“Molodetz.” Excellent. At least that part of the plan had worked. Mikhail ended the call and shoved his phone into his pocket.
So far, Vitaliy had been an asset. He wasn’t Georgian, but he looked the part with his dark skin and hair. Mikhail had dressed him up in a trench coat and instructed him to act menacing. His performance at the hospital the other night had been noteworthy enough for Artur to call for backup. Mikhail could only imagine how his boss would react when he heard the same suspect had shown up this morning in pursuit of Inna.
If only Artur had arrived to find Mikhail there protecting her.
Turning the corner, Mikhail added a limp to his run. He needed to make this extra convincing now that he had a larger and more savvy audience. He sprinted the half block to the import-export storefront. When he reached the door, he was panting as if he had been in an Olympic heat.
“Inna! Inna, are you okay?” he demanded as he opened the door and pushed past Vlad to get to her. “He didn’t hurt you. Did he?”
“What happened to you?” Inna asked. She didn’t rush to him and fuss over him as he had hoped. What did he expect? She didn’t remember the intimacies she’d shared with him last night, and she had other protectors huddled around her.
She hung back, as usual. Yet, her voice held the proper note of concern as she studied his bruised face—the black and blue courtesy of Aleksei’s punches.
“I was waiting for you.” He could have caught his breath, but he preferred to milk the drama. He let himself gasp loudly between phrases and followed the script he had planned earlier. “And then some podonok in a trench coat—one of the Georgian crew— jumped me.” Mikhail dropped his head as if ashamed. “He got the upper hand. Landed a few punches.” He touched his hand gingerly to the darkened bruise on his jaw to draw their eyes to his embellished wound. Instead of covering them up, Mikhail had enhanced them slightly to make it look like he had been attacked.
“That’s a pretty dark bruise,” Vlad said. His voice was flat, and Mikhail couldn’t read whether he’d impressed him or not. His resentment for Vlad flared.
Mikhail used to think he was rising quickly in Artur’s ranks, that Artur and Victor had special plans for him. He had imagined partnership with them was in his future, that he was already a trusted member of their operation, a key member of the inner circle, part of the family.
Then Vlad had arrived.
Vlad had appeared out of nowhere and somehow conned Artur into bringing him into the heart of the operation. Without making Vlad prove himself first, Artur had bumped Mikhail from his position as Artur’s right hand—despite his years working with Artur and Victor.
Mikhail wouldn’t sit idly by waiting for Artur to remember him.
The one lesson life had taught him was to take what he wanted. Otherwise, the world would never give him what he truly deserved.
In asking him to play bodyguard, Artur had, perhaps unwittingly, given Mikhail the job most likely to secure his advancement. Even if Artur chose to promote Vlad and not Mikhail, Inna was heir to Koslovsky Imports. If Mikhail won Inna, he could have everything—whether or not Artur wanted him to have it.
“How bad is it?” Mikhail rubbed his sore jaw. Aleksei hadn’t pulled any punches last night. “I haven’t seen it yet,” he lied. “I got knocked out. When I came to, the guy was gone. And so was Inna.”
“You got lucky,” Vlad said. “That he only roughed you up.”
“And didn’t get Inna,” Artur added. Instead of approval and admiration, there was censure in his tone. He turned to his daughter. “Vlad’s going to be your bodyguard from now on.”
In a single moment, Artur destroyed Mikhail’s plan, giving everything to Vlad. “What? Why Vlad and not me?” Mikhail protested.
“You really have to ask?”
“But…”
“Not another word,” Artur threatened.
“Papa, he did his best.” Inna’s quiet defense made Mikhail imagine she was softening toward him. At least this part of his plan was working.
“His best wasn’t good enough. He failed,” Artur said.
“Hey! I held him off long enough for Inna to get the head start she needed. She got here safely.”
“Go clean yourself up. Then go home and get some rest,” Artur said.
Mikhail got the distinct feeling he was being dismissed. He didn’t like it one bit.
