Chapter 11
11
DARYA
“ W hat do you mean, you don’t have the key?” Darya stares at me in confusion. “I didn’t even know there was an actual key, but Alexei said the Orlovs suspect you have it. Key or not, the vault can’t be opened without your fingerprints. I should know.” I don’t miss the hard note in her voice. “Vilnus pressed my fingers against that damned vault every day for years trying to open it.”
“It’s complicated.” I glance uphill, toward the restaurant where Mickey is waiting. “We need time to talk about this, Darya. But I’d rather do it while Mickey is with us.” I almost smile. “I promised that I would include him in every step. I don’t want to risk breaking that promise less than a day since I made it.”
“Then let’s go.” She moves toward the stairs without hesitation.
“Wait.” I gesture inside the apartment. “Don’t you have anything you want to bring with you?”
She shakes her head impatiently. “No. I burned anything important. And we’ve already wasted enough time.”
I lead her through the alleyways, trying to keep my shock hidden. “I burned anything important.”
Darya wasn’t just running this time.
She was disappearing.
In only a day or two more, she would have been gone entirely, across a border, somewhere harder for me to follow.
I could have lost her forever.
The impact of that thought hits me hard. It’s a different shock to what I felt after the bomb and the girls’ disappearance. That shock was visceral, an all-encompassing horror that still permeates every cell of my body, and will until I have my daughters home and justice for their suffering.
But the thought of Darya simply vanishing into a vast, anonymous sea of humanity in which she might so easily become invisible chills me to the bone in a different way.
That chill is a loneliness deep in my soul.
It’s the sudden realization that I would never have been able to stop looking for her.
I’d have searched every crowd for her face for the rest of my life, always hoping against hope that I would find her again.
In those simple words, I burned anything important , that alternative future is revealed to me with devastating clarity. And I know, with every fiber of my being, that I don’t want to be the shell of a man I see in that vision.
Whatever life brings to me, I need Darya by my side to face it.
Without her, I am not truly myself.
That truth is like an optical illusion, a hidden image inside a picture. Once seen, the picture can never look the same again.
I cannot be without Darya.
In a week of devastating realizations, this one is the most unexpected—and the one I am least able to articulate. Particularly now, when so much else is at stake. I tuck it away inside myself and force my rational mind to refocus.
The restaurant is twenty paces away, and with it, all that Mickey has discovered with his DNA testing. All that Darya doesn’t know.
I momentarily wrestle with myself, torn between my desire to prepare her for what is coming and the knowledge that we don’t have time to waste. “Wait.” I slow my pace.
“For what?” She gives me an impatient look.
“There are some things you should know.” But I never get a chance to finish. Mickey must have been watching for us, because he is already out the door and striding toward us, his lean face animated with relief. Darya breaks away from me with a small cry, racing toward him. They meet in the middle of a cobblestoned plaza, Darya enfolding Mickey in a tight, wordless embrace, her hand on his head as she presses her lips to his temple. Mickey clings to her, his tall body taut with relief.
“Thank God,” she whispers when she finally pulls away, tears streaming down her face as she presses his arms, as if reassuring herself that he is whole. “Thank God you’re alive.”
Mickey nods, trying to smile, but his lips are pressed firmly together, and I can tell he doesn’t trust himself to speak.
“Come on.” I put an arm around his angular shoulders, aware of the curious looks our little reunion is attracting. “We can talk in the car.”
Mickey gives me a rather hard look, and I sigh inwardly. I know there’s no chance in hell he will hold back from telling Darya the truth.
Christ.
It’s going to be a hell of a fucking drive back.
Mickey doesn’t waste any time. We’ve barely hit the highway when he drops the DNA bombshells.
“Wait.” Darya turns sideways in the passenger seat so she can look directly at me. Even with my eyes on the road, her shock is palpable. “Ofelia is your daughter ? And Vilnus Orlov is Masha’s father?”
“Takes a bit to get your head around, huh.” I keep my eyes firmly on the road, not least because of my desire to wring Mickey’s neck. But even if it had been left up to me, I know it’s impossible to withhold the truth now, under the circumstances. I also know there’s no point in ordering Mickey to do so.
