Chapter 23

Emma

Istared at my uncle’s bodyguard in horror as he leveled the gun at me. “Please,” I said softly, “My nephew’s right in the other room—”

“Yeah, I know, I’ve kinda got to kill him too. Hell of a thing, really, but your uncle really doesn’t like watching you drain his bank accounts paying off people he no longer has any use for.”

“I don’t get it. His businesses bring him in his only—”

“Oh honey.” He laughed, but his gun hand stayed steady as a stone. “The man’s rich enough for ten lifetimes. You think he gives a damn about his businesses anymore? They’re nothing more than glorified hobbies as far as he’s concerned.” He grinned mockingly. “It’s funny. You grew up with all this goddamn money and you still don’t know how this works.”

He was so busy gloating that he didn’t seem to hear the faint beep of the door’s card reader.

“Yeah, well, just because I’m not a spoiled asshole doesn’t mean I’m stupid.” I glared at him, absolutely terrified inside but refusing to show it. “Anyway, you’ve given me what I wanted, so I don’t have any more use for you.”

His eyebrows went up and he laughed. “Holy shit, honey, you’re not only better than your uncle, you’ve got bigger balls too. Too bad it can’t do you any good now. You don’t have me anywhere. I’m the one with the goddamn gun pointed at you.”

I stared at him steadily. “You’re not the only one.”

The door opened and I immediately threw myself to the side and scrambled away across the floor while I heard my unwanted guest stand up, distracted by the sound.

“You—” he said in confusion.

I dove around the corner into the kitchen a split second before two guns went off in quick succession. Then a body hit the floor. I heard a few faint wheezes, and then they stopped.

“Mom?” Nick called out fearfully.

“Stay in your room, honey, shut the door!” I tried to keep my voice calm but then started coughing on gunpowder fumes. The smell of blood was heavy in the air now too. But whose?

“Emma?” I heard Viktor’s strained shout, I quickly stood up and came out of the doorway at once.

“I’m here. He didn’t get me.” I struggled to catch my breath. “I’m so glad you got home just now.”

“What happened?”

“He’s the last employee I had to interview. My uncle’s bodyguard. But he’s been in contact with Uncle Charles. He was taking orders from him.” Now the shakes were starting to set in. “I- he- my uncle sent him to kill me. Me and Nick. Oh God.”

He finished checking the body and came over to me. “He’s dead. I’ll call in a cleaner to handle the body. I need you to try to stay calm.”

I nodded, breathing through my mouth and praying I could keep up doing so when I felt like I was going to crack. There was only so much a person could take, and in the past two weeks I think I had reached my limit.

I peeked into the living room and swallowed hard. The body had fallen off the couch when hit, but there were spatters of blood all over, and a pool rapidly spreading across the Chinese silk carpet. “Oh God,” I murmured.

“I know, sweetheart. I’ll get someone to take care of this mess. Meanwhile you need to go get Nick and get his shoes on him. We’re taking him to lunch. Just try to act like nothing’s wrong.”

I nodded, numb, with shock. I hastily threw a throw blanket over the leaking body and went to knock on Nick’s door. “You okay in there, sweetheart?”

He hesitated. “What happened?”

“I’m okay. Everything’s fine. I need you to put your shoes on. Viktor’s here to take us to lunch.”

“Okay!” He sounded cheerful, but then paused. “What’s that smell?”

“Um, it’s okay, I just burned some toast. Everything’s fine.”

I wished it was. But when I managed to get Nick sorted and bundled out the door, I breathed a little easier anyway.

A few minutes later, Viktor came out. “All right then. Time to go get you a good meal. I have news for you, and you’re not gonna believe it.” He smiled down at Nick, who grinned.

“You got the test stuff?” Nick asked.

“We did! And I was amazed by what it said. Let’s go someplace to celebrate.”

I forced a smile, but inside, I felt dizzy and still a little sick. Now there was a contract out on me, thanks to my uncle. And I had no idea why he’d chosen to go that far.

***

We were on the road in Viktor’s black coupe, when he looked over at me in the passenger seat and asked, “Are you okay?”

I wanted to cry to him of course not, but I refused to crack with Nick there watching. “I will be.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll need to talk to you about everything later.”

