37. Ofelia #2
I touch the fingertips poking out of his sling and briefly intertwine my own with his. The corner of his mouth tugs upward, but the pain in his eyes doesn’t lessen at all. Whatever residual anger I might feel slips away, neutralized by my brother’s very obvious crippling regret.
To cheer him up, I tilt my head slightly toward the front seat and roll my eyes. It’s Mickey’s turn to bite his lip. He turns away abruptly, looking out the window at the night sky, but his fingers tighten on mine, and I take an odd comfort in the contact.
Despite the almost comical farce of sitting behind Roman and Dimitry as if we were both kids again, there’s a certain reassuring familiarity in being with Mickey right now.
He and I have faced the darkness together many times, been each other’s silent comfort when nobody else was there.
Whatever distance might have fallen between us in recent months, that, at least, hasn’t changed.
The villa is blazing with lights as we pull up, despite the late hour.
Nobody is sleeping tonight, I think as we step out and follow Luca inside.
I take the bag Roman hands me, which, he tells me, was packed by Darya, with customary thoughtfulness.
After a shower and change of clothes I’m shown to a large stone-and-wood salon, which has clearly been set aside for our use.
Inside, Roman, Dimitry, and Mickey are all seated at a big wooden table—along with Mak.
“Ofelia.” Mak stands, greeting me with his customary exceptional manners. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him wearing anything other than a suit. Clad in a loose linen shirt over beige combat pants, he looks somehow leaner and more dangerous than I’m accustomed to.
Which doesn’t bode well, I think resignedly as he kisses my cheeks.
“Please.” Papa gestures to the heaped dishes of pasta and salad on the table. “Eat, darling.” He pours me a glass of wine.
I sit down and push at the food, wondering how soon I can pour another glass without looking too obvious. Fortunately, when Papa turns away, Mickey lifts the bottle with his mangled, bandaged hand and tops it up to the brim, giving me the ghost of a wink.
I shoot him a fervent glance of thanks and take a large mouthful. Frankly, right now I could easily use a fucking straw.
That alcohol problem is really getting worse. I hear Alexei’s playful tone chiding me, closely followed by loneliness crashing into me so painfully that I take another mouthful of wine.
“Now that we’re all here,” Mak says, “I’ll fill you in.”
That’s my cue.
Standing up, wondering if it would be rude to take the bottle with me, I force a smile. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
“No.” Mak’s calm voice stops me. “And don’t bother looking at me like that, Roman,” he says, without so much as meeting my father’s glare. “Ofelia has a right to know what her fiancé is walking into.”
Oh, fuck.
My father’s expression becomes positively thunderous. “What did you just say?” His voice is lethally quiet.
“Don’t, Roman.” To my surprise, it’s Mickey who speaks up.
He faces Papa’s death stare with one of his own.
“Whatever you’re planning to say,” Mickey says coldly, “I’ve already said—and more besides.
And as Lars pointed out to me extremely clearly, right before we got blown to hell, I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was talking about—and neither do you. ”
He turns to me. “You should put that ring back on,” he says quietly. “And wear it with pride. You both deserve happiness. More than anyone else I know.”
He turns back to Papa, who is staring at him in utter shock. “We’ve all got a lot to discuss,” Mickey says calmly. “But this is the one thing none of us needs to remark on at all, unless it’s to offer your daughter congratulations. Let me be the first to do that, by the way.”
He kisses my cheek gently. “Congratulations, Ofelia,” he says gravely. “I wish I’d done that right away.”
I nod, unable to speak, and wipe away the tears on my cheek as I take the ring out of the pendant around my neck and slide it onto my finger. The soft glow of the sapphire and the ring’s weight are as comforting as my brother’s presence, a reminder that Alexei and I are real.
Or at least, I think sadly, we were.
I don’t know what we are now.
My father looks between Mickey and me, then, clearly deciding that capitulation is the wiser course, raises his glass. “Congratulations,” he says stiffly.
Dimitry smiles at me as he repeats the toast. Mak, looking typically amused by the entire thing, raises his glass and echoes it.
It’s hardly the resounding celebration I might have once hoped for. But under the circumstances, it’s a whole lot better than I might have expected.
