Chapter 41
BANE
“Niko? Eto ty?”
I smile as I shrug off my coat and hang it by the side door to the kitchen.
“Just me, Oksana!”
A second later, my father’s housekeeper pokes her head around the corner, beaming at me. “Bane! I did not know you were coming!”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
I grin, crossing the large kitchen to give her a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.
I’ve known Oksana since I was ten. She was already Peak Grandma then, and only looks even more the part as she gets older.
Dad’s flat-out told her she can retire any time, and he’s happy to pay her a full salary and have her stay in the house to live out that retirement in style. She always says no.
I think she’s one of those people who equates “not working” with “one foot in the grave.”
I mean, she is Russian.
“Kak dela, babushka?”
How are you, grandma?
Oksana clucks her tongue and shakes flour-dusted fingers at me. “Your Russian is getting rusty, zaychik.”
“I’m getting too old to be called little bunny,” I grumble.
She snickers at me. “I disagree…zaychik.”
I roll my eyes and glance at her hands. “What are you making?”
“Pelmeni.”
Fuck yeah. My stomach rumbles. Oksana makes killer Russian dumplings.
“Are they ready? I could eat.”
She playfully slaps at my arm “Nyet, not until dinner. But you should stay.” She arches a brow at me. “Where is your lovely bride, by the way?”
There’s a sharp duality of feelings that twist in me when Oksana asks about her.
The first, of course, is the glowing warmth that I feel deep in my chest whenever I think about the woman I love. But the second, polar opposite feeling that I get at the exact same time is pain.
Pain and regret.
I knew about her addictions and her demons, and I knew about rehab. But the visceral sensation of my heart being sawed from my chest when she told me all the gritty details of that time in her life breaks me in two.
The times she could have been devoured by the world, and the times she could have died.
The times I wasn’t there for her.
And what makes it hurt even more and is knowing that I’m no innocent bystander to the darkness her life spiraled into.
I’m the one who pointed her in that direction. I’m the motherfucker who cornered a grieving girl, still trying to process her own trauma, at her best friends funeral, and told her “this is your fault. You did this.”
I’m not actually sure how I’ll ever atone for that. But I do know I’ll die loving her with every single part of me, even if it barely scratches that debt.
“At her father’s,” I grunt. “She…”
She wants to find out if he knows that half her life she's been living a lie.
I smile. “She’s just picking something up.”
Oksana gives me a look, wagging her brows before she turns away.
“Oksana.”
“Da?”
“What… What was that look?”
She smiles to herself, glancing back at me and waving me off with a hand. “Nothing,” she chuckles. “Just…nothing.”
I stiffen. “Is this nothing about Cesare?”
She tips her head side to side, looking at the ceiling.
“Oksana…”
“It is unprofessional to gossip, zaychik.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s also rude to hint at big secrets and then not deliver.”
She laughs, sighing. “Fine. There’s a WhatsApp group I’m in—”
“You know how to use a smartphone?”
Oksana whirls and whacks me on the wrist with her wooden spoon.
“I’m only seventy-nine, not two hundred,” she mutters darkly.
“I'm sorry. Who’s in your WhatsApp group?”
She shrugs. “Mostly other babushkas. Housekeepers, cooks, maids.”
I smirk to myself, and I’m suddenly more glad than ever that I hired Alfred when I bought the penthouse, and not some babushka who’d be gossiping about me to Oksana on WhatsApp.
“And what do the babushkas say about Cesare Marchetti?”
She grins impishly. “Did you know he has a second woman come in every other week to help his housekeeper clean?”
“I did not.”
“Well, he does,” she cackles. “And she’s from Moscow.” Oksana grins. “There’s a bit of gossip at the Marchetti house!”
I look at her expectantly. “Which is?”
She waggles her brows salaciously. “It would appear Don Marchetti is shlyat'sya po babam.”
Holy shit.
That's Russian slang for “sleeping around”.
“Cesare is having an affair?”
“Da!” Oksana giggles like a schoolgirl. “But I mean, you’ve met his wife, yes?” She makes a face. “A frigid cow, that one. No meat on her bones, and—”
“So he’s having an affair with the Russian housecleaner?”
Oksana hoots out a laugh. “Daria wishes! No, not with her.” She grins as she leans close, lowering her voice dramatically. “With the housekeeper—Melinda.”
I frown. “This is confirmed? Or just a rumor?”
“Oh, confirmed,” Oksana tsks. “Daria’s been working part-time for that family for decades.
This housekeeper…Melinda…she’s been sleeping with Mr. Marchetti on and off for years.
Daria’s heard them a few times,” she giggles.
Then she sighs. “It's sad, though. Daria says Melinda used to have it in her head that she might be the next Mrs. Marchetti. But then your father-in-law met that Felicity woman, and…oop! She stays the housekeeper.”
My pulse picks up.
Oksana shakes her head. “Daria was saying that Melinda hates the new Mrs. Marchetti. Views her as the woman who took her man.” She rolls her eyes. “Delusional.”
My jaw ticks. “Melinda has told Daria all of this?”
Oksana scowls. “Of course not! But the woman has eyes. Melinda is terrible to Felicity. Spits in her tea, rinses her toothbrush in the toilet.” She giggles.
“I only laugh because Mrs. Marchetti is so rude to Daria all the time. But I shouldn't.” She shakes her head. “Daria says Melinda is nevmenyáemaya. She’s just as bad to the other daughter Chiara, too.”
I go still. “What?”
“Da, I know,” she sighs.
“Oksana.”
She glances back at me. “Hmm?”
“Daria actually called her yebanútaya? Or nevmenyáemaya.”
The difference is important.
Especially when my fucking wife is over at that house right now.
Yebanútaya is like calling someone “psycho”, or “nuts.” It’s casual. I call Nero yebanúty all the time, because we’re friends and fuck around like that.
Nevmenyáemaya, on the other hand, means literally, clinically unwell. And Russians don’t say that lightly. Especially not babushkas like Oksana or Daria.
Oksana raises her brow and nods sagely. “Oh, nevmenyáemaya. The woman has a record, you know.”
No.
No, I did not fucking know.
I yank out my phone and tap on my wife's contact.
“What sort of record?” I growl as I wait for her to pick up.
“Assault,” Oksana says, clucking her tongue. “Daria found something in the trash about it…some mail that Melinda tore up and threw—Bane!”
She turns to smack me with her spoon, since she hates me making a phone call while she and I are talking. But when she sees the look on my face, she freezes.
“What’s going on, zaychik?”
What’s going on is Lark isn’t answering her fucking phone and my mind is going to the absolute worst-case scenario.
When she doesn’t answer my second and then third calls, I give up and march over to my coat.
“Everything okay?” Oksana says, concern all over her lined face.
“Da, all good.” I quickly walk back to her and kiss her cheek. “I just have to check on something.”
I don’t want to freak her out.
But I do need to go.
Right the fuck now.