24. Alexei
Alexei
It’s midmorning and I’m working in the cyber room, waiting for Ofelia to call, when the secure line rings.
I frown at the unknown number. I click to answer anyway; if they have access to this line, they’re inner circle.
My father’s face fills the screen. “Syn moy.” My son.
“Papa.” I smile, though I’m more than a little surprised. My father and I are not given to casual chats at the best of times, and certainly not when it may be a security risk. “Where are you calling from? And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“Roman has installed a secure room in the finca so he can work from home.”
I wonder how many centenarians know what a secure room is, let alone how to use one.
It still astonishes me that despite having lived for almost a century, and being almost incapacitated by a stroke over a decade ago, my father has not only rebuilt his physical fitness, but remains as mentally astute as he ever was.
“I told him I wished to speak to my son in private,” he is saying now, “so he made the connection and then left. We are alone.”
And that means something is wrong.
“Are you well, Papa?” I ask cautiously.
“Of course I am well.” He glares into the camera. My father might be old, but he loathes any suggestion of frailty. “I am calling because I have a concern regarding Ofelia.”
“Oh?” Oh fuck is more like it. I brace myself for whatever interrogation I’m about to undergo.
“I went to Granada last weekend to watch Ofelia perform.”
I keep my expression neutral with an effort. “I hope it went well.” Given that I not only live streamed the performance, but had a breathless blow-by-blow account of it soon afterward from Ofelia herself, I know exactly just how well it went.
His expression softens. “She was sublime.”
Understatement.
Watching her perform that piece in the Alhambra was an almost transcendental experience.
Beaten only by the exquisite torture of our phone call later that night.
“After the performance, Ofelia introduced me to a friend of hers, a woman by the name of Seline Duval.”
So far, this isn’t going quite the way I expected it to.
“Has Ofelia mentioned this friend to you?”
“No,” I lie. “Why would she?”
“I am old, Alexei. I am not blind.” He fixes me with an extremely stern eye, which, despite my age and the many men I have murdered, still has a rather quelling effect.
“And I must ask you for honesty, even if the truth is uncomfortable. You may be inclined to dismiss what I am about to say as nothing more than an old man’s paranoia.
” His grim expression forestalls my protest. “And it is possible you would be right. But it is also possible that Ofelia’s safety—and yours—depend upon you taking my warning seriously. ”
“What do you mean?” I stiffen, every cell suddenly microtuned to danger. Out of my father’s sight, I click to bring up the security cameras at Ofelia’s house.
To my relief, she is seated at her piano, completely focused on whatever she’s playing.
“What is this about, Papa?” Adrenaline makes my voice harder than it might usually be.
“It is about Paris. My Paris.”
The unmistakable reference to his own past is enough to cast a shadow into the room. After the brutal murder of his first wife and children in Paris decades ago, my father has, understandably, always avoided the city. I think Ofelia’s performance there is the only time he has ever returned to it.
“When I lived there years ago, I knew a family of gypsies by the name of Duval. The women of the family read fortunes in the Place du Tertre—or rather, they used fortune telling to distract their marks, while the men of the family relieved them of anything of value. Aleksander and I knew the family because, on occasion, they came to us to off-load the valuables they’d stolen. ”
I give him a quizzical look. “If you’re worried about Ofelia’s pockets being picked, Papa, I’m fairly sure her security team are more than capable—”
“Nyet.” Sergei shakes his head impatiently.
“This is not my point. The Duvals’ true business lay in trading not stolen goods, but stolen secrets.
The Duvals were not just petty thieves, Alexei.
They were highly skilled at discerning who might have information of value and discovering it.
They sold secrets to everyone from criminal organizations to foreign intelligence agencies, and they used their fortune tellers to do it.
Since every woman loves to have her fortune told, that was who they would target: the wives of powerful men, the mistresses, the daughters.
There was not a robbery, a kill contract, or a government deal made in that city that the Duvals did not know about.
They were embedded in both Paris’s criminal underworld and its highest levels of society. ”
I think uneasily of the amount of times I’ve seen Seline come to Ofelia’s door.
“This is a long bow to draw, Papa.” I try not to let my concern show. “You’re worried about Ofelia because you met a friend of hers who has the same name as a Gypsy fortune-telling cabal you knew decades ago? Duval is a common enough name, surely?”
“I warned you it might sound like paranoia.” My father does not smile.
“But if you had seen the things I have, Alexei, you too would understand that just because you are paranoid, as the saying goes, it doesn’t mean that no one is following you.
” He leans forward, his face grim. “I knew Solange Duval, one of these fortune tellers, for over a decade. I bought her stolen jewels. I listened to her stories. At one point, very early in my time in Paris, I even shared her bed.” He nods at my visible surprise.
“There was a time when I knew Solange’s face as well as I know my own.
And when I met Ofelia’s friend, Seline, for a moment I thought I had seen a ghost.”
“Did you ask if there was any connection?” I’m intrigued, despite my skepticism.
Papa nods. “Her reaction was instantly hostile, and she left soon after. Then Ofelia’s friend, Benny, made a comment about Seline being a witch; it was clear he doesn’t like her. I asked Ofelia if Seline had read her fortune. She said no, but I could tell she was lying.”
I don’t ask how he is so certain. If my father says Ofelia was lying, then she was.
I’m beginning to feel genuinely uneasy.
“I managed to get Benny alone later,” he goes on, “and he told me Ofelia had been consulting Seline in Paris for months. Now she is in Granada, supposedly for family reasons, and is Ofelia’s most frequent visitor.
