60. Velella Velella
VELELLA VELELLA
After dinner, I suggest we go down to the private beach. It’s low tide, meaning the small cove should be sandy enough to walk along.
Carina agrees cautiously. We spent dinner discussing the villa’s decorations and Italian climate, carefully avoiding any sensitive topics.
Fucking Maksim. He should have kept his mouth closed about Victoria.
And I should have shut up about Andrea. I saw the guilt flash across Carina’s face—exactly what I wanted to protect her from. Chances are, Igor would have found a way to mention his death to her if I hadn’t, and my father’s motivation would have been as cruel as mine.
I wanted to punish her for putting herself in danger.
If Igor claims she sent intelligence to her family, no one will argue that Carina deserves our protection, no matter her last name.
It was stupid to burn the letter before it could be translated, but I was concerned about what it might say.
I don’t believe Carina would knowingly share secrets with her family, but even the smallest of details could be harmful in the wrong hands.
If I return to Serebryanovo alone, everyone will believe that narrative.
Carina suddenly pauses our slow descent, then starts running down the remaining steep steps. Her bare feet slap against solid stone.
I tense, reaching for my gun and scanning our surroundings. The sun hasn’t set yet, its reflection off the calm sea blinding. No boats are visible on the water, no one in distress that I can see. Nothing on the cliff or overhead either.
Finally, I see what she noticed. Smell it, rather. The beach is fully exposed, large swaths of sand covered with dead sea creatures that have been baking in the sun for hours. The fishy, decaying aroma makes me want to gag. For some reason, Carina’s rushing closer to it.
I call her name, taking the steps two at a time to try to catch up. We reach the bottom stair at the same time, yet Carina tries to keep going. I wrap an arm around her waist, holding her back from the beach.
She attempts to pull away for a couple of seconds, and then her body goes limp.
“They’re la barchetta di San Pietro,” she says mournfully.
“Small boat of … Saint Peter?”
“Your Italian is better than my Russian.” Her tone is rueful and still sad.
“Velella velella is the species name. By-the-wind sailors. They’re marine colonies that float on the ocean surface.
They rely entirely on the wind to blow them around, so they get stranded during storms. A bunch washed ashore on the beach where Leo got married.
E-Enzo and I spent hours tossing them back in the waves. ”
“They don’t sting?”
“They use their tentacles to catch plankton. I did some research after that night. I was fascinated by them. They …” Her voice trails.
“They kind of reminded me of … me. They drift at the mercy of currents and wind. I felt aimless, too, like I had no purpose or couldn’t make my own decisions. Sort of … fragile.”
“Or resilient. We all navigate storms the best we can.”
I stare at the stranded jellyfish past the strands of Carina’s dark hair blowing in the wind. Some are fully translucent, their texture crinkled, like candy wrappers. A few have a bluish tint, which must be their normal hue.
“I keep navigating wrong.” Her gaze is straight ahead, tone resolute.
I still haven’t told her about Salvatore’s real plan concerning Nico Morello, and she already has regrets.
“I’m sorry,” she adds.
“For what?”
“For everything I’ve … messed up.”
“I don’t think you’ve messed anything up.”
She scoffs. “Are you serious?”
I spin us so she’s bracketed between the cliff and me. “Very. There’s nothing you could do that I wouldn’t consider extraordinary, Carina.”
“You’re mad I wrote that letter and got Andrea killed and messed up your entire life.”
“Is that all?” I drawl.
Carina rolls her eyes, then shoves my chest. “Move.”
I don’t. “I’m mad that you gave my father another reason to mistrust you because that puts you in more danger. I’m mad they killed Andrea because it’s going to be harder for me to be in a room with your father. But I’m not mad you messed up my entire life because you didn’t.”
“That’s not—wait. Why would you be in a room with my father?”
“I found out what was on the drive.”
“What? You did? When?” She hurls the questions at me rapidly.
“It’s a kill file on Nico Morello. Addresses, names of associates, guards, surveillance reports. Building plans for a church, where I assume you were supposed to get married.”
She blinks rapidly, processing. “I—that doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does. Your father was using you, but not the way it seemed. My guess is, he was intending to make the assassination appear accidental. Poison or a targeted attack that injured some of his men too. If an alliance between the families was imminent, he’d be in a prime position to step in for Morello, absorbing businesses while removing competition.
He’d double his territory and resources overnight. ”
“He wasn’t actually going to make me marry Nico?”
“That’s a question for him. But it appears the attack was supposed to happen at the church. They knew where and when Morello would be. Lots of people, lots of staff, lots of confusion. That’s how I would do it.”
Carina exhales, slumping back against the cliff. “Why wouldn’t my father tell me?”
“The drive’s encryption was advanced. The information was carefully guarded. He wouldn’t have wanted to risk Morello finding out.”
She shakes her head. “Meaning he didn’t trust me.”
“It was a smart plan. If it’d worked, he would have gained a lot of power. Power he could have used to protect you.”
“So, I’m supposed to forget the twenty-eight years of hiding me away, only to announce my existence so he could marry me off to a psychopath because it might mean I’d be able to live near my family for the first time ever?”
“You’re not supposed to do anything, Carina. I brought you here so you could decide. If you want to go back, I’ll take you. That was the point of this trip.”
“The point? You planned this? How long have you known about this?”
“A few weeks,” I admit.
“A few weeks?” she echoes incredulously.
“I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”
“And you think I’m keeping secrets? You just tell me, Lev. That’s the whole point of a partnership or a relationship or whatever the fuck this is.”
“We’re married, Carina. Because you ran from an engagement. You married me so you could stop running. If your family will protect you from Morello, then …”
“Then what?” she demands.
