by Vivian Wood
Misha flicks his gaze up to mine as he cuts his chicken. “I may have withheld certain information from you but I was always myself.”
“Not really. I don’t know anything about you.”
“You know the important things. What else would you like to know?”
I set my glass down, a little too hard, and pick up my knife and fork. “Let’s start with why you consort with someone like Damir Ravnikar. By your own account he’s a despicable person.”
Misha takes a sip of water. He’s not drinking the wine. “Damir is despicable. But he’s also many things I respect and admire. Powerful. Ambitious. Intelligent.”
“Rich.”
“Yes, he’s very wealthy. So am I.” He notices my look of disgust. “Something to say?”
“I find the pursuit of money to the exclusion of all other considerations contemptible.”
“Yes. It is.”
“Then why do you—”
He interrupts me without raising his voice. “It is an ugly story I haven’t thought about in a long, long time, and if I tell it you will still think the worst of me. Because of this.” He gestures around at the jet, which I take to mean my kidnapping. “So if it’s all the same to you, Ciara, I would rather not unbox my unhappy past for a hostile audience.”
He goes on eating in silence, and I feel a thrum of annoyance. This isn’t supposed to be the way it goes. He wants me to forgive him and understand him, and yet he isn’t falling over himself to answer my questions. I should be allowed to be as sarcastic and hostile as I want to be.
“How about a truce while we’re in the air? I won’t tell you you’re a bastard and you won’t get all Ravnikar on me.”
He knows what I mean by “all Ravnikar”. Pushy. Overbearing. Predatory. I want a few straight answers to a few questions, and then I’ll get right back to trying to escape.
Misha frowns at his plate. Finally, he says, “Fine. A truce. What do you want to know?”
Chapter Nineteen
Misha
“You and Damir. What’s your deal?”
I keep my face carefully blank as I cut into the chicken fillet, but my heart feels tight in my chest. What’s our deal. Why is he the way he is, and why am I the way I am. Ciara knows how to ask the hard questions. I’ve never told anyone about my family because the memories are a snarl of shame and anger and regret, and I’m painfully aware that the things I’ve done in my life are nothing of which to be proud. The only good thing has been to fall in love with Ciara, and what a fucking mess I’ve made of that. Sometimes I wonder if the Ravnikar men are cursed.
To give myself a moment to collect my thoughts, I reach for the bottle of white wine and pour myself a glass. I’m going to need it. But where to begin?
Ah. I know.
Putting down the wine bottle, I unbutton my shirt to my waist and pull it open, showing her the scar over my heart. “You never asked how I got this. Usually I tell people it was in a fencing accident, but as you know, my hobby was racing cars. What actually happened was that when I was twenty-four, my father tried to kill me.”
Ciara’s eyes go round with shock. She stares at the thick white bolt of scar tissue on my chest, and then up at me.
“You remember how hard it is to break with an overbearing parent,” I say as I rebutton my shirt. “Some of them can take your rejection very much to heart. No pun intended.”
My companion has stopped eating and turned pale. “Yes, but my parents never tried to kill me for switching from art history to law.”
“That is the difference between your family and mine. Your father was a greedy fool, whereas mine was a psychopath.”
“He really…?” She trails off and nods at my chest.
“I told him that I wanted nothing more to do with him, as a parent or in business. So he picked up a kitchen knife and tried to stab me through the heart.”
She swallows thickly. “And so you killed him.”
I shake my head. “No. Damir killed him. He came after me when he realized where I’d gone. He wasn’t as naïve as me. He knew my father would take my rejection of him as the ultimate betrayal. Damir saved my life.” Neither of us have ever told anyone what we did, or even spoken about it later. It feels good to admit the truth to someone at last. “We got rid of the body together. It bonds you, disposing of your father’s corpse with your brother.”
The development I’d been working on with my father at the time had an incinerator on-site. Damir and I took his body there and then doctored ourselves out of the CCTV footage. My father had made many enemies among London’s criminal classes and the police had investigated him, unsuccessfully, for money laundering the year before. When he disappeared they made a half-hearted attempt to find out what had happened to him, but the case never got much further than a missing persons report. With no body or evidence of foul play, the case went cold.
I take a sip of wine. “I’ve sometimes wondered why my father used a knife to try and kill me. He liked to read Shakespeare after we came to Britain and I think Brutus’ murder of Caesar in the Senate made quite an impression on him. Daggers and betrayal just go so well together.”
She watches me in silence for a moment. “You’re very cool about this.”
“I’m not. As I said, my past is ugly and I don’t like to revisit it, but I will for you, so you know why I’ve had to act so drastically to protect you.”
Ciara rubs a hand over her forehead, as if she has a headache. “But I don’t understand. Why did your father try to kill you? How did you betray him? And what has this got to do with you and me?”
