Prologue #2
The result is an occasion big enough to include the men from Alexei’s Miami crew who once helped protect and save my sister and me.
Formal enough to include invitations and an RSVP date, but intimate enough that almost everyone knows each other.
Alexei can’t possibly avoid coming, given that he’s pakhan in Miami and Darya’s brother.
Without such meticulous planning, I believe Alexei to be entirely capable of avoiding me for the rest of his life.
Abruptly, the string quartet cuts from the soft strains of Pachelbel to something far more dramatic. It takes me a second to realize Benny is playing the theme music from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Pirate Boy.
Alexei is here.
Even without Benny’s less than covert warning, I think I’d have known.
It’s the way people move instinctively aside as the heavy wooden doors open. The sudden lull in conversation when they catch sight of Alexei’s grim, scarred face and lone eye, then the hasty resumption of nervous chatter as they all studiously look away again.
It’s the subtle shift of energy that happens when a crowd tries to pretend that a class A predator hasn’t just appeared in their midst.
It takes me a moment to realize I’m gripping the arbor hard enough to put ridges in my hand, half hidden by the scented flowers.
Not exactly the picture of confidence, Ofelia.
“Lars!” My brother Mickey greets the lanky man at Alexei’s side with a warm hug. “About bloody time.” He claps the tech genius on the shoulder. “Let me get you a drink.” He clasps Alexei’s hand politely, but with considerably less warmth. “Lex. Good of you to come.”
Mickey knows, or at least suspects, more than the rest of my family about my feelings for Alexei.
But he’d never betray my confidence by talking about it. Not even to me. Not unless I raise it first.
That’s the thing about growing up in our world.
We know how to keep secrets. Our own, and each other’s.
Especially secrets that can kill.
And the secrets between Alexei and me would mean his death if anyone ever discovered them.
Mickey might not ask the hard questions, but he’s still a son of the bratva, and beneath his courteous, tech geek exterior, I know my brother is every bit the killer my father is. By the grim way Alexei returns Mickey’s greeting, he knows it, too.
Great.
Off to our usual flying, dysfunctional start, then.
Unless you face him, it won’t get any better.
I put my glass on a side table and step out of the shadows, a smile on my face.
“Ofelia!” Lars bounds upstairs to me with his arms open wide.
“Darling, you look divine. Happy birthday.” He kisses me soundly on both cheeks, blue eyes warm and open, then steps back, still holding my arms. Blond hair flops across a face perpetually tanned by the Arctic sun of his native Sweden.
Despite having made his first millions before turning twenty, Lars is entirely unaffected, and affectionate as a Doberman puppy.
He’s also Alexei’s oldest and closest friend.
“Thank you for coming.” I return his embrace without looking at the man standing several steps behind him. “I wasn’t sure you’d make it.” My rebuke is just as pointed as Mickey’s, even if I keep my eyes squarely on Lars as I deliver it.
“We wouldn’t have missed it for the world, beautiful.” Lars’s easy smile remains in place, but the twist at the edge of his mouth and faint narrowing of his eyes tell a different story.
I’d bet every one of the lavish presents stacked on an inside table that Lars is the sole reason Alexei made it here tonight.
“My gift doesn’t fit on the table.” He waves his phone at me.
“I’ve sent you a digital booking form for a week on my new yacht, anywhere in the world that you choose.
Fully catered, for you and all your friends.
Just say the word and I’ll have it sailed to a port of your choosing and fly you all there. ”
“Lars!” I hug him again. “That is so kind of you.”
“You’re welcome, darling.” He busses my cheek as his arms wrap firmly around my waist, and for a moment I close my eyes and stay there, head on his shoulder, relishing his easy, comforting embrace.
It’s always like this with Lars.
Simple. Affectionate. Uncomplicated.
Then I open my eyes, and my heart stops.
Alexei is staring directly at me.
For a brief, unguarded moment, the savagery in his lone eye makes my heart stop and a primal thrill race through my body.
Then Lars steps back to accept a drink from Mickey, effectively blocking Alexei from view. By the time he moves away, Alexei’s face is once more the blank, hard facade he always shows the world.
“Happy birthday.” His voice is flat and cold, and he speaks from three stairs down, making no move to approach me.
“Thank you.” I’m surprised my voice works at all. For that matter, I’m astonished the entire night hasn’t suddenly come to an abrupt halt.
I find it hard to imagine nobody notices the tension crackling between us. But somehow the clink of glasses and murmur of conversation continue unabated, the party moving on as if my whole world didn’t just get knocked off its axis.
