Chapter 8
ALEXEI
As I step through the front door, I find Marsha standing there before me, her brow furrowed and a concerned expression on her face.
“Pakhan? I need to speak with you.” The tone to her voice tells me this is serious. Her eyes dart briefly to the blood on my hands, but she seems to pay that little heed.
I nod towards my office. “Come with me.”
She follows me to my office, where she pours me a drink without asking and pushes it across the table towards me.
That’s the good thing about Marsha, she always seems to be able to tell what’s going on inside my head, without me having to speak a word out loud.
She’s worked for me since my father died, and she worked for him before that for at least fifteen years.
She knows how this house works better than anyone, and I would trust her with my life.
“What’s going on?” I ask her, as I lift the vodka to my lips, the alcoholic bite at the back of my throat taking my mind off the throbbing pain in my knuckles.
“The new nanny came to me today,” she explains.
I furrow my brow slightly. Cara? She’s meant to be sticking to her part of the house, with Max and Nina. That’s where she belongs, where I know I can keep an eye on her. “And what did she say to you?”
She sighs, shaking her head. “She spun some story to me about wanting to leave. About having some grandmother who had taken a fall, who she had to go and take care of right away.”
My eyebrow cocks. “And you think she was lying?”
“I’m sure of it,” she replies. “And it’s a terrible thing to do, to lie on your family’s lives like that. She must not be very close to them.”
I take another sip of the vodka, considering.
Is that what my instincts were trying to tell me yesterday, when we met?
That there was something off about her presence here.
After all, Vinski has already shown himself willing to try and get into my warehouses.
Why wouldn’t he try to go after my home, too?
“What did you tell her?”
“That she should think very carefully about whatever choice she made,” she replies. “Because you might view it a certain way.”
I nod. A fair response. My mind races as I put all the pieces together, how this might all fit.
Because, if she really was here, sent by Vinski, then she might have had the call to pull out as soon as Ivan was busted.
Which would explain why she had seemed to go from totally invested to searching for a way out the first chance she could get.
And maybe she’s not entirely wrong to. Shit, I know all too well what can happen when this world of mine comes to take what it is owed, and the last thing I want is for her to be caught up in it too.
When this place isn’t locked down, there is always a chance that someone could see the vulnerabilities on display here and do what they can to make us pay for them.
I can still remember, with a stark clarity, the day my father came home from that dinner with my mother, the look on his face, the spatters of blood on his shirt...
“You think she might be working for someone other than me?” I ask Marsha. She pauses for a moment, considering her answer carefully. Another trait in her I admire; she never speaks without thinking, making sure to give an answer that’s as true as she can make it.
“I don’t know,” she replies. “But there is something she’s hiding, I’m sure of that. I could see it in the way she spoke to me. As if there were something she didn’t want me to find out.”
I nod. “I got the same feeling from her when we met,” I mutter. “Thought I was just being paranoid, but...”
“You should know by now to trust your instincts, Pakhan.”
I smirk. “You’re right,” I agree. And, glancing to the door, I realize that Cara could be with Maxim right now—could be taking care of him even as I sat there, completely oblivious to whatever she was doing with my child.
What if she was taking pictures, sending them off to someone, showing them exactly who they should target if they could get close enough to the house to take a swing? Yeah, that’s not the kind of shit I’m going to risk, not after what just happened at the warehouse.
I throw back the last of my vodka and rise to my feet, striding towards the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To deal with this,” I reply, without looking back. I need to talk to Cara, right this fucking second, if I’m going to believe a word that comes out of her mouth. I don’t know if I can trust her, but, one way or another, I’m going to find out.
I catch sight of myself in the glass of my office door and see that I’m still spattered with blood.
My fist is still aching, my knuckles grazed from where I landed those blows on him.
I should go and clean up before I speak to her, but time feels like it is of the essence right now.
And I’m not going to let her spend a second alone with my son without finding out what her deal is.
I head straight to her quarters, the guards opening the doors wordlessly for me, and head to the kitchen. She’s there by herself, and she jolts when she sees me.
“Alexei?” she gasps, as she looks me up and down, taking in the blood on my shirt, sleeves still rolled up. “What’s… is everything okay?”
“Where are the kids?”
“Next door,” she replies, her voice trembling. “They’re watching some TV with their lunch—”
I take her arm and steer her towards the bedroom, so we can talk somewhere we won’t be disturbed. She’s too shocked to pull away from me, or maybe she’s just terrified knowing that I’ve finally caught on to her.
“What’s going on?” she finally asks, as I pull the door closed behind me.
“I just spoke to Marsha,” I tell her, releasing her arm as I glare down at her. “And she tells me that you were planning on leaving us already.”
Her face pales. “I–I told Marsha, my grandmother had a fall...”
“And she thinks you were lying,” I reply. “And I trust her instincts on this, so, you want to tell me what the real reason is you want to get out of here so quickly?”
