Chapter 14Vasily #2
The ATF training program, but I don’t point out her lie. I’m keeping enough from her.
“Tony’s got a picture of them, Lacey and her son. No idea who the dad is, but the little guy must take after him.”
“You know his name, by any chance? ”
“Nah, I don’t ask about her. Best I can tell, she got out, you know? Let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Right, right. Where’d she get out to?”
“Vasily,” Benedetti intones warningly. “You leave Lacey Lombardo alone. She’s a good girl. She doesn’t need your trouble.”
Maybe not, but Ana Baranov needs me, regardless of the trouble I bring.
And now that I’ve got a full network working on tracking down Artom, I can at least take Ana to meet her friend.
Hopefully, she won’t mind that we’re going to be returning to our unit with a plus one.
I want Alex to stay at least the night with us.
I know it’ll just add more problems to the mounting shitpile of problems, but the flip side of that is at this point, what’s one more problem?
“Weird that we’re meeting her on the rooftop, though,” Ana mutters as we make our way up to the roof.
I should have made Angelo convince Gino to meet me at a restaurant or something.
But hell, Ana’s memory is coming back one way or another.
This morning, she woke up, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “Pierogi is your favorite food.” She’s not remembered any events, far as I can tell, but facts are coming back.
Potentially facts like a rooftop with a helicopter was the site of our undoing.
A bout of nerves hits me as we reach the door to the roof, but I don’t want to let Ana go to retrieve my pills. It’s stressful enough not being able to guard Ana on both sides. I open the door and look to the helipad, the sun directly over it.
I shield my eyes in an attempt to get a better view of the chopper, but the sun is too low in the sky to see anything except white.
I reach back and take Ana by the shoulders, locking her in.
I have this feeling like everything is about to go wrong, but as long as Ana is right here, it’s going to be fine.
As we near the helicopter, it begins to blot the sun. My vision’s still blotchy as fuck, though, no sight for me for a few more seconds.
And because the chopper is quieting down, we both hear, with perfect clarity, a tiny, squeaky voice yell, “Mommy!”
I nearly trip over my own feet with the way my legs come to a halt beneath me. In the same breath, Ana freezes for a blink but then pulls away from me, sprinting ahead, her footfalls quiet enough in her soft-soled shoes that I can hear the clomp of palm-sized sneakers rushing toward us.
In a blink, the conversation with Angelo fast forwards through my brain. What did he say? Did he actually use Alex’s name? Give an age? Mention the Bratva or any personal details?
Your boy. That was all he said. Gino has your boy.
It’s not Alex being returned today. That disappearance hasn’t been solved. But this is—
“Artom?” Ana cries out. My sight is still fucked, dark blots against glowing backdrops, but I see her silhouette fall to her knees and stretch her arms wide as a waist-high silhouette lunges toward her. “Oh my goodness, Artom, I missed you so much!”
“Mommy, I was really scared,” the little boy replies, and it’s another blow.
My son was scared because I didn’t do my job as his father. He should have never been left alone, and Ana should have never been kidnapped. They should have never been anywhere that didn’t have full security with them at all times.
They should have been here.
“Miss Tia tried to call you about a billion times, and you never answered. And then these men I didn’t know came to get me, and Miss Tia told me that I had to go with them, but you told me I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers and that if a stranger tried to take me, I should go to someone I know for help, but I know Miss Tia! ”
His little voice rambles through his tale, and I take the time to stand there and listen, to figure out how the hell I’m ever going to be able to talk to him.
But I don’t have to. I just have to listen to his stories and make sure he knows that no matter what he does, I love him.
My eyes burn. My heart squeezes too tightly for me to breathe. My entire body is struggling to find even ground as too many synapses in my brain fire and my knees go so wobbly I have to lower myself, too.
Ana does what I should be doing, telling him, “Oh, my heart, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you what to do if that ever happened. That’s my fault.”
“It’s okay,” he says like it really is. Like he just needed an apology and everything would be good again.
But I think he’s going to need a lot more than an apology from me.
“And one of the strangers was my Uncle Tony! I didn’t know I had another uncle.
He bought me ice cream and let me stay with him. ”
Right, yeah. Angelo did say Gino had gotten him from Tony. I’d been thinking it was Alex, of course, but this makes sense, too. Tony doesn’t have a wife or kids, so he probably handed Artom over to Gino and Camilla.
My eyes finally start to clear up. I want to rush to Artom like Ana did, but he doesn’t know me any better than he knows Tony, and Ana deserves a moment with him, let her either remember him or just let her heart be soothed knowing that he’s back with us.
The path forward is going to be harsh for all of us, but we’ll figure it out .
I don’t let my eyes focus on the spot where they embrace.
I’m already too off kilter, and I need to do my job.
I need to greet Gino and Camilla, thank them, and discuss our next steps.
Review what’s happened with both Artom and Ana.
Find out where she was and what I need to do to get any relevant paperwork.
It’s the middle of the school year; I don’t even know how to put a kid in school or if I should hire a tutor.