When Benny mentioned his misgivings about forming a close association with her, Ofelia’s exact words were that Seline is ‘the only person she can be completely honest with.’”
Seeing the growing alarm in my face, Papa nods. “Perhaps now you see why I felt a call was necessary.”
Fuck.
I know every figure who has come to Ofelia’s door, from the gas delivery man to the students she tutors.
Seline has come by at least once a day. She and Ofelia usually take drinks out to the pool and sit beneath the umbrellas, a blind spot on the cameras that I figured Ofelia chose deliberately for privacy—which is fair enough.
Let’s face it, you jealous fuck: you ignored Seline because she is a woman.
“But I tell you all this for added context. There is more reason for my call than just suspicion,” Papa is saying.
“Before I called you, I persuaded Pavel to do a little research for me.” He lifts a shoulder.
“I told him I wanted to know what happened to an old flame and that I would prefer to keep my inquiry discreet.” He gives me a conspiratorial smile.
“It is the one benefit of being old, to have everyone assume you are a doddering fool.”
I can’t help but smile, despite the gravity of the situation. “Nobody could ever dismiss you as a fool, Papa.”
“Ha.” His smile fades. “But his information was alarming, as I thought it might be. Seline is definitely Solange Duval’s granddaughter. But she was not born in France. She was born in America. In Atlanta, Georgia, to be specific.”
“Oh, Christ.” The words escape me in an almost resigned sigh.
“Da.” His face darkens. “Alexei—the surname on Seline’s birth certificate is Novikov.”
Fuck. I stare at Ofelia, upright and slender at her grand piano. She’s never looked more beautiful—nor more vulnerable.
“Kiril Novikov is Seline’s half brother.
” Papa’s eyes are grave. “Seline’s mother married his father over twenty years ago, when Kiril and his brother were children.
Seline and Kiril were raised in the same house, Alexei.
She holidayed in Paris with her grandmother Solange every year, until her parents sent her to live there permanently as a teenager.
That was when Seline took the name Duval. ”
“As a teenager?” I shake my head. “That would make it right about the time I defeated the Orlovs—and killed Kiril and Seline’s father.”
“I imagine her parents sent her to France to keep her safe, when it became clear you were taking retribution on all who had allied with the Orlovs,” Sergei says.
“I never knew their father, but from all accounts, he was not a bad man. He was just unfortunate enough to be doing business with the Orlovs when you rose up against them and got caught in the crossfire. His youngest son, however, is another matter. By all accounts Kiril is quite the sadist.”
“Fucking understatement,” I say grimly. “Dima and I both wanted to put that bastard down years ago. I spared him at his brother’s request.”
“You did the honorable thing, syn moy.”
“Did I,” I say flatly.
“You took the father’s life for siding with the Orlovs and spared his sons. This is how we do business.” The empathy in Papa’s eyes makes me want to punch something. “And the older brother was an honorable man, I understand.”
“Only now he’s dead—and Kiril has nobody holding back his worst instincts.
” I stare at Ofelia onscreen. “Seline didn’t find Ofelia by accident.
I knew something was going on with the Novikovs.
Christ. I could fucking feel it. I was just looking in the wrong place.
I have men watching every move in Atlanta, while all this time, Ofelia was confiding in Kiril’s fucking sister, right under my nose. ”
And this is wasting valuable time. Any minute now, Seline could arrive for another cozy fucking chat—with a horde of Novikovs at her back.
“I need to get Ofelia out of there today.” I’m thinking out loud.
“I’ll have the dragons—her security,” I add for Papa’s benefit, “drive her to the finca. She’ll be safe there, until I can finish this.
” My mind is whirling, already trying to outthink whoever is coming for us.
“Thank you, Papa.” I meet his eyes. “For coming to me with this.”
My father nods curtly.
“Wait,” I say, as he begins to turn away. “Why did you come to me with this?” My eye narrows. “If you suspected Ofelia is in danger—why didn’t you go directly to Roman?”
“I should have.” His voice is hard with internal conflict. “I nearly did. But when I complimented Ofelia after her performance in Granada, do you know what she told me?”
I lift a shoulder, frowning.
“She said that before she began playing, she was extremely nervous. Then she said she heard my words in her head: Glaza boyatsya, a ruki delayut.”
The eyes are afraid, but the hands do.
The breath stops in my throat.
“Ofelia said that when she heard those words in her mind, she thought of me, by the river with Aleksander. Then, she said, her hands knew just what to do.” Papa’s eyes bore into mine down the line.
“You are the only person I ever told that story to, Alexei. Darya might know the saying, but she doesn’t know where it came from, nor did your mother.
Only you know about the day I faced the river.
I knew, then, what I only suspected before. ”
There are no words, no explanation I can make. Not without lying outright, and I won’t dishonor my father by doing that.
“You are my son, Alexei.” The resignation in his expression hurts more than Vilnus’s blade ever did. “I failed you once before—”
“No,” I say immediately. “It was my choice to stay in Miami.”
“I left you.” He goes on as if I hadn’t spoken.
“And you suffered things no man ever should. I promised myself I would never choose anything over you again, and I will not.” His face hardens.
“But although I owed you this warning, Alexei, I will not lie to Roman. He has a right to know that his daughter is in danger—and why.”
I stare at Ofelia on my screen. Wishing that I could touch her, one last time, before our worlds implode.
“At least let me warn her,” I say quietly. “She should hear it from me first.”
Papa nods. “But do it quickly,” he says. “Ofelia needs to leave today. Now. As soon as possible. We do not know when they will come for her.”