Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance(60)

“Yes… There was a time we thought nobody could get to the invisible man… Did you know they call him ‘invisible man?’”

“No. Is that like a nickname or something?”

“It's more than a nickname… It's like his job. People don't see him, he says. He thinks ever since he got the, you know —” she gestures at the side of her face, indicating the side of his face. The scars. “Ever since then, he kinda thinks that nobody can see him anymore. Not like Alek over there. The supermodel. He really sticks out.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say. I'm afraid to agree, but I'm afraid to disagree too. Something in me is hungry to hear more about them. I suddenly realize that even though we spent the last weeks together, I've mostly been running away. It didn't really occur to me to just it down and ask them about themselves. Oh great, now I feel like a jerk.

“What, um… What happened with that?” I whisper almost fearfully. Suddenly, I want to know. I really want to know.

Her eyes flicker toward me and darken. It looks as though she's hesitating, wondering whether she should really tell me. I tip my plastic cup against hers and toss back the whole rest of the drink, hoping that will encourage her. She barks out a short laugh abruptly and then refills another couple fingers of vodka in my glass.

A great strategy, or maybe not. I can already feel the vodka warming up my insides, and it's got to be 90° out here. Getting drunk is one thing, but throwing up in a garbage can in front of three hundred of your new Russian relatives is a totally other thing.

“Well… I don't know how much you know about this… You probably heard that Alek was engaged, right? To Irina?”

I nod, lying through my teeth.

“Well, Irina’s father was… A problem. Not always a problem, but where Irina was concerned…”

I can totally relate.

“So Alek was with her… But Roman got caught in the middle or something. This is back in Atlanta. Somehow Irina's father got it in his head that she and Alek were going to elope, but when he looked for Alek he found Roman instead. There was… Well —” she swallows hard, her gaze going far away. “There was a fire. Irina's father wanted to know where she was, Roman couldn’t tell him because Roman didn't know. But he didn't believe him. He knew that the brothers were always together. And I guess they were, up until then.”

“That's… That's horrible,” I say. I try to piece it together and in my imagination the movie of some old crazed Russian guy coming to Roman, torturing him? Asking him questions about Alek? Not believing what he said? I could see how it would happen… Roman couldn't, wouldn't talk his way out of the situation. He would refuse on principle.

But I can’t imagine them apart. Trying to conceive of Alek without Roman or vice versa, it makes no sense to me. They’re joined in my mind, two sides of the same coin.

My eyes find them again, talking in their group. I can see the shiny, pink smear of the scar under his cheekbone. Alek stands next to him, a study in contrasts. I want to go to them, suddenly. Maybe it's the vodka, but I want to tell them… Something. I don't know what yet.

“Yeah,” she continues, sighing, “we always thought it would be Alek who got married first, but I guess not. Roman really is a good catch, Marie. He’s safe, strong. In our business, that kind of protection is something to cherish. You did good. Really good.”

Roman and Alek each glance over to me again, one right after the other and I realize they keep doing that. They’re watching me, keeping tabs. Their bodies are angled so that I’m always in view. And where this kind of supervision used to bother me intensely, now I find it almost comforting.

Knowing that Roman sacrificed his face to protect Alek hurts my heart. But yet, of course he did. It’s their nature. And that sacrifice probably hurts Alek more deeply than Roman.

Maybe it’s the heat or the vodka, but suddenly I’m simmering in affection for them. The way they’re standing there, so serious. The way their eyes flicker toward me protectively, then back toward each other, passing those silent notes between them. Maybe Olga is right. I did good?





CHAPTER 16


ALEK

“I understand why you're asking me, Roman, but I don't know what you want me to tell you,” Gregor says, clasping his hands in front of him. The bright August sky is reflected in his old-man glasses. From the look of him, I don't have any reason to think he's not telling us exactly what he knows, but Roman just can't seem to let it go.

“Then who?”

“I think you already know the answer to this question,” Gregor nods. “If not us, then who? Probably her own people, Roman. That is the most likely.”