by Lee Winter
Sure enough.
“Just repeating our top story. One man has been arrested, and a woman is in the hospital under police guard after the abduction of a Victoria Police homicide detective’s daughter at the Melbourne Cup. The thirteen-year-old and her aunt, also a homicide detective, were kidnapped and held in a motorhome trackside for a brief period. A good Samaritan with martial arts skills reportedly assisted in raising the alarm. Further details on the hero and the names of those involved have not yet been released.
“The arrested woman was picked up attempting to get medical treatment. Police sources say she is alleging her controlling boyfriend broke both her wrists when she refused to help him, quote “kidnap a cop’s brat.” The pair will face court tomorrow.
“Meanwhile, Flemington saw plenty of drama of a different kind today at the race that stops a nation. Peppermint Dream’s two-length win was overshadowed when an internationally renowned celebrity chef and a busty reality star had a drunken dust-up in the Birdcage. Punters’ phone footage shows…”
Natalya snapped off the TV. Lola was as slippery as she was charming, so her escape from the hospital was inevitable. She texted a coded query to Lola’s right-hand man asking for an update. For all she knew, her former stepmother might be out already.
Her phone beeped a reply a minute later.
Still visiting hogs. Pool is @ six.
So she was still under police custody. Six hours? That was how long most of Fleet Crew were betting it would take their boss to make her escape.
Idiots. She’d be out in three.
Natalya finally had enough of pacing her empty home. She grabbed her car keys.
Half an hour later she parked in her usual spot, and entered the Rose Gardens Nursing Home. She headed down the hallway at a fast clip. It was well lit, the walls painted hospital green. The skeleton staff would be on and they all knew her. And, most importantly, they knew to leave her undisturbed.
She came up to the third floor nurse’s reception area. The desk was unmanned at this hour so she poked her head in a small side office.
“How is he today?” she demanded without preamble.
She had never bothered to learn the nurses’ names, although she was quite sure every one of them knew hers. It was a bit hard to avoid since her name was gracing the assisted care wing built with her donated funds. A useful investment, as it turned out, because she could visit any time she pleased.
“Ma’am.” The nurse bobbed her head up and down forcefully, as though checking it was still attached to her neck. She wore a non-regulation, vivid blue scarf and a nervous expression. The latter was satisfactory, at least.
“He’s been quite lucid this afternoon. He had his dinner and has been resting quietly ever since. He remembered his name and where he was when I checked in on him an hour ago. He keeps asking for his wife. He drifts in and out of awareness.”
“Ex-wife,” Natalya corrected. “And to spare your people asking again, no, she will never visit him.”
“Oh,” Blue Scarf said. “That’s a real shame. He really misses her.”
Natalya ignored that and headed down the hallway. Her black, polished heels drilled into the creaking linoleum as she followed the path she knew so well.
As she entered, she took in Vadim’s room with a critical eye. It was pristine, just as she’d demanded, larger than any others on the floor, and had a wide window that offered a panoramic view of the gardens during the day. The very best money could buy.
The only thing it couldn’t buy was the man she knew.
She eased herself into the thinly padded chair beside the bed and studied the worn shape next to her. He had stubble, white and scraggly, which meant he’d fought the nurse again when she’d tried to shave him. His pyjamas were grey with white stripes. He seemed thinner. Loss of appetite was a side effect of his many medications.
She reached over and took his right hand, which was covered in stark blue veins and liver spots. It seemed lighter than the last time she’d held it, a week ago.
He didn’t respond to the touch.
“Papa,” she said quietly.
He turned his head then, and his ancient eyes studied her. They were empty.
She exhaled. It was always a crapshoot as to the mental state he’d be in.
“Who are you?” he asked. “You look like someone. Someone I know.” He fidgeted. “You remind me of my daughter. My little sun—solnyshko.” He frowned at her. “Except you’re old.”
Natalya squeezed his hand. “It is me, Papa.”
