20. Ofelia
Ofelia
“You are going to tell me everything.” Lourdes hugs me tightly in the marina parking lot. It’s far too early for southern Spain to be awake, and there’s not a soul in sight as I open the car door.
“I will.” I tilt my head warningly toward Teresa, who is opening the driver’s door. “When we get back to Granada.”
Teresa snorts as we get in. “Oh, please.” She gives me a withering look in the rearview mirror. “Like the entire crew didn’t have to wear earplugs to drown out the sound effects for the last week.”
I shake my head. “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be more discreet.”
“Yeah, well.” She turns the key, looking exceptionally unimpressed. “Bet you wish I’d won the coin toss now.”
“Coin toss?” Lourdes gives me a quizzical look.
“She and Julia tossed for who got to ride the Ducati,” I explain. “Teresa lost.”
“Teresa certainly fucking did,” she mutters from the front seat, casting a resentful look at Julia revving the Ducati behind us, wearing a shit-eating grin as she closes her helmet.
Teresa hits the stereo, and Taylor Swift fills the car. “Seriously?” she mutters. “Will this week never end?”
She leads Julia out of the lot, shaking her head.
Lourdes turns to me. “So? Benny said you were on Pirate Boy’s yacht?”
I bite my lip. “Yes. I was.”
“Ay, Dio mio.” Her eyes shine. “Diga me.” Tell me.
“Tell her in English, I beg you.” Rolling her eyes ostentatiously, Teresa turns Taylor Swift up loudly enough to put a sound barrier between the front and back seats. “At least that is my second language.”
Lourdes is trying and failing to stifle her giggles. “But you’ll have to tell me quickly,” she says, giving me a rueful smile. “I am flying to London tonight to see Benny. I’m so sorry,” she says, squeezing my hand as my face falls. “But he has a recital, and I promised I would be there.”
“Oh no!” I grimace, guilt slamming into me. “I completely forgot. I’ll book a ticket straight away.”
“No, don’t.” Her reply is unusually emphatic.
“It’s no big deal,” she says, seeing my surprise.
“Really. You know what these things are like—it’s out in the wilds of Leicester somewhere, some minor rural orchestra.
I think it would only embarrass Benny if we both came, especially with all of .
. . that.” She nods toward Teresa in the front seat.
“Oh. Sure.” I feel a strange dissociation being back in a world where I’m the oddity again.
Lourdes and Benny have always been incredibly understanding about my bodyguards.
But since Benny left his family and his wealth behind, sometimes it feels as if he and Lourdes have more in common with one another than they do with me.
After an entire week with Alexei, who not only understands the security I have to live with but takes care of it for me, the abrupt change makes me feel lonely in a way I haven’t since I first pulled up to school in a limousine as a child.
And suddenly, I don’t feel like sharing the week I’ve just had, even with Lourdes.
I want to hug it close to myself, take out each precious memory and privately luxuriate in it.
So instead of the excited torrent I was about to launch into, I say simply, “It was amazing. But now it’s over, and I don’t know when I’m going to see him again.”
She searches my face, her excited expression gradually softening to one of sympathy. “Oh, chica.” She hugs me fiercely. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk. Or at least, not until you’re ready.”
Teresa glances at me in the rearview mirror. “You’ll see him again,” she says, for once without any sarcasm. “A man doesn’t look at a woman like he looks at you unless he’s already planning the next time. Believe me, he’ll be back.”
I give her a rather shaky smile. “Thank you.”
I don’t bother telling her that it isn’t Alexei’s intentions I’m worried about, but rather those of whoever is trying to kill him.
Or whoever he is trying to kill.
In our world, the two things are usually one and the same.
Lourdes squeezes my hand. “But was it good?” she murmurs, under cover of Taylor.
For a moment I think of Alexei staring down at me, his hands hooked around my legs, his eye blazing into mine. “Oh, yes,” I breathe. “Yes, it was good.”
She tilts her head onto my shoulder. “I’m glad,” she says simply. “You deserve it, ’Felia.”
Her use of the nickname customarily only used by my siblings is oddly touching.
I wait until Lourdes has left to call my brother. It’s early evening, and I’m sitting in my salon with the doors open, watching the Alhambra turn from rust to umber under the fading light. In the end, despite thinking I would tell Lourdes everything, I told her very little.
Talking about Alexei feels like allowing gold to slip through my fingers. I want to hug him close for a while longer, to horde the treasured memories in the privacy of my heart, savoring him for as long as I can.
Mickey’s phone rings for a long time. When he finally picks up, Darya, Papa, and our younger brothers are all making noise in the background.