She stares at me for a moment, and I can almost see her heart pounding against her ribs, the terror written in every inch of her face. She’s shaking as she stands there in front of me, her entire body seized with discomfort, but I’m not going to let up until I get a fucking answer.
“Come on, Cara,” I growl. “Do what’s best and tell me the truth.”
“I–I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she retorts, suddenly looking up at me and narrowing her eyes as she remembers her attitude. “If I want to leave, I should be allowed to leave. You can’t keep me locked up here like some kind of prisoner—”
“And I’ve no intention of doing that,” I reply calmly.
“But you have to understand, I just found out one of my businesses was infiltrated by people who wanted to get in and get out. People who wanted to get into my space, take pictures, and get out so they could sell them off to the highest bidder.”
I take another step towards her, and she leans back against the door, her eyes wide.
“So you can understand why you trying to get out so soon has me wondering a few things,” I continue quietly. “You just wanted to get in and get out, huh? Get as close to my son as you could so that you could use him for—”
“No!” she exclaims, her lips parting in shock. “No, God, I would never do anything like that. I–I had no idea what kind of business you were even involved in until I got here, and trust me, I would never have taken the job if I had.”
“And what exactly have you heard about my business, huh?” I prompt her. “Who have you been talking to?”
“My sister,” she retorts sharply. “She’s a journalist. Said your name has come up in a few of the cases she’s covered recently. And that you’re a supplier for pretty much anyone who needs a gun in this entire city, right?”
I stare down at her for a moment, scanning her face for any sign that she might be lying to me, but I find none. Whatever she is saying she, at least, believes it. And I don’t know if I do yet, because if her sudden desire to leave wasn’t to do with her double-crossing, then what was it about?
“Marsha and I talked about something else too, you know,” I remark, and she swallows hard, throat flexing just a few inches away from me.
Her mouth is pressed into a hard line, but there is still something tempting about it, the soft fullness of her lower lip like a pillow where her teeth are pressed into it.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I reply. “About how we both can’t shake the feeling that you’re hiding something.”
Her cheeks darken, and I know I’ve struck a nerve. She is hiding something, I can tell, it is written all over her face, in the way she has carried herself since she saw me.
“I–it’s not what you think,” she attempts, trying to dissuade me from taking this any further. “It’s got nothing to do with your business, I can promise you that. That’s all that matters, right?”
I let out a mirthless snort. “You think that I’m going to let some woman with a secret around my son like that?” I reply. “I’m trusting you with him every day. And if there’s something that you need to tell me-”
“You don’t need to know,” she pleads with me.
“You just–just let me go. Please. I promise that I’m not going to breathe a word of this to anyone, I won’t even tell anyone I worked for you.
You don’t have to pay me, I’ll give you all the money back, just let my daughter and I go back to our old lives. That’s the only thing I’m asking for.”
I plant my hands on either side of her, looking hard into her eyes. “Cara,” I warn her. “I’m not going to let you walk out of this room until you tell me what it is you’ve been hiding from me.”
She squeezes her eyes shut, like she is trying to shut out the fact that this conversation is happening at all, but that’s not how this works.
“Cara.”
When I speak her name again, she looks at me, and I can see her chest rising and falling fast again.
She would do just about anything to get out of telling me what she is really thinking, but I refuse to let her distract me.
She’s not right about my business–it’s not the most important thing to me, not by a long shot.
What matters most to me is my legacy, and it lives in that little boy that I’ve entrusted her with.
She glances to the side, at my hand, the one with the spiderweb tattoo. And something finally gives in her expression, whatever she’s been hanging on to finally loosening up.
“I...we’ve met before, Alex,” she confesses finally. “A long time ago now. I don’t think you’d even remember me.”
I furrow my brow. “We’ve met before?”
She nods.
“That night at the masquerade ball,” she continues.
“I... I was the woman you took back up to your hotel room. We had sex, you got into the shower, and I left. You have to believe me, Alex, I had no idea it was you when I took the job, I never thought we were going to see each other again, and if I had...”
It all slots into place in my mind. Everything that happened that night—the smell of her, the sound of her voice, her long hair over one shoulder.
That’s what my body was trying to warn me of when the two of us encountered each other again, that there was a connection there that I might not be able to put into words.
Because I’ve never forgotten that night, or that woman. For as little as I saw of her face, I could make out every inch of her body, and it has burned itself on to my brain ever since.
When she left while I was showering, I figured that she might have a partner of her own, have been overcome by the guilt of what she had done, or just come to her senses and realized that it was more than slightly crazy to spend a night alone in a hotel room with a stranger whose name she didn’t even know.
But what we shared that night, when I took her on the bed, it’s something I’ve never found since. And I’ve looked, fuck, I’ve looked. There have been women since her, but none have come close to the thrill of that night.
And now, she is standing right in front of me, the nanny to my son, with a daughter of her own…
And that, of course, is when it hits me.