He considered her words carefully, sifting through them as though weighing them up for truth. It was so achingly familiar; it was like he was still him.
“How can that be?” he asked suspiciously. “You and Natalya? Both my daughter?”
“A lot of time has passed.”
“Where’s Lola? She will visit, too, yes?”
“Not today, Papa.”
His face fell.
“Tomorrow?” he asked, hopefully.
“Maybe,” Natalya said, knowing he likely wouldn’t remember this conversation in five minutes. And yet, she still couldn’t not have it. “I have to tell you something.”
“Yes?”
“I’m going away for a while. I’ve been asked to dep for an orchestra overseas. I’m leaving soon.”
“Where are you going?”
“The tour’s across Europe.”
“Ahh,” he said. “Europe. It is important you visit Vienna. My daughter played there, do you know? She was in papers over there. She won awards for cello playing.”
“Yes,” Natalya said softly. “She did.”
“What do you do?” Vadim asked curiously. “Do you play the music, too?”
“I do.”
“My solnyshko plays cello,” he repeated and his eyes became distant. He stared at the silent, dead television on the far wall intensely, seeing something that wasn’t there.
After a few beats he turned back to look at her.
“Natalya?” he asked, and this time pride coated his voice.
She smiled at his recognition. “Yes Papa.”
“You’re visiting early this week.”
“I am.”
“Have you seen Lola lately?”
She wanted to roll her eyes. Always her. His condition was in some ways a blessing, because he’d forgotten all the ways she’d tried to screw him over on the way out the door.
“I saw her today, actually.”
“How is she?”
Brutal, cruel, mocking, her brain supplied. She would have robbed me of my soul without a second thought. She tried to steal my music.
“Same old Lola.”
He nodded, and then studied her. “You are troubled.”
“It’s nothing. A friend…of sorts…turned out to be not what she presented.”
“And who is this friend?”
“A…violinist.”
“Ah.” He nodded at her. “You and your music.” He contemplated her. “You don’t talk of friends often, Natalya. I have never heard it. It is important to have them. Remember that when you conquer the world. Don’t isolate yourself too much, my solnyshko.”
“It’s fine, Papa. My friend, really, it’s all over. She won’t bother me again.”
“Oh? You’ll cut her off? Be cold to this one as you always are? A second chance never given? You always did this. Is it really the best way?”
“It’s the only way,” Natalya said darkly. “This is black and white, Papa. Betrayal and deception deserve only one response.”
“It is grey, doch. Just let her explain first. Then you can bring down your cold war if that is your want.”
“I fail to see why anyone should get the benefit of doubt,” Natalya snapped, eyeing him in irritation. “She’s lucky I still let her breathe in my existence.”
He shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment.
“On this earth I have walked for eighty-four years, Natalya. Time, it goes so fast. Look at
me: One day, ordering my men around the field, seen as the man to go to for wisdom. The next I am in this little room with nurses who bellow at me as though I am deaf and feed me the blue poison.”
“It’s jelly, Papa, not poison.”
“Well, it’s not food, even if it is safe.” He gave a half laugh at his small joke, and she could see his teeth, yellowed by years of smoking. He smoked so much she had been sure the cigarettes would kill him. Instead, this. She wasn’t entirely sure which was worse.
“I am Russian, solnyshko. A proud military man. I was raised the correct way to behave and, so, this I did. It was always hard for me to tell you things you needed to hear. Your mother died on the day of your birth. I did not know what to do with this child. How would I talk to her? What would I say? What did I know of little girls? It was not easy.
“Maybe it was wrong I treated you like a son and taught you the discipline of fighting men. I did not know what else to do. I did not know what to tell you. But I watched, so proud, when you grew: So tall, so strong. So much talent. However, I made one mistake: I never talked of love.”
Tears filled his eyes, and Natalya tried to hide her shock. She’d never seen her father cry, ever. Not even after Lola had left him.
