Chapter 37
NATALIA
One month later…
It was easy to take Leks back after thinking he was dead. I was so consumed with relief that all I wanted was to prove to myself that he was really here.
…it’s harder to trust him again.
I keep thinking he’s going to leave me alone and carry out some plan I don’t know about. I still shake when I remember those hours that I waited for him to return and he didn’t. He was in danger and I had no idea. He could have died. I thought he had.
We’ve moved into my family’s home. It feels familiar but not. I’m an entirely different person from the girl who lived here.
The house is different too. Leks doesn’t trust my father’s staff. He wanted to fire them all, but I told him to put them on paid leave until Yuri could do background checks on them all. It’s a slow process, but we’ve finally got a cleaner back.
Mama has moved out. She practically fainted when we came downstairs that day, covered in blood, Leks needing serious medical attention for his burns and smoke inhalation.
Still, I knew it was better to rip the bandaid off.
My mother had been living a lie the same way I had, and she needed to hear the truth.
When she’d calmed down from the initial shock, we sat her down and told her the truth.
She pretends not to hear us, not to understand, for an entire week, not speaking to either of us.
Until finally, she dragged me into the living room and made me tell her everything I know about my father’s involvement in my brother’s deaths.
That sent her into a spiral. So much that she’s moved into one of the Manhattan apartments instead of the mansion where I grew up. She said it was too much to stay here with all the memories of my father, to be looking at the physical reminder that she believed a lie for all those years.
I like that we have the space to shape a life of our own here.
I’ve been trapped in a life that wasn’t my own for far too long to want a repeat.
Today when I sit down for breakfast — French toast, made by Leks, because we still don’t have cooking staff — he points me towards a spot behind my head on the wall. With a sip of coffee still in my mouth, I notice the new painting framed there. It can’t be. I almost choke on my coffee.
The Cholmondoley painting of the duck. Either it’s a perfect replica and Leks has found an art forger who is too good for my skills to detect. Or…
“That one is real. I thought the fire destroyed it.”
“I know, zolotse. It’s ours.”
I stand up to take a closer look. It’s perfect. But it’s not ours.
“We can’t hang a stolen painting in the dining room, Leks! What will people think?”
He lifts his gaze up to the painting then looks back at me, suppressing a laugh.
“Maybe they’ll think we’re involved in organized crime or something.”
I shake my head. “You laugh now, but what’s going to happen when you have to build business relationships and they see this?”
“Luckily, I think you’re the only person in the world with a record of every stolen painting in your head. Other people will just think it’s a weird painting of a dead duck.”
I elbow him in the side. “You have no taste.”
He tilts his head at the painting. “I really don’t see anything special about it. I like your ones better.”
I roll my eyes.
Leks is always telling me to do more painting, and every time, I feel the same mixture of joy and discomfort. I love how supportive he is, but I can’t help feeling that I’m not good enough for his belief in me.
This past month I’ve been painting a lot, and while I love it as an outlet, I’m sure no one else will ever want to look at it.
“They’ll never be good enough to hang in a room like this. I’m not talented enough.”
Leks wraps a hand in my hair and pulls me to face him. “That’s Maksim talking. You can’t let him win like that.”
He rubs his thumb over my lower lip. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
“That your art is good. That you are an artist. That you deserve to express your emotions through art.”
“Leks, you don’t have to—”
He growls from the back of his throat. “This isn’t for you. This is purely self-indulgence, for me.”
A sudden wave of emotion hits me in the back of my throat.
“My art is good enough.”
“Not good enough,” he growls. “It’s good, period, end of story.”
“My art is good.” I gulp in air. “I am an artist.”
He strokes the side of my cheek, wiping away a tear.
“And?”
“I deserve to express my emotions through art.”
“There you go, zolotse. Now get your perfect ass back into your studio and show me what you can do.”