Chapter 11 - Mira
“Sarah, he’s being so stubborn about forcing me to get married!” Mira wailed as she watched her father’s minions running this way and that as they decorated the estate.
Sarah said nothing but kept arranging the room quietly. She moved over to where some clothes were stuffed into a hamper and began to fold them carefully, one after the other.
Mira turned to look at the other girl and wanted to give her a shake. “Did you hear me, Sarah? Despite what I’ve found out about what he did to my mother, and despite knowing I’m no longer a virgin, he still wants me to get married to the stodgy old geezer he chose for me.”
Sarah looked up from the clothes she was folding, then dropped them onto the bed and came forward with a sigh. “It’s not my place to say, ma’am, but it stands to reason that s’long as you’re here and you’re single, he’s gonna be after you to get married.”
Sarah sometimes had an accent she spoke with that was somewhat hard to describe, but Mira had found the other girl to be wise beyond her years. She was also so loyal to Mira that they’d become friends almost immediately after meeting each other for the first time.
Mira’s eyes widened in alarm as she asked, “Are you advising me to run away?”
Sarah shrugged. “You’ll barely take two steps past the gate before his men would be all over you.”
“Then what should I do?” Mira demanded.
Sarah was silent for a minute as she thought. Then she sank onto the bed beside Mira and said with a quiet, shy smile, “I love reading romance novels.”
Mira failed to see how that helped her situation, but she wisely refrained from saying so.
“I once read a Judith McNaught novel where the male lead said he had only two hands and he had pledged them both. So he couldn’t marry the other lady who was angling after him because he’d gotten married already to her rival,” Sarah finished almost breathlessly.
Mira frowned. “So your advice is to just up and get married?”
Sarah threw a surreptitious look at the door as though she were afraid someone might be eavesdropping. Then she nodded vigorously.
“You’re missing the point, Sarah. I do not want to get married. Why would I escape one marriage only to end up in another one?” Mira demanded. “I don’t want to be shackled to some man. My career is only just taking off.”
“You don’t understand,” Sarah said, clasping Mira’s hands in hers. “It would be a fake marriage, but only you and the man would know that. Plus, he would have to let you stay at his place as well to lend um…what’s the word? To make your marriage believable?”
“You mean lend credence?” Mira offered.
“Precisely,” Sarah crowed with delight. “As far as your father is concerned, it would be a real marriage, and he would back off. Then when he’s off this marriage craze, you and the fake husband can shake hands on the deal and canter off, going your separate ways in a thrice.”
Mira mentally rolled her eyes. In a thrice! Angling after! Sarah did need to stop reading those Regency romances; they were affecting her speech patterns.
“Well?” Sarah prompted, oblivious of Mira’s distracted thoughts.
Mira had to concede that it wasn’t a terribly bad idea. It could work. Whoever her father had lined up for her could hardly marry her if she was already married. Then, once the threat of marriage was no longer over her head, she could divorce whatever poor sod she had fake-married and go her merry way.
And the best part was, she would get the satisfaction of being out from under her father’s control while she dug up more information on just what had happened to her mother. Her father had pretty much confessed it, but then he’d clamped up at the last minute.
Mira had forgiven him for a lot over the years, but if she found hard evidence that he really had killed her mother, she would be his worst nightmare. She wouldn’t stop until she had avenged her mother’s death.
Remembered anger coursed through her and she absently clenched her fist around Sarah’s wrist, making the poor girl cry out in pain. She released her friend’s hand immediately, with profuse apologies.
“What are you thinking about?” Sarah demanded.
“I think it’s a brilliant plan, Sarah. But what man would be brave enough to risk my father’s anger even for a fake marriage?”
Sarah paled, just thinking about Dostoevsky’s anger. He’d been known to kill men with nothing but his bare hands when he was in a fit of rage. Then she brightened. “What about the guy you slept with? Sex-in-a-limo guy,” she prompted, using a nickname she and Mira had come up with for the stranger she’d slept with that night. “He must have been brave to be the one to, um, get it on with you.”
Mira fought not to blush.
“I mean, it was your first time,” Sarah continued, “and your father would have harvested his kneecaps if he’d known about it.”