“It wasn’t the way for men in my world to talk of feelings,” Vadim continued. He ran a wizened finger down her cheek. It was warm and rough. “I worry I did not do right by you, Natalya. That I didn’t do all of my duty. Just half. Expressing love, feelings—I never taught you how to do these.”
“I’m fine, Papa,” Natalya said uncomfortably. “Really. It was never you.”
“But you are alone. This, I worry about. You never talk of finding someone to share life’s burdens. Even as a girl, you never spoke of such dreams. This saddens an old man. And it is hard for me to see that you have no one even now.”
“Some people don’t need others to be content,” she said. “Emotion is weakness, after all.”
“Never,” he said and his pale eyes flashed suddenly. He pointed a gnarled finger at her. “Whoever told you that is a fool. Emotion can be harnessed, Natalya. You cannot tell men to go into a battle and kill and feel nothing. It does not work that way. But if you tell them they must fight for family? Then they have a strength of twenty bears. My own eyes have seen it. Emotion, Natalya, is strength.”
She stared at him.
“I see your face, doch. You think because I kept my own counsel all these years that I had no emotions? I promise you that my heart was brimming enough to fill a well.”
“No,” Natalya said. “I just don’t think those rules apply to everyone.”
He laughed, a low booming sound that came deep from his core. It was so familiar and yet sounded odd coming from so frail a body.
“Ah, so you mean humanity’s rules do not apply to you,” Vadim said. “The rules that say everyone needs someone. Even if they do not get this person, they still want; they still dream. Never have I met a soul on this earth who did not want someone, just once, to look with love in their eyes at them.”
Natalya fidgeted, feeling well out of her depth. She didn’t discuss emotions for this reason. There was no control with emotions. No order.
“Not everyone is like that, Papa. Some of us are different. Some set themselves apart. The chaos of emotional attachment is not desired.”
“Mm,” he said regretfully. “I wish…” he faded out.
“What?”
He patted her hand.
“Daughter, perhaps you should try the roosters,” he said earnestly. “Hens are so fickle.”
Natalya froze and stared at her father in shock.
He smiled at her expression. “You thought I didn’t know? I may be old, solnyshko; I may be Russian and military. But when you get closer to grave than cradle, you find that the more time and age closes old eyes, the more it is you see.
“I just want you to have happiness. Rooster or hen, it is as it will be, but you need someone who brightens in spirit when they see you. Someone who challenges you and your stubborn ways. Stubborn ways you learnt from me. Most of all you need someone to look at you with love.”
She opened her mouth to reply just as his expression drifted. His hand went limp in hers, as her mind reeled. How long had he known about her? He’d never given any indication.
“Who are you?” Vadim asked flatly.
Natalya leaned over and gave him a light farewell kiss, rubbing his stubbly cheek with her thumb. He pulled away uncertainly.
“I’m no one,” she said.
“Mmph.” He eyeballed her crossly. “Then go away,” he said. “It is late. You do not belong here.”
“No,” she agreed softly. “I don’t belong.”
She rose, walked to the door, and turned. She studied Vadim for a moment as he rolled over to face the window. So small now, shrunken inside his pyjamas. They engulfed him, an apt metaphor for his life.
“Goodbye, Papa,” she said in a low voice.
* * *
When she arrived back home, it was close to one in the morning. Natalya made three secured calls to the top associates in Fleet Crew. The trio of men would each rather be running Lola’s enterprise themselves but had failed to wrest control of it upon Dimitri’s death.
Oh, they had the skills, cunning and ambition, but they all lacked one vital thing: Requiem. No one had the courage to take on Lola while she owned a lethal, loyal pitbull.
Natalya stood at her windows, staring out at her darkened gardens, phone to her ear, as she casually informed each of the sleepy men that Requiem had, effective immediately, shifted her allegiance from Lola to neutral. They could do what they pleased now without Requiem’s interference.