That should piss me off. I’ve always demanded utter obedience.
If I’m honest, though, I feel an odd touch of pride. Young he might be, but Mickey is already his own man. Something he will need to be if he intends to make our world his life. And whether I like it or not, I don’t think he can escape our life.
Not after this.
Besides, Malaga is barely three hours on the freeway from Granada. As soon as we arrive, we’ll be back in the thick of the hunt. I know there’s no way in hell Darya will accept being on the outside of that investigation. Brutal as it is, there’s no real choice other than ripping off the Band-Aid and getting this over with.
“So.” Her voice has a brittle edge that doesn’t bode at all well. “You and Inger...?”
She doesn’t need to finish the sentence to make her meaning plain.
“A long time ago.” I glance at her briefly, taking in the pale cheeks, rather fierce eyes, and hard-pressed lips with no small amount of trepidation. Admitting to a youthful affair is one thing. Being forced to admit it in a car to the woman I love and nearly just lost—not to mention Inger’s son, watching my every damn twitch—is about the worst kind of purgatory I can imagine. I dodged Mickey’s questions on the way here. I know there’s no chance in hell of doing it twice.
Worse, this is Inger, who has repeatedly tried to humiliate Darya. Not to mention hurt the children, first emotionally, and now by physically endangering her own daughters. I brace myself to do something I really fucking hate: owning up to a mistake.
“Inger and I had a brief affair back in Miami, the same summer that I met Mikhail.” I glance in the rearview mirror. “It was already over between us when she met your father, Mickey.”
That isn’t entirely true, but I figure some details are better left unsaid.
The truth is that the moment Inger realized who Mikhail was—or rather, that it was his father’s yacht that was moored at the local marina—she dropped me faster than she had her panties.
“We were very young.” I meet Mickey’s eyes in the mirror again. “Not much older than you are now. I wish I could say that there was more to the story, Mickey, but honestly, that’s about it.”
I glance sideways, but Darya gives me nothing, just stares at me with those gleaming eyes.
Fuck. She’s really not going to make this easy. I want to touch her, to cut the distance between us by restoring the sensuality that has always bonded us so closely, but nothing about the situation lends itself to physical intimacy. I clench the steering wheel to stop myself from reaching for her. It’s paralyzing how much I want to.
“Mikhail turned up on your Deda Yuri’s yacht shortly after it ended between your mother and me.”
Actually, the two things happened on the same day, but who’s counting?
“Inger fell for Mikhail as soon as she met him and never looked back.” That part is true enough. I figure Mickey doesn’t need to know that it was the yacht, rather than Mikhail, that Inger fell for. Though by the way his mouth twists with distaste, I guess he’s smart enough to have worked that much out for himself.
“Did Papa know?” His eyes in the rearview mirror are laser sharp. “About you and Inger?”
“Yes.” At least I can answer that without hesitation. “Mikhail asked me right at the start if I minded, if I was serious about her. I wasn’t, and I stepped aside immediately. We never really talked about it again. Two months later, Inger was pregnant. They married a few weeks after that.”
An uneasy silence settles over the car. I can still feel Darya’s eyes on me, but I can’t sense her reaction to the story. I swallow uncomfortably. I’m not used to feeling ashamed. But I was, after Mikhail told me Inger was pregnant. Not because I’d defiled something innocent, which by then, I knew Inger certainly was not, but because I’d been almost pathetically grateful that it was Mikhail she had set her sights upon. I knew, then and there, that I was not remotely equipped to make somebody a husband or father. I took no satisfaction from having dodged what I already knew was a toxic bullet, but I did learn from it. Afterward, I became almost pathological about keeping my relationships strictly businesslike.
“But you must have wondered if the baby was yours. Papa, too.”
Christ, the kid is relentless.
I shift uneasily in my seat, choosing to meet Mickey’s hard stare instead of Darya’s quiet scrutiny. She’s still wearing the headscarf and Moroccan outfit. I want to tear both off and run my hands through her hair, make her mine again. This car ride is fixing to be the longest of my damned life. “Inger and Mikhail had been together all summer. Her parents were very traditional, and they’d already met Yuri.”