Mira shook her head regretfully. “I don’t know who he is or where he is. I can’t find him again.”
It was true. Though her eyes had searched for him in as many places as she could, all over Chicago for the past two weeks, she’d seen neither hide nor hair of him. True, she hadn’t returned to the club; but what would have been the point?
“I want to hurt my father very badly. He killed my mother and he turned me into a pawn in his stupid power games,” Mira whispered to no one in particular.
Sarah patted her shoulder gently and Mira felt tears of anger well up in her eyes.
“I never knew my mother as a child. Her husband killed her,” she whispered absently, as though in a daze. But then, just like that, the dam burst and she began to sob.
Sarah gathered her into a hug against her small frame, letting her cry against her shoulder. When she was spent, Mira’s mind was made up.
She looked at Sarah. “There’s only one man alive who isn’t afraid of him.” She’d been unable to call him her father ever since she’d become convinced that he killed her mother.
“Who’s that?” Sarah asked.
“Nikolai. I don’t know his full name, but I’ve heard… Oleg mention the name like a curse word enough times to know he hates him and the feeling’s probably mutual.”
“You can call him your father, you know,” Sarah said. “He’s been Father to you all your life. It would be hard to drop that overnight and switch to his first name.”
“I’ll find Nikolai and make him an offer he can’t possibly refuse,” Mira vowed.
Sarah frowned at her. “Why do you think he’s gonna want anything to do with you? Are you going to ask him to marry his enemy’s daughter? What if he’s already married?”
Mira shook her head. “He isn’t married. I once heard Father— Oleg —complaining that if Nikolai were married, he could grab his wife or kids to teach him a lesson. But I won’t broach the subject of marriage, thank you very much. I’ll simply ask him to partner with me; we can take Fath— Oleg down if we work together. I’ll hide out at Nikolai’s place until then.”
Sarah’s eyes were wide as saucers as she looked at Mira. “I’ve heard enough about this Nikolai to know he’s even more ruthless than your father, ma’am. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Mira sighed. “What other choice do I have? I would be getting married tonight to a sixty-something-year-old man otherwise, and helping out my mother’s murderer. Besides, Nikolai doesn’t seem to be afraid of… Oleg , and that’s exactly what I need right now. Something tells me this Nikolai will enjoy working with me to make Fath— Oleg suffer for his sins.”
“Okay, I’ll help you get ready,” Sarah said, springing to her feet.
Mira dressed hurriedly, careful to put on a white dress with splotches of red floral scattered all over it. The stark white of the dress emphasized her porcelain skin and made her look ethereal. She tugged on a pair of low-slung red sandals and carried a small red clutch.
“You look as if you’re going to the salon or something,” Sarah said.
“Yeah, that’s the plan. He thinks women are only ever good for one thing—looking good. So if I say I’m going to the salon before the wedding, he’ll think I’ve become obedient and he won’t ask any of his men to keep an eye on me,” Mira reasoned.
She stuffed all her mother’s gold and diamonds in her possession into a small duffel bag and packed all the cash in her safe into the bag too. She wasn’t sure what she was going to find, but she knew she had to be financially buoyant. If she knew the first thing about her father, he would try to freeze all her accounts. Good thing she’d opened an account he didn’t know about. She took out her phone and transferred as much money as she could into that account.
“If my plan works, I may never be able to come back here,” Mira said, putting her phone away and looking up at Sarah.
Sarah’s eyes filled with tears as she said, “No one is ever nice to me here, except you.”
Mira grabbed her by the shoulders. “If I am successful, you’ll come join me. But until then, do not under any circumstances let… Oleg so much as suspect that you knew I was going to leave, or that you helped me. He would surely kill you if he knew.”
Sarah nodded mutely.
Mira gave the girl a smile, forcing a bravado she was far from feeling. It wasn’t every day one met one’s father’s archenemy and convinced him to shelter one in his villa. What if he saw this as an opportunity to hurt her father by hurting her? What if he chose to take her hostage?
There was no help for it. She was going to meet her father’s worst enemy whether she wanted to or not. All that was left to do now was find his address and sneak out before anyone noticed.