“And after that?”
“We will be on a plane for the Ukraine right away, to get the ball rolling.”
Alex nodded. “Okay,” he said. He ordered his men to safe house Ninochka until she signed every conceivable document, and then personally put her on a plane back to Russia. He left out of the room before Ninochka could even say goodbye. He didn’t want to have anything more to do with her. But he was a bastard. She knew it better than most.
After everybody had left his home, Alex found himself alone among the wreckage. Wreckage, in every way he knew, that was caused completely and singularly by him.
But he didn’t remain in his despair. He phoned Tino Castellano to find out the progress on an assignment he had given to him.
“Any news?” he asked him.
“Not so far, sir. Neither one of them have been seen around Atlantic City ever since you eyeballed Narnia. We’re searching over in Trenton now. We know Felix Petropoulous likes to hang out around a poolhall in Trenton. We don’t have any read on Misho yet.”
“Keep me apprised of all developments,” Alex said. “I want to know everything they know about Narnia and the day of that plane crash. They told me they had put her on that plane. They told me a lie.”
“We’ll find them, sir,” said Tino.
Alex, at least satisfied that the right man was on the job, ended the call.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The next morning, Kari felt it was absolutely necessary that she and Jordan got back to business as usual. Lucinda left last night, and Faye and Benny had already gone to their respective offices. Oz had stayed around, and he was waiting for her and Jordan outside at the Rolls. But Kari was feeling some kind of way about that too. She was going to tell him that it was okay, and he could go on with his life now. She was going to tell him, now that she was no longer Alex’s fiancée, that she didn’t need protection anymore.
But she wasn’t ready to give it all up that easily. She saw the pain in Alex’s eyes last night. She saw the guilt and the anguish. He was hurting too.
But she also saw the pain in Jordan’s sad eyes, and his anguish. What she feared most, that Alex would do something to uproot his happiness, had come to pass. And last night, instead of comforting her son, he was defending and comforting her! On no given day was that alright with Kari. She was not going to allow her child to bear her burdens. Roles had been reversed by necessity last night. She had to get their affairs back in order.
But when they stepped out of Faye and Benny’s house, so that she could get to work and Jordan could get to school, she realized just how far from normal they had traveled in one night.
Oz was out there, but he wasn’t standing by the Rolls. He was standing beside Alex’s jet-black Mercedes-Maybach, and Alex was standing there too! Both brothers, both in fine tailored suits, were both looking refreshed and ready to go, as they leaned against his car.
But Kari wasn’t ready yet. Not by a long shot. And Jordan wasn’t either. She could feel the hesitation in him too. But when both brothers stood erect, and Alex opened the front passenger door of his car for her, she was torn. Yesterday was a horrible day. Alex had revealed something to her that should have been revealed to her before they had ever gotten engaged. He had been married, not once as she had thought, but twice. She knew he had a girlfriend who died in a plane crash. She’d read about that. But nobody knew he was married to her. Nor that she was pregnant since her body was never recovered. Or that, now that she was alive, that divorce he thought he had been granted, was null and void.
When Alex opened that door, she could have refused to get in his car. She could have asked Oz to drive her to her home, got in her own Toyota, and she and Jordan could have gone on with their lives. Without Alex or Oz or anything to do with any Drakos forever.
But the problem with going back was the going back part. She loved Alex. She liked it better with him than without him. Last night, after he left, a part of her wondered if she was overreacting. It wasn’t as if he had cheated on her. He just kept something very major in his life from her. But she felt there was more. She felt there was something more he was keeping from her. But what was it? And why was he keeping it from her still? She had so many questions!
And that was why, when Alex opened his car door and she made her way up to that car, she got in. She had too many questions that anger and bitterness were not going to answer. Only Alex could do that.
Jordan looked at his mother. He always, his entire life, took his cues from her. He followed her lead, and he got in the backseat.
Alex felt a sense of relief he had not felt since yesterday morning, but he knew he had to come clean and get this right this time. No bullshit answers. No far-fetched explanations. No excuses.
They drove in silence most of the way to Jordan’s school. Alex’s stereo was already on, and that Relationships CD by BeBe and CeCe Winans was still in the queue. And when that song came on again, These What Abouts, Kari felt it to her core:
“Now let me start by saying sorry,
thought it might be positively too late.
Knowing this one word can't change things,
but yet it can express the way my heart aches.
My heart aches!
What about the plans we made?
What about the dreams of cascades?
What about the vows we pledged?
Are they still alive or dead?
And what about the promise to stay?
Can I still believe it's OK?
Can we somehow talk about
These
what abouts?”
Alex glanced at Kari as the song played, but Kari continued to look out of the passenger side window. He might have wanted to apologize again, or give more explanations, but she felt they’d said too much in front of Jordan as it was. She wasn’t ready to hear it yet.