My mind travels back, to a time and place far away. Now that she knows how the story ends, I suppose she needs to know how it began. “When I was a boy in Slovenia, I knew there was something not right between my parents. My mother tried to hide it from me, but she was terrified of my father. I was her favorite child, and she tried to keep me away from him too, and told me to never trust what he did or said. ‘You’re a good boy, Misha. Never forget that.’ She would say that to me all the time, but I didn’t really understand why. My father wasn’t much interested in me. Damir was his favorite.” I frown, thinking through the years. “I don’t exactly know what went on between them. I never asked, and then Damir disappeared…”
Ciara’s watching me in silence, perplexed. I’m not making it easy for her, jumping around in time like this.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself. Damir didn’t disappear until much later. When I was nine, my mother became very sick, and she died. Cancer. Perfectly ordinary, but I know without a doubt that my father put that disease into her with his cruelty. She was never happy around him, always on edge, always fearful. Extreme stress and sadness can make your body rot. I can still see her frail body lying beneath the blankets. She died at home, with a nurse to attend her. The sickroom frightened me with its machines, and seeing this skeleton who used to be my beautiful mother.”
That was the dream I had while we were in Dubrovnik, my mother ignoring me in the hours before her death and lavishing love and attention on Damir instead.
Except that it didn’t happen that way.
“On her deathbed, my mother held my hand and told me I was good, that I was loved. She ignored Damir. I was nine. He was six. No one ever loved Damir. Not my mother, and not my father. I think sometimes not even me.”
“Why didn’t any of you love him? He was only a boy.”
I twist the stem of my wine glass. “He was a strange little boy. He could be cruel, and he never cried and rarely smiled. The only emotions he seemed to express were rage or vindictive delight. My father thought he was perfect.”
“I thought you said he didn’t love Damir.”
“It wasn’t love,” I say quickly. “My father didn’t love anyone but himself, and certainly not Damir. Damir was his protégé. He had that killer instinct that my father admired, and for a long time, Damir liked to be admired in that way. I had always been close to my mother. It was difficult for me t
o love my brother when I could see how much she feared him. Then when she died, I was too unhappy and lonely to love anyone.”
I pick up my fork and stab it through an asparagus spear, but then put it down and take another mouthful of wine.
“The next year we moved to London. My father raised Damir and me in his image. He told us we would achieve great things if we were like him. Only like him. His was the only way. I hated him and was afraid of him and revered him at the same time. I grew up, and my mother became a distant memory. Damir and my father seemed to understand each other in ways that I didn’t. Then, when I was twenty-one and Damir was eighteen, he disappeared. I was studying a Master’s degree in finance at the London School of Economics, and for three years we didn’t hear from him. My father was enraged and without Damir, I was his whole world. He told me what my duties were as a Ravnikar. To always win, no matter what. People are weak and stupid and if you don’t take advantage of them then someone else will. Winning is the only thing that matters. He’d been trying to remake me in his image for years and with Damir gone, all his energy went into it, and it was killing me, as he’d killed my mother. I didn’t know how to escape.”
Ciara fiddles with her cutlery, deep in thought. “It’s hard to get rid of someone when they’ve been part of your life for so long. You have cut out part of yourself to do it. Even when their love is full of poison, it doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Yes. That’s exactly it.” Ciara knows because she did the same thing. I want to reach out to her, to show her how grateful I am that she understands this small part of me. When she meets my eyes I feel a flicker of hope, but she doesn’t say anything so I go on.
“I told you I admire ambition. Everyone has ambition. I do. You do. Your parents, my parents. What sets people apart are the lengths that they’re willing to go to and the rules they will break to get what they want. That’s what makes some people dangerous. They don’t believe that they’re bound by the law or the rules that govern society. They backstab. Lie. Manipulate. Then there are the illegal things. Embezzlement. Money laundering. Murder. Anathema to you and all decent people, but not to those who want to win, and only to win. Damir is one of those people. My father was one of those people. I’ve come dangerously close to being one of those people. I can be one of those people, if the need arises.”
I’m being one of those people right now, and I can tell from the trepidation in her eyes that she understands that.
“When Damir came back, he wouldn’t tell me where he’d been or what he’d done, but he’d changed. He told me that we didn’t need our father and that we could do things our way. It was exactly what I wanted to hear. Foolishly, I went to my father to tell him that I was done with him. Damir realized where I’d gone and what was going to happen, and he came after me and killed our father with the knife he’d tried to kill me with. I’m not sorry he’s dead, ljubica. I was finally free.”
“Except that you weren’t,” she says. “You became Damir’s pawn instead.”
Ciara hasn’t corrected me for calling her sweetheart, I’ve noticed. “We were partners, at first. He offered me everything I wanted. He can do that, and it’s…intoxicating, being on the receiving end of his charm. Damir and I knew how to do one thing, and that was make money, but I’d never been allowed to do it my way. It had to be my father’s way. Damir told me we’d do it our way, and our father could go fuck himself. That’s what we did, and I never looked back. Not until I met you.”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “Really? I’m some magical princess who unwittingly saved you from yourself?”
I can feel the Ravnikar side of my nature unfurling every time I look at Ciara. I want to make her mine, but I know it will never work that way. She has to step into my arms willingly, love me willingly, otherwise we’ll end up killing each other.
