He turns to look at me, a soft smile on his full lips. I snuggle into his side, feeling very warm and safe. It’s not so bad, this relationship. Besides, I am getting a lot more out of this form of mafia protection than I was as just a debtor months before!
Suddenly, I find myself itching to confide in him the way he confided in me. I want him to know me, really know me.
“My mom and brother died, too,” I murmur, with no preamble. Probably not the most tactful start to this particular conversation, but here we are.
Ivan sits up a little bit, turning his full focus on me. He furrows his thick brows and cocks his head to the side slightly. “When?”
I sit up, too, and shift around to face him, sitting cross-legged on the bed and pulling a pillow into my lap for moral support. “Many years ago,” I reply. “And it was very much like the way your mother and sister died.”
“Car accident?” Ivan prompts, looking genuinely interested.
I nod, fiddling with the hem of the pillowcase nervously. “Yes.”
“Foul play?” he asks, the hardness returning to his expression.
“No, no. It was really just an accident,” I answer quickly. “Honestly, it was.”
Ivan runs a large hand back over his head. “Well, either way, it is a horrible thing.”
“Yeah, it is. I wasn’t as young as you, and I wasn’t in the car at the time. But I still think about them every day, you know.”
“You never really heal from that kind of wound,” Ivan agrees.
I’m quiet for a moment, biting my lip. Then, the words just fall from my lips: “But I can understand their deaths. Unlike my father’s.”
Ivan takes my hand in his, gently rubbing the back of my hand with his thumb supportively. This gives me the strength to continue. “He was murdered a couple months before you met me.”
“Who killed him?” Ivan demands, his rage suddenly bubbling to the surface.
I shake my head sadly. “I still don’t know. There was a quick but thorough investigation, but they never did find out. It drives me insane thinking that the murderer is still out there living his life while my dad is gone. It just isn’t fair.”
I’m surprised at myself for sharing this much. I’ve never found the words to tell anyone else, not like this. But something about Ivan does this to me, makes me act like someone else, someone more open, less afraid.
So I go on. “I was away at college when it happened. I grew up here, you know, and after my mom and Steven died, I never imagined I would leave my dad. I couldn’t just abandon him to run the club alone. But he encouraged me to leave, to go off on my own and live my own life. So finally, I did. And I was having so much fun, Ivan, just being myself, being a college girl. And then somebody killed my dad while I was gone.”
I stop to catch my breath and swallow back the lump in my throat. Ivan gives my hand a quick squeeze of encouragement and I resume the story.
“So I came back and I’ve been trying to run the club alone ever since. I don’t want to let my dad’s dream die, even if he did. The Amber Room is really all I have left of him, and if I can keep his dream alive then it’s almost like I can keep his memory alive, too. And I just keep thinking that if only I’d stayed home like a good daughter, he wouldn’t have died. Maybe I could have done something to prevent it, to save him—”
Ivan puts a finger to my lips and shakes his head. “You were not your father’s keeper, Katy. Remember that. Dark things happen when we are not looking, and you could not have stayed here forever just waiting for it. That is no life.”
I hang my head and blink back the tears in my eyes. I have to stay strong. I’m tougher than this. Get it together, Katy!
“I only wish I had known you then,” Ivan continues thoughtfully. “But I was not even in America at that time. I was in Russia.”
I raise my eyebrows in surprise, and he adds, “I was in prison, specifically.”
“Russian prison?” I ask, wiggling closer. “What for?”
“For nearly beating a man to death.”
My mouth drops open. “N-nearly?” I manage to croak.
“Yes. I would have killed him if that had been the mission. But no, I wanted him to live, as an example to his peers of what can happen if a man fucks with a member of the mafia family. He was a very bad man, Katy.”
“What did he do? Who is he?”
Ivan heaves a sigh. “Well, let me start from the beginning. I was here in Brighton Beach when my superior informed me of a mission back in the motherland. My boss’s daughter, Yekaterina, he was worried for her safety. She had fallen out of contact with her father, and he wanted me to find her. So I returned to Russia for the first time since I was sixteen years old.”