by Christa Wick
She watched his face, his expression collapsing as he studied how the scarring on her front side was concentrated around her stomach, the faded evidence of a potentially deadly beating older and deeper than the stretch marks from what he must realize was a pregnancy.
Bringing the edges of the robe together, he tied the sash for her.
"Bogdan," he started before his own bitter laugh interrupted him. "Dima dyed the boy's hair and brows black."
She said nothing, would not have this conversation with him—not when it was an interrogation, an accusation against her hanging in the air.
"When I finally peeled his teeth off my arm," Mikhael continued, "I thought I was looking into my mother's eyes. Same blue but with a white hot hate instead of Kata's cold indifference."
Alina wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed her eyes shut so hard the low rumble of tension from the straining muscles muffled his voice.
Gripping her elbows, he tugged her against him, her arms trapped between their bodies.
"Who tried to beat the baby out of you?"
She shook her head. She didn't want to remember the electrical cord in her father's hand, how he had stopped halfway through the ordeal to pull out a pocket knife and strip the protective rubber away at the end to expose the sharp copper wires.
It had taken years before she stopped reliving the attack in her nightmares. Not that her waking nightmares stopped. Dima had taken over, his abuse more constant but seldom physical.
She started to shake, her stomach grinding like small pebbles in a pool of acid because she'd already thrown up all she could.
"Let me get dressed."
"Who beat you here?" he growled, his hand leaving her elbow to curve around her stomach with a soft, cradling touch.
"Papa," Alina whispered and tried to pull away.
His hand slid behind her and settled against the curve of her back. "And here?"
"Papa at first. Dima after Papa died."
The old man had been beyond furious at her pregnancy. With Mikhael thought dead, he had immediately arranged to marry her off to a lesser family within the syndicate in an attempt to join territories. Finding her pregnant, he had turned insane in his rage, his hand stopped only by Dima's return and false claim of paternity.
Once she delivered the baby, the beatings resumed each time she was caught whispering into Bogdan's ear that she was his mother. The last time, when the boy was three and her father more than a year in his grave, Dima had almost beat her to death. After that, she was never left alone with her child and was blocked more and more from seeing him at all.
"Please," she bit out, her voice beginning to break. "Can I get dressed?"
Releasing his hold on her, Mikhael retrieved the clothes from the top of the dresser and handed them to her.
He left with a warning on his lips.
"We are not done talking, my Alina."
15
Mikhael
Mid-Flight – Over the Atlantic
The boy sat near the rear of the small charter plane, a set of headphones on as he watched a movie on Reed's computer, Reed in the seat next to him.
Several rows forward, Alina perched at the edge of her seat, her gaze never leaving the boy for more than a few seconds. Grabbing two water bottles from the galley, Nazarov stepped over her legs and plopped down next to her by the window.
They had not spoken since he had all but strip searched her in the bathroom. She had made sure to eliminate any opportunities for him to be alone with her again, locking a door if she went into a room, staying in it until she heard Kane or Reed's voice.
Without a word, he offered her the water. She took it absently, tucked it against her seat.
Beneath the yellow-tinged overhead lights, she looked like shit that had dried out in the sun. She wasn't eating, wasn't drinking—all because of him and the boy.
At first, the ten-year old had thrown himself into her arms, welcoming her tight, sobbing hug with one of his own. Pure joy had lit her face as she embraced her son, the same joy Nazarov had seen stamped in a wide grin on her morning visits to the bakery.
Then all hell broke loose when Bogdan pleaded with her to get him away from the bad men who had killed his papa and Alina tried to explain that the men in the room—Kane and Mikhael and Reed—had saved his life.
The boy had struck her with closed fists, called her all the names he had learned from the foul devil who had masqueraded as his father to keep Alina trapped and tormented in the Rodchenko family.
"Reed is watching him." Mikhael's tone, meant to coax her into relaxing, set her spine more stiffly against him. "Please, Alina, you're making yourself sick."
She choked on a laugh but collapsed back against her seat. Reaching across to where she had tucked the water bottle, he broke the seal, unscrewed the cap and pressed the bottle into her palm.
Swallowing roughly, she wiped at her cheek. He could tell by the tremble in her lips that raw emotions were sweeping through her, but he hadn't seen her shed a single tear since she had begged into the camera for his life.
He didn't know what to say, but he had to get her talking. Her mind was poisoning her body.
"Bogdan thinks I'm the monster who killed his father."
Her head bobbed. She stopped staring at the backrest in front of her and glanced at his hands as he gripped his knees.
"Were you the one who shot through the wall?"
"Yeah," he rasped, realizing his hands had started to shake. "I don't think I could have if..."
"If you had known Bogdan was yours."
"Yes."
He looked at her face but she kept her gaze trained away from his. This was the first time she had acknowledged what he already knew. The boy was his, the result of that one night of stolen bliss in a house filled with hate.
Part of him wanted to admonish her for not telling him before the raid. She'd had time and an opening before she lost consciousness, but she had intentionally withheld the information.
Why? To protect him or the boy?
"How are we getting back into the States?" she asked, distracting him from his own questions.
