“We got it at that flea market in Omsk. And the spring inside? I always said to throw it away because the spring made it uncomfortable to sit on, and guests would complain, but you loved this thing. You said, ‘It’s one little piece of wire!’”
Dimples deepen on his cheeks as he smiles at the memory. The dimples do something strange to my belly.
“You said, ‘One little piece of wire won’t get the best of me.’” He looks so happy. Talking about the chair makes him live in that other time.
He kneels in front of the chair, running his hand over part of the cushion, then he looks up at me, face raw with hope. “You can still see the place where you ripped up the cushion so you could get under there. Come. Look.”
I stay where I am.
“You never gave up on anything. You hated quitters. Oh, you really hated quitters.” The smile fades. “Just come and look. You couldn’t get the exact right color of thread.”
I sit on the couch. “Enough.”
He shuts his eyes. It’s what he does when he tries to quell his emotions. I feel frightened to know this, as if I’m being pulled away from my heart’s desire.
“I get it—this is all going too fast for you. You had a trauma. You have amnesia. I’m going to help you, though. It’s okay if you don’t remember everything. Maybe it’s even better to not remember things all at once, but in your heart…”
“I’m not her.”
He comes to me then, sits right next to me. I feel the force of him, the power of him. I feel him on my skin, in my belly. “Do you truly not want to remember?”
“I told you what I want. I want to contact the convent. I want to know what you’re doing for my captive sisters, and if you aren’t planning on freeing them immediately, I want you to set me free so I can go back there myself. Maybe I’ll bring the police and we’ll free them.”
“Right, the police. How will you know which of them you can trust? Do you think a place like that can run without police protection? We have it under control. I was there planting surveillance and getting into their network. It’s being handled.”
I gaze at the fire, hating this helplessness.
“You say you don’t want to know your old life, but how do you know which is the better life if you don’t know anything about one of them?” He takes my hand. My fingers spark at his touch. “You don’t know.”
“I know what I have now is better than any other possible life.”
“The life that you had before, it was glorious.”
“Is that why my body’s covered with the marks of violence? My body is proof that the life I had wasn’t glorious.”
“The life, maybe not always, but you were glorious. You were a warrior. Fierce and so beautiful and brave. You were…” He trails off, searching for words, and there’s that beauty again. My blood races. He’s beautiful when he remembers her. “You shone,” he finally says. “Brighter than anything—”
“You don’t know true brightness.”
“Wrong. I did. I knew you. You were so impressive, brave…” He pauses, his sadness like a raw thing; even his voice comes out rough. “You were my whole heart.”
Something turns over inside me. It frightens me the way I feel him, the way I know him. But the life he speaks of put scars on my body and landed me over the side of the cliff with nobody searching for me.
He takes both my hands now and lowers his voice to a whisper. “I loved you so much, Tanechka.” He presses his forehead to the unruly ball that our hands make together.
My heart thunders.
“I loved you so much. I need you to remember.” He lifts his brown eyes once again to me. “You saw the tattoo. Could that lie?”
“It tells me only that I had a different life before.”
He studies my eyes as if to search for the woman he has lost, but he’s the one who’s lost. He’s lost and beautiful. I stare at our fingers together, mesmerized by his warmth, by the rough familiarity of his skin.
“I never thought I’d touch you again, never imagined…” He kisses my fingers, quick, fervent kisses that swell something inside me, as if his kisses are nourishment. He glances up at me, then he turns his face back down and kisses my fingers again, and this time his kisses are slow, his lips warm and soft. A strange and pleasant feeling spreads all through me.
Lust.
I yank my hands from his, heart pounding.
I was drugged, kidnapped, threatened, kept prisoner in an underground brothel. I was forced to eat meals with a sick and twisted man, but I was never truly frightened.
Until now.
“I am not her. Respect that.”
His look is stern and dark. He stands. “I respect Tanechka. Tanechka would want me to fight for her. She’d do the same for me.”
“I am Tanechka.”
Chapter Eight
Viktor
Tanechka stops talking with me an hour after she arrives. I show her to our bedroom. I tell her that there are clothes in the drawers and the closet. She informs me again that she won’t change, and she closes the door and locks it.
Fine. The bedroom is a nice room. She’ll be surrounded by familiar things. It’ll be okay.
Aleksio and Mira come by before dinnertime.
“Anything on Kiro?” I need some good news. I need to know he’s not locked away in a prison where we can’t get to him.
Aleksio shakes his head. “Nada.”
I suck in a breath. “Okay, then.”
Mira’s impressed with the home I’ve made. “I didn’t know you had all of this in you,” she says, fingering the rich red tablecloth, embroidered with folk art designs.
“It’s Tanechka. This is like the home she made for us in Moscow.”
“She still doesn’t…” Mira begins.
“No.” I shrug. “She doesn’t remember. Yet. They say to surround her with familiar things. Familiar people.”
“What if she still can’t remember?”
“She will.”
Aleksio studies my face. “What if she does remember?”
“It’s all I want.”
He looks away. “The good news is that your frame worked. Out at Valhalla. They don’t suspect you were anyone.”