By which I meant, away from Nick and his big ears. Viktor nodded. “Of course.”

“Just tell me that you’ve got some kind of good news I can distract myself with, and I think I’ll be okay.” I couldn’t let on around Nick how close I’d come to being killed. How close he had come to being killed. And all because Uncle Charles had given the order.

Why? Did he know I was allied with Viktor now? And how did he find out?

I frowned. “Look, the important part I can talk about right now is I found out where my uncle is hiding. Unless his bodyguard fed me a lie, which he had no reason to do when he was about to—well, you know.”

“I do. So where is he?” He kept his voice calm and conversational, but when I saw his hands on the wheel, I noticed his knuckles were white.

“Haiti. He’s in Haiti, in the hills northeast of Port-Au-Prince. He didn’t get more specific than it being above the tent city.” My mouth felt dry now that the nausea and fear was gone. I hoped his cleaner did a thorough job.

“Above the tent city—oh. Right.”

“What is it?” I looked over at him, his hands were relaxing on the wheel. “There’s only one resort with a golf course in Haiti. After the big earthquake, it got turned into a temporary tent city for refugees. The problem is that they never got together enough permanent housing for all those people to dismantle it.”

“That’s so sad. But at least now we know where to go.”

He looked thoughtful. “Yeah, we do. Thanks to you. Good job getting the information out of him. But I think I need to train you to use and keep a firearm from now on.”

I looked at him in shock. “A pistol?”

“Yes, or a shotgun.”

Nick poked his head between our seats. “Cool! Can I have one?”

“When you’re older,” Viktor and I nearly chorused. “And once I’ve taught you proper firearms safety,” Viktor insisted.

I blinked again. Viktor was talking like he planned to be in our lives from now on, and he was offering to teach things to Nick. That was, if not fatherly, at least familial. I wondered why the sudden change, but with what had just happened, both of us naturally had safety on the brain.

“Okay. I don’t want to hurt anybody by accident.” Nick sat back with a surprising minimum of fuss, and I heard him start fiddling with the small stack of books he’d brought.

“That’s a good attitude. You have to be safety first about a lot of things,” Viktor told him. “Cooking. Using knives. Lighting fires. Driving. You’ll learn more about it as you get older.”

“Being a grownup sounds a little dangerous.” Nick sounded solemn.

I sighed and nodded. “Parts of it yes. Danger is one of the biggest reasons we save some things for when you’re older. Danger and things just being complicated, or just for grownups.”

“There was danger earlier, wasn’t there?” he asked quietly. “That’s why you didn’t want me coming out.”

I did my best not to freeze up, but ran out of ideas to explain away what he’d heard and smelled.

“Some things are too dangerous, especially indoors,” Viktor stepped in again. There was a strange, wistful note in his voice. “Our job until you’re grown is to protect you from danger so you don’t need to be scared, your mom and I will always keep you safe.”

The look in his eyes made me curious. Something had changed, and it went beyond Uncle Charles sending a would-be assassin to eliminate Nick and I.

I was suddenly not only curious, but dead curious about the DNA test. What else could it be but that?

We went to a burger place in Hollywood that I hadn’t tried before. I wondered if it was one of Viktor’s businesses, because many of the workers and a few of the patrons nodded to him as he walked in. We were given a table right away, and I helped Nick sort out what burger he wanted. As usual, his eyes were bigger than his stomach, but that was why leftover bags existed.

“So, Haiti. He fled to Haiti. Not the most convenient place for a very wealthy, elderly white man with medical needs.”

I did a quick look-up on my phone. “There are twenty different pharmacies within his neighborhood. I am guessing he’d use one with a delivery service, which is most of them. That knocks it down to fifteen.”

“If I can have my computer guys find out where his prescriptions were transferred, we could follow a delivery up the hill and find his property, well, that’s assuming the pharmacies are online,” he paused. “Though, if not, that is not a problem, it just means it takes us a little longer.” Viktor’s voice was low, only raised enough to accommodate the loud hum of conversation.

I started deciding on my own burger. They had offerings I had never even considered. Guacamole and caramelized onion. Ten kinds of cheese, including blue cheese crumbles. I finally got a double bacon cheeseburger. I was starved, inexplicably, and was a little less interested in watching my waistline right this second when I’d just almost died.