Benny’s sudden switch from Pirates of the Caribbean to the ominous opening chords to Beethoven’s Fifth is the only acknowledgment that fate has come knocking, and fortunately, it has the effect of making me smile.
Alexei nods dryly at the string quartet. “Friends of yours, I take it?”
“They are, yes.” I seize on the conversation opening like it’s a life buoy.
“Benny, the cellist, studied with me in London. And Lourdes, over there”—I nod at my friend, who is staring at Lars, Mickey, and Alexei in open fascination—“studied classical guitar, but her family is from Granada, so she plans to stay here now and focus on flamenco instead.”
I realize, too late, that I’m babbling.
Alexei’s mouth quirks. “I wasn’t aware we needed to submit a biography with our RSVP.” He takes a step closer, and I inhale sharply. “I’m not sure what mine would say.”
Even from two steps below me, his eyes are level with my own. He takes another step, filling my senses with the dusky, dangerous scent that still haunts both my dreams and my nightmares.
“Kidnapper?” He says the word like a silken caress. “Murderer?”
He’s tall enough that I have to tilt my head to look up at him. I swallow on the sudden thickness in my throat as he takes the final step and puts one scarred hand on the arbor beside me, towering over me so he blocks the rest of the party from view.
“Maybe you should start with the basics.” I’m astonished that I can speak at all. “Criminal, for example. Or pakhan.”
His lip curls in rare humor. Goaded by some inner demon, I whisper, “Torturer.”
His hand clenches on the arbor, hard enough to make the wood creak, and his knuckles turn white, his eye boring into mine.
“Torturer.” He rasps the word like it’s being torn from him. “That’s the only word that really matters, Ofelia, isn’t it?”
We’re closer than we’ve been in all the years since I left the Orlovs’ cell. Suddenly I’m back on that concrete floor, Alexei looming over me, his blade searing my flesh, his whispered warning hot in my ear: “Trust me . . .”
“Lex.” A broad Australian accent interrupts us, sweeping the tension away like an ocean wave, and just like that, the moment is gone. “Good to see you, brother.” It’s the calm tone of Luke Macarthur, one of my father’s best friends.
Alexei turns away, bestowing a rare smile on Luke’s bearlike form.
I sag against the arbor, heart thudding like a racehorse, barely able to catch my breath.
“How do you not have a glass in your hand?” Zinaida Melikov, Luke’s immaculately dressed wife, turns me deftly away from the crowd. “Breathe.” She steers me toward a quiet corner. “Nobody is watching. Here.” She pours a shot from an open vodka bottle, then pushes it into my hand. “Drink.”
I wince as the liquor burns my throat.
“Good.” She refills the shot glass. “Now have another.”
I toss it back. “Aren’t you supposed to be one of the responsible adults in the room?”
Zin arches a perfect eyebrow. “I doubt anyone would ever accuse me of being responsible. But I am definitely adults-only, which means I know when a girl is in need of a drink.”
I laugh then, which helps still my racing heart.
Zinaida runs the Quartier, London’s most exclusive burlesque club. It’s as famous for its orgies as its clandestine guest list.
The Quartier was also the scene of my last disastrous meeting with Alexei a year ago, after my first solo piano recital.
Tonight is the first time we’ve met since.
It was Zinaida who held my hand that night, when I cried my eyes out.
Zin is also an utterly terrifying criminal mastermind, one even my father wouldn’t dare cross. She’s also one of the only women he calls friend.
Killer. Friend.
In my world, those are the kinds of juxtapositions you live with.
“Your face is still perfect.” She eyes me critically.
“Take a deep breath, this glass of Krug, and put on that stunning smile of yours.” She hands me a flute.
“Then get out there and make every bastard in this room, Alexei Petrovsky included, believe that you’re having the most fabulous night of your life.
“As for you,” she says, turning a glacial stare to Benny, “stop with the theatrics and play something happy, for Chrissakes.”
Benny, chastened, shifts smoothly into a sweet rendition of an old Fleetwood Mac song that instantly makes the night feel nostalgic.
I touch Zinaida’s hand. “Thank you.”
She nods briskly. “Now, unless you fancy your birthday turning into a bloodbath, do us both a favor and stay the fuck away from Petrovsky for the rest of the night.”
That’s what I like about Zinaida. She doesn’t try to sugarcoat our world—or pretend that any of the players in it are innocent.
Taking a decent slug of Krug, I step out into the crowd.
Several hours later, I’ve drunk just enough to make the night magical, but not quite enough to make me unsteady in my stilettoes.