“But—”
“We’re Russian, Mickey.” To my surprise, it’s Darya who heads him off. She turns in her seat, giving him a quiet, reassuring smile. “Questions just aren’t asked in such circumstances. Maybe in a less traditional world they might be, but not for us. Marriage would have been the only option, given the public nature of their relationship.”
Mickey settles reluctantly back in his seat. “I guess.”
I should be grateful for Darya’s intervention, but I’m not. Especially given that she won’t quite meet my eyes. Mickey might be more or less satisfied with my answers, but despite her coming to my rescue, something tells me Darya is nowhere near done. And a queasy sensation in my gut suggests that her questions are going to be a hell of a lot harder to answer.
In the brief reprieve that follows Mickey’s questions, I sneak another look at Darya. Her face is closed, her arms folded protectively across her body. Everything about her posture fills me with unease. Even Mickey seems disinclined to continue his cross-examination. He, too, is watching her, clearly concerned about the impact of so many revelations. In the end, however, it’s Darya who broaches the next question.
“What about Masha?” She looks between Mickey and me. “Did you have any idea about her? Did Mikhail?”
“I don’t think so.” It’s my turn to frown. “I still don’t know how the hell that connection happened.”
“I do.” Mickey’s tone is flat and hard. We both glance at him. “It was when Inger left Papa.” His jaw is set, his anger clearly visible. “I remember that summer. I was eight, Ofelia was ten. Papa said we had to go to Miami for the holidays and stay with Deda and Baba Melnyk. Inger’s parents,” he adds, for Darya’s benefit. “We didn’t want to go. Their house is really small, and it smells weird.”
I can’t help but grin at they way he wrinkles his nose. “He’s right,” I say to Darya, as an aside. “Inger’s mother is a big believer in traditional cooking. That house has smelled of cabbage ever since I can remember. And despite all the money Mikhail gave Inger’s parents, they’ve never moved.”
“Baba always says that the best place for money is somewhere people can’t see it,” Mickey says. He meets my eyes and actually smiles. “Papa used to say, if that was true, then he didn’t see why she couldn’t invest in some air freshener, since it’s invisible.”
I give an involuntary snort of laughter at that, then, given the topic we’re discussing, try belatedly to turn it into a cough. I’m relieved to see that Darya is smiling too.
“I know that smell,” she says to Mickey. “Papa used to take us to visit some old Russian friends of his, and their house always stunk of cabbage, too. It’s the soup they make.”
“Yeah.” He rolls his eyes. “Papa also used to say that he couldn’t see why anyone in Miami would want to cook fucking soup , since the air is already the same consistency.” That makes us all laugh, despite the fact that I should probably pull him up on language.
“I remember him saying that.” It feels good to talk about Mikhail. I realize, with surprise, that I rarely do. I should. His children need to remember who he was.
That thought sobers me up immediately.
“Regardless of those tests, Mikhail was still a father to your sisters.” I meet Mickey’s eyes in the mirror. “Like I told you, Mickey, DNA doesn’t mean shit. Family is family, and you were all Mikhail’s children. Don’t ever forget that.”
“I think Papa might have known about Masha, though. Or suspected, at least.” His laughter has disappeared. “That summer was awful. Inger was away nearly all the time, and Deda and Baba Melnyk are really strict, so Ofelia and I weren’t allowed out much. We pretty much hung around in our rooms, on our laptops. I was more interested in gaming, but Ofelia used to search for articles about Inger all the time. She hid the screen so I couldn’t see, but I saw enough to know that it wasn’t work that was keeping Inger busy. The online tabloids were full of pictures of her at parties and on yachts.” His face is tense and pale again. “Ofelia and I didn’t talk about it much. But there were enough photos of Inger with other men to make it pretty obvious what she was doing.”
“Your father didn’t want you to go to Miami. He only sent you there to keep you safe.” I owe it to Mikhail to ensure his children know the truth. “Your Deda Yuri had just gone to jail, and there was a war between the Russian families. Your father and I knew we were facing a bloodbath. We both wanted you far away from it.”
“Yeah.” Mickey gives me a humorless smile. “Ofelia and I saw that online, too.”
