Chapter 35

Chapter Thirty-Five

T ears poured down Kira's cheeks as she stared at the painting. The memories were too overwhelming to verbalize for Rand. But she knew without a doubt they were real. Not a dream. Not a fantasy.

Reuben was her brother.

But how was that possible? Luka Kulik's dead daughter would be in her midthirties. Kira was two months away from her fortieth birthday.

She remembered Reuben's words that first night, calling her father a thief. And then there was the letter she believed was written by Luka Kulik.

We will drink a toast to success and grieve for those who are not present to celebrate with us. Your parents. My wife and daughter.

It had been a taunt. A reminder of the wife and child Luka Kulik no longer had, but Conrad Hanson did.

And then the letter she received yesterday:

In addition, the Stoltz treasures have been located. Come to Malta. Once all is returned, our friendship must end. But we will not grieve, for all will be as it should, with treasures once stolen, now returned.

I'm the stolen treasure.

Her dad—Conrad Hanson—had stolen her from her real father, Luka Kulik.

Somehow, decades after the theft, Kulik found out, and orchestrated Kira's return.

"What have you remembered, Kira?" Rand's voice was soft. Gentle. And beyond patient.

"I remember this place. My mother, my father. My brother. One memory—playing hide-and-seek with Reuben and seeing my mother… Reuben's mother…kissing my dad. But not my real father. The man who raised me. Conrad Hanson."

"Luka Kulik is your father."

"Now I know how Luke felt." She swiped at her tears and let out a bitter laugh. "When Darth Vader broke the news, I mean."

"Who's to say I am the villain?" The voice behind her had a thick Russian accent.

She turned to see the elderly man she recognized from his profile on Wikipedia. Luka Kulik had thinning white hair and a lined, ruddy face. He leaned heavily on a cane as he approached. He must've entered the corridor through the nearest door, which was why she hadn't heard the tap of his cane.

"After all," he continued, "it was Conrad Hanson who stole you from me. You had everything you could ever dream of, and he took you to live in America, raised by a poor, doddering professor."

She wanted to defend her father…they hadn't been poor at all, and it was the man before her who doddered. But he was right about the theft, and the implications—all the years of lies from her mother and father—caused rage to surge in their direction.

My whole life is a lie.

Rand took her hand, threading his fingers through hers. He'd tucked his gun back in the holster, perhaps reluctantly, but it also wasn't a great idea for a SEAL to enter an oligarch's home uninvited and immediately pull a gun on him, so she understood the action.

The oligarch's eyes dropped to their joined hands. "I thought you were my daughter's client?"

She wanted to tell him not to call her his daughter, but found she couldn't. It was the truth. She didn't need a DNA test to prove it.

"I was," Rand said, "but now I'm more than that."

"We'll see about that."

"It's none of your business," Kira said.

"It is if you think you're going to inherit my billions. My money isn't going to some feckless author who writes pulp."

"I don't want your money. I didn't even know you were my biological father until a moment ago."

"That's not what Reuben thinks. He believes you're here to claim your place in the family, hoping to cash in on a future inheritance."

Now she understood Reuben's vague words last night. "I can't help what he believes. Now, are you going to tell me what you and my father—" She waved him off when he moved to object. "It's all semantics to me. He raised me. I called him Dad. What I want to know is what the two of you were you up to for the last thirty years. Was there ever any missing Stoltz art?"

"Let us have a seat. I'll have food and drinks prepared."

Kira had no intention of eating or drinking anything in this house. She'd avoid windows on upper floors too. Russians were known for their poisons and defenestrations, and Reuben thought she was after the family billions. Hell, he might have tried something last night if Rand hadn't been watching him like a hawk.

To think she'd been angry with Rand at the time, but still, he'd protected her, just with his presence.

They exited the corridor through the nearest door, entering a smaller sitting room or living room or whatever the rooms were called in an oversized billionaire villa. She and Rand settled on a couch—much more comfortable than the ones in the first room had looked—while their host took a plush chair.

