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Things skidded and clattered onto the floor. Alek turned back in time to catch Ian yanking the lamp off the side table. The electric cord ripped from the wall. The light went out and the sudden darkness blinded him, but he didn’t need his eyesight to know that the sound of shattering china and broken glass was Ian throwing the lamp onto the floor.
“Good night,” Ian said in a sad, gritty refrain.
The door slammed.
“Goodbye,” Alek said quietly.
He wished he hadn’t ruined their goodbye, just like he wished he hadn’t ruined everything else.
36
ALEKSANDAR
BULGARIA. SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD.
The years Aleksandar spent banished at boarding school proved most informative.
Aleksandar had always known he was superior to others—in wit, in talent, in appearance, but it had never occurred to him to use that superiority to his advantage. People were meant to be manipulated. Everyone was for sale. Wasn’t that what his father taught him?
Blackmail and bribes were particularly useful. Sex was as good a currency as any. If Aleksandar wanted something, all he had to do was determine whom to fuck or fuck over. Ten minutes on his knees was the only effort he’d had to put into securing two hours of daily solo practice at the piano.
Boarding school was much more tolerable after that.
Aleksandar was invited home for the summer and every summer thereafter, but he seldom saw his father, and when he did he wished he hadn’t. After a respectful period of time, his father remarried.
Aleksandar's new stepmother was seven years older than him. She was fair-skinned with golden hair and hazel eyes on aface rounded with youth—nothing like his mother’s olive skin, green eyes, and sharp beauty.
Their marriage was a loveless one. A match made in politics and power. There were no half-siblings, the fact of which was not lost on Aleksandar.
After stealing a classmate’s login information—in case his own browsing history was monitored—Aleksandar used the school computer to learn everything he could about lock picking and safe cracking. Apparently, a fireproof safe was more for protection against damage than protection against theft. A combination lock could be cracked if a would-be thief knew what to listen for. Drilling a hole through the lock was another more foolproof option, but Aleksandar wouldn’t cheat unless he had to.
His mother might have known of the safe’s location—perhaps she even knew the code, or planned to pick the lock—but the safe wasn’t for her. His mother was prone to migraines, brought on or worsened whenever Aleksandar played. His uncle would never leave something for her there. Then again, for all he knew, his mother loved music, but couldn’t bear to listen to what only reminded her of what she couldn’t have.
All the same, Aleksandar knew with complete conviction that as much as the piano belonged to him and he belonged to it, that locked box only belonged to those whose initials were carved into the side of the piano. His uncle, and him.
At first, hiding the safe with the piano had seemed reckless. Whatever was inside must not be very important, or valuable, especially because it was locked away in a safe that could easily be cracked, but his uncle was never reckless. Exactly like Aleksandar’s father, and like Aleksandar himself, everything his uncle did was for a reason.
The Velishikovs played chess, not checkers.
The only likely conclusion was that the safe, and itscontents, were a backup plan. His uncle had left what Aleksandar would need most in a place he was most likely to find it. That meant the combination to the lock wasn’t random. His uncle would have selected a series of numbers Aleksandar would be able to guess. It was the most frustrating of failures that he hadn’t solved it yet.
That was why he wouldn’t crack the safe with tools or tricks, not unless he had no other choice. He wanted to earn the contents contained within. He wanted to know that he was right, that even though there were secrets that his uncle had kept from him, that he’d likely never learn the truth, at the very least, he knew his uncle.
It wasa hot night in midsummer when Aleksandar finally cracked the safe. He was eighteen. Boarding school was done and over and after reminding his father that all the otherheirlingswent to nepotism-ridden business schools in the United States, he would leave for Wharton in the fall.
It was all a farce, one that they both were in on. It had been years since his father had seriously expected that Aleksandar would one day replace him. Aleksandar could not be controlled. He wouldn’t fall in line. The corrupt family business would end with his father.
Aleksandar wasn’t sure why his father let him live when he’d killed his own brother with impunity. He suspected his father didn’t care what happened to him, as long as he didn’t have to look at him, because when he looked at him all he saw was everything that he’d lost. A brother. A wife. The idea of a son that Aleksandar had failed to become, and never would.
That night, the forest behind his house was alive with the calls of crickets and frogs, providing a perfect cover for hisfootsteps. His father and stepmother were away, and aside from the guards at the gate, the grounds were empty.
Like every time Aleksandar approached the fallen log that nursed four new trees, he expected the safe to have disappeared, to never have existed at all, erased from existence the way that his uncle had been. But just like all the other times, when he reached his hand into the dark hole, pushing past roots that tangled like spider webs, the box was still where he’d left it.
Aleksandar propped his flashlight on the ground. Over the years, he’d tried dozens of alphanumeric cipher versions of his name, hundreds of historical dates, some so obscure they were only tangentially related to the stories his uncle had told him.
That night he would try only one code. The date of birth of something that never breathed, that had died, but would live as long as Aleksandar didn’t forget it. He’d spent months researching the history of his uncle’s piano, a task made difficult by the need for secrecy and the fact that all identifying features of the piano had been destroyed in the fire.
With the tip of his finger, he scrolled through each number disk until the combination read 1-8-9-3. There was a click, and the lid popped open. It was an anticlimax, really. Opening a box that had been locked for years. Discovering what his uncle had left for him, what his mother had so desperately wanted.