Thank you, I mouth to Mickey as they all turn away again.
He nods his head unsmilingly, the haunted look still behind his eyes. Whatever Lars said to him and whatever happened after that have changed my brother, I realize. More than everything else he’s been through before now.
“As we speak,” Mak begins, “Alexei is heading to Cuba. From there, he’ll go by boat to Miami.”
Cuba.
Stunned, I can only stare at him across the table.
Without even telling me.
“He didn’t want me to share this information,” Mak goes on.
“In fact, he was rather strong in his insistence that I do not. However, since I happen to be personally acquainted with the people Alexei is about to confront, I am exerting my right to disregard his wishes. Put simply, gentlemen—and lady,” he adds, raising his glass to me with a slight smile—“my honest opinion is that without the help of everyone at this table, Alexei may possibly have come up against an enemy he can’t defeat. ”
“Respectfully,” Papa says stiffly, “that sounds like an Alexei problem. Dimitry and I left Miami behind a long time ago. And Alexei has made that swamp, as I believe he calls it, quite his own.”
“For fuck’s sake, Roman,” Mickey cuts in, glaring at him. “Just listen.”
Mak bites his lip in a visible attempt to restrain his amusement. “Respectfully,” he murmurs, mimicking Roman, “I suggest listening to your godson.”
Papa, looking like he might blow a gasket at any moment, sits back in his chair and swallows the rest of his wineglass in one mouthful, then looks around for the bottle. I hand it to him politely, but not until I’ve pointedly filled my own glass.
“Christ.” Dimitry shakes his head. “Family dinners with you lot require dueling swords and fucking armor. Go on,” he says to Mak.
“A long time ago,” Mak says, “a very good friend of Alexei’s, a teenage daughter of the Cardenas family, was brutally raped by a college kid in Miami on spring break.
Knowing her family would likely blame her for the attack if she told them, she came to Alexei instead.
And despite being the Orlovs’ captive, and having been tortured by them on an almost daily basis for several years before then, Alexei risked his own life to sneak out of the compound, track down his friend’s attacker—and quietly administer the kind of justice a piece of shit like that deserves. ”
He looks around the table. “The kind of justice every man here would administer,” he says quietly, “given the same situation.”
Even my father makes a low noise of assent.
“Unfortunately,” Mak goes on, “it turns out the body Alexei put in the swamp that night just happened to be more than your average privileged piece of shit. Carter Thorne’s daddy is a particularly vile specimen by the name of Silas Thorne—and his friends are even worse.”
He goes on to explain that Silas Thorne operates a digital organization called the Meridian Network, while his other son, Tyler, runs a college campus group called the Compass Initiative.
He mentions two other corporations, one a private security company and the other a government advisory, and explains they’re all run by friends of Thorne’s, dating back to some secret college society.
At first it just sounds like a lot of names, which, after the day’s events, run together.
But gradually, as he describes the so-called John Owens who met Alexei at the airport, and then the coordination and planning behind the attack in Paris, I become fascinated despite myself.
By the time he gets to my own kidnapping in Granada, I’m hanging on his every word.
“Wait,” Papa interrupts at that point, frowning. “So it was this Thorne bastard who let Kiril Novikov off the leash?”
Mak nods. “Quite literally sent him to Miami to kill Alexei’s rivals—and make it look like it was Alexei’s doing.
But if they were hoping to use Kiril to set Alexei up, and trust in the Petrovsky bratva to then dispose of him, they picked the wrong man for the job.
Kiril knew he was being watched, so he killed the Luccheses himself, then ran back to Atlanta and used Sentinel’s mercenaries to do the rest of the killing for him.
Kiril has only ever had one goal, and it’s Alexei’s head, not his business.
All the while he was supposedly doing Thorne’s bidding, he was working behind the scenes to find Alexei.
Blackmailing his sister, Seline, to help him kidnap Ofelia. ”
He grimaces. “And not just kidnap, in my opinion. Kiril is a mad dog. Despite Alexei doing the honorable thing by sparing Kiril’s life after his father sided with the Orlovs, Kiril wouldn’t have returned the courtesy. He’d have killed Ofelia as retribution.” He pauses. “Slowly.”
Papa subsides into his chair, his brow furrowed.