Chapter 26 Ivan
IVAN
I might have a problem. I’ve never had stalker tendencies, but the past few days have shown me a side of myself I never knew existed. Why don’t you have a proper look, moya ptichka? My words to her, but here I am, looking more than I should. Having my own proper look.
Let’s just say, watching your kids’ nanny to make sure she isn’t a total fucking psycho like your first wife could lead to weird obsessive-compulsive behavior.
I have every camera’s feed open on my monitors in my office, ready to watch her whenever she’s on the screen with the girls, doing something cute, or motherly, or unconsciously beautiful that makes my heart seem to swell.
I can’t get enough, and it’s fucked up because this isn’t me. This isn’t my decreed life.
Even worse, ever since that night where I came out of the bathroom with only a towel and she walked in, it’s been like a brewing fantasy.
Her dropping to her knees in prayer but letting me fuck her mouth instead.
Imagining my cock being hugged between those sweet lips is so intoxicating, I sometimes go back to recorded footage to watch her again and again.
By the third night, I was sitting at my desk stroking my cock.
Yep. I’m that fucker.
I’ve mapped out every curve of her body, memorized every one of her small gestures—a flick of her ponytail, the way she bites her lip when she doesn’t want to laugh at something the girls said or did, the way she leans in to listen to them or goes down on her haunches to pull them in for a hug.
I’m not sure if it’s just her, the notion that our marriage is now a sure thing and I’ll bed her soon enough, or just my physical needs that haven’t been met for ages that have led to this non-existent impulse control. Whatever the fuck it is, I have to rein it in.
Maybe she’s a drug. Sunlight after so much dark that every bit of me wants to turn toward her and soak her up. Whatever this is, I’m fucked, and tonight is going to be interesting. Having watched her for four days, jerking off to a screen, seeing her in person might mess with my head.
I call out as I walk into the house, but when there’s no response, I head to the kitchen. It’s already six o’clock and dinner time. Something smells freaking delicious, but there’s no sign of Gabriella or my girls.
I hear their voices and walk over to the sink and spot them through the big picture window. Gabriella and Yuri each have a girl by the hand and are walking back to the house, probably having fed the rabbits and the chickens as they’re coming from that side of the garden.
Gabriella has stepped in as if she belongs.
I pause and take a deep breath, soaking in the visual of this woman.
She’s dressed in unpretentious jeans and a simple T-shirt, unaware of her female allure.
Irisha smiles up at her as she tells her something.
Gabriella nods and then looks up. Our gazes clash where I’m staring at her from the bright light inside the kitchen.
She smiles at me, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
Yeah, I get it. She dealt with things today that aren’t exactly in her job description. I respect her more for it.
“Come on, girls,” she says as they walk into the conservatory. “I see Papa is here, so let’s wash our hands and have dinner.”
“Papa!” the girls shriek in unison, and I lean in to catch them as they run up to me.
“Malyshki! I missed you!” I have Irisha and then Katya both in my arms and walk them over to the sofa where I sink down with an Ooof! Soon, I won’t be able to do this anymore. They are growing up too fast. “Tell me everything about your day.”
I listen as they babble on, about painting and working in the garden and finding worms and bugs and pressing early fall leaves between the sheets of old phone directories Kostya found in the basement. I shoot glances at Gabriella where she’s quietly setting out the food on the table.
“Can you call Milana, please?” she asks Yuri when he hovers, clearly wanting a word with me. “And you’re staying for dinner, right?”
“I have my quarters—”
“Stay, Yuri,” I say, wanting to hear every side of this story. In a way, this will be like the old days. Plus, I sense there are things to discuss here. Maybe he’s already hooked some intel on Randazzo, but our rule is no emails, no calls. Face to face in a secure place only.
“If you insist. I’ll get Milana,” he says with a nod and walks off, leaving the four of us alone.
I doubt Milana will join us. She’s cut me out since that morning in the driveway when Gabriella arrived.
“Let’s wash your hands, girls,” I say, nudging them to get off the sofa. We head for the sink where there is a little stair to help them reach the faucet. “It smells great. What did you make?”
Gabriella shoots me a shy smile as she helps Irisha with the soap dispenser.
“Just everyday Italian fare. I had Kostya on the phone while he was shopping, so I got all the right ingredients.” Gabriella hands Irisha a clean dishcloth to dry her hands.
“And then the girls had a solid two-hour nap while I did the cooking.”
“Wow.” I’ve watched those naps. She’s been settling them every afternoon at the same time, enforcing their routine. “Even Irisha?” I ask as she steps off the little stair to make space for her sister.
“Even Irisha. She had a busy morning,” Gabriella says as she strokes Irisha’s golden hair.
Her gentle touch stirs me, and I have to look away to stop myself from making the moment ours by placing my hand on top of hers and leaning in for a kiss—the one thing I couldn’t stop thinking of these past four days.
Me, a thirty-seven-year-old single dad who fucked a fair share of very beautiful women before my first arranged marriage, could think of nothing else but kissing this woman as I walked into the house. As if we were husband and wife.
I let Katya rinse her hands as I roll up my sleeves to wash up. “Sounds like we need to have some wine with this meal.”
Gabriella’s eyes are on me, on my hands as she helps Katya finish up. “No.”
“No?”
“I’m not sure if Yuri told you about Milana?”
I watched most of it. Until they were in Milana’s suite where I have no cameras installed. I shake my head as my sister’s voice sounds, in tandem with Yuri’s, from the corridor. “Okay, no wine. We’ll talk later.”
“Yes.”
When my sister walks into the room with Yuri by her side, our gazes meet briefly, awkwardly, only stressing how many unsaid things anchor us miles apart.