“That sounds like fun,” I say dryly by way of greeting.
“Fucking mayhem. Let me take the phone outside.” Mickey sounds slightly breathless.
“No, Aleksander, you can’t come too,” he says over the mouthpiece.
“I’ll be back in a minute. Go and eat your dinner.
Seriously,” he says a moment later, as the noise fades, “I love them, but coming home is like walking into a madhouse. I’m driving back to the Malaga penthouse the minute they’re all in bed. ”
“It’s a lot,” I say, smiling.
Aleksander is seven. The twins, Vanya and Tosha, are two years behind him, and the baby, Maxim, whom everyone calls Maxie, has just turned three.
“No shit,” Mickey says fervently. “Masha spends half her time at her dance teacher’s house in the village, and I seriously don’t blame her.”
“Poor kid. I’ll have to invite her to come and stay soon.”
“You should definitely do that,” he says. “I’d take her back to Malaga with me, but God forbid she miss a dance class. She’s as fanatical about it as you always were with your piano.”
“Or you with your laptop,” I counter.
He laughs. “Yeah. I guess we’re all a bit intense, in our own way.”
“Different fathers,” I say, “same psycho mother. Inger’s genes had to come out some way or other, I suppose.”
Dark humor is necessary in a family like ours.
Mickey’s father, Mikhail, was the one we all called Papa as children.
But as it turned out, Inger had fallen pregnant with me before she ever met Mikhail—in a one-night stand with Roman, who back then was just a poor street kid.
Inger dropped him like a hot potato when she realized Mikhail was the son of a wealthy pakhan and pinned the pregnancy on Mikhail, who obediently married her.
We only discovered the truth several years ago when Mickey ran DNA tests, which proved not only that Roman was my father, but that Masha was the product of another affair, this time with Vilnus Orlov—the man who eventually kidnapped us both.
Despite our tangled family tree, or perhaps because of it, the three of us have always been exceptionally close, especially after Mikhail died.
Inger’s death, which came during our kidnapping, we mourned a lot less.
It’s hard to mourn someone who agreed to have her own children kidnapped, just because she thought she’d get a good payout.
“Do you ever wonder what it would have been like without her?” Mickey asks now. “I mean, I know it’s a weird question. But I think of it sometimes when I see Roman and Darya with the boys. How it would have been if we’d always had them for parents, instead of being dragged up by Inger and Mikhail.”
“I’ve thought about that, yeah.” I stare at the Alhambra, hearing the distant echo of Masha’s screams, seeing her little arms reaching for me in terror the night Mikhail died, when Inger tried to drive away with her.
“It sucked having Inger as a mother, and the way she and Mikhail fought was a nightmare. But at least he named Roman as our godfather. And we were still kids, more or less, when Darya came along. I’d say we’ve been lucky, all things considered. ”
“True.” For a moment we just sit on opposite ends of the call, our shared years enduring a strange, often frightening childhood sitting companionably between us down the line. “Anyway,” Mickey says eventually, breaking the silence, “you didn’t call for a family therapy session. What’s up?”
“Well,” I hedge. “Funny you should mention family therapy sessions, because after this little chat, you and I might need one.”
“Okay,” he says cautiously. “This doesn’t sound good.”
“Here’s the thing.” I brace myself. “I need a secure communication room installed in my house. And I need to have it done without Papa knowing about it.”
The silence that follows is so long that I start to think the call has cut out. “Mickey? You still on the line?”
“Yup” comes his flat response. “Still here.”
More silence.
“You going to say something?” I ask eventually.
“Nothing good,” he says curtly. “I take it the reason for this request is the same reason Mak’s secretary has been fielding my calls all week?”
I wince. “Correct.”
“He’s a very fucked-up reason, Ofelia,” Mickey says coldly. “As I think I’ve already mentioned.” It doesn’t escape me that despite his clear fury at Alexei, my brother is still cautious enough not to mention his name over the phone.
I bite back a very strong retort. “Can you do it or not?” I struggle to keep an even tone. “I wouldn’t be coming to you with this if I had another choice.”
“Why are you coming to me with this?” he counters. “Someone else too scared to man up?”
“Oh, fuck off, Mickey.” There’s nothing like being lectured by a younger sibling to piss a girl off. “Don’t forget that I knew you when you were just a skinny nerd of a kid, instead of some tech bro with a six-pack.”
Shit. For a moment I genuinely think he might hang up on me.
Then, to my relief, my brother gives a snort of laughter. “A tech bro with a six-pack? I’m going to remember that one.”