He looked at where Kane politely pretended to be asleep in his seat after spending the first half of the flight in the cockpit using a secure radio channel.
Answering, he nodded at the man. "As of half an hour ago, this is a U.S. diplomatic flight.
16
Mikhael
Undisclosed location - Virginia
Bars were installed on the windows of one of the bedrooms at the safe house Stark International provided Alina and Bogdan—not because of anyone the Rodchenko family might send to exact revenge but to keep the boy from running away. All three of the bedrooms opened onto the living room, where Mikhael slept on a couch that his big frame overflowed.
For added security, he installed a slide bolt on the outside of Bogdan's bedroom door.
A child psychiatrist visited three times a week during the first two weeks and advised them to tell Bogdan the truth about Alina being his mother and Mikhael his father. The boy had turned wild after they followed the advice, injuring the psychiatrist so that she hadn't returned in the two weeks since.
Whenever the boy exploded into one of his violent tantrums, Mikhael would wrap his arms and legs around Bogdan and hold tight until the child exhausted himself and could be safely locked in his room.
Alina watched both of them throughout the day with a haunted gaze, an apology delivered with each glance she cast in their direction. Mostly she looked like she was sorry she had ever been born.
She still refused to cry.
Mikhael waited, certain she would break, maybe so hard she could never be put back together—not by doctors or psychologists, and certainly not by him.
Sometimes she would answer one of his questions, usually after he had to wrestle with the boy and was almost as exhausted as Bogdan. Other times he eavesdropped on the answers she gave the FBI and U.S. District Attorney—but those answ
ers didn't interest him so much.
In exchange for straightening out the birth certificate issues and giving her and Bogdan new identities, they wanted to know about the structure of the Rodchenko crime family. Who reported to whom, what were the rivalries within the organization, who were the weak links that might be turned and other things like that were of the greatest interest to the men who visited the house.
But every now and then her voice would hitch as she talked to the government agents and Mikhael would have a new question to ask her once the men left, like what happened two years after Mikhael disappeared when the old man died showing the same medical symptoms as Kata.
The one question he didn't have the guts to ask was whether she had only sent him away that day in the library because she was trying to save his life, sacrificing herself just as she had sacrificed over and over in the almost eleven years since then.
He didn't want to know that she had meant every word she said.
After all, he still loved her. Had never stopped loving her.
Turning on his side on the narrow couch, he sighed as he heard the distant approach of a storm. The safe house was east of Richmond and a bit more than a hundred miles south of Arlington where his job and a house he'd bought after leaving his last employer waited for him.
He hadn't gotten the all clear yet on returning to work—at least if he wanted to make regular visits to the safe house. He expected clearance soon. Dima had been universally hated and his death had created a power vacuum that others within the organization were too busy trying to fill to take time out to avenge their Pakhan's death—or even investigate it, especially given the precision and heavy tactical support with which the assassination had occurred.
The sky growled a little more loudly. Hurricane season with a slow one moving up the coast. There was too much distance between the safe house and the ocean to worry about the direct effects, but tornados were becoming more of a problem.
Picking his smartphone up from the coffee table and checking his weather app, he wondered whether storms still terrified Alina. They hadn't had one in the month they'd been in the safe house, at least not a real one with heavy thunder and lightning and a swirling threat that the Hand of God was about to pluck entire families out of the sky and fling them back to the ground.
Hearing the creak of Alina's closet door, he sat up. It creaked a second time and then the door handle clicked shut right before the curtains at the front door gently glowed for a second.
Resting his elbows on his knees, he planted his face against his palms and concentrated. He listened to the storm grow closer and for signs that Alina or Bogdan needed him.
He didn't expect the thunder or lightning to wake the boy. His tantrums wore him out, often causing him to sleep upwards of ten hours after he finally went limp. It was Alina he worried about, as fragile and silent as she had been rendered by everything that had happened in Russia and Bogdan's reaction to finding out she was his mother.
She didn't need the weather to turn furious on top of everything else.
A loud crack of thunder pulled him onto his feet. He padded softly over to her shut bedroom door, the lesser grumblings of the storm masking the groans of the old wooden floor. He leaned in, listened for any sound of distress.
Hearing muffled whimpers, he eased the door open as lightning flashed to reveal an empty bed. Thunder boomed and she whimpered again, the noise leading him to her closet.
"Alina," he whispered as he opened the door.
At first, he saw nothing. The floor was pitch black, no sign of her pale skin or arms. He reached down, his hand colliding with a blanket and, beneath that, the top of her head. Slowly, he drew the fabric away to expose her face.
"Come out of there, baby," he said before he could stop the endearment from escaping.
He had promised himself he wouldn't wear his heart on his sleeve around her. She didn't need the added pressure. Shaking her head, she tugged the blanket out of his hand and whipped it back over her head.
Getting on his hands and knees, Mikhael elbowed his way into the closet, crowding her at first then pulling her onto his lap.
"You don't have to face the storms alone anymore," he coaxed as she trembled stiffly in his embrace. "Not if you don't want to."