She smiles at the girls, though, if a bit weak, but the dark circles under her eyes spell out her exhaustion.
At least she’s dressed in clean clothes and her hair is washed and plaited to hang down her back.
All I want is to walk over and hug her, tell her everything is going to be fine, but how do I say this to a woman who hasn’t had any agency since she landed back on American soil?
For a moment, the atmosphere is so strained, you could cut it with a knife, but then Irisha starts chatting again.
“This looks delicious, Gabriella,” I say as she dishes up small servings of penne in a tomato sauce.
“Something for the girls to start. There’s grilled chicken and veggies for secondo, which I hope they will also like, yes, girls?”
“I see.” I glance around the table, at us sad lot who are basically starved for good food that didn’t come in a take-out container.
As we dig in, I watch around the table. If someone is going to get Milana to eat again, it’s going to be Gabriella. I don’t know how she managed to get her to be at dinner with us.
And my sister is eating. Not just nibbling and pushing food around her plate.
Gabriella is starting to look like a godsend, and I don’t believe in those. She has Irisha and Katya eating small strips of chicken that aren’t even coated in some weird breadcrumb mix that has no bread in it, so maybe I better start believing.
We finish the meal listening to the girls chatter.
Gabriella makes sure to keep them talking with questions and prompts so there’s no lull in the conversation, which would only be filled by the tension that still hangs between me and Milana.
Who knows what happened today after Yuri and Gabriella dragged her back to her room, but something did.
“Bath time, girls,” Gabriella announces as Milana excuses herself and stands, but in the process stacks every empty plate and walks it to the counter by the dishwasher.
I’m grateful Milana was here with us for dinner, and I’m not ready to let her go, wanting to speed up getting back to the vaguely normal family life we had before Darya’s death, before the Pakhan’s illness…before Dimitri.
“Go help Gabriella with the girls, Milana,” I say. “Please. I’ll come read them stories.”
“Sure,” she says with a shrug, and I watch, somewhat dumbstruck as she takes Katya by the hand and lets her guide her to the stairs, following Gabriella and Irisha.
As they walk off, I wait for them to be out of earshot then turn to Yuri. “What the hell happened here?”
Yuri smirks. For this Russian, it’s rare. “What didn’t happen? You watched?”
I nod and indicate for him to go on.
“Milana was pissed. Vodka up to the eyeballs. Gabriella took charge.” He shrugs and waves a hand at the table.
“And this is what you get. Milana meek as a lamb. Dinner on the table. The girls ready for bed even after their nap. Same as every day before. She knows kids, that one. And she knows how to cook, thank the fucking Pope.” He smirks at his own little joke. “Sounds like the jackpot to me.”
Sounds like too good to be true to me.
“Tell me what’s off, Yuri. I don’t trust good news.”
“Don’t blame you.” He hands me his phone, unlocked, after he’s opened some app on it. “Read.”
It’s every phone call Gabriella’s made with her brothers, transcribed and translated into Russian. Nothing unexpected. Family chatter. There’s one call, the first one she had with Dominic, where toward the end, she asks about Mother Lucia.
I read through the whole thing again before turning the screen to Yuri.
“What’s this? About Mother Lucia?”
“I did some digging. You say something sounds off? Look at this.” He takes his phone, taps at the screen a few times, and holds it out to me again.
I scan the pages, the witch hunt that seems to be plaguing convents in Northern Italy, with the last incident being in Potenza. “That’s where she was, wasn’t it? With this Mother Lucia? When her brothers found her?”
Yuri just gives me a hard stare I have no trouble interpreting.
Yes, that’s where Gabriella was, and this ‘witch hunt’ has all the classic signs of an assassination, disguised in a swarm of similar incidences.
It’s a strategy I’m familiar with and have used in the past. It’s the cleanest dirty way to get rid of someone while keeping your side spotless and the cops guessing.
“Mother Lucia was the last one?”
“Looks like it.”
She could have been the target, or the hunt stopped because they found what they wanted, but what were they looking for? This incident with Mother Lucia happened shortly after Gabriella reconnected with her brothers.
“Keep an eye on this, and keep me posted,” I tell Yuri as I hand his phone back. “What else? Any hits on Randazzo?”
“I have two potential leads. One is a woman known as Mara. A tattoo artist. Does piercings and all that stuff. Used to do work for Randazzo. On his girls.”
“You mean his prostitutes?”
“You know he was into human trafficking, Ivan. Don’t make me spell it out for you.”
Girls. Real under-aged girls. Girls like Irisha and Katya. Kidnapped, immigrant children separated from their parents, stolen. “Fuck.” This is the type of thing that puts me in such a rage, I could kill indiscriminately.
“Yeah.”
“Where’s she? This Mara?”
“A man known as The Mole is holding her. Apparently, she was there the day Randazzo’s compound got torched. When Randazzo was killed. Doing work on someone. Everybody thinks she’s dead, but The Mole got her out.”
“And who the fuck’s The Mole?”
“Our enigma. Worked for Randazzo for years, but he was a double agent. In old Don Scalera’s pocket.”
I laugh. Full fucking circle. Probably still works for the new Don, too, Matteo Scalera. What are the chances we flip him to our side? “How much did you pay for this info?”
“Two million dollars. You know Randazzo was in bed with the Russian dirt in Europe for the last fifteen years at least. Drugs and human trafficking. Sex trafficking. I have connections who’ve been watching him for years. This is what I got, but there’ll be more.”
I smirk. “And what’s it going to cost to get more? To get this Mole to talk?”
“Your little bird is becoming expensive. Why do you want to know all these things?”
Knowledge is power, and I’m never going blind into a relationship again. “Just wanting to know who I’m getting into bed with, Yuri.”
This time around, I won’t be sleeping with the enemy.