugs, pour cream into a server, fill the sugar bowl and find the cinnamon and cocoa powder. I felt like being a little indulgent today—and also like I needed more caffeine than usual.

My to-do list was pretty modest. Two more interviews, including one with my uncle’s former head of security. I also had some kind of appointment with Viktor and one of his men about Nick’s genetic testing. Then there were a few more phone calls to try and get control of my uncle’s assets in absentia. Strangely, he hadn’t changed me as his representative and next of kin. It made no sense... until it did, and I felt even angrier.

He hadn’t bothered changing them, and leaving me with power over his stateside affairs, because he thought I’d be conveniently dead by now.

Instead, here I was, still with as much of a backdoor into his life as I’d had back when I had been the only person he could trust. Because I’d been the only one close enough to him who was still alive, and yet I didn’t know what he’d been up to.

He’d trusted me because he’d thought I was stupid. Naive. Tame. Easily tricked into doing what he wanted—most of the time, anyway. Having me be the one with the spare set of keys to everything gave him security as his health started to fail. I’d been proud to be trusted with so much.

But now, I was going to betray every inch of that trust, because he deserved it. And because it might just be the only way to goad him into coming home and facing me.

I had four hours before my first interview, and I was glad of it. I doctored up a cinnamon mocha and took a careful mouthful. Piping hot, but amazing right now. Thinking about my uncle and his cruelty, his real feelings about me, his betrayals, made me feel very cold inside.

I checked my email, both private and professional, and quickly felt even worse. Everyone in my life was worried about me after hearing about the shooting and then my uncle’s illness.

I hated lying. I hated that I’d have to ask Nick to lie too—to his teachers and his friends. What kind of example was that setting? Nothing good, certainly.

But what choice did I have?

Besides, lying was a small price to pay to be allowed back into our lives. Nick needed his school. I needed the structure of work, and my patients needed me. If I was going to play the dual role of pillar of the community and ally and lover of a crime lord, I needed to really play up the first part for a while.

I had initially thought Viktor had kidnapped me quietly, using drugs and a quick transport. But I discovered there had been some kind of siege around my home, one that Viktor’s men and no doubt contacts in the LAPD, had framed as some drive by gangbanger vendetta gone wrong.

Yet another thing I needed to ask about. But there would be time enough for that later.

***

Breakfast was a quiet affair, warm and a little strange. Nick helped gather pancake toppings and set the table while Viktor made the pancakes and cooked up sausage patties. I chopped the fruit salad and made juice.

“Today we’re going to find out the results of that test we gave you earlier in the week,” Viktor told Nick as we sat down to eat. “We’ll find out where you came from, if you have any other relatives around you don’t know about, and some other things.”

Nick looked at me, I nodded, and then he smiled at Viktor. “That sounds neat. Are we going to find out about my dad?”

I wasn’t sure how to broach that, my sister had never told me much about her ex and I didn’t want to raise his hopes up. “Maybe. But more excitingly we might find things out like your ethnicity and if you have any relatives.” I made up Nick’s plate first, stacking pancakes and adding sausage patties and a big scoop of fruit salad. He took the plate with a smile as I talked.

“What’s an efnicity?”

“That’s where your ancestors were from,” Viktor told him. “It can tell you a lot about yourself. Your heritage, your family history.”

“So what’s yours?” Nick added butter and syrup to his pancakes a little clumsily. He was insisting on doing it himself more and more these days.

“Ah. My brother and I came from Russia. But Russia is a huge place and when I grew up it consisted of lots of different territories that are now separate countries. Our father was Russian but lived in Kazakhstan, and our mother was Georgian. I’ll show you on a map sometime.”

So homey. So normal. Like we were an ordinary family having breakfast together. It made my heart ache a little.

“What’s it like in Russia?”

“Well, it’s beautiful, like the United States has cold parts and warmer parts so does Russia. I was born in Moscow, where we had warm summers, but long, cold winters a bit like parts of Canada. We left when I was young, but you never forget it once you’ve been there. The people are very tough. You don’t live through cold like that year after year and not get tough.”

“Do you like it better than America?”

He sat back, thinking. “They’re both home now,” he said simply. “American life can be softer, especially the weather here in LA. Many of the people, they aren’t so tough compared to what I’m used to. But others are, usually the ones who work with their hands all day.”

I filled up my plate, deciding to listen more than talk. I was still feeling loose and tingly, and despite the caffeine, I wanted a nap later. You wore me out, Viktor, I wanted to tease him, and make him laugh. But if I had, Nick would have asked what I meant, and that was a conversation I didn’t want to have for about ten years.

“I can be tough. Mom’s tough too.”

Viktor laughed and nodded. “Yes, yes, I have noticed. You really can bounce back from anything.” Including his intrusion into our lives. At first, I had seen it all as a nightmare. But now that I had the truth, I knew what Viktor walking into our lives really was, a very strange, almost ironic godsend.

“When does your guy with the genetic results get here?” I asked Viktor after we’d eaten and chatted for a while longer.

“Bit before noon at this rate.” He took a big bite of sausage patty, chewed and swallowed. “Will that run into your last appointment?”

“Only a little if it does. Will you be around before that?”

“No. I have to fetch the man, he’s terrible at directions. And I have a few more stops before that.” He smiled. “But I’ll be in for lunchtime and part of the afternoon. We could go out to eat for lunch.”

Out to eat. Like a normal family. Driving the LA streets, walking around, ordering off a menu, being out among people.

“Sounds great,” I said, and really meant it.