When they arrived at the school, and Jordan got out of the car, he didn’t put his bookbag straps across his small shoulders and just leave the way he usually did. But he, instead, went to the passenger side door, opened it, and gave his mother a big hug. Right in front of everybody! Although Kari was pleased that her son felt a need to show her affection, it was sad too. He should not have felt that need. Because she knew why he was doing it. And Alex, who was devastated by it, knew too.
“I love you, Ma,” Jordan said.
“I love you, too, son. And have a great day. I’ll be just fine. Don’t you worry about me, I mean it. I’m a tough old broad.”
Jordan didn’t smile the way he usually did. Because he wasn’t nearly as convinced as his mother was. He looked at Alex. He had so many questions, and all of them centered around that woman, his wife, and where she was at that very moment. Did they spend the night together? Did they have sex when they first reunited in Russia? Was he trying to string Kari along too? Jordan had so many questions! But he knew his mother had to get hers answered first.
He left. All of his friends were looking at him. They saw the news. They knew what had happened too. They were probably shocked to see Alex bringing him to school, something Jordan used to take pride in. Now it was embarrassing.
But he ignored all the stares, and he headed to his class.
When they arrived at Kari’s office, it seemed back to normal. They both knew why. There had been a murder-suicide overnight in Apple Valley, involving some well-connected family, and the local news media forgot about Alex and Kari’s drama and began hounding that story. No reporter, to Kari’s delight, was waiting at her office.
But she knew she couldn’t just get out and leave things as they were. Alex knew it too.
“She went back to Russia, or to some village in the Ukraine where she claims to have been living,” Alex said. “I don’t know which, but she’s gone. Before she left, she and I signed all of the papers that are necessary for the divorce to proceed. My lawyers, with those papers in hand, are on their way to Ukraine, to the Ukrainian courts, to file all the documents. The process is underway.”
Kari looked him dead in the eyes. “Do you want to be with her?” she asked.
Alex frowned. “No! Of course not, Karena.” Then he looked her dead in her eyes. “I’m with you,” he said. “I never loved that woman. I was just trying to do the right thing. She got pregnant because of my carelessness, just like Linda did when I married her. It was my fault. I was trying to correct that error.”
“By marrying a woman you didn’t love?”
Alex nodded. “It would have been a marriage in name only. Ninochka understood that.”
“Will our marriage be a marriage in name only too, Alex?” Kari asked. “Will you marry me, to keep me, and have your other women like before?”
Alex didn’t look at her at first. Because he deserved her suspicion and he wasn’t going to blame her for how she felt. But he was pissed.
After inwardly calming himself, he looked at her. “I would never marry you for any reason other than the fact that I love you. That you are the love of my life, Kari. Ninochka never was. No woman ever was. It’s only been you. It will only be you.”
But Kari still felt as if something was wrong. Something he wasn’t telling her still! But she wasn’t going to force his honesty. Their marriage would never work if she had to force him to tell her the truth. She grabbed her briefcase and her purse and was about to get out.
But Alex placed his hand on her arm and stopped her. When she turned to him, he admitted it. “It was guilt,” he said.
Kari stared at him. “Guilt? About what?”
“That plane crash. It wasn’t an accident. It was a retribution hit.”
Kari didn’t understand. She closed the door back and turned to him. “A what?”
“A revenge hit,” Alex said. “A member of the Russian mob was being transported on that small, one-engine plane. He had killed two of my father’s lieutenants around that time, and my father wanted revenge. I ordered the engine-rigging that caused that plane to crash.”
Kari couldn’t believe it. “You ordered it? But your wife was on board, Alex!”
“I didn’t know she was going to be taking that plane. I didn’t know that! I left the Ukraine to handle business in Brussels the day after we were married, so I had to use my plane. She flew into New York a few days later and we met back up there. She stayed with me for a few days, and then was going back to the Ukraine, which was the plan all along. She flew commercial because I had another business trip coming up that next morning.”
Kari continued to stare at him. She didn’t say a word.
“When she arrived at the airstrip, she knew the mobster on that private plane, some friend of her father’s, so she rode with him. At least that was what my guys on the ground had told me. When I found out, not that the plane crashed because I was expecting that, but that she had changed the plans and was on that plane, I was stunned. I had killed my brand-new wife. And my unborn child.”
Kari’s heart dropped.
He looked forward. He was too ashamed to look at her. “I couldn’t believe it. I carried that guilt for a very long time, Karena. My son’s suicide, you see, wasn’t the first child that died because of me.”
There was a long pause.
“Then years later, when I saw Ninochka in that hotel in Moscow, I could hardly believe it. What in the world was going on? And then when we had that shootout in that club in Moscow, and that cyberattack on my German facilities, and that oil heist on one of my rigs, I knew then she was somehow connected, and my seeing her wasn’t going to be good for us. I had to put an end to whatever she was up to, and I felt I had to do it right away.”
“But why did you let her go back to the Ukraine if you suspected that she was involved in what happened to us?”
