Chapter 42
CASSIE
“You may sit,” Anna (Irina?) said, escorting us into the living room after Hawk returned from moving the car.
The interior of the cottage was exactly as it appeared outside: small and cozy, worn furniture arranged around a fire that burned low in a stone hearth, table lamps casting a soft glow over the room.
A quilt was folded across the back of the chintz sofa, two overstuffed armchairs covered in a faded tapestry next to the fireplace. A simple kitchen with pale wood cabinets was visible from the living room and three doors marched down the single hall.
Bedrooms probably.
Jagger and Vigo took the chairs next to the fireplace while I sat at one end of the sofa and Hawk stood next to the window that looked out over the trees surrounding the side of the house.
Anna stood nervously between the kitchen and living room, looking like she might decide to bolt at any minute.
She was tall and slender, with perfect posture and an elegant tilt to her chin.
Her blonde hair was threaded with silver, but her face was sill mostly unlined, and I guessed her to be somewhere in her mid-forties, although her long skirt and the oversized beige cardigan she wore over a gray turtleneck was more suited to someone much older.
She had the sharp bone structure of a model, and while she was attractive even now, she must have been a knockout when she’d been young.
Her hands fluttered nervously to the pendant around her neck, a religious figure I didn’t recognize suspended by a gold chain. “Would you care for tea?”
I heard again the Russian accent.
“No, thank you,” I said.
“I’ll certainly need some,” she said, turning for the kitchen.
I let my gaze sweep the room while she moved around the kitchen.
The room had been almost overtaken by books.
They groaned from the shelves on one wall, were stacked on the side tables and even the floor.
A laptop sat closed on a small table near the window where Hawk stood, staring through the glass at the surrounding landscape like a guard on patrol.
Something soft bumped against my calf and I looked down to find a gray cat with yellow eyes sliding past me.
I ran my hand along its silky fur and heard it start to purr.
“That’s Misha,” Anna said, returning with a tray laden with cups and a porcelain tea pot. “She’s usually shy.”
The cat made a U-turn, returning for more pets, and I stroked her back as she made her way to Anna, who set the tray down with shaking hands on the coffee table next to a bouquet of roses in a chipped blue-and-white vase.
She poured the tea and handed me one of the cups, then handed one to each of the Hawks. They looked ridiculous holding the fragile porcelain cups, and I fought against the urge to laugh.
Maybe I was finally losing my mind.
“Are these your bodyguards?” Anna asked, sitting at the other end of the sofa.
“They’re my… friends,” I said.
Her gaze flickered to Hawk, then Vigo and Jagger before returning to me. Her eyes were sharp and knowing. “You’ve put your… friends, and yourself, in danger by coming here. To say nothing of me.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go.” I hesitated. “Can I ask how you knew my parents?”
She poured cream into her tea from a small porcelain pitcher with a rose-vine border. “I met your mother when I was in school.” She set the creamer down and took a drink of the tea. “In Blackwell Falls.”
“You went to school in Blackwell Falls?” I asked.
“At Aventine,” Hawk guessed. “In the Queens’ house.”
She nodded and returned her tea to the saucer, then leaned forward to set it on the coffee table before turning her cool gray gaze on me. “Your mother was at Bellepoint.”
“At the same time?” I knew my mom had attended Bellepoint, an all-girls school outside of Blackwell Falls. I’d just never imagined her having any contact with the kids from Aventine a couple miles away.
But of course she would. Any straight girl attending an all-girls college would probably be looking for boys, and Aventine was full of the beautiful and dangerous sons of criminals.
And the daughters, like Anna.
Anna nodded. “We met at a party at the quarry. I was called Irina back then, although I’m sure you already know that. Quarry parties were usually reserved for our kind but for some reason your mother was there. I’d later learn this was one of her superpowers.”
“What was?”
“Getting into places where she didn’t belong,” Anna said. “Finding out things she shouldn’t know.”
“You became friends?” I asked.
Her eye took on a faraway look. “Not right away. I didn’t trust outsiders easily — a byproduct of my family’s business — but I kept running into her and eventually we did indeed become friends.”
“What do you know about Dimitri Kaprolov?” Hawk asked.
I glared at him and returned my gaze to Anna. “And you stayed friends? With my mom?”
“More or less,” Anna said. “We grew apart some as our lives changed — I moved to London, she got married and had your brother, then you — but we stayed in touch.” She rose to her feet. “Actually, I have something you might like to see.”
She disappeared into one of the rooms off the hall and I looked at Hawk. “Let me talk to her,” I hissed.
“No offense, mouse,” Vigo said, his legs now draped over the side of Anna’s chair, “but you’re definitely taking your sweet time.”
“Too bad,” I said. “And sit up straight, get your legs off Anna’s chair.”
Vigo looked wounded but he sat up, his tea cup teetering in the saucer as he removed his legs from the furniture.
Anna returned to the room holding a photograph. She handed it to me and I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.
It was a picture of my parents, only a little older than me. A little boy about six years old— Bram — frowned next to my father while my mom balanced me on her hips, my red hair curly around my chubby face.
My parents looked young and happy, my mom pretty, with long red hair and a breezy smile, my dad in glasses, one arm slung easily over my mom’s shoulders, the other resting on Bram’s head.
“I think you were about three in this picture?” Anna said.
“I’ve never seen this before,” I said.
“Catherine sent it to me in a Christmas card, I believe.”
I took a deep breath, trying to find a polite way to the most important of my questions.
“My parents left behind some papers. A lot of it doesn’t seem super important, but there were some bank records — wire transfers — that they’d highlighted from Kensington Trust. I wondered…
well, I wondered if you knew anything about those. ”
She reached for her tea and took another drink. Her hands were shaking again, and the cup rattled against the saucer.
“Of course, I do,” she said. “I was placed there. By the Bratva.”