Then I’ll kill him and leave you alone. I don’t say the first part aloud because Carina has a more traditional moral code than I do, but Morello deserves to die, and I don’t trust the Carusos to handle him.
And I don’t have a chance to say the second part aloud before Carina tells me, “Not running is not why I married you.”
I wait, the obvious question hovering between us.
She sucks in a breath. Glances right, at the sandy graveyard or maybe at the waves past it.
Then her gaze returns to mine, eyes filled with new resolve.
“If I had to give a reason … it probably had a lot to do with how I’d been in love with you since I was …
eighteen? Seventeen? I think the night you were stabbed was when I realized—you pointed a fucking gun at me, Lev!
And what did I do? Run? No. I stopped you from overdosing on vodka after taking antibiotics and painkillers and whatever else.
Insisted on changing your bandage like I had any sort of medical training—who does that?
I was trying to … impress you, and you should have been in a hospital—why are you smiling? ”
Am I? I didn’t realize.
I turn serious because this is important. “It probably had a lot to do with you saying you’ve been in love with me for ten or eleven years.”
Carina swallows hard. Shakes her head a little. “You knew.”
“I didn’t.”
I never allowed myself to consider how Carina felt about me. There was no ideal. Her caring would hurt. So would her not caring. I had nothing to offer her in Chicago, and I’ve been fixated on keeping her safe since.
“Now you do.” She ducks under my arm and races toward the water.
I abandon my gun on the stairs and chase after her. Dead jellyfish crunch under my shoes, replaced by a suctioning sound once the sand becomes wet.
Carina’s underwater, flashes of her white dress visible between cresting waves.
I don’t make a habit of swimming fully dressed, and somehow, it’s happened twice today. I wade deeper, the salty, sticky ocean steadily saturating my clothes. I’m a dutiful soldier, but there aren’t many people I’d willingly do this for. There’s only one, really.
Carina bobs to the surface ahead like a sea nymph, a look of surprised delight spreading across her face as the stretch of water between us shrinks.
She starts swimming this way, her progress much faster than mine, until she’s clinging to me like a piece of seaweed, arms around my neck and legs around my waist.
“I wasn’t sure you could swim.”
She smiles at the lie, tightening her hold. “I can. I had a good teacher.” Her expression sobers. “I dream about that pool sometimes. I’m there … and you’re there. We float. You tell me not to trust anyone. You usually have a knife.”
“Do I hurt you?”
“No,” she answers quickly. “No, I know you’d never hurt me.
I’ve always known that. I wasn’t scared when you pointed that gun at me, just surprised.
I think the dreams were my way of … warning myself?
You were always so careful about keeping boundaries between us.
I tried to think the same way, to pretend we were a series of one-night stands. It worked … some of the time.”
I want to interrupt, to tell her that it was that way because it needed to be, not because I wanted it to be, but I stay silent. Let her finish.
“I made assumptions about how you felt to keep myself sane. Convinced myself you did care or you didn’t, whatever I needed to believe that particular night.
And I’ve kept making assumptions because you were doing so much for me already.
Because it felt … selfish, I guess, to put you in that position or to ask for validation on top of you fixing problems that hadn’t been yours in the first place.
Or the ones that had been caused by me. Except now …
I don’t know what’s real. What’s dream or what’s reality. ”
Her eyes search my face, looking for answers.
“You asked how many men I’ve killed? I don’t remember them all.
But I remember the first. Igor woke up Aleksandr in the middle of the night.
My room was across the hall from his. I saw the lights.
Heard the voices. I was curious, so I followed them downstairs.
I must have been seen at some point, but no one stopped me.
They brought Aleksandr out by the kennel. ”
I close my eyes briefly, recalling it all perfectly—the crisp night air, the bright lights, the semicircle of stoic men.
“There was a hooded man on his knees. Igor handed Aleksandr a gun and told him to shoot.”
Carina inhales sharply. “How old was he?”
“Thirteen.”
“And you?”
“Eleven.”
She bites her bottom lip.
I continue, “Aleksandr kept asking who the man was. Igor didn’t like that—he hates being questioned.
By his heir, in front of his men? He was like a ticking bomb, waiting to go off.
I could always tell when Igor was close to losing his temper.
I paid closer attention to his moods than my brothers did.
So, I walked over and held a hand out. Igor gave me the gun, and I pulled the trigger.
I’d fired a gun before, but it’d always been at a paper target.
I had good aim though. Hit his head. Igor was proud.
Aleksandr was embarrassed … angry. He didn’t speak to me for weeks. ”
“Who was the man?”
“Remember Misha?”
Carina nods.
“His father was caught skimming. Took a cut while collecting profits. He needed the money to pay a loan shark who had taken advantage of his gambling habit. Offered to pay every cent back. I found out after. ‘We’re not in the banking business,’ Igor told me.
Misha is only a couple of years older than I am.
His father used to play with us while Igor was with his mistresses. ”
I swallow hard.
“The point is, I did it. I killed Misha’s father, and I’ve followed every other order Igor has ever given.
Except for handing over you. That I couldn’t do.
That is real, Carina. I would kill for you—I have, and I’ll do it again if it’s ever necessary.
I’ll always be between you and any threat.
Your life matters more to me than anyone else’s, including my own. ”
“Wow,” she whispers. “And to think, some guys just say I love you.”
I should have said that too. “I love you.” I brush a stray droplet off her cheek, belatedly realizing the salty streak wasn’t from the ocean. “I’ve never said that before.”
Her smile is tremulous. “I want to go to my father’s.”