by Christa Wick
Seeing the expression on Alina's face, the woman offered a coquettish smile. "We'll just carry them with us for inspiration."
Alina's fingers danced against the plain black purse she had brought with her. Her new identity was inside, along with the smartphone Mikhael had secured for her. She didn't want to call him, just check the time and see how long this peculiar kind of torture had lasted so far.
Nearing the end of the wardrobe room, an elderly woman sat with a stack of papers. Vivian stopped and placed a hand against the older woman's shoulder, whispering in her ear. Glancing over, the other woman looked at Alina's feet and nodded.
Alina stalled. She couldn't do it, couldn't follow after this glamorous and clearly rich socialite with her foundation—and story of a dead husband—who wanted to dress Alina up for a day. Maybe the world worked like that when you grew up with money, when your own family hadn't scarred most of your body. But it didn't work in Alina's world. She would always know what was under the clothes.
It was time to make her apologies and go back to the main room or out to the car. Mikhael and Bogdan would find her when they were done, and she could apologize all over again.
"Please!" Vivian begged sweetly before Alina could open her mouth. "I don't want to overwhelm you. Let's go to the makeup chair and sit you down so you can relax."
The Lodge woman was little more than a stunted girl if she thought sitting down and playing with makeup solved real problems.
Alina shook her head and started to turn, her thoughts shifting to how to get back to the main room and then out to the car. Anxiety had dogged her each step of the way into and through the building and there was an even chance she'd take a wrong turn or two in her attempt to escape.
"I wanted to talk to you about Bogdan," Vivian said, expertly dangling the boy as bait.
"What about him?" Alina asked, turning back.
"Oh, something Reed and I were talking about." Giving no real answer, Vivian turned toward the makeup area.
Hooked, Alina followed after Vivian and let the woman place her in the seat.
"What were you talking about, what did Reed say about my son?" she asked after Vivian did a light facial cleansing without saying anything substantive.
"I heard that, on the trip back, Bogdan didn't want anything to do with anyone but Reed."
Alina nodded. The boy had spent a few seconds clinging to her when they were reunited, but when he realized she was working with the men who killed his "papa," he had instantly turned on her.
"Can I tell you something in confidence?" Vivian asked, her voice and gaze dropping.
"Yes," Alina answered flatly.
Whom did Vivian think she would tell anyway? Not Mikhael nor the boy, both of whom were as far out of her reach as they had ever been. Not the FBI, which only wanted to hear about the Rodchenko family. Certainly not anyone back east—she'd never made real friends because of Dima always spying on her and controlling her every move. And she wasn't supposed to contact anyone from her old life.
All secrets were safe with a woman to whom no one cared to listen.
Vivian exhaled a shaky breath, her hand pausing from applying brow powder. "Reed lost a child."
Alina felt like the room had started spinning around her. She didn’t want to bond with this Lodge woman over death—first the husband, then the unnamed boy who had lost his mother, now Reed's loss of a child.
She didn't want to bond with Vivian at all.
Alina slid one leg to the side, ready to push up from the chair. Vivian's hand landed on her arm.
"Reed said you were willing to die to keep Bogdan safe and to get one last day with your son. He has the utmost respect for you because of that and knows you'll be a great mom for Bogdan. With his own loss, he's very observant on these matters."
Alina recoiled as the conversation turned even more uncomfortable. She was glad the boy was with Mikhael, not Dima. In the end it would work out between them. But there was no place in their lives for her. This beautiful woman on the verge of tears standing in front of her was just one example why.
She had seen the way Mikhael had looked at Vivian. The woman was whole. Alina was not.
"No, please," Vivian said, her fingers lightly pressing against Alina's shoulders so Alina wouldn't leave the chair. "I'll shut up."
She gestured at the mirror for more support. "I don't know any woman who wants to go out partly done."