“Vlad’s your bodyguard now,” Artur told Inna. “You’re not to go anywhere without him.”
Mikhail could see she wanted to protest, that she didn’t like the idea of having Vlad as her bodyguard. Instead, she whispered a reluctant, “Spasibo, Papa.”
Thanking her father, she kissed him on his cheek and then ducked away. In her haste to put as much distance between herself and her new bodyguard as possible, she nearly knocked over the antique table behind her. The white-and-gold China tea set displayed atop the lace tablecloth shook and rattled. Inna steadied the table. She held herself unnaturally stiff and straight as if clutching to a dignity that threatened to flee.
She headed with brittle grace to the back office, while Vlad watched her with an almost pathetic longing. As if she felt his gaze, she cast a hunted glance in his direction and then cut her gaze away.
Mikhail almost snickered. Inna was afraid of Vlad. Bodyguard or not, the brute didn’t have a chance with her, no matter how badly he might like one. He wouldn’t be able to hold Artur’s approval, either, once Mikhail was done with him.
All wasn’t lost.
MAYA
MAYA HAD HARDLY been able to credit Mikhail’s call. Inna had actually gone to work today? She had expected her daughter to crawl back into her shell, perhaps to sulk and wallow in her misfortune, maybe to backslide into her problems with anxiety.
She had expected Inna to need her mother.
Instead, Inna had gone to work. She hadn’t called to talk. She hadn’t called for help.
Inna sat at the mahogany desk in her plush office at Koslovsky Imports. Maya lowered herself into the chair across the desk from her daughter. A Tiffany lamp cast a soft light onto the desktop, spilling a warm glow onto the fine Oriental rug.
Inna was bent over a thick catalogue, making a note on a yellow sticky with the name of a client. Her fingers were long and slim. She had graceful wrists, and Maya watched the fluid stroke of her pen.
Inna had her father’s elegance, and Maya’s heart brimmed with both love and pain while she watched her work.
“Do you need something?” Inna’s tone was the slightest bit harsh.
“Is that any way to talk to your mother?” Maya asked, affronted.
Inna and Artur had furnished the office together. Inna had wanted something modern and sleek to suit her own taste, but she had capitulated when Artur insisted her office reflect the image of the business they had started together. Together, just father and daughter. They hadn’t invited Maya or Aleksei to join them.
It had always been that way, father and daughter thick as thieves, never letting anyone else get close. And now that Maya had taken the step of visiting, Inna didn’t seem particularly pleased by this motherly show of concern.
Children! Maya could never predict how they would behave.
Artur spoiled Inna terribly. She had no reason to try her independence or strike out on her own, not when her father anticipated her every need, gave her whatever she might want before she could even think to ask.
“I’m only here to check on you. Because I care about you.”
Inna grumbled under her breath.
“Inna,” Maya chided.
“Don’t ‘Inna’ me,” she said without looking up. She pretended to be absorbed in her catalogue and flipped another page. “You think I deserve what happened to me. And now you’re waiting to see if I’ll go crazy again.”
“What a horrible thing to say!” Maya pulled the catalog out of her daughter’s hands to force Inna to look at her. “I’m your mother! Is it a crime to worry?”
“There’s no
reason to worry. I’m fine,” Inna said. “I’m going to be fine.” Her pronouncement had the quality of a mantra.
“Who are you trying to convince?”
Inna pressed her lips together. Holding back her angry words made her tremble, but the effort pleased Maya.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” Inna said finally.
Maya counted the exchange a victory, a small step closer. She had despised her own mother. Was it so much to want Inna to love her?
“You look terrible,” Maya said, studying her. She fretted over the dark smudges under Inna’s eyes. “Maybe you should make an appointment with your psychiatrist.”
Inna’s gaze slid away from Maya back to the catalogue. She smoothed the page, one of a gold-crusted Fabergé egg. Maya could feel the furrows in her forehead deepening. Her child aged her so.
