Page 248 of Lethal Obsession

“Thanks, brother.”

“Fuck off,” he says cheerfully and ends the call.

I hand the phone back to Mickey, still grinning. He raises his eyebrows. “Anything I need to know?”

I shrug. “Dima says you’re useless, but he’s working on it.”

“Fucker,” Mickey mutters as he turns away. I’m still smiling when a knock comes on the door.

“Boys.” We turn to find Sergei at the door. “I hope I’m not interrupting?”

“Not at all.” Mickey puts his glass down and heads for the door. “Since I no longer have to dread coming face-to-face with my ex-girlfriend, I’d probably better go and eat something to soak up all the vodka.” He shakes my hand as he passes, shooting me something that could almost pass for a grin. “See you out there, brother.”

Papa waits until the door has closed behind him before pouring himself a vodka from the same bottle of Graf and lighting a cigarette.

“Don’t tell—”

“Rosa,” I finish for him, grinning. “I know.”

“If a man cannot enjoy a smoke in his nineties,” Papa says, drawing on the cigarette with relish, “then why bother living that long in the first place?”

“Some fine Russian logic there, Papa.”

“Ha.” He smiles. “Perhaps. But Rosa is Colombian, so my Russian logic has never impressed her at all.”

That makes me laugh.

“It is such a sight,” he says, regarding me affectionately, “to see you laugh, syn moy. To see such happiness inside you, and the happiness you bring to others.” He meets my eye. “I have never been more proud of you, Alexei.”

His words mean more for being so simple.

I embrace him, savoring the old, almost forgotten comfort of his rangy strength.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I say as we step back. I take the hip flask back out of my breast pocket. “Who was it that engraved the words on the bottom of this flask? You or Aleksander?”

“Ha!” He gives a cough of laughter. “You found that. I thought perhaps it was too faded to notice.”

“I noticed, Papa. On the plane on the way to Miami.”

“Well, how about that.” He looks both surprised and pleased. “It was Aleksander,” he says. “He inscribed the words there on one of our first nights in Paris. We were two men raised in a gulag who knew nothing about the world except what we’d learned from the stories of other men. It was cold, we had very little money, and no idea, really, how to begin making a new life, so we did the only thing men do at such times and got blisteringly drunk.”

I laugh aloud at that, and Papa smiles, a proper, wide smile that touches my heart.

“Aleksander somehow carved those words perfectly, despite being barely able to hold the graver, and even less able to see straight. The next morning he was utterly mortified and spent hours examining every letter for any trace of a fault. He always said it was the best work he ever did, because technically he was working blind.”

“I love that story.” I turn the hip flask over in my hands. “There are so many dents and marks on it. While I was in Miami, I realized that I can’t properly tell the story of this flask, Papa, because it holds not just one, but hundreds of stories.”

I stop turning the flask and meet his eyes. “I was hoping,” I say quietly, “that after our honeymoon, you and Rosa might come and join Ofelia and me on the Quantum Drift for a while. I should like very much to hear the stories the flask has to tell.”

His eyes widen in surprise, then deepen to a rich, sparkling blue. “It would be my honor, syn moy,” he says quietly. “And my greatest pleasure.”

51

Ofelia

“This is hardly the peaceful space to calm pre-wedding jitters.” Abby shakes her head as she shoos Aleksander and Leon out the door.

“Gia is calling you,” she scolds them as one of the au pairs appears, red-faced and out of breath, around the corner. “You need to stay with her, and out of this room, to give Ofelia a chance to get ready. And find something quiet to do until we leave for the wedding.”