We focus on Valhalla, going over what our tech guys have gleaned from their computer files so far. They’ve identified pipelines and intermediaries. Aleksio shows me a chart he has begun. Like something the police might make.
Yuri, Tito, and Nikki arrive along with the rich scent of stroganoff, followed soon after by Pityr, Mischa, and a few others. We set out the feast.
Yuri admires the rich red tablecloth, embroidered with black folk designs. “So Tanechka.”
Aleksio sets the ten-serving to-go pan onto the table. I tell him to use a serving dish, perhaps too fiercely. Tanechka always wanted to use proper dishes.
Aleksio regards me strangely, because it’s not something I would normally care about. “Okay, brother.”
“Tanechka would always try to make things nice,” I say to Mira. “She came up poor. She always said she would never be pushed down by poverty, something she got from her proud mother, I think. Even once we were rich in the Bratva, she would insist on such ceremony. One of her few concessions to polite society.”
“She would get so angry when one of us would throw a plate,” Yuri says. “Though she was the one to throw them half the time.”
“You Russians are so fucking dramatic,” Aleksio says. “Is she up there?”
“Yes. Locked herself in the bedroom.”
Yuri looks at me sadly. I set out the candles and light them.
“She’ll come. She’ll remember.” I serve our guests vodka, belt back one of my own.
“A nun,” Mischa says. “She never did anything halfway. Neither did you. Both of you, intensity junkies.”
“Remember her wildcat stare?” Yuri says.
I laugh.
“Blyad,” Mischa says. “That stare. That temper.”
Yuri turns to A
leksio and Mira. “She has a stare of hate that can cut a man. She would line her eyes in black makeup, and they would be like two lasers burning at you. When you were on her good side, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for you, but get on her bad side…”
“It starts with the stare. Ends in blood,” Mischa says. “Tanechka was never one to let a slight pass.”
“The girl could hold a grudge,” Yuri says. “And you always knew.”
I smile.
Mischa exchanges glances with Yuri.
“What?” I demand.
“Do you have a plan for when she remembers?” Yuri asks.
I shrug.
“She is not always so reasonable,” Yuri says. “She was a…how do you say…a ‘rip out your intestines, ask questions later’ sort of girl.”
“It’ll be fine,” I say.
“You don’t want her armed when she remembers,” Mischa says.
“You think I don’t know how to manage Tanechka?” I leave the table and go upstairs to get her.
Tanechka doesn’t stir when I knock at the door.
“Tanechka,” I say. “It is dinnertime.”
“Will you allow me to contact my sisters in Ukraine?”
I tell her no, but I will break the door open if she doesn’t unlock it.
She comes and flings it open. She still wears the severe black robe, buttoned up to the neck, and the black scarf tied around her chin.
Behind her I see that she has cleared off a bookshelf and placed the icon of Jesus on a cloth on one of the low shelves. I cringe to think of her praying to it. Kissing the feet of Jesus.
“Dinner,” I say.
She just stares at me with those deep blue eyes. Wary, but hungry, I think.
“With friends. Please.”
Reluctantly she comes down. Everybody stands when I lead her in. Tanechka is gorgeous in the candlelight, and the wisps of blond hair that sneak out from her scarf glow like white gold. She greets her old bratki politely but without recognition.
Tanechka. It feels dangerous to hope. Still I hope with every fiber of myself. I pour her a vodka.
“Thank you, no,” she says. “Water, please.”
Nikki rolls her eyes.
Water with dinner is not her way, but I pour her a water. My Tanechka does not like to be told what to do. She turns to questioning Nikki about contacting her family. She seems to know a lot about it. I gather Nikki’s a runaway.
“Yeah, I’m good as is,” Nikki says.
Back in Russia we loved to have wild dinner parties, but this Tanechka will not drink vodka, and she wears a nun’s robe and head scarf to dinner.
She’s here in body at least. And the place looks so much like our old place. We sit around the long table, and I serve. The men start to eat.
“Aren’t we going to give thanks?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “We don’t do that.”
I pass Mira’s plate, find her glaring at me. She thinks I should play along? Hell no.
Tanechka gives thanks on her own, silently, head bowed.
Her prayer grates on me. The article on amnesia I read said to surround her with familiarity, and prayer is not a familiar part of our old life.
We eat. I turn the conversation to Sky World, a run-down amusement park outside Moscow we used to go to as kids. Tanechka does not remember it.
Yuri has the party laughing with his descriptions of the wooden roller coaster, and then the swinging platform ride. The rides at Sky World, they were so dangerous. Our stories make for a jolly table. Even Tanechka smiles. Her smile fills me with so much happiness it nearly spills over into tears.
The rides are especially shocking to Aleksio, Mira, Nikki, and Tito—this is part of what makes it funny.
“You Americans,” Yuri snarls. “With your smooth plastic playgrounds like easy chairs.” We argue about this, but Tanechka doesn’t seem amused anymore, as if she tamped down her pleasure. She says almost nothing through the rest of the meal. The silent treatment, as Aleksio would call it. She wishes to go to the church, of course.