“I don’t want to discuss this with you.” Inna crossed her arms over her chest. Her elbows created sharp points that pulled and thinned the fabric of her sweater. So thin, so fragile, and yet she still mustered the will to defy her mother.
Maya might have admired her daughter’s resilience if it didn’t present such an obstacle.
Inna refused to confide in Maya—no matter how much Maya had fretted and worried and tried to help. With Dr. Shiffman permanently removed as confidante, Maya should finally stand a chance. Yet, Inna insisted on shutting her out.
Inna’s gaze shifted to the door. Maya turned her head to see what had caught her eye. Artur stood in the doorway. Maya held her breath, waiting for her husband to scold her for questioning Inna.
“You should see your doctor,” Artur echoed.
Inside, Maya smiled, gratified. So seldom did he take her side. Maybe they were turning their latest corner.
“You’ve been under a lot of stress,” Maya said. “This isn’t the time to play games with your care.”
“You remember what it was like before,” Artur said.
Inna flinched, likely remembering the episodes that had required she visit a shrink in the first place.
“Please, Inna. Don’t make me worry,” Artur said. “You need to take care of yourself.”
“I am taking care of myself, Papa.”
“She hasn’t seen Dr. Kasporov in months,” Maya said.
“How do you know that? I didn’t tell you that,” Inna said.
“He asked after you when I saw him at the grocery store,” Maya said at the same time that Artur asked, “Are you seeing someone else? A different therapist?”
“No,” Inna said. “I don’t need him.”
“Are you sure? Look at the way her hands are shaking,” Maya told Artur. His tight nod confirmed that he also saw the danger signal. Finally, after months of growing distance and disagreements, they were in accord. They were a team.
“Inna, are you taking your medicine?” Artur asked.
“Yes. Of course.” Inna tucked her hands in her lap. “I’m not a child. You need to trust me to handle my own problems.”
Predictably, Inna didn’t want help, not even from Artur. The weight of the awful premonition Maya had described this morning hung in the room. She knew it haunted Artur, and she savored her power over him as the seed she had planted blossomed into distrust and worry.
“You will make an appointment with Dr. Kasporov,” Artur decided.
How gratifying when a plan started to come together!
NICK
NICK’S PLAN WAS simple: bring Inna flowers, tell her he was sorry about what happened and that he felt responsible. Maybe she would agree to get a cup of coffee with him and talk about it. Maybe he could ease her into a tentative friendship.
Nick found Inna’s number easily enough in the directory, but she didn’t answer his call. Maybe she wasn’t home. Maybe she had gone to work. Or maybe she didn’t want to talk to him.
He stopped at the florist anyway and bought a modest mix of colorful flowers—nothing too romantic or over the top. This was a small gesture, an invitation.
She might not accept.
Katya had told him that Inna was a designer working out of Koslovsky Imports. Nick took the subway to Brighton Beach. As he walked the main drag, he passed a number of brightly colored shop fronts and more than a few pharmacies, including International Pharmacy. Wasn’t that one of the businesses that Aleksei owned? The place was clean and brightly lit, a typical storefront with neatly stacked boxes of toiletries and vitamins.
Koslovsky Imports itself, another block down, was also rather unremarkable. In fact, Nick walked right past it the first time. It fit into the neighborhood, another shop with Russian-style trinkets made in China and “genuine” Fabergé eggs in the window. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Artur Gregorovich had been a KGB spy. He would specialize in fooling people that he fit in.
The bell rang when Nick opened the door, but no one appeared. The store seemed to be empty. He walked toward the back, past wooden tables and nostalgic oil paintings of horse-drawn sleds and churches with colorful onion domes.
As he neared the register, he heard voices.
“Inna, please. Don’t make me worry.”
Nick crept past the register and slipped through the door to the private offices. He followed the voices into a short corridor, passed an open office with desks and overhead fluorescent lights, and paused by another door, this one only slightly ajar.
He peered inside and found a scene so painfully familiar: Artur, older now, more distinguished, pleading with a dark-haired woman with almond-shaped eyes.
