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“The file says you left school, it never said why. What happened?” The question is soft.
It isn’t a good memory. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how people found out about me but they did. One day I woke up to find a police officer, a social worker and a half dozen men in uniforms roaming around the place I called home. The next I knew I was in Ray’s Lincoln Park one-bedroom-with-a-study condo, living in a small room without doors and no closet. For the first year I wouldn’t leave the condo. I was so scared of how chaotic the outside was. But by the next school year the social worker, the psychologist, and Ray were over me being afraid and said it was time to go back to school. At first, it wasn’t so bad. But then some boys started teasing me. The stuff they said…” I shake my head.
“I tried to tell the social worker and the teachers, but they were the children of rich people and I was lying. No one had told them, how could they know? I managed to make it out of the school year in one piece but the next year…”
Aleksander presses his lips to the back of my hand. “The boys, what did they do?”
“They cornered me in a bathroom. There were four of them. They tried to rape me. My clothes were so torn the school had to request Ray bring me new ones. Thankfully, a teacher heard the commotion and saved me. I told everyone I would use Ray’s gun on myself before I went back to school again. They listened.” I shrug.
“Mylashka, do you remember the boys who hurt you?”
Even with the rage I sense within him. I have no fear of him. It isn’t me who needs to fear Aleksander. Maybe I’m not as good as I thought I was because I have no doubt why he asks the question. I know and am…thankful, oddly flattered he cares about what happened to me so long ago. I shake my head.
“I already destroyed them. The whole reason I learned how to hack was to get to the pictures one of them took of it. I got into his laptop then I got into his life. He was at Columbia, pre-med when I found him. He’s dead, died of a drug overdose two years ago. The other three aren’t a whole lot better. Two are in prison, one for the rest of his natural life, one for another ten years. And the last one, I ruined his life so badly he ran off to the wilds of South America, leaving everything behind to stay off the grid last year. He’s not very smart though, I picked up his tracks a few weeks ago.”
Aleksander laughs a full, throaty laugh. “You are indeed a Levin.”
Dear lord, his laughter is so sexy my nipples are hard—I didn’t know they did that for something so simple.
“Today we will spend the day out on the family boat. Not quite the Shedd, but Mother says it’s almost as good.”
“Will she be joining us?” I want to meet her but I’m also worried she won’t like me. If she doesn’t, what will it mean to Daddy? It’s clear he’s close with not just his brothers, but his mother too.
“No, she’s dealing with the preparations for Milos’s wedding. She did warn us once the wedding was over she would be spending a week on the water to recuperate. I think she was hoping to force Milos out of the city for his honeymoon. Even when he’s on the boat he winds up working.”
“A week on a boat?” No way are we speaking the same language. “Daddy, is it really a boat?”
A shrug. “All right, it’s more of a yacht. It started as a boat. It was named for her. We are now on our third, so this is theYulianumber three. Mother grew up poor in Ukraine listening to her father waxing lyrical about his time at sea. When she came to America anytime she could be on the water she felt close to him. She spent hours on the sightseeing boat tours before she met my father. Father joked that he should have proposed to her with the promise he would buy her a fleet of ships. If he had maybe she would have said yes the first time.”
“Your mother told your father no?” I’m shocked. As much as I hate Victor Levin, he was a handsome man. His sons took after him. I also know he was extremely rich and powerful at forty when he married his wife. All the pictures I’ve seen of them, it’s clear they were in love.
“She’d only known him for a day. She swore she thought he was joking. When he handcuffed her to the bed, telling her he’d let her go when she said yes, she figured out he was very serious.”
“He what?” So insanity runs in his family. That’s something to consider besides the whole my children will be killers. Then again, maybe it’s the insanity that makes the killing easier.
“Yes,mylahska, I took a page out of his book. He was quite proud of it. Mother had no complaints.”
“She might have said that, but it’s a lie.” I don’t know where the words come from.
Aleksander is thoughtful. “How would you know? Considering you had a chance to meet my mother and ask her yourself, yet you did not.”
“I’d regret it. Living on without him all these years. I’m not stupid. I know the shooting that killed him and your grandfather had nothing to do with a disgruntled ex-employee of his grocery store almost fifteen years ago. It was a hit. If he weren’t mafia he would be alive.”
Tilting his head, he studies me. “If he weren’t bratva he would likely never have had enough money to buy the building she came to rent an apartment in. He also probably wouldn’t have dared to hold her against her will when she told him no. I will not lie to you, the lives of my brothers and me are under threat from various men at times we have no control over. Milos was shot only a few years ago. I’m sure you felt my scars. However, that is me and my brothers. There is no one safer on this planet than you. People die every day in traffic accidents, plane crashes, and the violence our world has fallen into. For the record, my mother has stated she doesn’t regret a thing. She would have taken a single month with my father over fifty years with another man.”
I want to call him a liar. Only I can’t. Staring into his eyes, his body against mine. The only reason I would have been able to walk away from him was because nothing could take away the memory of his care and lovemaking. I could live on that forever and all I got was a few days with him. He sees it and smiles. The press of his lips against mine is gentle.
As we finish, thanking the pretty waitress who keeps flashing Aleksander longing looks, Boris appears again at the same time an alert sounds from Aleksander’s phone.
Aleksander reads the text with a frown. “Baby girl, I’m sorry. I have something I need to see to. Boris is going to take you back to the condo.”
Disappointment flares through me. I stamp it down. “Okay.”
Catching my chin, he lifts my face to his. “It’s my brother. Damian has been in the city for less than a week and already he’s tangled himself up in something. My hope is it will only take a few hours. However, if he’s asking for help, aware I’m supposed to be resting, it’s highly unlikely. As soon as I can I’ll be home and hopefully we can salvage this beautiful day.”
I nod, giving him a smile I don’t feel. The press of his lips is gentle. I fight not to sigh as he walks away, taking the stairs down at a jog.
Boris nods at me to walk ahead of him. Head down, I go out the way we came in.