Mira asks her questions now and then about her life in the convent, and Tanechka answers politely. Always a short answer. Yes or no, if possible. She thinks we’re no better than the brothel, but I saw her laugh. The old Tanechka peeking through. I’ll have her back. I’ll make her come back.
The one time she speaks up, it’s to tell us to hurry up about the brothel—this she says at dinner, even though we have gone around on it very many times.
“You should have left me and taken them. I would’ve been fine.” She waves her hand, taking in the table. “All of this. I’m grateful, but I don’t need it like the other women. I would’ve endured what those women couldn’t. I was most fit of all of them to endure what was to come.”
I throw back a glass of vodka, welcoming the clean, hard burn. “We will rescue the women.”
Aleksio explains about the police being compromised. That it would be shut down only provisionally and likely moved if we don’t strike deep into the network. “Think of it as a ceiling,” he says to her. “Merely closing this brothel is like fixing a leak in the ceiling by painting over the stain.”
“You tell it to the virgin there awaiting the man who bought her. Frightened, alone, cut off from all she knows. What would she say about your ceiling?”
I bite back a smile. She is glorious. Yes, this is the nun speaking, this nun like an enemy in Tanechka’s body, murmuring her stupid prayers, fingering her ridiculous prayer rope, but more and more this nun feels familiar.
Aleksio explains the big picture to her more carefully, as if she didn’t understand the first time. Tanechka purses her lips. Tanechka is annoyed. I exchange amused glances with Yuri—we’re both seeing it.
“Yes, Aleksio, I understand. I care nothing of your ceiling. These women alone. They care nothing for your ceiling.”
Aleksio stiffens. “We’re maximizing our effect.”
“Maximizing your effect,” she spits.
Mischa bites his lip. Pityr beams. This nun, unwilling to accept our obstacles, our explanations. She doesn’t understand why it can’t be stopped now. She sees girls in trouble. Go, take them out. That’s her attitude. Have your cake and eat it too. Fuck everything. So Tanechka.
I set down my glass. “Would you have us shutting it down in a violent way, then? Would you like that instead?”
“A false choice,” she says. “There are more options than those two.”
“Maybe pray?” I challenge.
“You tell the police and trust in that. You find the good ones and tell them.”
“Police,” I sniff. A comment like that is beyond childish. Tanechka would never say it.
“The police are there for a reason,” she says.
“The police are for rent in this town,” I say. “Have you heard nothing of what Aleksio said? It’s not so different in Russia. You just don’t remember.”
She gives me a challenging look. She’ll have none of my shit. It warms my heart.
She turns to Mira at one point. She’s rightly identified her as a possible ally. “Surely there’s an Orthodox church here in Chicago.”
“You’re not going to a fucking church,” I say.
“They’d let me contact my sisters in the convent.”
“So will I,” I say. “As soon as you change out of that nun costume.”
“I told you I won’t.”
“Well then,” I say.
An awkward silence falls over the table. Yuri tries with more stories of Sky World, but the fun is lost.
Later in the kitchen Mira scolds me, tells me that this is a horrible choice I’ve left Tanechka with.
I shrug. “It’s done.”
“What if I call her convent?” she says. “You said she couldn’t, but I could.”
“If she cares about talking to her sisters there, she’ll change out of her nun clothes.”
“You’re pushing her. You’re making her dig in. And you’re acting lik
e a jackass. Why would she even want to remember anything if you’re the guy she’d end up with?”
I grab the box from Petrovsky’s and begin to arrange the orehi on a colorful plate.
“What are those?”
“Nuts, we call them. Orehi. Cookie dough with brown custard inside. A silly child’s treat, but Tanechka loved them.”
“She won’t give in on the clothes now.”
“I know.” I know it better than Mira.
“So stop trying to make her change by taking things away from her,” she says. “Why not give her things she loves instead?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” I press my fists to the cool marble counter. “What is this dinner? This whole place?”
“She didn’t choose this, you did. If you give a little, maybe she’ll give a little.”
“This is the lawyer talking?” Mira’s a lawyer, starting a new practice in Chicago these days. She loves the law. Not so convenient for Aleksio, but their love is strong.
“No, it’s your friend talking, telling you not to be an asshole. Think about letting me call her people at least. Tito says she gave him the number. I could call and let them know she’s okay.”
I say nothing.
“Maybe letting those sisters know she’s okay will help her relax. You want her to let go of that life, but don’t you see? Worry makes her cling. Yanking things away makes her hold tightly.”
“I know,” I grumble. “Okay, do it. I’ll send in Tito. And Mischa in case you need translation.”
“Good man.”
I storm out feeling angry and upset. “Dessert,” I say, setting down the plate in the waning candlelight. I tell Tito and Mischa that Mira wants them.
Yuri and Pityr are excited. We didn’t so much love orehi—far too sweet for us—but we would tease Tanechka about it. We start passing around the plate. Everybody takes one or two. I set three on the small side plate in front of Tanechka.
“Are these Petrovsky’s?” Pityr asks.
“Yes,” I say. All of us fight not to stare at Tanechka. She doesn’t recognize the orehi, though. This I can see.
Mira and Mischa come out a few minutes later. Mira announces she called Tanechka’s convent.
Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) Page 8