Suddenly he was eight years old again, hiding in the one bedroom in his mother’s apartment while Artur by turn argued and wheedled with his mother. Some nights their arguments had ended in passionate kisses and others with his mother folded on the living room carpet, sobbing.
Then he had been only a child, too young to understand the argument, too small to take up his mother’s cause.
Nick had wanted to hate Artur for making his mother cry. Yet, the man’s sweet lies had turned in his direction. “We’ll be a family, Kolya. Would you like that? We’ll go to America together. I’ll be your father.”
At eight years old, he had been so hungry for affection. His grandparents had died in Siberia—thanks, he learned later, to Artur. Nick had missed his grandfather, his surrogate father, terribly.
Aunt Vera had been the only one to see through the lies, had known how Artur had already betrayed the family, how he merely toyed with Sofia, and how he would never leave his wife or keep his promises.
Artur had promised his mother the world—had promised them both the world—and delivered only death and loss.
Over the last twenty-five years, Nick had imagined Artur over and over. What he was doing. How Nick would bring him to justice.
Finally, he had found him. The man who killed his grandparents. Killed his mother. Killed his baby sister. Destroyed Nick’s family.
He clenched his fists, almost crushing the flower stems in his hand.
Artur cupped the woman’s face in his hands and bent so that his forehead touched hers. “Please, Inna. For me,” he wheedled. “I love you beyond reason. Don’t make me worry.”
“I love you too, Papa.”
Fury unfurled in Nick’s chest. The man had stripped him of everyone he loved, even while soliciting Nick’s affection. Nick had lost everyone. Everyone. Yet here was Artur all these years later, prosperous and doting on a daughter he adored, one who obviously loved him back. Inna couldn’t be so much different in age than Nick’s own baby sister would be now—had she lived.
KGB spy. Adulterer. Liar. Sociopath. Artur Gregorovich would pay for his crimes against Nick’s family. Nick would find a way to expose him and strip him of all of the things he cared about.
“Step away from the door and put your hands up.”
Nick did as instructed. He turned around to face a hulk of a man with a gun and an angry glare.
“Now tell me. Who the hell are you? And what are you doing back here?”
“
I’m Nick Salvatore,” he said. He stared at the gun. He hadn’t expected one, but should have. Artur might seem on the surface like a successful businessman, but Nick had glimpsed the true monster underneath, a beast that might change its country but not its stripes. Of course Artur would be surrounded by guns and violence. Who was this man with the gun? Mafia? A spy?
Nick was only a lawyer. No match for physical force. No match for bullets. Maybe he was in over his head.
Rage and raw determination overrode fear or caution. Facing down the barrel of the gun, he forged ahead with his plan. “I’m here to see Inna.”
The guy with the gun gave him a critical once over. His eyes lingered on the bouquet. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” Nick said. “I’m not a client. Could you tell Inna that Nick’s here?”
“Nick?” The dark-eyed woman promptly appeared in the hallway. Inna.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Self-consciously, she ran her hands through her hair, tucked some loose strands behind her ear.
“I came to see how you were doing.”
She seemed almost unearthly with her inky, wavy hair in its long ponytail and her pale skin and solemn eyes, so large in her delicate face. She was prettier than he had expected and somehow very familiar.
He wasn’t a particularly spiritual man, but he had the sense their souls had met before.
Unprepared for the immediate emotional pull she had on him, he thrust the bouquet at her. She took the flowers as if they were precious. Her dark eyes seemed to drink him in. The mix of apprehension and hope he saw there made his heart stutter.
He suddenly wished he had something more to offer her than a bunch of wilting flowers wrapped in green cellophane.
“Who are you? How do you know Inna?” Artur joined them in the hallway and regarded Nick with edgy wariness. A blond woman with ice blue eyes peered at him from behind Artur’s shoulder.
“This is Katya’s friend,” Inna said. She swallowed hard. “The one I was supposed to meet the other night at Troika.”
“The blind date,” the blond supplied.
Kings of Brighton Beach Bundle Page 17