That shuts me down pretty fast. I, more than anyone, should know how much children see. But the truth is, I was too caught up in the war, in founding Hale and Mercura, to care about what Mikhail’s children were doing.
“I’m sorry, Mickey,” I say quietly. “Your father and I should have done a better job of caring for you.”
“It’s okay.” He shrugs, but I don’t need to see Darya’s frown to know how insincere his denial is. I grip the steering wheel and, for the thousandth time recently, vow to do better.
Much better.
“Anyway,” Mickey goes on, “Papa came to Miami a few times that summer, but he and Inger fought all the time. She wanted him to bring Deda Yuri’s yacht to Miami for us to stay on, but he said it wasn’t safe. In the end Uncle Nicky sailed it over anyway, which was actually pretty cool at first. Inger was away on a modeling contract. Ofelia and I liked the yacht way better than Deda and Baba’s house, and Uncle Nicky took us out, did stuff with us. But then Inger came back to stay on the yacht, and they more or less forgot about us. We saw very little of either of them for the rest of the summer. Ofelia said that the only reason Uncle Nicky came in the first place was because he had a crush on Inger.”
Darya’s eyebrows nearly shoot through the roof. “Are you serious?”
I cover her hand briefly with my own in silent warning, and she gathers herself quickly. “I mean, wow. That must have been tough for you guys.”
“No shit,” Mickey says flatly. “It was gross. Anyway, it didn’t end well. They had a huge fight one night on the yacht. Ofelia and I were both there. Uncle Nicky accused Inger of sleeping with someone else—apart from him, that is—and then she burst into tears, saying she was in love with Papa and wished she’d never left him. Uncle Nicky screamed at her for hours. The next day he was gone, and Inger took us to stay with Babushka Vera in the London house. She and Papa got back together soon after that.”
How the fuck did I know none of this? I’m having difficulty hiding my shock, and from the sideways glances Darya’s giving me, she’s equally horrified.
“I’m pretty sure it was Vilnus Orlov that Inger and Uncle Nicky were arguing about.” Mickey seems oblivious to our shock, which makes it even worse.
No wonder the kids disliked me so much. They thought I knew all of this and just didn’t care.
“What makes you so sure?” Darya asks.
“After I found out that Vilnus is Masha’s father, I did the math, then went back and trawled all the online pictures from that summer. Vilnus and Inger were at all the same parties, and she’s pictured with him at least a dozen times. One of those photos was taken on my birthday.” He smiles without any humor at all. “Uncle Nicky took us out, because Inger said she was working. Later, he saw that photo of them together, which was what caused their argument.”
“Oh, Mickey.” Darya reaches for his hand and Mickey lets her take it, but only for a moment. Then he folds his arms and forces a smile.
“We’d been back in London for a month or so when Inger told us she was going to have a baby. I was so happy that Papa and Inger were back together that I never thought about it. I think Ofelia might have, though. I think that’s why she asked me to do the DNA testing in the first place. Maybe she overheard Papa say something. I don’t know if Papa had heard rumors about Inger and Orlov, or what, but he and Inger fought all the time back then. He left for the last time just after Masha was born.”
That hits me like a gut punch, and from the look on Darya’s face, it’s hitting her, too. “Does Ofelia... know? About the test results?”
“No.” Mickey’s voice is raspy with tiredness. He shakes his head, then yawns widely. “Not yet. I didn’t want to upset her before I spoke to you.”
Thank Christ for that. I almost slump with relief.
Mickey yawns again, rubbing his eyes. It’s almost morning, and he’s been running on empty for hours. Darya is staring out of the window, her face hidden. We’re all exhausted, and the next time I glance in the mirror, Mickey has dozed off.
The silence that falls across the car isn’t an easy one. The gulf between Darya and me is far greater than the disconnection of a few days apart. The electric intimacy that has always formed an unconscious, tangible bond between us was shattered by the blast, by the words I said after it, by the days when we both thought we’d lost one another. The caveman in me wants to reinstate that intimacy immediately, lose myself in Darya’s body and make it my own again.
Given the awkwardness of that distance, in some ways Mickey’s questions and story have been a welcome relief. I’m not quite sure when it happened, but at some point over the past few months, the children became Darya’s and my safe space. When we are with them we both know our roles. We slip into a mutually supportive team. Those roles are a comfortable place. But they’re also a mask, a place in which both of us have hidden our truth from the other.