“The oilman swore that she wasn’t the woman he met with, the one who received payment for that heist. She denied any involvement in that shooting and those cyberattacks. There’s no evidence to indicate she was involved. I couldn’t just keep her here. Besides, that guilt hasn’t gone way.”
He let out a harsh exhale. “That’s the life I live, Karena. Sometimes I have to do very nasty things to people. I almost did a very nasty thing to somebody who didn’t deserve it. For many years, I thought that was what had happened. And that’s why I didn’t tell you. That is a shame on my life. It’s a blot on my name that nobody outside of those who committed the deed would have ever known about. I doubt if Ninochka ever found out about it herself. But I know about it.”
Kari sat there. Her heart felt as if it was going to beat out of her chest. Why was she so nervous? Why was she so unsettled?
“But,” Alex added, “just to be on the safe side, I have my men searching for the two men I hired to put her on that plane. I want to make sure there’s no conspiracy at work. I want to know all they know about this sudden reappearance of Ninochka.”
Kari looked at him. “Then that must mean you suspect something’s up?”
“I don’t know if it is or not, but I don’t like it. They were supposed to see her off. They claimed they had. They claimed they saw her get on that private plane. We both know that can’t possibly be true.”
“So, they lied for her?”
“They lied for somebody. They had to. As soon as I found out Ninochka was alive, I got my men searching for both of them. I need answers.”
“I sure hope they have some, because I’m with you. Something’s up.”
But then there was a pause. And it wasn’t based on nothing. Kari looked at Alex. “What is it?” she asked.
Alex was apprehensive. “There’s one other thing,” he said, “that you need to know about.”
Kari steeled herself. Was this that proverbial other shoe? “What?” she asked.
“For the divorce to become final, it could take months. And that’s only if we’re able to bribe the shit out of everybody involved. If not, it could take several years.”
Kari’s entire countenance changed. “Years?” she asked.
Alex nodded. He hated with all of his heart to have to tell her that. “Yes,” he said. “I can’t sugar coat it. I can’t say what will happen. But it could take years.”
Kari felt her emotions rising again, and she wasn’t about to let this man see her cry. She opened that car door again, getting out.
“Kari!” Alex called after her. “Kari?”
Alex’s heart dropped through his shoe. Because he knew she was doing the right thing. Why wouldn’t she leave him, he wondered? He kept her in danger, in pain, and in tears more times than any woman should have to stand. He looked as she hurried to her office door. Her life was simple before he came and wrecked it. She had a right to run!
But as soon as she got to the door, and was about pull it open, she stopped in her tracks. Alex stared at her. She stopped? Why did she stop?
Then, before he could even entertain the idea, Kari turned around, dropped her briefcase and her purse at the door, and ran back to his car. He leaned over and opened the passenger side car door for her, and she jumped in and into his arms.
Alex grabbed her so hard that he pulled her all the way onto his lap. And held her tightly, with his eyes closed least they shed tears too.
Then he looked at her. “Why did you come back?” he asked her.
“Because you’re a good man. Because you make me better, not worse. Because Jordan needs you. Because I need you. Because love can’t be conditional, or I’ll never get it again.”
Alex’s heart soared, and he kissed her with a long, searing kiss. “I am so sorry I hurt you, Karena,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. I just didn’t want you to see just what kind of person I sometimes have to be.”
“I know who you are, Alexio. You’re rough and tough and sweet and kind and vicious and everything else.”
He smiled.
“But you’re good to me and my child. I love who you are,” she said.
“We’ll continue to plan our wedding, you hear me?” Alex said. “And we will marry as soon as that divorce is finalized. Come
hell or high water.”
Kari smiled. “Let’s hope neither,” she said, and Alex laughed. It wasn’t that funny, or funny at all, but they needed the laugh.
Then their smiles were gone. And Kari and Alex stared at one another. And then they hugged, tightly, for a very long time.
And in their heads, that Carter/Giscombe, BeBe and CeCe song again:
“My heart
belongs to you.
You’re the happiness I know I can depend on.
Been there for me
when things go wrong.
There’s a river full of love I can rely on.
You and I have faced troubled times before.
Because of you I live needing nothing more.
Where you are my heart isn’t very far
So promise me now
We’ll always be for-ever!
Every day I wake and every night I dream of.
One thing in life I’m sure of.
You are the love of my life!
Never should there be one moment lived without you.
Nothing I’d change about you.
You are the love of my life!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Ninochka was still on the plane heading home when the call came in.
“Where are you?”
“On my way back home.”
“Did he suspect anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Good.”
“He really loves her. I have never seen Alex this way.”
“That’s why we are on the right course.”
“What is next?”
“Meet me in Florida.”
“Florida? But I just left Florida!”
“He put you on a commercial flight, yes?”
“His men put me on it, yes,” said Ninochka.
“That bastard.”
“He always made me fly commercial. Always. That was Alex.”
“Where is your first layover?”
“Miami.”
Alex Drakos_His Dangerous Affair Page 16