Page 195 of Lethal Obsession

“I do not need to tell you of the evil of Ilyan Fedorov.” I realize my father is watching me, sadness heavy in his face. “You lived enough of it to know the man he was.”

“He told Vilnus Orlov that I belonged to him.” I barely realize I’m saying the words until they’re out of my mouth. “He said, ‘Sergei Petrovsky’s devil-spawned son belongs to me.’”

“Da.” My father’s soft Russian is barely a breath. “That sounds like Fedorov.”

“My people are watching your every fucking move, Petrovsky. You so much as twitch in the wrong direction, and I’ll take your other eye.”

“I wasn’t afraid of him.” I meet my father’s eyes. “There was nothing he could do to me, by then, that Orlov had not already done.”

Papa’s mouth twists painfully. “As you recently reminded me, Alexei: It isn’t our own pain that hurts the most. It is being forced to witness the suffering of those we love—and knowing that we caused it—that is the stuff of nightmares.”

I grimace. “I was angry.”

“You had every right to be.” Taking another cigarette from the packet, Papa lights it from the first, then throws the butt into the rubble. “You said something else that has stayed with me: that you knew how important the Naryshkin treasure was to me, because I had already sacrificed a family for it back in Paris.”

I shake my head. “I should never have said such a thing.”

“Again—you had every right.” He draws on his cigarette. “I have made many terrible mistakes in my life, Alexei. But there are two I regret the most. The first is the way I spoke to you during our last call.” He blows out smoke in a fierce stream. “And the other is all the things I have never said to you.” His face is grim and set. “I did not intend to keep secrets,” he says slowly. “I am not even certain I kept them on purpose. But as your sister rather bluntly pointed out to me recently, whatever my intent might have been is irrelevant.”

The shade of Darya’s voice coloring his words almost makes me smile.

“I should like to tell you some of those things now,” he says quietly, “if you will allow me to.”

I nod.

“So.” Papa’s cigarette burns between his fingers. “The night Ilyan Fedorov took our families, he had Aleksander and me arrested.” Not even half a century is enough to take the rough edge from his voice as he begins. “False charges, of course, but Fedorov owned much of Paris at that time. He offered us a deal: he’d leave our families alone if we handed over the Naryshkin treasure.” He glances at me. “We agreed. Of course we did. There was nothing we wouldn’t have given for their safety. We took him to the warehouse and gave him everything we had.” His face spasms. “We didn’t realize it was already too late.”

He inhales deeply on his cigarette. The smoke leaches slowly from his mouth like an afterthought, his old eyes staring at the broken ground before us.

“You said earlier that our families died in a fire. That description does not come close to describing what Ilyan Fedorov did to our wives, Alexei. To our children.”

Inhaling sharply, he looks directly at me. “Fedorov came into our homes. Into the bedrooms of our children. Pulled them from their sleep and forced them to watch as his men raped our wives. Irina, my eldest daughter—” He breaks off, passing a shaking hand over his face. “I will never know if that was true,” he says grimly. “But I knew Fedorov.” He holds my eyes. “You knew Fedorov. You know what he was capable of.”

For a horrible moment I hear Fedorov’s flat, cold threats: “I’ll take your cock and feed it to your cunt of a father, while I torture his daughter until she’s mad with it . . .”

“Yes.” My voice is not quite steady. “Yes, I know what he was capable of.”

“Long before Paris,” Papa says grimly, “I knew Fedorov in the gulag. When I beat him in a fight, he forced me to watch as he raped my sister. All those years later, when he told me that he’d done the same to my daughter, not only did I have no reason to doubt him—I could see it. I could see it, Alexei.” He shakes his head. “And then he burned them alive,” he says dully. “Later, our neighbors told us that they heard our children screaming for us. For fathers who never came.”

The sudden, sickening spinning hits me without any warning. One moment my eye is locked on my father’s, his every word slicing me up inside. The next, I’m gripping a twisted piece of jagged metal hard enough to cut into my hand, fighting for breath and wondering wildly if I am going to shame my father’s loss by vomiting at his feet.

Then Papa’s hands are on my shoulders, his grip surprisingly strong. “Breathe.” His voice comes down a whirling tunnel, calm and strong. “Breathe, syn moy. I am here. You are safe.”

He keeps saying the same words, until gradually the world steadies and I can breathe once more.

“Come,” he says, leading me to an overturned piece of concrete. “Sit.” Sitting on the concrete beside me, he offers me one of his cigarettes.

“No.” I shake my head. “Thank you.”

“Ha.” He gives me a rueful smile. “I admire your strength, syn moy. Me, I have many weaknesses. Cigarettes are the least of them.”

“I am not strong, Papa.” I put my head down, clasping my hands behind my neck, my stomach still churning. “I don’t smoke because showing any form of weakness just gave Orlov another way to torture me.” I’ve never spoken of those years to my father. Not ever. But somehow, after what he has just said, the words come of their own volition.

“Yes.” Papa nods. “That is the way men like that work, is it not? They seek our vulnerabilities and exploit them. Discover what we care about—and destroy it.”

He rests his elbows on his knees, smoke trailing up into the air. “I am ashamed to admit,” he says slowly, “that after what happened here”—he nods at the wreckage in front of us—“I learned to do that myself. We both did, Aleksander and me.

“Fedorov brought us here the morning after he had killed them all. He put guns to our heads and made us kneel amid the ashes of our own wives and children. He told us, in slow, graphic detail, exactly how they had died. When he was done, we both wished he would pull the triggers.”