“In a way. I wanted to believe there was good in Damir, but it turns out my mother was right about him all along. I felt powerless for most of my childhood. Later, when Damir and I started working together, moving great sums of money around, seeing the figures go up, that made me feel powerful. But I’m forty-two now. That’s not going to cut it anymore. I want something real.”
I reach for the bottle of wine and top up both our glasses. “So that’s my poor-little-rich-boy tale, Miss Alders. Now you know everything. No, one more thing.” I take a large swallow of wine and put my glass down. “Since we left London I have completely and utterly ruined my brother. The police should be on their way to arrest him, if they haven’t already.”
Trying not to show it, I hold my breath, fully aware that I’ve played my final card. If I was ever going to convince her that I’m worthy of her love despite all the things I’ve done, this is that moment.
Ciara stares at me, not comprehending what I’ve just said. “I’m sorry, what? Arrest him? Damir?”
“Yes. For money laundering and insider trading. He’ll be looking at decades, especially if they can link him to a few unsolved murders he’s responsible for.”
“Why would you do this to your own brother, after all this time?”
I reach out and take a gentle hold of her sprained wrist. “Why do you think?”
For Ciara. I did it for her. He’ll never stop coming after her and I need to know she’s free.
Free to be mine.
“My brother is an unstoppable force and will win at anything if he puts his mind to it. This was the only way I could think to give us a fighting chance.”
She looks down at my hand around her wrist, but she doesn’t pull away. “You sound like you still admire him.”
“I do. There’ll never be anyone else like Damir. And thank fuck for that.”
I get up and retrieve my laptop, switch it on, and place it before her. “Go through it all. The things that I did at Ravnikar Enterprises. The evidence that I handed over to the police not long after we left London. This is the last piece of the puzzle. I want you to know everything there is to know about me so you can make your decision.”
“About what?”
“About whether I’m a despicable, manipulative devil who can never be trusted, or if you’re going to let me save you.”
She looks up at me, calm and clear-eyed. “Maybe it’s both. Maybe you’re a despicable manipulative devil, but I’ve got no choice but to let you save me.”
I might be the dragon, she means, but there could be bigger, nastier dragon up on the mountain waiting to eat her up. I trace my forefinger over her cheek. “You could be right, ljubica. I can’t tell. But I’m looking forward to finding out.”
Chapter Twenty
Ciara
I don’t know what to do with everything Misha’s just told me, so I put it aside for the moment in favor of reading the files on his laptop. This is something tangible I can process, and I go through the emails, bank records and spreadsheets methodically, like it’s evidence in a case. Some of the names and corporations he mentioned seem familiar and I use the satellite internet to look them up. To my surprise, I find a number of news pieces about them.
A missing CEO from three months ago, last seen while out jogging. Police have a new lead as of three hours ago.
A chain of restaurants that went into administration two weeks ago. The financial director was arrested for embezzlement earlier today.
A five-star hotel is now under investigation for money laundering.
I turn the laptop around and show Misha the news stories. He’s sitting across from me, drinking coffee and reading his phone. He holds it up so I can see he’s reading the news, too. “I just saw the same things. Results are wonderful things, aren’t they?”
I go back to the files, wanting to be sure that what Misha is claiming is true, that his dossier of information is the reason for the news stories and it’s not just a weird coincidence. It takes some time to get my head around what I’m seeing but I take my time, cross-referencing names, dates and amounts of money with emails on the Ravnikar Enterprises server. They’re Damir�
��s deals and contacts, not Misha’s. Maybe if there were emails incriminating him he’s deleted them, but then he’d have to delete whole chains and there’d be holes in the dialogue. I check the electronic calendar and I can see invites for meetings and Misha’s not in any of them.
“Why did you never worry that I would bump into you at Ravnikar Enterprises? I went there several times to drop money off.”
“Because I don’t work in that building. I haven’t for many years. I like to keep my distance.”
Misha still turned a blind eye to what was going on. Even if the illegal activities were all connected to Damir, he was an accomplice, just as he was an accomplice to his father’s murder. I watch him covertly over the top of the laptop, remembering the scar on his chest. How many pints of blood does it take to earn someone’s loyalty? How many years does it take to stretch that loyalty to breaking point?
Misha suddenly sits up, still looking at his phone. “Fuck.”
“What?” I ask quickly.
“I don’t want to rush you, but things just became a little more urgent.” He shows me his phone and I read a news alert.
With shaking fingers, determined to cross-check everything for myself, I type a few keywords into the laptop browser to verify what I’m reading. Six news outlets are reporting the same thing. The first headline reads, london billionaire wanted for questioning over murder, money laundering; interpol alert issued.
I read the article. It seems police raided Damir Ravnikar’s home and office at Ravnikar Enterprises and took hard drives, laptops and cell phones, but Damir had already fled. He knows the police are after him, and he’s gone on the run. He could be anywhere. He could be waiting for us in Sharjah, to put a bullet in us for our betrayal. If he didn’t hesitate to kill his father then he certainly won’t hesitate to kill us.
I make myself take a deep breath and read the rest of the article. “They don’t mention that you’ve disappeared, too.”