“Will you’ll send someone?”

“I’ll go myself. The matter has become even more personal, now.”

I nodded, then looked up at him pleadingly. “Please take me with you.”

He took a deep breath and let it out, looking concerned. “It will be dangerous.”

“I understand that. It’s Haiti, and it’s my uncle. But I think you know why I want to be there.”

He pressed his lips together. I wished I could tell him straight out that I wanted to watch my uncle die with my own eyes. That I wanted a chance to spit in his face before he lost consciousness. I couldn’t say that in front of Nick. My innocence was gone, but he was a kid. He deserved to keep as much of his as humanly possible.

Finally, he gave a single nod. “Once I have handled a few issues involving Charles and his actions here, we will make our plans. Including making sure that Nick is well looked after.”

“But I want to go to Haiti with you!” Nick hesitated when he saw my face. “Is that bad? Where’s Haiti?”

“It’s in the Caribbean We have to go handle some things in Haiti because that’s where Uncle Charles is, you’ve already missed enough school.”

“But until I handle certain matters,” Viktor insisted, “We can’t have him here, alone.”

Nick looked between us, then said, “Why?”

“Well…” Viktor quieted down as the server arrived. We gave our orders. He didn’t so much as lift an eyebrow at mine even though I was getting as much food as him. Definitely distracted by something important.

Viktor thought for a few moments, taking a swallow of his ice water before speaking. Then he reached under his jacket and produced a folded set of papers. He opened them and handed them over.

Nicholas Martinez’s ethnic mix was half my family’s smorgasbord of British, and Spanish and Native American, from the Mexican side, plus Eastern European, Slavic, Central Asian, and West Asian on his father’s side. I glanced at the population matches, it mentioned Kartvelian, which I assumed was his Georgian heritage. I took a closer look, I’d given a sample too and closest relatives were listed as me, and—

I looked again, father, Leon Kozlov.

And uncle, Viktor Kozlov.

I looked up at him slowly, wondering if he was playing games with me.My adrenaline was up, my brain was making bad associations. Yes, I had seen him back up lies with false documents before. But was that what was happening now? He had no reason to lie.

“I- the doctor verified this? All of it?” I read it again, needing to verify the same thing myself for my stunned brain.

“Yes.” Viktor actually sounded a little breathless. “I had trouble believing it myself at first. When I first saw Nick, I thought he looked familiar, but I had told myself that it was my mind playing tricks on me. After getting the results, I even went back and checked some of my old photographs with Leon when we were young boys. The quality is not good, and some are faded, but…” he brought out an envelope of old photographs.

I pulled them out with shaking hands.

Two boys were in all of them, one beefy and thick-haired and obviously Viktor, the other younger, slimmer, with finer features.

He was the very image of Nick, from over twenty years ago.

“Oh my God,” I breathed, astonished.

“What’s in it? Come on guys, I want to see!” Nick got out of his chair and stuck his head under my arm to look at the pictures. “Who’s that? He looks like me!”

“That’s your father as a kid,” I murmured, still feeling it sink in.

So that was it. Who Lucia’s mystery lover had been—not Levan, obviously a fake name, but Leon. Viktor’s younger brother.

“That’s my dad? What happened, where did he go?”

“He died, honey,” I said softly. “That’s why he disappeared.”

He looked back at me sadly. He didn’t even really remember his real mom, from the way he acted and talked, but he’d always been curious about them. And I knew I must have a sad look on my face now too, which he hated seeing.

Then, though, he looked back down at the photo. “Who’s the other boy?”

“That’s me as a kid!” Viktor kept his tone light. “Your dad was my little brother.”

“You’re my uncle?” Nick’s eyes widened. “You didn’t know?”

“No, none of us knew, honey,” I said. “We’re all surprised.”

This was why my sister never talked about her lover. She must have known what kind of business he was in and didn’t want people freaking out.Like I was worried about now that I was with Viktor.

How ironic. But it certainly explained Viktor’s behavior since he’d come home.

Nick perked up. “Hey, if I’m half Russian, does that mean I can have beer now?”

“Oh my God.” I rolled my eyes and Viktor pinched the bridge of his nose, shoulders shaking as he chuckled silently. “No, honey, you wouldn’t even like it right now.”

“Aww.”