When Luka—she wasn't about to think of him as her father, and calling him by his last name was out—again offered food and drinks, she and Rand both declined.

His eyes narrowed. One thing was certain: Luka Kulik was sharp as a tack. "I have no wish to harm you now that you've finally returned."

"I'm not thirsty."

"Right. It's afternoon on a Maltese summer day, and you don't even want water."

She did, now that he mentioned it, but she remained firm.

"Fine." He rang a bell. A servant appeared, and he said something in Russian, which she assumed was a food and drink order for himself.

"Mom refused to teach me Russian," she murmured.

Luka's lip curled. "It was the only language you spoke when she stole you from me."

It made sense, she supposed. All her memories were likely wrapped in the language. The sooner she forgot the language and replaced it with English and German, the more likely her memories would fade.

She remembered playing with Reuben and talking to him. But what she remembered was the meaning of the words, not the words themselves.

She'd loved her big brother.

Had he loved her?

"Is Reuben here?" she asked.

"No."

"Does he know I'm here?"

"If security called him. He wasn't expecting you, though. He didn't know I sent a message to your hotel."

"Why the games with the henchman at Mdina? Why not just send me an invitation to tea?"

"This is how the game with Conrad worked. I wanted to see how much you knew."

"I didn't know a thing."

A slow smile spread across his face. "And yet…you are here. Cunning as your mother."

His tone sent chills along her spine. "Only because Reuben told me you and my father were spies, and that the Stoltz treasure was the code for a meeting. But he failed to mention my so-called cousin was your Russian handler."

"Not my handler. Conrad's. He was a double agent."

"As were you."

"I am loyal to the country that made me rich."

"You traded secrets with your government's blessing."

He shrugged. "I was doing my part for Mother Russia. If I gave a little, I would get more from Conrad."

"How did it begin?"

"With the Stoltz treasures. Conrad was looking for them for his stepfather. He contacted me, because he traced my father as one of the Soviets in charge of the East German state that was home to the salt mine where he believed the family's artwork had been hidden. I had a home in East Germany at the time…"

His face pinched, and she wondered what he'd remembered to cause his voice to trail off. He cleared his throat and resumed. "We formed a friendship discussing art and history." He waved his hand around the room, which was filled to bursting with paintings—not her mother's work—and sculptures.

Art was clearly this man's passion.

Was that why he'd married her mother? Because she painted?

"I enjoyed Conrad's company and was stuck in the DDR. Your mother had a difficult pregnancy with you and insisted we stay in the DDR instead of going back to Russia for your birth as we did for the others."

Others. Kira had wondered if her mother had miscarried or even had a stillbirth. She wanted to ask about that, but it could wait. Right now she needed to know about his and Conrad's spy games. "So it was while my mother was pregnant with me that you and Conrad began your information exchange?"

"I don't know how it came about for Conrad, but I suspect MI6 or CIA were monitoring one or both of us. He was granted entry into East Berlin and other parts of the DDR for his research. I was an important figure in the party. High ranking with even higher-ranked friends. I would guess MI6 or the CIA or both instructed him to gather intel for them. He started nudging me in that direction about a year into our acquaintance. I received approval from my superiors in the party, and the spy games began."

He made it sound so very much like his role was on the up and up, but she highly doubted that. Neither man would risk so much if there wasn't meat to the intel being traded.

But her father—dammit, Conrad —wasn't here to ask.

Her mother must have known, of course.

Then Conrad Hanson stole mother and daughter away, but continued with the spying, probably because Luka would get suspicious otherwise. "What happened—officially—to me and my mom?"

"When you were almost four, you were out on a boat, paddling around the harbor, with Alesya and Reuben. Just the three of you. You fell in. Your mother jumped in after you. You both disappeared, never to be seen again. Your brother, nine years old, screamed and cried for hours. When we found him, he was sunburned and dehydrated. Nearly dead himself."

She imagined that brother she'd adored, so young and terrified. She might not like the man he was now, but her heart ached thinking of what he'd gone through.

He easily could have died that day.

Instead, he'd been abandoned by his mother.