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“Don’t let me interrupt,” Viktoria says coolly.
“Then don’t interrupt.” I turn to face her. She’s smiling, but I see the hurt there, too. Even when she and I occasionally found ourselves in bed together, it was never like this. She can see that as well as I can. “What do you want?”
“I just came to collect my due thanks.”
“Thanks for what?” Rayne snaps.
“Maybe Kirill hasn’t had the time to tell you, but I’m the reason he galloped over here all triumphant. That grandiose speech back there?” She hitches a thumb over her shoulder. “All possible because I blew the whistle on pervy little Sasha.”
“You took your sweet time sharing the information,” I remind her.
“What’s thirty seconds here or there? I’m a hero, and I want a prize.”
“You told Kirill that Sasha was in here with me?” Rayne asks in bewilderment.
Viktoria nods. “I saw him follow you in after we talked. I’ve been in a dark room with him enough times to know he was up to no good.”
“Thank you,” Rayne murmurs. The words sound like they are scraped from the very bottom of her. It’s the bare minimum she can manage after all the history between the two of them. “How’s that?”
Viktoria wrinkles her nose. “I had something else in mind: the truth.”
Rayne sighs. “What truth? I don’t have anything to hide.”
“Then tell me where your mother got that necklace.”
Viktoria crosses the room and reaches for the locket. Rayne moves to pull away, but Viktoria catches the necklace in her hand and turns it over. Light from the main room reflects off the gold plating on the back.
I move around to get a better look at the lines engraved into the gold. At first, it looks like a crude series of slashes worn by decades of wear.
But then the image takes shape.
“What?” Rayne asks, jerking the necklace out of Viktoria’s hands and trying to get a better look at the back. “This etching? That’s just the name of the jeweler or something. It doesn’t mean anything. Actually, my mom got it from her lover, so maybe it belonged to another woman. Maybe those are her initials.”
“Or his.” I look to Viktoria, watching the beginning of realization dawn on her face.
Rayne is still clueless. “Maybe. I don’t know who he was, though, so—”
“Viktoria knows.” I wrap an arm around Rayne’s shoulders and turn her to face me. “You said that necklace was given to your mother by the man she had an affair with. The man who is really your father.”
“Yeah.” Rayne looks from me to Viktoria, who is speechless for the first time in god knows how long. “What’s going on?”
Viktoria clears her throat. “That engraving is… it’s the Kozlov family crest. The letters K, Z, and V laid over one another. That necklace belonged to my grandmother. When she died, she gave it to my father. He must’ve given it to your mother.”
Rayne goes perfectly still. She turns to me, eyes wide. “Wait—her father is…”
“The same as yours.” I nod grimly as the truth settles in. “Leonid Kozlov.”
54
RAYNE
“No.” I shake my head in denial before I can even process what Kirill is saying. “No, no, that’s not—That’s ridiculous. There is some kind of—”
Kirill clutches me close as he explains. “Leonid told me he gave his favorite mistress a token of his love. There’s a chance this could all be some misunderstanding… but I don’t think so.”
“Leonid is—” I shake my head again. “My mom slept withLeonid?”
Out of everything, that is what my mind catches on. Even in his youth, I can’t imagine Leonid not being a slimy snake of a man. What could my mom have possibly seen in that fake smile and slicked-back hair?
