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I worry Leo will see it right away. But he’s only looking at Nick with curiosity, not recognition.
“Leo, this is my friend, Nick.”
Nick’s eyes flash to mine, only for a second, before returning to Leo. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, if he’s noticing the resemblance between them or if he’s annoyed that I’m not telling Leo the truth about their relationship.
Nick squats so he’s at Leo’s height. He holds out a hand, which my son hesitantly shakes. “Hi, Leo. It’s really nice to meet you.”
“Is this your plane?” Leo asks, looking at the behemoth shadowing this interaction. It’s even bigger up close.
“Yes.”
“Can you fly it?”
“Yes.”
I side-eye Nick, not sure if he’s lying. But his face is still smooth and expressionless, impossible to read.
“Are more men going to chase us?”
My lips press together into a tight line. Grigoriy’s and Viktor’s sensitivity only extended to keeping Leo from seeing dead bodies, apparently. They spent the drive here discussing the men who attacked us. And not much gets past my son’s sharp ears.
“Those men are never going to get anywhere near you again, Leo.” There’s no emotion on Nick’s face, but his tone is flooded with sincerity as he straightens.
Viktor says something in Russian behind me, and Nick responds with another flurry of words I don’t understand.
“We need to go,” he tells me, then looks at Leo. “Have you been on a plane before, Leo?”
“No.”
“Go explore before we take off.”
Leo looks at me, and I nod. He bounds up the steps and boards the aircraft.
“Where are we going, Nick?”
“My home. Russia.”
Russia.
It feels like the ground beneath me just became less stable. “Russia? That’s…far.”
“I don’t have time to explain everything now, Lyla. We need to leave.”
Nick turns and takes the stairs.
And I follow him.
CHAPTERTEN
NICK
Ican’t stop staring at him.
Every time I tell myself I’ve looked my fill and force my eyes to focus on something else, my eyes dart right back to Leo.
Each time I get another glimpse of him, I feel like I was just punched in the stomach all over again.
Alex wasn’t exaggerating when he said the boy looks like me. There’s a photo I keep on my desk of myself with my father and two brothers from a hunting trip we took years and years ago—one of endless efforts by my father to toughen his offspring up. I was ten or eleven at the time it was taken. We came home with plenty of animal carcasses, but the only memento I kept was a rare picture of the four of us smiling together.
