3. Tamara
TAMARA
I don’t tell Leonid about the Irish giant. It’s the first time I’ve ever withheld information from him, but like a little kid still navigating the language spoken by their parents, I can’t seem to find my words when I report back to Leonid.
“The Petrovs were not there.”
I face him in his study without sitting down, the weight of the Irishman’s gun in my pocket doing all kinds of strange things to my pulse. He didn’t take my weapons. He disarmed me easily, but he didn’t secure my weapons to save himself or try to harm me.
Why?
He wasn’t there to enjoy the view. Neither was he a novice screwing up his first task for whoever pays his salary. Not with those moves. He must also have known that I would report my findings back to my Pakhan.
Only, I haven’t reported back to Leonid because it feels like snitching on the wrong person. So, I remind myself when I see the disappointment in my Pakhan’s eyes that I was there to get information on the Petrovs, and the Irish giant doesn’t count.
Leonid sits back in his seat. “Did you check out the storage units?”
“The rest of the team checked them out. Whatever information you were given, perhaps it was wrong.”
Leonid is quiet for several long beats, while every fiber of my being is itching to retreat to my room and replay the evening’s events in my head before I forget the tiny important details.
“Perhaps,” he says finally but without conviction.
I don’t question where his information comes from; it isn’t my place to know his sources. If Leonid trusts them, that’s good enough for me. Tossing the Irish into the mix will only confuse matters, so I tell myself again that I’m doing the right thing.
“Is that all?” I ask.
His expression is unreadable, but it feels as if there is a whole load more to be said. “Yes.” I reach the door before he stops me. “You would tell me if there was something bothering you, Tamara.”
It isn’t a question, so I reply with a nod and close the door gently behind me.
In my room, I lie on my bed in my clothes and close my eyes. The throbbing ache in my pussy has dulled to a pleasant tingling sensation, but still, I slide my hand inside my panties, slip a finger between my legs, and work my slick around my clit.
I can taste him. I can smell his clean citrussy cologne and the faint tang of alcohol that is nothing like the vodka that Leonid and his family prefer to drink.
I can feel his weight on me, pushing me back against my mattress, making it difficult to breathe, and I spread my legs wide to accommodate the images of him in my head.
He isn’t here, but I imagine him filling me up, and am shocked when I hear myself gasp.
My orgasm is close. It has been close since he covered my body with his and I felt his erection between my ass cheeks, and I don’t know why.
This has never happened to me before. Love doesn’t exist in our world; it doesn’t belong to people like me and Ivana because we learned when we were very young that men only want to own us, and that ownership gives nothing in return. We are happy the way we are.
But the blood pumping around my veins right now, the trembling in my legs, and the way my clit is spasming is telling a whole different story.
I want the Irish giant. I want him in a way that I have never wanted anyone else, and when my orgasm erupts, and my panting breaths become erratic, I find myself wishing that I had asked for his name instead of that of his boss.
That night, I sleep badly.
Ivana doesn’t come to my room, and I don’t check on her, so this guilt sits on my chest alongside the giant’s beautiful smile, and the lingering damp between my legs.
She was obviously disappointed about not being tasked with tracking down the Petrovs.
I knew this, and yet I allowed my inexplicable reaction to the Irish guy take precedence over my own sister.
I rise early, shower, dress, and prepare my sister’s favorite breakfast: pancakes with bacon burnt to a crisp, maple syrup, and fresh cream. Then I take a small white daisy from a vase in the kitchen, knowing that Leonid’s wife Gianna won’t mind, and carry the tray up to Ivana’s room.
I knock softly on the door and wait.
Nothing.
I knock again, and this time, I murmur, “Ivana? Are you awake?” It’s a silly question; my sister has always been an early riser, and nothing has changed since her injuries.
Pressing my ear to the door, I get the first twinge of doubt inside my chest. The silence behind the door is louder than the blood gushing through my veins and roaring in my ears.
I balance the tray on one hip and test the handle. It’s unlocked. My sister never sleeps with the door unlocked.
The plate rattles as I enter her room, set the tray down on the dressing table, and check out her neat bed and the smooth comforter.
She isn’t in the ensuite bathroom, and her toothbrush is dry.
I check the time on my phone. 7:10. Perhaps she spent the night at the refuge if they were busy and there was no one else to cover the night shift.
I find the number on my Contacts app and hit the green button.
Cartier answers the phone with a cheery, “Hi, how can I help?” even though she is six months pregnant and has probably been working all night.
“Is Ivana there?” My mouth is dry. “This is Tamara.”
“Hey, Tamara.” Cartier’s voice always sounds as though she’s aglow with sunshine. “She isn’t on the schedule for today.”
“She was there yesterday. Did she work overnight?”
“Um, no.” The sunshine glow isn’t quite as bright now. “Ivana wasn’t here yesterday.”
“She said Gianna needed her help…” Even as I speak the words out loud, I can hear the lie in Ivana’s voice when she said them to me.
Gianna didn’t need her help. Or if she did, Ivana had no intention of going to the refuge last night.
“I’ll speak to Gi—”
I cut Cartier off and sprint directly to Leonid’s office on the ground floor of his rambling mansion.
I don’t knock. I barge through the door, flinching when it bounces on its hinges, and confront Leonid who is sitting behind his desk, his thick black hair immaculately groomed, his face freshly shaven, his collared shirt snowy white and perfectly pressed.
His younger brother Andrej sits across the desk from him wearing his customary black pants and a black sweater and looking like he has just arrived from a Hollywood movie set.
The Ivanov genes create beautiful babies, but these two men have never made my heart race the way Irish did last night.
“Ivana is gone,” I say, breathless.
They both look up at me as if I’m speaking a different language.
Then Leonid’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Her room hasn’t been slept in, and she didn’t show up at the refuge yesterday like she was supposed to.”
