There is only anger in my heart now. I have not truly loved Natasha for a long time. She left me and took that part of my soul with her.
Good fucking riddance.
Only when I can’t roar anymore and the ringing of my voice has long since quieted down does Yelisey speak up again. When he does, he is quiet, muted, direct. The blood on my hands has dried now, like a red trail of tears.
“One of the housemaids mentioned a call from the LAPD police. I didn’t want to call back blind, so I checked with our contacts in the FBI.” He clears his throat and pours his own drink. “She was living here under a fake name, Natasha Volstok.” He nods to my watch.
I force a thin smile. My throat is sore. Volstok. The brand of the watch she gave me. Another petty, cruel mind game, played by a petty, cruel woman.
Perhaps it is better that she is dead before I got my hands on her. Better for her, at least.
But Yelisey has more to say. Even though he isn’t saying it. We, too, have known each other since childhood and his apprehension is as physical as the presence of another person. But I can’t do anything to rush him, so I sit quietly. He’ll talk when he’s ready.
A few moments pass as we drive on into the night. He clears his throat eventually and adds, “In the news articles our contact sent over, there is mention of a child. A three-year-old girl.”
My heart leaps into my throat. That’s certainly one way to capture my attention. “A child?”
He nods.
“Three years old,” I echo.
“Yes, Kostya. Three years old.” Yelisey finishes off his drink in a loud gulp.
We both are thinking the same thing: three years old would almost certainly make the child mine.
I don’t know what the fuck to say to that. If a roar was all I could conjure for Natasha, then a child is certainly beyond my ability to appropriately respond to.
Not just a child, but my child. Alive and out there, somewhere, wondering what has happened to her parents. A child who is half me and half Natasha. She exists. That alone is a fucking marvel. To think that, after everything that happened with my ex-wife—the lies, the games, the rifts that opened in a million and one ugly, hidden places—a child came out of all that? I don’t have any goddamn clue how to process that piece of information.
But for right now, that is all it is. Information. I resolve to do what I have always done with information: find out how I can use it to my advantage.
“What is her name?”
“Tiana.”
Tiana. After my mother. Yet another of Natasha’s games
Yelisey continues, “Since Natasha has no living family”—my father made sure of that—“and the police called looking for you, it leads me to believe that Natasha has left some indication that the child is yours.”
I nod because words fail me. My child. The words roll through my head again and again like the tide.
Fuck. I feel a cold swirling in my gut. This does not bode well. But my decision was made from the moment Yelisey opened his lips.
There is only one thing I can do.
“Find her. Bring her to me.”
Yelisey, who never questions my orders, glances up. “Sir, you might …”
And because he’s never spoken out before, I’ll forgive him this once.
“I said find her.”
The words need no clarification. He’ll do as I say because thirty years of friendship mean nothing when it comes to disrespect. And he knows it.
I add, “And set up DNA testing. I want proof.”
What I actually want is to bring Natasha back to life so I can kill her with my bare hands. She denied me the one thing I’ve always wanted, the thing I can’t buy—a family of my own.
It appears that the joke is on me.
This time, Yelisey nods, and the only sound inside the car is the hum of tires on the road. I think of Natasha, of her eyes. Deep brown, flecked with ambers and golds at the pupil. Beautiful eyes that once, so long ago, held nothing but love of the purest, sweetest kind.
Or so I thought.
Right up until everything changed. Until the games began. Twisting me, begging me, hiding things from me. She wanted a dog, then a car. Then a house big enough so she never had to see the dog, and a chauffeur, so she never had to drive the car. Those earliest games were petty, but the objective was simply to see how far she could manipulate me. And when she knew … then, my world became her oyster.
I was blind to it then, an idiot, a fool who deserved to suffocate in the wool being pulled over my eyes.
Perhaps I would have, too, if my father, sensing my weakness for Natasha, hadn’t acted on my behalf. And when the scam was up, then she left. Disappeared into the night.
Until now.
Well, fuck that. Fuck Natasha. And the more that I think about it, something else comes to mind, too: Fuck this child. If she is even mine, if she even exists.
I’ve changed my mind; I want nothing to do with another one of that psycho bitch’s games.
I will tell Yelisey to find the girl and get rid of her. I don’t care how—pay social services, bribe a foster family, put her with one of our people—
My phone buzzes.
I accept the call and snap “What the fuck do you want?” without looking at the caller’s ID.
“Well, hello to you, too. Sorry for interrupting.” I swear I can hear Charlotte’s blush. I can close my eyes and picture it, too. She’s so fucking innocent that she still blushes. And that pale skin of her cheeks shows the red so well. I can only imagine how well the pale skin of her ass would show