"Go, please." Her tone turned robotic as it did whenever he or one of the men from the government asked her questions. "It's embarrassing to have anyone see me like this."
Ignoring her request, he rubbed at her forearms in an attempt to soothe her. His hand encountering a wet spot on her flesh, he traced a circle, the pad of his finger picking up small, even indentations.
"Why do you bite yourself?"
She laughed and it pained him that it was as bitter as all the other laughs that had escaped her lips since he had entered the bakery in Moscow.
"Because if I don't bite myself, I'll scream, and I don't want the microphones to hear me."
His arms tightened around her. "There are no microphones here, baby. Kane wouldn't lie to me and I won't lie to you."
She exhaled, slow and unconvinced.
"There were microphones in Papa's shed. Cameras, too. Dima had them installed. Do you remember the year they put on the metal roof?"
Mikhael forced his body to relax so he wouldn't crush her in his embrace. "Someone put you in the garden shed during a storm?"
"Every storm," she answered. "After Papa died. Me in my nightgown, hauled from bed, not even a robe. Night vision cameras so Dima could watch..."
Rage boiled inside him. What had he done, leaving her there?
"He wanted to marry me, you know? Said I could be Bogdan's stepmother..."
Bile coated Mikhael's tongue. He couldn't take her voice any longer, the catatonic monotone. Forcing her to turn in his arms, he pressed her face against his chest and shushed her. When the thunder shook the windows, it was his flesh she bit into, over and over until the storm finally rolled past and they fell asleep on the floor of her closet, her body still cradled against his.
17
Mikhael
Alina's panicked scream woke Mikhael. His arms grasped at nothing. The boy shouted, his voice twisting like a rabid animal as Mikhael lumbered out of the closet on deadened limbs.
Bitch!
With no other voices reaching his ears, Mikhael knew Bogdan was speaking to his mother. Flinging open the bedroom door, he looked immediately toward the kitchen where Alina was trying to keep the boy at arm's length and away from sharper instruments as Bogdan wielded a fork.
A patch of blood stained the forearm of her plain white nightgown from where Bogdan had already stabbed her. More vile words and accusations spewed from the child's mouth. She was a bitch, a filthy whore who had seduced Mikhael into murdering his papa.
With shaking hands, he stepped silently behind Bogdan, cupped beneath each armpit and lifted the boy off his feet, spinning at the same time so that there was only empty air to kick at and not his mother's face.
"Drop the fork," he ordered coldly.
Bogdan tightened his grip on the utensil. "Fuck you!"
Just as quickly as he had scooped the boy up, he dropped him and grabbed both wrists separately. Ignoring Bogdan's thrashing, Mikhael squeezed at the pressure points on each side of the boy's wrist. Twisting like a demon, Bogdan tried to find a patch of Mikhael's skin to bite, but the big man held him taut, his arms stretched as far as they would go without dislocating Bogdan's shoulders.
"Please, don't hurt him," Alina pleaded, stepping toward them and reaching for the fork.
"Stay back," Mikhael bellowed as the boy tried to twist his hand and aim the sharp tines of the fork in Alina's direction. He squeezed a little harder at the pressure points, but only managed to make the boy growl furiously.
A rough chuckle escaped Mikhael. He had finally found one point on which the boy was nothing like Dima. He didn't roll belly up at the first bit of pain.
"You know how this ends," he thundered in the boy's ear. "Let go."
> The scent of shoe polish filled Mikhael's nostrils as he straightened. Looking more closely at Bogdan, he saw that the boy had applied the substance to the blond roots on his scalp and his eyebrows.
Alina caught the direction of Mikhael's gaze. "He was knocking at his door, said he had to go the bathroom—he must have hid the polish in his room yesterday. I was going to wash it before you woke up..."
"Filthy whore!" the boy shouted. "You know papa hates it when it's yellow!"
Patience hanging by a thread, Mikhael squeezed the pressure points one last time and the fork clattered to the ground. Wrapping his arms around the boy's chest, he sat on a kitchen chair.
"You stabbed your mother," he said, the low, flat tone filled with menace.
"He didn't mean—"
Mikhael shot her objection down with a sharp glance.
"Show him your arms."
She shook her head. His meaning was clear. He had said "arms," not "arm." He wanted the boy to see not only the damage from the fork but all the scars that crisscrossed from a few inches above her wrist up past her biceps.
Kneeling on the floor, she tried to placate Bogdan. "Let me wash the polish out, it's not healthy. We'll get some proper dye at the store."
Seeing the boy's cheeks hollow, Mikhael nipped at his ear. "Don't think about spitting at anyone, especially her."
With memories of Osip and Kostya spitting on his bruised and bloody face surfacing, Mikhael squeezed the boy a little harder.
"No dye," he ground out. "Bring me my clippers."
Alina's face went hard. "No. You are not going to shave him."
The boy went wild as understanding finally sank in.
Ignoring both of their protests, Mikhael stood, the boy helpless in his arms, and went into the bathroom. He shut the door and braced his back against it so Alina could not intervene beyond pounding her fists raw on the wooden surface.