“Tamara, come in.” Leonid is gentle but firm. “Close the door and sit down.”
Andrej pulls out the seat next to him and gestures for me to take it.
“Did you hear me?” I remain standing. “She didn’t spend the night here.”
“I heard you.” Leonid’s expression softens to the one I see him adopt whenever his twin daughters are around, and it cracks something open in my chest.
“She wanted to come to the port with me last night.” My voice trembles. “But you didn’t want her there. Why didn’t you send her instead of me?”
My breath hitches when I realize that if Leonid had sent Ivana, she would’ve met Irish, not me, and I don’t like the way my mind is warping my emotions in favor of a stranger I barely know over my sister who would literally die to protect me. What kind of fucked up does that make me?
“Tamara.” Leonid sits back in his seat as though he needs the extra lumbar support for this conversation. “You’re wrong. I asked Ivana to lead the team last night because she may not be back to full fitness, but the task was still within her current capabilities. She turned it down.”
“She… No…” I shake my head. “She said that you didn’t want here there.”
Is that what she said? I’m doubting my own memory now because everything that happened before yesterday is hazy, fogged up by the vibrant images in my head from last night, and I wonder if that’s what I heard when she told me that she wasn’t accompanying me to the port.
“She would never lie to me.”
She didn’t need to; I reached my own conclusions without waiting for the facts. And she lied to me about going to the refuge or is this something else I’ve manipulated to assuage my own guilt.
The question is: where did she go?
“Maybe she needed some space,” Andrej suggests. “Some time out to clear her head and think about what she really wants.”
“You don’t think she’s coming back.” I’m numb. Even my voice sounds flat as if every ounce of emotion has been sucked out of me with the suggestion.
“What my brother is trying to say,” Leonid picks up the thread, “is that Ivana has been struggling with her convalescence. She wants to feel useful, but I can’t risk sending her into the field until I’m confident that she can defend herself.
You know me better than that, Tamara. You know I would never risk your lives. ”
He’s right. I know that he has taken care of us, treated us like his own sisters since he rescued us from being sold like cattle to the highest bidder.
He gave us a life here in Chicago that we could never have imagined when we were crossing the ocean inside a shipping container filled with women and children dying of starvation and thirst. He cared for us, nurtured us, trained us to be his enforcers. He turned us into weapons.
But he risks our lives every time he sends us out to work for him.
“Being an enforcer is all she knows.” I tilt my chin and square my shoulders. “She has always been loyal to you.”
And to me.
“Her loyalty isn’t in question,” Leonid says. “It’s her strength that concerns me.”
Anger flares inside my chest. “She almost died saving Cartier. She would do the same again if she had to, even if it took more strength than she had to give.”
A sob is brewing inside my chest like a volcano preparing to erupt.
“She would never walk away from this life, from you, from me.”
“Do you have any idea where she might have gone?” Andrej asks.
I cast my mind back over the last few days.
While I was out working for Leonid, what was my sister doing?
The only thing I do know for a fact is that she wouldn’t have been sitting around the house watching TV or reading a book; she has too much unspent energy to sit still for extended periods of time.
I shake my head and try to picture Ivana walking out of this house with no destination in mind just like we tried to do when we were eight years old, and my throat tightens when I realize the image isn’t the same as it would’ve been a year ago, or even six months ago.
I’ve noticed and shoved aside the sluggishness in her movements, the way she holds herself with her shoulders slightly bowed like a wounded animal trying to heal.
Because I didn’t want to face up to the very real possibility that she’s no longer the strongest twin.
My thought process must play out across my face because Leonid says gently, “Maybe it was time for her to walk away.”
“No!” I shut him down before he says something unforgiveable. “She isn’t an animal. She hasn’t crawled into a hole to fade away quietly.” My hands are balled into tight fists, my fingernails slicing into my palms. “That isn’t Ivana. She would never stop fighting.”
Andrej and Leonid exchange glances that I don’t understand, and then Andrej says, “Survival instinct isn’t always about fighting.”
I narrow my eyes at him and take small comfort from the way he recoils from the pure untethered anger on my face. “You don’t know her like I do. Fighting is in her blood because what else is there?”
I go to the door and turn around to face them before I leave.
“I’ll find her. I’ll find her, and I’ll bring her back, and then I want you to leave her in my charge. I don’t care if she isn’t as strong as she was before; I’ll keep her alive. I’ll do whatever it takes because I promised her that I would.”
“Tamara—” Leonid begins, but I’m already walking away.
I go back to my sister’s room and blink at the breakfast tray on the dressing table. I made pancakes for her when I had no idea that she was already gone.
Where did she go? What was going through her mind yesterday when she refused to come to the port with me and walked out of this house alone?
She’s still alive. I would know if she wasn’t because there would be an Ivana-shaped hole in my chest through which the rest of the world would disappear. A hole that no one else would ever be able to fill, even if I wanted them to.
And I can prove it.
I drop to my knees and feel inside the mattress on my sister’s bed. My heart skips when my fingers wrap around our mother’s silver hairbrush and the crumpled photograph.
Sitting back on my heels, I study them as if they hold the answers to where my sister might’ve gone.
One thing’s for certain though: she wouldn’t have left them behind, even if she couldn’t face saying goodbye to me, which means that she intends to come back once she has done whatever she set out to do.
Because despite Leonid’s misgivings about Ivana’s strength, she is an enforcer at heart, and she is loyal to two people.
Him and me.
Wherever she has gone, she must believe that it’s the only way to save one of us, even if it means sacrificing herself, and I won’t stop until I find her.
I lie down on Ivana’s bed and stare up at the ceiling with the hairbrush and the photograph cradled against my chest.
“I’ll find you,” I whisper. “I promised to keep you safe, and that will never change.”