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The scowl, however, was completely and utterly Gavril’s.
“Sorry, Mama,” Katarina said quietly, her head still bowed. “We were too loud.”
The woman continued to stare at me, her cool gray eyes assessing every inch of my skin, and I suppressed the urge to shiver under her gaze.
Yet another trait her son had gotten from her. “I’m Sveta Stanislavovna,” I finally stated, stretching out my hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, and thank you for allowing me into your home.”
She glared at my hand and I started to sweat under the light sweater I was wearing, dropping my hand awkwardly to my side.
This woman could melt ice with her stare.
“Maria Afanasyevna.” She took my hand in a light grip.
I felt like I should curtsey or something, but I remained perfectly still as she looked over my shoulder at her daughters. “Dismissed.”
Both girls wasted no time in leaving the room, squeezing past their mother without another word.
Maria looked back at me, her eyes assessing again. “You will take tea in my solarium. Come.”
I was so exhausted, the change in time zones and then the sweet but overbearing interactions with Gavril’s sisters having sucked the life out of me, but I wasn’t about to tell his mother no.
After all, she didn’t look like a woman whom you dared to say no to.
Obediently, I followed her further down the hall, desperately trying to recognize something so I could find my way back once she was done with me.
That is, if I survived this tea.
Finally, she turned into a room of glass, the windows overlooking the river below at all angles. The furniture was wrought iron and surrounded by quite a few green plants. The smell of soil hung heavy in the air. I doubted that she tended to the plants.
A tray with a samovar sat on the table between two chairs.
“Sit,” she commanded, her voice filling the space.
I waited until Maria took her seat before I took mine, not wanting to break some sort of etiquette rule I didn’t know about.
She promptly poured the tea and handed me the porcelain cup, the steam escaping from the hot liquid. Gavril’s mother didn’t offer up anything extra, not even sugar or honey, and I kept from grimacing, doubting that it was one of those flavored teas that I had tried before.
At least it wasn’t black coffee.
“I am not a fool,” she finally said after several minutes, her cold eyes still on me. “You might have fooled my girls because they are children. You might have fooled my son, who is too stupid to see. But you cannot fool me. Not a drop of Russian blood flows in your veins, much less Stanislav Orlov’s.”
Oh my God. What else does she know?
I clenched the cup and its saucer tightly in my hand, wondering what was going to happen next. Did they shoot liars on the spot? Why couldn’t Gavril wait until he had introduced me to his mother before running off to do his business? He was going to come back to a dead wife.
Still, the way she had coldly addressed her children to me, a stranger, didn’t sit well with me. It was only after hearing her clipped tone that I realized: she didn’t speak; she issued orders.
“Your daughters are lovely,” I started out, knowing my voice was shaking. “And your son is brilliant. You should be proud of your children.”
“I don’t need you telling me to be proud of my children.”
Her gaze sharpened, but I refused to cringe. What sort of wife would I be if I just let her bash him like that? He wasn’t the most perfect person, but Gavril wasn’t stupid.
“Do you know what my son does for a living?” Maria asked, lifting her cup to her lips.
I didn’t answer her. Honestly, I really didn’t know all of it. I knew why he had wanted to marry me, but other than that, Gavril hadn’t shared a lot of information about his business.
“Of course you don’t.” Maria finished her sip, a smirk on her face. “Gavril thinks that bringing an American whore to me is going to make me forget everything that our forefathers have done before him? He might allow his cock to lead him this time, but he’s not going to ruin everything that we have done. He will not dishonor our family like this.”
I opened my mouth, feeling downright pissed off that she thought Gavril was ruining what his forefathers had done. I mean, who even spoke like that these days?
“I see you have questions,” she replied, surprising me. I watched as she placed her teacup back on the tray and folded her fingers in her lap. “And I will tell you what you need to know. Our family was once a great family of Russia. We dined with czars and married into royalty, led Russia’s armies from one victory to another.
“And all of it came to an end when the Bolsheviks came. They did not like the fact that we were their betters. So, they stole what rightfully belonged to us. Burned what they could not take and killed those who dared to resist. The ones who lived fell into the hands of the communist state. First Lenin’s Cheka, then Beria’s NKVD. After torture and endless false letters confessing supposed crimes against the people, they disappeared into Stalin’s gulags, hidden among the sea of trees in Siberia.
“There, they were worked to the bone. The weak died, and the survivors were forced to become a part of the Vory v Zakonev.”
The confusion must have shown on my face, for she shook her head, muttering under her breath, probably for me to drop dead so she didn’t have to explain anymore.
Her mouth was drawn into a tight line, and her voice was barely a whisper. “Thieves,” she said in English. “We became thieves.”
The way she said it made me feel like I was stupid, but I bit my tongue. The woman clearly hated me, but I didn’t want to give her a reason to hate me any more than she already did.
“When the Soviet Union collapsed, we started again.” She returned to her native Russian. “The generations that were left picked up the pieces and reforged the Kirilenko name in Yeltsin’s and then Putin’s new Russia. It wasn’t without sacrifice, of course,” she continued, anger stretching over her expression. “There were others that rose with us, others like your so-called father.”
Maria spat out the last word like it was poison. I didn’t know why she was feeding me this information. Maybe she was trying to scare me away.
Given everything I had gone through over the last few weeks, she was going to have to try harder.
Maria stood suddenly, and I hurried to place my cup on the tray. “My husband was killed a decade ago,” she replied, reaching out to touch the leaf of the nearby plant. “In a crossfire that should not have taken his life. That forced my son, my only son, to step into a position that he wasn’t ready for.”
My breath caught as I thought about Gavril, grieving the loss of his father, now forced to assume control of his family’s empire. No wonder he was like he was today. It wasn’t just because of his cold mother but because of the weight that had been on his shoulders at such a young age.
