Aaron nodded somberly. “That’s what Mama told me. How old are you?”
“Old enough to hear the story now, I believe.”
Maria chose this moment to walk over to Aaron and guide him toward the door by the shoulders. “We will let your parents talk now, si?”
But Aaron didn’t go without one last question, thrown over his shoulder, “You won’t hurt her, right?”
“No, I will not hurt her.” Not physically, at least, he thought to himself.
As soon as they were gone, he set aside his plate and said, “The only reason I am talking to you here, as opposed to in a room full of lawyers, is because I have just decided I do not want Aaron to grow up without a mother as I did.” He leaned forward in the chair. “I will have my lawyers draw up papers, which will grant me full custody and provide you with an apartment below my own. If you sign the papers, you will be allowed occasional access to him at my discretion. If you do not, then I will make sure you never see him again. This deal is only on the table for fifteen minutes, so you will need to decide now.”
Her response to this was to set her own plate down and quietly say, “Okay, you know what, I’m through with you and your threats and your blackmail. Just go on ahead and kill me already.”
“What?”
“Take out your gun or send over your hit-man or give me some poisoned tea or whatever ya’ll do in your family when you want to get rid of somebody. It’s obvious you only care about winning by stomping all over me so you can prove nobody can beat you. So I’m inviting you to either take your kill shot or stuff your custody agreement. I’m not going to play your business games anymore, and if you want to take my son away, you’re going to have to do it over my dead body.”
“I am not trying to win or prove anything,” he said, his old Russian accent actually invading his speech, she was getting him so riled up again. And it was all he could do to keep his voice level, so the others wouldn’t hear him in the dining room. “You are one who lied. You are one who left with my baby inside of you because I am not rich enough, and you are one who did not tell me about him, even when I asked you directly who he is.”
“I didn’t tell you because I knew you would react exactly this way,” she whisper-yelled back at him. “I knew you wouldn’t consider what was best for our son, only what was best for your ego. You think he’s some pawn in this argument between you and me, but he’s a little boy and he needs his mother! The fact that you’re even talking about full custody tells me you still don’t get that he’s a human being, not some extension of Rustanov Enterprises.”
He hated her at that moment. Hated her for keeping Aaron from him and hated her even more for being right about his ego coming before his son. It was true, he wanted Aaron in his life, and he wanted the boy to be happy, but he couldn’t stand the thought of Eva not suffering for what she’d done.
“Why?” he asked, still keeping his voice low, but coming to his feet. “Why did you not tell me you were pregnant? I know I said I do not want children, but did you really think I would not have taken care of my responsibility? I would have dropped out of school and gotten a second job if that was what it took. I would have not turned away from you and my son. I thought you knew me better than that.”
She also stood, her movement stiff with anger. “I thought I knew you, too. But then I found out I didn’t know you at all.”
He shook his head, confused. “I do not understand your meaning.”
“My meaning is you keep asking me why I did this and why I didn’t do that, but you don’t want to hold yourself to the same standards.” She paused, as if shoring up the courage to say what she said next: “Why didn’t you tell me back then you were supposed to be the next head of a Russian crime family and that you killed a man and only came to America for college to lay low?”
He shook his head in confusion. “So you read my Wikipedia page and now you think you can hold that against me? It will not hold up in a court of law. No judge will grant you full custody because of allegations of what I am only rumored to have done.”
She shook her head right back at him. “No, Alexei, I did not find out about it on your Wikipedia page—though trust me, that was an interesting bit of reading in itself. I discovered all of this back in grad school before you became famous and that’s why I left you.”
Alexei’s eyes narrowed. He had purposefully kept the truth from her back then, but now she was claiming she had somehow found out. “No,” he said. “You are lying. You will do anything to get me to let you have Aaron to yourself. “
Her mouth fell open in offended shock. “Are you out your dingdang mind. As much as I love being a mother, doing it by myself has been hard. Really hard. Even with a kid as great as Aaron. You know, my parents didn’t just immediately take me back after what I pulled. I was on my own for two years. And if you had ever had to deal with back-to-back ear infections, explosive poop, and figuring out how to pay for full-time daycare, which you could barely afford on a social worker’s starting salary, you would never accuse me of trying to keep Aaron to myself. Believe me, there were a lot of nights I had to stay up until the early morning with him crying because he was sick, and I’d start crying, too, because I was so tired and I need someone to come in and relieve me. But I couldn’t have that, could I, because you were his father.”
Alexei pushed aside the guilt that sprang up when he thought of her crying while dealing with a sick baby all by herself. “You could have contacted me, even in Russia. You could have. Or better yet, you could have come to me as soon as your parents denied you. I would have forgiven you if I had known you were carrying my child.”
She looked at him, her face more angry and bitter than he had ever seen it. “No, I couldn’t have. You want to know how I found out about all your interesting pre-college experiences in Russia? Your uncle told me all about them when he came to your apartment and threatened to kill me and make it look like an accident if I didn’t break-up with you.”
