Page 89 of The Circle

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The man calling himself AlexeiGorny smiles back at Alec. It’s not a pleasant smile. The skin around his lips and eyes seems too tight. Artificial. And I recall that I thought the same thing the other time I met him. Maybe a year, year and a half ago? Longer?

Time doesn’t really mean anything anymore.

He places Andra down from his knee, gently, and gestures to the guy called Anton to come up to the stage.

I glance rapidly between Alec, Eliza, and Danny. I can practically feel the heat in the room that’s melting everyone’s brains—mine included—but I can’t decide who’s likeliest to be dumbstruck the most.

Alec just found out his father is not as dead as he has been believed to be. Eliza just found out that the person who has abducted her kid and her brother is the kid’s actual, biological grandfather. And Danny…

Oh, shit. Danny’s about to find out why I have been to this place before. In the same way that I just remembered.

“Hello, my son. So happy you’ve made it here,” Zander van den Berg says.

He may look nothing like the man we once knew as Alec’s father, but everything else about him is the same. The voice, the demeanor, the casual way he presents himself as the prototype for the men Alec and Lars would eventually become.

“Anton, will you take young Andra and bring her to her uncle whilst I have a chat with Alec and his friends, please?”

With no one now in the room to block her, Eliza rushes to the stage to grab Andra up before Anton can escort her away, but when she gets to them, he grabs her by the arm. He’s a thin, willowy kinda guy, but he must be stronger than he looks because it stops an angry Eliza dead in her tracks.

I’ve seen Eliza Watson wriggle her way up and down buildings and out of death’s grip on a few occasions, so him stopping her now with just a tug on her arm is terrifying in a way that’s out of proportion to the visible power on display.

Fuck. We’re all going to die.

“Ms. Watson, please,” Anton says.

“Give. Me. My. Daughter.” Eliza grits out.

Anton looks to Alec’s father, or the man once upon a time known as Alec’s father, who nods his head slightly, communicating something more complex than a head nod usually conveys. Anton releases Eliza’s arm, while not letting go of Andra’s hand, and whispers something that I’m too far away to pick up. And in too much of a haze to understand even if I could hear it.

Eliza stares at the man, chest rising and falling with her breathing, and then she kneels down and says to Andra, “Hey, baby.”

Andra looks up at Anton and then back to her mother. “Hi, Mommy. I missed you.”

The curious accent the kid has—some combination of the various British tones her mother uses as needed, coupled with the unsteadiness of a person just learning what “words” are—slips out in a small, gentle way. I’ve only known the girl for the length of an afternoon, but what’s striking is how compliant she seems compared to how boisterous and rambunctious she was before, demanding that Danny play hopscotch with her and being generally a loud two-year-old.

She doesn’t come across as afraid or anything close. She comes across as someone who adapts to the situation they’re in with incredible ease, acceptance, and a hint of devil-may-care. Basically, she comes across like… well, like Alec.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” her mother asks her.

Andra nods and says, “Uncle Theo and I had scones.”

It makes Eliza laugh. Just a tiny bit. The kind of tiny bit that smacks of relief mixed with sorrow. “Good, baby. That’s good.”

“Is that my grandpa?” Andra asks, pointing at Alec’s father.

Eliza looks at Zander with contempt blazing in her eyes and says, “Don’t worry about all that. You just… you just be good for a bit longer while I talk with everyone and then you, Uncle Theo, and I will go home. How does that sound?”

The tiny person shrugs and says, “Okay.”

“Okay.” Eliza smiles. She wraps Andra up in a hug and I can tell, even from over here, that she’s trying not to cry. “I love you so, so much, baby.”

“I love you too, Mommy.”

I reach my hand to my stomach, unconsciously.

“I’ll see you in a minute, yeah?” Eliza says.