Instead of truth, we’ve had desire.
We’ve avoided the secrets between us in the bliss of being naked and entwined, lost amid an all-consuming sea.
A bolt of longing hits me right in the abdomen, so fierce I shift uneasily again. I want to lose myself in that sea again. Not later. Not after we talk. I need it now, like I need to breathe. But Mickey’s sleeping form in the back seat isn’t the only reason that’s a bad idea. Something tells me that the time apart has dug a gulf that will take more than just sex to breach.
But Christ, it would be a good start.
It’s almost a relief when Darya breaks the silence. “Masha is six.” She speaks quietly, almost to herself. “I was still in the compound when Inger and Vilnus were together. Not that I knew anything about his social life. I wouldn’t have wanted to either.”
I glance at her. “Do you think the two things are linked?”
“I don’t know how they could be, if Vilnus only recently found out your real name.” She shakes her head. “But it’s a strange coincidence. Strange to think our lives were linked back then, even indirectly.”
I don’t argue with that. I’ve had exactly the same thoughts.
She sucks her lips in and exhales slowly. “And you never guessed that Ofelia was... yours.”
There’s a slight catch in her voice. I hunch over the steering wheel, unsure of how to answer her. What I really want to say is that the only time I’ve ever even let myself imagine having children was very recently—with Darya. And even then, I never really believed it could happen for me.
But I can’t pretend that learning Ofelia is my daughter doesn’t mean anything to me.
As for whether or not I suspected... I don’t know how to answer that either. I’m scared that anything I do say will drive Darya even further away than I already have, and that is something I don’t even want to contemplate. I’m still wondering how to answer when she speaks again.
“Are you... happy? Knowing she’s your daughter? That you’re a—a father?” Her voice trembles. She’s looking out the window, her arms folded over her body in an almost protective gesture, as if she’s trying to defend herself from some unseen attack.
“Right now, I’m just focused on getting both of the girls home.” Unwilling to say anything that might hurt her more than I already have, I avoid the question. “I need to work out how to put the Orlovs down for good.”
She shakes her head, still staring out the window. “I know Vilnus Orlov. He’s a piece of shit, but he doesn’t do anything by chance.”
The uncharacteristic bitterness in her voice makes me wince. It reminds me of all she endured before I met her, which in turn makes me savagely terrified at the thought of Ofelia and Masha in Vilnus’s hands now.
“Until you know exactly what he is playing at, you can’t just go in there with guns blazing. He’ll be expecting that.”
I might have promised Dimitry that I will hear her out before making an action plan, but her doubt pisses me off. Not least because going in guns blazing is almost precisely what I’m about to order Makari Tereschenko to do.
“When it comes to war,” I say stiffly, “I know what I’m doing, Darya.”
She gives a silent huff of humorless laughter. “And when it comes to the Orlovs,” she says quietly, “I know them better than anyone. I can’t make you take my advice. But if you really want to put the girls’ safety first, then you’ll get all the facts before you do anything. If I learned anything from the years he held me, it’s that Vilnus is one of the most ruthless men I’ve ever met. His allies are even more ruthless. And cunning.”
She meets my eyes, and in the headlights of an oncoming car, I see the fathomless depths of old pain in hers. “I know how dangerous you are, Roman. But the difference between you and Vilnus is that Vilnus won’t hesitate to kill the girls, even if you give him what he wants. Not even if Masha is his daughter. He is a man without honor, without heart. He betrayed my father, killed my mother, and I’ve watched him murder his own blood when they’ve disappointed him. Vilnus enjoys inflicting pain.”
For a moment I’m standing outside my father’s house again, watching Vilnus carve my father’s flesh into pieces as he screams in agony. I flinch. “I know what Vilnus is capable of,” I say roughly.
She nods slowly. “I know that he killed your parents, Roman. But knowing it is one thing. I lived it. Every day for years, I lived with his knives and his sadism. And believe me when I tell you this, Roman: whatever cruelty you’re capable of, Vilnus can do twice over, without blinking.”