The message was clear: their power-hungry, fat asses would be safe if any of them grew a pair and tried to throw their boss over. The reign of Lola Sweetman was essentially over the moment the words were out of Requiem’s mouth.
She stared at her reflection, backlit in the glass. She could see the cold detachment with which she announced the queen was dead.
The men had been extremely grateful for this information, with one, Sal, asking repeatedly if there was “anything, anything at all” he could do to assist her in her future plans.
She sneered inwardly at the toadying lickspittle, but she had to admire his shrewdness. Sal had worked out that he didn’t want Fleet Crew’s single most deadly (and secret) asset to side with a rival Fleet boss contender.
Natalya told him she would be in need of his cleaning services soon. With her alliance to Lola now ashes, Requiem’s automatic access to Fleet’s scrubbing crews and any other services had died with it.
Her possessions still needed to be packed away safely and her home wiped of incriminating traces of anything involving Requiem’s life while she embarked on an extended trip overseas. Just in case she had unwelcome visitors while she was touring.
Fleet Crew had a reputation for being without peer at site scrubs. No prosecutions had ever resulted from police searching an establishment cleaned by Fleet’s finest.
“Sure,” Sal said enthusiastically. “No problem, Requiem. We’ll have the A team there within the hour whenever you text us, day or night. Be in and out before any turd cutters get a chance to scratch their balls. Anything else?”
Natalya thought about that as a small white moth danced in front of her garden up-lights. She warred with herself for a moment before she spoke.
“Put two names on the permanent white list. They are never to be touched, no matter who gives the order or you’ll have to answer to me. Emily Alison Ryan and her niece, Hailey Moore. I want them protected from future fallout in any coups.”
“Ryan and Moore? Okay. Uh, wait, Moore…she’s not related to Zebra is she? Christ, tell me she’s not the boss hog’s brat who got kidnapped today?”
“She is.”
He inhaled sharply as he processed what she’d asked of him. Fleet Crew all knew the abduction was Lola’s job gone sour. And now Natalya was asking Sal to g
o directly against his boss. Disloyalty like that could be fatal—unless you slithered over her head into the top job yourself.
“Is that a problem?” she asked in a challenging voice.
“No!” Sal said quickly. “It’s done. Just wondering—you don’t want your own name on the white list? Just in case? Lola’s arms are fucking long and her vendettas are legend.”
That was a kind way of looking at it. She would become Lola’s personal target now for betraying her with this call.
Well, Lola had betrayed her first. The same sick sensation coiled in Natalya’s stomach as she’d felt when she’d been a breath away from losing her music by Lola’s hand. To not be able to play was barbarism—she had no other word for it. She could still see the casual expression on Lola’s face as she outlined her plans. As though it was a matter of little consequence.
A cold fury flooded through her. Oh yes, the betrayal was all Lola’s.
Natalya realised Sal was still waiting for a reply and forced out a bark of laughter.
“All right, Sal, sure. I don’t need every two-bit thug gunning for me to make their name; I’d never get anything done. Although good luck finding anyone who could come close to hurting me.”
“Yeah,” Sal agreed reverently.
She hung up.
If only he knew. Two people had managed to get through her defences and hurt her in just the past eight hours.
Lola: Indifferent and cruel. Disloyal and brutal.
And Ryan, who wasn’t the woman Natalya thought she was. She didn’t know where the lies began and ended with that one.
How long had Ryan been laying her little traps for Requiem? She had played her with an innocent routine that had sucked Natalya in and she’d swallowed it whole. Her eyes hardened. She could count on one hand the number of people who had ever done that to her.
She drew in a sharp breath and leaned her forehead against the window. Her breath fogged up the glass and she recalled her impulsive decree to Sal: No one hurts Ryan. Because, despite it all, it didn’t automatically follow that she wanted the woman dead—at least, not at some oafish stranger’s hand who was trying to win Lola’s favour. That would not befit the sneaky little mouse.