And if Ana’s memories are still going to be fighting her, I’ll need their help for even the small shit like making sure my apartment is safe for him until I find us a better place to live.
I hope Gino and Camilla knew when they flew out here that they were going to be stuck here for a while.
Nah, it’s fine. Camilla and Ana used to talk on the phone for hours at a time.
I wave at the chopper, and only then do I realize there’s only one person standing next to it, and it’s neither Gino nor Camilla.
Oh, fuck.
“Ana, come here,” I say as calmly as I can as Tony’s eyes lock onto mine and he grins victoriously.
Ana stands, lifting Artom like an old pro even though she’s so petite she looks like she’ll topple over. My brother and I were both stocky boys. Papa always said we were built for brawling. From what I can see of his back, Artom looks to have taken after me in that way, too.
She doesn’t say anything, just gives me a peevish look and shakes her head like she doesn’t get why I’d be acting like there’s a threat when Artom is here.
I take a step toward them, wishing I’d paid better attention to how far Ana had run to meet Artom. I don’t want to be too dramatic here, but she’s closer to Tony than she is to me, and I don’t like that .
“Artom!” Tony calls in the friendliest, fakest voice I’ve ever heard from that man. “You forgot your headphones! You should come back and put them on before the pilot turns the helicopter back on.”
“Okay, Uncle Tony!”
Artom slides down Ana’s body like this is normal, a little boy literally just monkeying around, having a good time. He presses his hand right into Ana’s to drag her with him as she starts to say, “Tony? Are you my—?”
“Brother, yes. I’ve been so worried about you, Lacey.”
She looks back at me, and the fear in her features has me relieved that I told her as much as I did about how we ended up together. She already knows Tony’s a bad guy. This isn’t so big of a deal.
And I do have a gun on me. If Tony tries to get really shady, I absolutely don’t want to kill him in front of my wife and son, they don’t need to see their brother and uncle go out that way, but I’ll do whatever I must to protect my family.
Ana stops, and her hand is firm enough that Artom has to stop, too.
“No, my name’s Ana, not Lacey.”
Tony begins to close the gap between them, his hand outstretched with a child’s sized set of noise-cancelling headphones, and says, “Is that what he told you?”
Artom’s hand slips free of Ana’s so he can grab those headphones. He’s about to put them on when he looks back at her— and at me.
Even in the shadow, it’s impossible anyone would think he wasn’t my son.
God, he looks like a mirror reflection of my five-year-old self, like something out of a children’s show where the mirror shows your fantasy.
My side would have been our modest, crowded home in St. Petersburg, with bunk beds for Artyom and me and a little sister— not even out of diapers yet— chasing after us, our faces dirty, our knees scuffed.
But we dreamed of living in the sky, Artyom and I did.
Artom looks at Ana, gives the sweetest laugh, and says, “Who’s Ana? Mommy, everyone knows to call you Miss Lacey. ‘Cept me, ‘cause I call you Mommy!” He plops those headphones on, like what he said didn’t just royally fuck up my world, and sticks his hand back out to her.
Tony reaches out for her, too.
She looks between us, unsure.
“Ya tebya lyublyu, zvyozdochka,” I remind her. “You can’t believe Tony.”
“How dare you?” he barks at me, all bluster, as he pulls Artom to him and places his hands on either side of the headphones as though to make sure no sound will get in. “You need to come with me, Lacey. Come home.”
“This is your home!” I yell, fighting the urge to rush ahead. I can see Tony’s shoulder holster.
Ana gives me the most apologetic look, making me hopeful that, worst case scenario, she goes with Tony because he’s got his hands on Artom and she’ll be able to protect him until I can extract them both from Tony’s place.
Only, she shakes her head at a thought. “This isn’t though.
None of that stuff was mine. It was all unused. ”
“I can explain,” I rush out, attempting to take a careful step toward her, only to realize that Tony isn’t alone, of course.
There’s a pilot for the helicopter. And that’s a gun already on me.
“Lacey! He’s ruined your life once,” Tony warns her. “If you want to stay, I can’t stop you, but he’s going to ruin your life again. ”
“How? How did he ruin my life?”
Tony looks right at me, six years of hatred and malice and planning— although this was certainly not in his master plan— glowing bright in his eyes.
“He kidnapped us. You were just a college kid, Lacey, and he raped you right in front of me. And then he sent me back home but kept you for another two weeks, until he knew you were pregnant.”
“I didn’t know!” I bark out.
All but admitting to the rest of the accusations. Which are all but true, but fuck, it was all Tony’s fault to begin with.
“Please,” I call out weakly, realizing there is absolutely nothing I can do at this point except let her decide for herself. “Just come here so I can explain it to you.”
“I’ll even let you take Artom with you,” Tony says like he’s manufacturing halos on the side. “Let your boy see the man who abandoned you both.”
Ana shoots me one last glare, and it’s nothing less than venomous. “No, I’ve heard enough. Let’s go home.”