Then she spat out, “When I found out you had decided to break the news about our time in South Padre behind my back, I wasn’t just running away from you, I was trying to run away from your uncle, too.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
EVA must have been more wrecked by her cross-Atlantic trip than she thought, because at that moment she actually felt sorry for Alexei. He reacted as if she had physically hit him again when she dropped the bomb about his uncle.
For what had to be at least a minute, he said nothing, as if his brain had locked him in place while it attempted to process what she was telling him.
But then he took a step toward her and said, “You are saying my uncle came to our apartment and threatened to kill you if you did not leave me?”
“Yes,” she answered, realizing how unbelievable that must sound to him. “He said you were supposed to be the head of the family, not him, but you wanted to stay in America with me and he wanted you to come back. He also said a bunch of stuff about him not wanting you to marry a black girl, or even an American, but I’m pretty sure it was mostly because I was black.”
“He did not know about you. I kept this from him.” Alexei said. “I only told him I did not want to come back to Russia.”
“Well, apparently he figured it out somehow, because he was real clear about the fact that he would kill me if I didn’t leave that night. He even sent somebody over to clean out my stuff and had it delivered to Layla’s apartment, even though I hadn’t told anybody I was staying there.”
“So that is where you were hiding from me when I was trying to find you,” he said dully. “With Layla.”
“Yeah, I knew I had to go to someone you didn’t know I knew, and she’s still the only person I’ve ever met who would take in a girl she’d met once in a CPR seminar.” She lowered her eyes, suddenly nervous about making a full confession about what she did and how she did it eight years later. “Funny story, that’s actually how Aaron got his name. Her middle name is Erin, so I named him after
her—“
“Eva,” he said, cutting off her ramble, his voice harsh with anger. “You are telling me you did not leave me that night because I was poor or because you were pregnant, but because my uncle threatened you. This is what you are telling me.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. I didn’t even find out I was pregnant until, like, a month later, and by then, I was way too scared of what your uncle might do to me to tell you.”
He blinked, his face becoming a cold mask, and when his eyes met hers, for the first time, she saw in them the other Alexei, the one she’d been told about. In that moment, he wasn’t the passionate, intelligent, caring, and sexy Russian she’d thought he was when they’d first started dating, but the cold-blooded killer his uncle had presented him as in their tiny little apartment.
“Stay here,” he said.
“What?”
“Stay here,” he repeated. He grabbed her by the wrist. “Look at me, if you try to run, I will hunt you down. So do not make me do that. You need to realize your original plan was a bad one, because there is nowhere on Earth you could hide from me.”
A chill ran down her back. It felt like she was talking to a stranger. No, that wasn’t it. The truth was it felt like she was talking to his uncle again. She shrank from him. “Let go.”
He did, but not before saying the two words again, this time so viciously they cut through the air like a knife. “Stay here.”
Then he strode out of the room and apparently out of the apartment, because Maria appeared just a few moments later and said, “Why does he not eat the pasta?” Then her eyes went to Eva’s still full plate. “And you do not eat either?”
She looked positively crushed by their seeming rejection of her food, but Eva was too confused to form a coherent answer. What had just happened? Over the past few weeks, Eva had spent an obscene amount of time running scenarios in which she told him the truth about what had happened the night she left him. She had imagined him yelling, she had imagined him accusing her of being a liar. She’d also imagined he’d hug her, apologize, and tell her everything was going to be okay in more hopeful moments.
But never in her wildest dreams had she imagined he would bark a command at her and then just walk out.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Maria, trying to pull herself together. “It was a long trip, and I’m just too tired to eat.”
“Oh, you poor thing. Let me show you to Aaron’s room. You will sleep there.”
She let Maria mother hen her toward the apartment’s third bedroom, which Aaron had been occupying all summer, but then she remembered, “Wait, I need to talk to Aaron, to explain to him…”
“No, no. You need to sleep. You can talk to Aaron when you get up.” Maria sat her on the side of the bed and pulled off her flip-flops.
As soon as she sat down on the bed, the jetlag and lack of food and rest kicked back in, all but erasing the adrenaline that had helped her get through her fight with Alexei. Maria’s twins were lucky to have such a nurturing and kind mother, Eva thought drowsily.
“Thank you,” Eva said, sleep pulling her down to the pillow, beckoning like a warm, insistent embrace she could no longer fight off. The waking world faded to black before Maria was even done tucking her in.
* * * *
The sun was setting when Eva woke up, painting the Italian sky outside her window a dark purple sinking into a bright orange horizon. If the sun was just now going down, she thought, then she’d gotten at least six hours of sleep—which was good, because she’d really needed it. She found a jersey dress, a new sports bra, a package of underwear, a towel, and a wash cloth on a wooden chair near the bed. She assumed these items had been left there for her by her ever-thoughtful sister-in-law. And she couldn’t help but feel a pin prick of jealousy for her brother, who had not only become a Foreign Service officer, but had also gotten the cream of the crop as far as life mates were concerned.
Still, by the time Eva emerged from the shower she felt completely restored. Done feeling sorry for herself and ready to fight Alexei’s uncle and Alexei himself if she had to. She refused to let his last threat deter her from keeping her son safe.