No, Alina thought, her determination to leave crumbling as she caught her reflection. Half done was worse than never begun when it came to makeup. She had entered the room with dark shadows under her eyes and flaking, sallow skin from all the stress. If she left incomplete or without washing it off, she would look like a powdered corpse.
Surrendering once more, she waved a dismissive hand at the woman.
Another dozen or so minutes passed before Vivian pulled back, a closed tube of mascara in one hand.
"I'm guessing false eyelashes are a big no."
"Correct," Alina answered, her voice creaky from the silence they had fallen into.
"Okay, just this last bit then. Waterproof okay?"
Alina shrugged. She would prefer something she could wash off immediately if necessary, but her nerves were beyond frayed and the tears she had been holding back daily since the boy's last meltdown might come at any moment.
Leaning over Alina once more, Vivian used a lash curler, added a thin coat of mascara, used the lash curler again on the same eye and then laid down a thicker coat with a final curl before repeating the process on the other eye.
Finished, she rotated the chair so that Alina could look in the mirror.
Gaze unfocused, Alina slowly allowed the image of her reflection to sharpen and come together as Vivian brushed at her hair.
Alina looked from the expertly made up face down to the frumpy second-hand blouse she wore. She had allowed Mikhael to get the boy the kind of clothes to which he was accustomed, but she had insisted on going to the re-sell shops for her own clothing. Part of it was necessity. Finding long sleeves in late summer was hard.
The other part, the bigger part, was not unlike what had driven the boy to rub shoe polish in his hair. Before, she had only worn what Dima allowed—what he paid for. That meant drab cast-offs. For a while, he had insisted on sleeveless blouses exposing her scars except for when she visited the boy.
She took it all in even though she didn’t want to, old pain soon mixing with new.
"Maybe just try on the clothes before I blow some curls in," Vivian said as she put the brush down and plugged in a blow dryer.
Alina's skin began to itch, her fingers absently scratching at her arms.
With no objection voiced, Vivian slipped out of the room for a second and returned with a box and plastic bag. She placed them on the counter then backed toward the door.
"I asked Carla to grab those before we came in here. No one will enter until you open the door. If you want to try it on and take it back off, that's fine—or if you don't want to try it on at all. Just give the idea a chance before you decide."
Alina remained frozen as Vivian left again. She stayed frozen for a few more minutes, only her eyes moving. The emerald shirt and long black skirt hung on the wall behind her. The box, its lettering visible through the thin plastic bag, contained shoes. A shiny black material she guessed was a bra or panties was also inside the bag.
She looked at her reflection again. The eyes staring back remained bone dry. With all the emotion running through her, she should have been crying. But even her emotions were arid—like she had felt them once but now they were only blowing back at her on a desert wind.
Sliding out of the chair on shaky legs, she locked the door and made sure there wasn't a second entrance. Returning to the makeup station, she pulled the box out first.
Fuck, the shoe box…
She had buried that memory so long ago—or tried to. Whenever she found herself recalling how she had fed the little mementos into the fire or the t
errible thing that had happened after with the rabbit or Mikhael at the library, she pushed her thoughts toward the beating that had followed her father's discovery of her pregnancy.
It hurt less remembering how the electrical cord had lashed her body. That had been only flesh—not like losing the man she loved and cruelly hurting him to make sure he left, or how they had bragged afterward about setting the building on fire while he slept and of the big Russian's body pulled out of the rubble charred so thoroughly only his great size identified him.
Slowly, she peeled back the lid to find a pair of black suede shoes with a one-inch heel. Reaching into the bag a second time, she removed the black silky material, unfolding it to reveal a bra and panties, Vivian's expert eye having perfectly sized up Alina's measurements.
Slowly, she pulled the bottom hem of her blouse up over her head. Leaving her bra on, she shucked her shoes and pants off and stared at her scarred body in the mirror. The bra she wore wasn't from the re-sell shop, but it was a cheap eighteen-hour type in plain white cotton—a war horse compared to what Vivian had brought her.
