Chapter 18
Galina
He looks at me for a long moment, like he is deciding how much to give me, and I feel the familiar tightening in my chest that comes with waiting for a man to decide what I am allowed to know.
“I spoke to your father,” he says.
“I gathered that.”
“He didn’t confirm anything.”
I fold my hands in my lap and keep my voice steady. “About what?”
Laszlo leans forward, elbows on the desk, and looks at me directly. “I think I know what he is using the corridor for.”
My heart does something uneven. “Okay...”
“I think your father has been planning to move Yelena for a long time. I think the wedding is the cover. He has planned this down to every last detail.”
The silence that follows is very loud.
“How did you come to this conclusion?” I croak.
“I’ve been working out the motives of men like your father for my entire adult life. The dots connected. I don’t know if I’m right. He didn’t tell me I’m not.”
“But he didn’t tell you you are either.”
“No,” he replies, even though it wasn’t a question.
“So, what now?”
“We proceed with caution in case I’m not right.”
Relief slams into me, hard and fierce, and I hate how much I needed to hear it. Not just because of Yelena. Because somewhere along the line, I have started needing Laszlo to tell me we are not powerless. The answer steadies me more than it should. Another dangerous truth to add to the pile.
I press my lips together and stare at the desk between us.
“He should have told me,” I say quietly.
“He couldn’t.”
“I know that. I still hate it.”
Laszlo watches me for a moment. “You’ve been carrying this for three years, thinking you were the only one who gave a shit.”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t.”
I exhale, and it comes out shakier than I want it to. I clear my throat and straighten in the chair. “What if you are wrong?”
“Then we are no worse off than we were yesterday,” he says. “We stay alert, and we keep our eyes open.”
“And if you’re right?”
His gaze settles on mine. “Then your father is already doing what should have been done a long time ago, and we stop acting like we need to storm the gates ourselves.”
“Did he give you anything definite?” I ask.
“No.” He leans back against the desk. “Only enough for me to know he isn’t ignoring it.”
Relief flickers through me again, sharp and painful. Not certainty. Not safety. Just the knowledge that Yelena has not been forgotten.
I stand up because I can’t sit any longer. “This could end badly.”
“Very.”
“They could get hurt.”
“They could get killed.”
“Fuck. You need to tell Baron,” I blurt out.
He breathes in. “I know. I just don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to say. Baron doesn’t deal with maybes. He deals with absolutes.”
“Then we need Dad to tell us enough to stop guessing.”
“So, we come full circle back to you, Galina.”
“He won’t say anything on the phone, and he’s out of the country for three days.”
“No, I don’t think he is.”
“Let’s go,” I say decisively.
“Where?”
“To his house. I could do with picking up some more stuff anyway.”
“Are you sure about this?”
I swallow and feel the heat in his gaze. “I’ve never been more sure about any fucking thing in my life.”
“God, you’re sexy when you’re all fired up.”
“Maybe we don’t wait for the wedding night after all?” I murmur as he moves closer.
“Wedding night? Who said anything about night? I was going to ravage you at the reception.”
His smirk is the last thing I see before I turn and walk out of the office with purpose, feeling his eyes on my black denim-covered arse.
My heart is hammering. Not from fear. From something that feels a lot like hope, and I am not used to hope.
Hope is dangerous in our world. Hope is the thing that gets you killed when reality arrives.
If Dad has been planning this all along, if she has eleven more days of that house and that man, and then she is out, I don’t know what to do with that.
Three years of watching her disappear into herself at family dinners, three years of seeing the careful way she moves when she is sore, three years of lying awake at night knowing I couldn’t do a single thing without the resources to back it up.
Now I have resources.
Now I have him. My monster.
If my father had ever mistaken me for bait, then this was his error. Laszlo was not the trap closing around me. This is not surrender. This is selection.
Laszlo appears beside me in the hall and reaches for a set of keys. He doesn’t say anything. He just opens the front door, and I walk through it.
Outside, the morning is overcast, the sky a flat grey that makes London look like a city that has given up on colour entirely. The Lamborghini sits on the driveway, engine cold. One of the men has the passenger door open before we reach it.
Laszlo puts his hand at the small of my back as I lower myself in, and I let him. I am done fighting the small things. The small things aren’t the enemy. If I am finally choosing a side inside this marriage, then I need to stop standing in it like a hostage.
He gets in, starts the engine, and pulls away with the security Range Rover on our tail.
I watch the streets slide past the window, the grey terraces and wet pavements and the particular blankness of London on an overcast morning, and I think about my father sitting in his study in Kensington with his careful face and his chess board and his three years of planning that he never once thought to share with me.
I am furious with him for leaving me in the dark, to worry myself sick.
I am also, underneath the fury, so relieved I could cry, and I am absolutely not going to cry in this car on the way there.
Maybe on the way back.
“Go for the throat, moya zhena,” Laszlo murmurs. “Don’t hold back. I’ll be there to give you strength.”
I blink a couple of times as reality sets in. Go for the throat.
There is only one way to do that, and I hate it. I hate that I have to drag her into this, but I guess she is already in it. Yelena is her family. I’m going to have to drag my mother’s memory up from the grave and nail my dad to the wall with it.