Pulling her hair back into a large puff as she strode down the hallway toward the living room, she began to make plans. First, she’d need to convince Steve to get her and Aaron fake IDs, then she’d run to some place big like California, where a single black mother with a light-skinned child wouldn’t stand out so much. Once there, she’d put together a new plan for what to do if they were found—
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of children giggling in the family room, accompanied by that of male laughter. And that was how she found Alexei, of all people, lying on the floor, pretending Aaron and Steve’s two-year-old twins had him completely pinned and he couldn’t get up.
But the game came to an abrupt end when Aaron saw her standing in the doorway. “Mama! Mama!”
The twins, who were already in their pajamas, abandoned their positions, sitting on Alexei’s chest, and jumped up and down. “Auntie Eba! Auntie Eba!” they cheered, ridiculously cute in their matching pajamas and box braids.
Aaron came rushing over and threw his arms around her waist. “You’re up!”
She rubbed his back, a little nonplussed by the enthusiasm of his greeting.
Her confusion must have shown on her face, because Alexei sat up and said, “You’ve been asleep for over twenty-four hours.”
“What?” She searched for and found a wall clock. “It’s only 9:30.”
“9:30 the night after you arrived. Aaron was worried about you, but Maria and I told him to let you sleep.”
As if on cue, Maria appeared behind her. “You are awake. Good, good, you can finally eat.”
The way Maria proceeded to fuss over her for the next half-hour would make one think the worst thing in the world that could ever happen to a person was to not have anything to eat for a whole twenty-four hours. And Maria would not be satisfied until Eva had eaten several mouthfuls of linguine and a slice of the fresh Italian bread she’d made. Steve was working late at the consulate and everyone else had already eaten dinner, so Maria fixed bowls of gelato for Aaron and Alexei who stayed on at the table, after she left to put the twins down.
Eva hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she took the first bite. After that, getting the pasta into her stomach became her main focus to the point that she wasn’t able to talk with her son and Alexei because her mouth stayed full. But as it turned out, she didn’t have to say a word. They kept up a steady stream of conversation topics that included Aaron’s soccer team, Aaron’s dead bug collection, and Aaron’s trips to both Disneyland Paris and Disneyland California.
Aaron couldn’t believe Alexei had never been to Disneyland and Alexei gravely promised to remedy the situation as soon as possible. “But maybe I will need someone to show me around. I hear Disneyland is very large.”
“Mama and me can show you,” Aaron told him, just as grave. “Maybe we could even go to Disneyworld in Florida next time. But we’re going to have to wait awhile for me to get enough money in my vacation fund.”
Now Eva paused in her eating, waiting to see what Alexei would say. He could easily afford to whisk Aaron away to Disneyworld if he wanted to, whereas she’d have to focus doubly hard on replenishing their vacation fund after her unexpected trip to Italy and using a pay-as-you-go phone to make international calls for two weeks straight.
Alexei raised an eyebrow. “You have a vacation fund? Maybe you are very good with money, da?”
“Mama makes me put ten percent of my allowance in savings, ten percent in a college fund, and ten percent in a vacation fund, so I have money to spend when we go on vacation.”
“That is very smart. How long do you think it will take you to save for Disneyworld?”
Aaron calculated in his head. “At least until Christmas.”
Again she held her breath, waiting for him to supersede the rules she’d already set forth wi
th Aaron, but Alexei just nodded. “Then we will go at your Christmas break.”
“Do you think you can save up enough money by then, Mama?”
She had just finished her last bite of linguine. “We’ll see. It might just be you and…your dad. Or we might have to…” She stopped again, realizing she still had no idea what the future held in store for them, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to make Aaron any promises she wouldn’t be able to keep later. “We’ll see,” she said again, and left it at that.
Alexei’s face grew serious and he turned to Aaron. “It is time for your mother and me to talk. You will go now.”
It took some effort for Eva not to laugh. That wasn’t exactly the way you talked to a seven-year-old. But Aaron didn’t seem to mind. “I’ll go help Maria with the twins.”
“Yes, good idea.”
But before he left, Aaron hugged Alexei, throwing his skinny arms around his father’s massive chest. Alexei dropped a kiss on top of his head and said, “You are a good boy.”
“You won’t leave without saying good-bye this time, right?”
Alexei looked Aaron in the eye, as somber as a priest. “I promise you, I will not.”
That negotiated, Aaron hugged Eva, too, before jogging out the room. Like many boys his age, he tended to run everywhere, as if he had energy to spare.
“So I see you two are getting along,” she said, when he was gone.
“He is easy to get along with,” Alexei answered. A small smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “He told me his allowance is based on him doing the laundry for the both of you.”
Now Eva smiled, too. “You gotta start them early. I had him sorting by two and up to full loads by five. My mama talks about me like a big dog for making him do it.”
It was meant to be a joke, but Alexei’s face grew serious again. “She should not say this thing. He is already very responsible, someone who would make any father proud. He is the best of both of us. It is obvious you have been doing a very good job with him. ”
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