Turning, she fingered the emerald green shirt. Smooth, lightweight and flowing like water, she wasn't certain what kind of fabric it was. She searched for a tag and discovered it was silk. Lifting a brow, she calculated that the shirt alone was more expensive than the entire wardrobe that she had rebuilt second hand, as small as it might be.
Silk shirts and powdered women were Mikhael's world—and Dima's.
Going back to the counter, she opened her plain black purse and pulled out the phone. Turning it on, she saw that an hour had passed. Shoving the phone back in the purse, she wondered what Mikhael was doing at that moment. Probably congratulating himself on his plan in bringing her here.
For some misguided reason, the fool thought he had a swan who was convinced she was a duck.
Reaching behind her, she unhooked her bra, her gaze avoiding the mirror as she put on the fancier undergarments and then the rest of the outfit. She would show him that if it walked like a duck, swam like a duck and quacked like a duck, it was a duck. No matter how anyone dressed it up or slapped makeup on it.
She would bear this last humiliation of trying to be what she wasn't and then he would see it was time to let her go and raise the boy on his own.
23
Mikhael
Sitting at the large conference table in Vivian's studio with his smartphone in hand, Mikhael thumbed through intelligence reports from work. Each day, the remains of what had been the Rodchenko empire crumbled a little more. The Grekovs were muscling in with some really nasty non-Russian motorcycle gangs in the U.S. There were at least half a dozen house fires from New York to D.C. in the last week that might not look connected to local investigators but were all properties that Dima had owned and used for everything from prostitution to drug warehouses.
Mikhael's bosses weren't pushing for him to return to work, but there was a lot of information to process and too few experts to do the job.
Hearing the studio door open, he looked up. Even with Vivian standing at her side, he almost didn't recognize Alina. When he did, his heart seized.
Was there ever a more beautiful woman?
Pocketing his phone, he stood. Alina flinched. He didn't think she was afraid of him, just feared his inspection and judgment. So he approached slowly, his hands locked behind his back to keep from immediately touching Alina once he reached her.
"I'm going to see how Bogdan and Reed are doing," Vivian said, already slipping across the room to leave the two of them alone.
Alina stood with her gaze cast at the ground. He slid a finger under her chin but didn't force her to look up.
"What are you afraid of, my Alina?"
Maybe he had it all wrong. Maybe what she didn't want to see was love and hope shining in his eyes.
Gently, he pinched her chin between his finger and thumb, the pinch repeating again and again in a rhythmic caress. Her shoulders relaxed but she tried to tilt her head, to interfere with what he was doing.
"You look beautiful," he rasped softly. "Always, but I don't think you can see that."
"Stop trying to make me feel better, Mikhael," she said. "It's cruel, even if you don't mean it to be."
"How?" He pushed closer, his body brushing lightly against hers with each breath he took. "All I want is for you and the boy to be happy and safe."
"Take him and he will be," she persisted, pulling back, her hand instinctively searching for the handle of the door behind her.
He wanted to explode in denial but Bogdan rushed in at the other side of the room with Vivian and Reed in tow. He carried someone's smartphone in one hand and a mini hover drone in the other.
"Look!" he shouted. "Look what Reed gave me!"
The boy ran over, proudly thrusting the craft higher so his parents could inspect it.
"I have to transfer control to another phone," he explained then looked directly up at Alina. "Can I use yours, mama?"
"Of course."
Her voice sounded distant and Mikhael noticed that she still winced when Bogdan called her "mama." In the days since the boy had made his breakthrough, Alina hadn't sought to embrace him, either. At least she didn't withhold herself entirely. She would allow him to sit on her lap or rest against her when he wanted.
There was no doubt the boy wanted to be close to his mama. Alina's lap had become his favorite place to rest, his head on her shoulder and one hand curled around her arm. She would let him stay as long as he liked, often with him falling asleep on her and Mikhael carrying the boy to bed. But he feared Bogdan might relapse if Alina didn’t begin to heal.
