Page 125 of Winterveil

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Klaudia.”

Her chest seized, almost painfully. Julian’s stare was both soft and intense, and she could almost believe him. She tried to think of an equally reassuring reply, or even a coy barb, words that would make her feel like she deserved the attentions of someone like Julian Joyce-Young III.

But those words never came easily to her.

Instead, what she said was “So where is Fikret taking us?”

“My family has a compound on Martha’s Vineyard,” Julian said. “No one has been there since . . . No one will be there.”

Klaudia nodded again. Maybe, if they had longer, she could have summoned up the kind of words she wanted to say—been the kind of girl she wanted to be. But that would require everything to be different. It would mean living in a world that Klaudia couldn’t even allow herself to dream of.

Back in her room, Klaudia ordered a plate of food and picked at it, running through the plan in her mind. There were so many ways it could go wrong and so few eventualities where they escaped alive. They would have to be quick, clever, bold, and maybe just a little bit foolish. But wasn’t all hope, to some degree, foolish?

She also examined the dress hanging in the wardrobe. Just seeing it made her skin prickle, but Klaudia removed it from the garment bag and tried it on. It fit perfectly, tight around her breasts and hips.

As she stared at herself in the mirror, Klaudia felt very much removed from her own body. She could make herself look presentable, well-groomed, even sophisticated and elegant, patting on lipstick and pinning back her hair, but it felt like dressing up a doll. There was no connection between the physical form and the mind that controlled it. It had been that way for as long as she could remember.

Once she had ensured that it fit, Klaudia took off the dress and hung it back in the garment bag. She closed the wardrobe.

When Klaudia put her civilian clothes back on, a piece of paper fluttered out of the jacket pocket. She leaned down to pick it up. It was Julian’s note, the one where he had told her to play the Archangel Variation. The one where he had called her sweetheart. She was bewildered for a moment to see it. Had Deckard retrieved it from the coat she had worn in Traumstadt and slipped it into this jacket? If so, why?

Her fingers ghosted over the letters, tracing her name as it was written in Julian’s neat penmanship. There was no reason to hold on to it; the note had served its purpose. But Klaudia tucked it back into her pocket anyway, pulse humming.

There was a knock at the door.

Klaudia walked over and peered through the peephole, expecting to see Julian or Nadiya or Giselle, or even Deckard. But instead it was Chane.

Her instinct was to jump back, or pretend she wasn’t there. But it was too late for that; Chane had certainly heard her footsteps. Stomach clenching, Klaudia opened the door.

“Hey!” cried Chane, immediately upon seeing her. “You’re here! Awesome!”

Klaudia tried not to flinch visibly. “Did Deckard give you my room number?”

“Yeah,” Chane said. “I wanted to talk to you in private. One-on-one, for real this time. Yeah?”

Klaudia froze in the threshold. She had no experience fending off these kinds of advances, especially not from someone as relentless as Chane. And hadn’t she laid the path for this already, with her false flirtation? Utterly out of her depth, Klaudia merely stared back at him in silence.

But Chane looked undeterred. “I invited your father to the gala, you know.”

Her blood turned to ice. “What?”

“Yeah, I sent a nice little gift basket and everything. I wanted to get some business advice from the great Ivan Shimonov.”

Chane had no ability to be subtle. Quickly, Klaudia discerned the true purpose of his invitation. As much as her father loathed the paternalism of the narrative that had been foisted upon him, the story was a valuable political tool. To have fled the Soviet Union due to persecution was good enough—adding his identity made the tale’s propagandistic potential irresistible. Western leaders could point to it as proof that the Soviets oppressed their ethnoreligious minorities, behavior that had no place in the free world. Klaudia had heard it all before. Russians were backward tyrants; Americans were liberators.

The truth was quite a bit murkier, but no one was interested in the gritty little realities. Chane wanted to bolster his image as a hero of the West. And having Ivan Shimonov at his side—or his daughter on his arm—added legitimacy to the act.

“He never replied to the invitation,” Chane went on. “But I guess he’s a very busy man, isn’t he?”

Relief made Klaudia feel weak in the knees. “Yes. He is.”

“Good thing he has such a charming and beautiful daughter.”

Immediately the icy sensation in her veins returned. It was public knowledge that Chane had thirteen children, all fathered out of wedlock, an impressive feat for a man of only thirty-eight. His various mistresses were always suing him for child support or going on morning talk shows to air their grievances.

Chane was not exactly quiet about the fact that this was all done in an effort to further a superior bloodline. While that would make Klaudia an unlikely candidate for the position, the knowledge did not much reassure her.

When Klaudia didn’t reply, Chane said, “I have something for you.”