Still holding onto the drone and phone, Bogdan kept staring up at Alina. A bigger smile brightened his already happy face and he put his arms around Alina's waist.
"You look so beautiful, mama!"
She stiffened, her hands stopping the instant before they would have closed around the boy's arms. Her gaze, loaded with accusation, shot first to Mikhael and then to Vivian and Reed.
Gently, she disentangled from Bogdan's embrace and shooed him toward Reed. Dipping into her purse, she handed the boy her phone. "You should switch it over now, in case it's difficult to understand."
As Bogdan walked over to the table with Reed and Vivian, Alina started to shake.
"No one put him up to that," Mikhael assured her. "He said it because he sees what I see."
She didn't answer, couldn't stop shaking. Grabbing her by the elbow, Mikhael walked Alina over to another door, one that led into a smaller, private space.
"We are borrowing your office, Vivian," he explained, his words clipped at the end.
Shutting the door, he tapped at a control pad on the wall, dimming the lights. A few more taps and soft instrumental music began to play.
"What are you doing?" The question emerged fast, almost breathless with an undercurrent of panic.
"Calming you," he growled, dragging her toward the sofa pushed against one wall.
"No—you are not," she laughed hysterically.
Plopping down, he pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms tightly around her chest as he had done that first month with Bogdan.
"I am not the boy," she protested, fear continuing to lace through her responses. "You cannot wrap your arms and legs around me and wait until I fall asleep."
"Bogdan," Mikhael rumbled. "His name is Bogdan and you haven't used it once in the last week. It means 'God rendered.' The one thing your papa let you do was name your son and that is what you chose."
She began to twist, but she was easier to keep hold of than their son. The boy's wild fury had powered his muscles as he thrashed and turned.
"No one told him to say that," Mikhael repeated. "He looked up and he saw his beautiful mama. Just like I saw my beautiful Alina."
She shook her head, the gesture angry. "It all washes off, you know. Clothes fade and wrinkle..."
Mikhael rotated her in his arms, defeating her attempt to escape.
> "You are most beautiful bare," he said. "Raw...naked."
She dipped her head, refusing to look at him.
Hearing a sniffle, he relaxed his grip and tried to tilt her stubborn chin upward.
"Do not hide your tears from me, Alina. You have to have someone you can cry in front of. Let it be me again."
"Your friend's efforts will be ruined," she rasped and pressed her cheek against his jacket.
Mikhael stroked at her hair, let her cling silently to him. He hummed softly to the music, his deep breaths keeping time. Warmth spread through him as she relaxed in his arms.
His Alina was letting him hold her and, for the moment, that was enough.
24
Mikhael
"Your friend is...sneaky," Alina said as Mikhael and Bogdan finished loading a box of clothes into the trunk of the sedan.
Mikhael smiled sheepishly. "Vivian's been called worse."
"Do you like the presents I picked out for you, mama?"
The boy was hugging her again, his arms around her waist. This time, she didn't look like she wanted to extract herself.
"Yes," she answered softly, her hand stroking at his head, almost a week's worth of growth giving it a velvety nap. "You have excellent taste for how to dress a lady."
Tilting his head up, Bogdan beamed a smile at her.
"In the car with you," Mikhael said, his gaze on the clouds that had gathered while they were inside the facility. It looked like a strong storm rolling in from the east.
Gently manhandling the boy's head, he opened the rear door and steered him toward the back seat. "We'll get some food in your belly near Ashland."
Grabbing the car's frame so he couldn't be shuffled inside, Bogdan looked at Alina. "Can you ride in the back with me? I can show you the drone app on your phone."
Her jaw clenching with indecision, Alina finally nodded. "That would be nice."
Mikhael watched them climb into the back seat, Alina making sure the boy put his safety belt on before she let him start playing with the phone. Sliding behind the steering wheel, he caught her gaze on him in the rearview mirror.