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Chapter Thirty-Three
Katya
Whenwefinallyarrivedback at the lodge, I was mentally and physically exhausted. It was only 2:00 in the afternoon but it might as well have been midnight. Sloane and Harry had offered to keep Kenlee for the night and although I felt selfish for wanting it, I was relieved. My selfishness wasn’t just for me though. I was thinking of Zane as well. He’d been through hell today also, and I wasn’t sure either of us had the strength to deal with an infant and to be honest, I didn’t want to try. He did go over there shortly after we got back to the lodge, however, to spend a little bit of time with her. I was sure the fear of losing Luca and I had brought back a lot of painful memories for Zane, and it made sense that he would want to check in with his child, to remind himself that she was safe and sound.
Back in his room, I put Luca to bed for a much-needed nap and headed straight for the bathroom. My muscles were begging for a hot bubble bath. I filled the tub and made sure the massage jets were on and stepped in. The minute the water hit my aching muscles, I began to relax. I leaned back and closed my eyes but opened them when I heard Zane rustling with a bag.
This amazing man was too much. Not only had he saved my son and me again after being held at gunpoint, but now he was pouring Epson salts into my bath. “What are you doing?” I asked. “You should be resting. You have had a hell of a day yourself.”
“Yes,wehave, but I don’t want to be away from you and the salts will help the tension in your body. And I know it might not be the best time, but we need to talk,” he said matter-of-factly.
I knew this conversation was coming but I thought I’d have more time to prepare. Looking at Zane’s face as he sat on the edge of the tub, I knew there was no time like the present, so I reached up, grabbed his hand, and said, “Okay, what do you want to know?”
His answer was simple. “Everything.”
“Everything?” I asked, raising my eyebrow.
Softly he raised my hand and kissed it to reassure me and continued. “Yes, Baby, everything. If I am going to protect you and I plan on doing that for the rest of my life, I need to know the truth. I need to know about your life and family back in Russia and what made you leave. If what Aleks told me is true, he might not be the only person looking for you.”
I sighed and blew out the breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding for the last four years. I had always been so afraid of anyone finding out my truth that I had always been on guard. But I realized that if Zane and I were going to work, he had to know everything. No, he deserved to know everything, so I let go and didn’t hold back. I turned the jets in the bathtub off so that he could hear me clearly, then started my story.
“As you know, my name is Katya Belinsky. My family is one of the oldest and wealthiest in Russia. We, I mean, my family owns one of the oldest toy companies in the country in addition to other businesses and properties. The family wealth is vast even by American standards, and I stood to inherit it if I had stayed. That’s what Aleks was after apparently. I had no idea that he knew who I really was.”
Zane’s expression at my admission seemed to be one of confusion and concern. “So, how did an heiress end up here in Montana cleaning rooms in a ski lodge and barely making ends meet?”
Reaching up and stroking his face, I said, “I’ll explain everything. Just listen. When I got pregnant with Luca, I was only sixteen. Like any young girl in trouble, I was frightened and didn’t know what to do. I told my boyfriend, Sergei, Luca’s father, and he seemed to be happy. We knew it would be hard, but he said he wanted to make it work. He said he wanted us to be a family. I sat my parents down one evening and told them the news.”
I looked down at the water, which was now a little murky from the salt, and sighed. “I knew my parents wouldn’t be happy about it, but I honestly thought that they would eventually get on board. Seregi was devoted to me and the baby, so what could they really be all that mad about?”
I laughed, remembering the look in my father’s eyes as I delivered the news all those years ago. “I was naive. I didn’t understand just how much our family reputation would mean to them. I’d been the Golden Child once upon a time, but after I got pregnant, I just became some slut who’s bastard child was going to tarnish the Belinsky name. The fact that Seregi was the father only made matters worse. They hated him. He was poor, and came from the type of familial line that my parents looked down on.”
“What did they do?” Zane asked. “Did they tell you to get rid of the baby?”
I shook my head. “That wasn’t an option anymore. Too many people knew I was pregnant, so the scandal had already broke. They forbade me from moving in with Seregi, and told me that if I chose to live under their roof, and use their money to support my baby, that I had to do everything they said. I tried to call Seregi that night, thinking he would come and rescue me the second he heard about how awful my parents were treating me… but he didn’t answer.”
Once I got to this point in the story, I had to stop and catch my breath. Thinking about Seregi and the days leading up to my escape from Russia was painful, and I’d been walling myself off from those emotions for years.
“After calling about a dozen times, his sister picked up and told me that he hadn’t come home from work that night. I called the store, where he was employed at the time, and they said he hadn’t shown up for his shift that day. As far as everyone knew… he’d just vanished. I had my suspicions, but for a while, I kept them at bay and just kept holding on to hope that Seregi was coming for me, and just… I don’t know… got held up.”
I smirked sadly at my own childhood ignorance, then looked up at Zane, who was staring back at me with nothing but compassion in his eyes. “What were your suspicions?”
I opened my mouth to explain, but all that came out was a gasp. I put a hand over my lips and took a moment to collect myself. “My parents did something to him,” I said after a while. “It was the only explanation that made sense. I was terrified, convinced they would do something to me or my child next. I packed a small bag, and headed to the nearest train station. I didn’t have a destination in mind, I just knew I had to get the hell out of there. I got to the station and purchased a ticket to St. Petersburg. Once I was safely out of town, I felt like I could breathe again but I knew I needed a plan. Although St. Petersburg is 400 miles from Moscow, I knew they could find me there. My family has connections all over Russia so I decided the safest bet was to come to America.”
Zane clicked his tongue. “God, you were only sixteen, and you had already traveled so far… I can’t even imagine.”
I smiled. “Yeah… those few weeks of travel were a lot. But I got through it. I chose Montana because I’d seen pictures of it once in a brochure. My parents were planning a ski trip, and thought about going to the States, so they ordered all these brochures to be sent to us from the snowiest places in the West. I remember thinking Montana looked so beautiful and peaceful. I used the rest of my money to buy a plane ticket across the globe, and then road trains and buses all the way from the East Coast to here.”
I stopped for a few minutes and let Zane process and absorb the bombshell I had just dropped on him. Some would run for the hills after hearing that so my nerves were on high alert. When I thought about it, I had to seem like a disaster waiting to happen. My ex-boyfriend had held him at gunpoint and kidnapped Luca and me, and now I was telling him that my parents were probably responsible for the disappearance of Luca’s father. If he decided to stick around, that could mean only one of two things.
He really did love me.
Or he was an idiot.
Starting to shiver, I couldn’t sit in the now cold water any longer, so I slowly got out of the tub, dried off, wrapped the towel around my body, sat down on the vanity stool, and waited for Zane to speak. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I finally said, “Please say something, anything. I know it is a lot to process but your silence is killing me.”
Zane looked at me but said nothing. He slowly stood up and walked to me and knelt down in front of me.
“Katya, you’re home now. You’re safe. I apologize for my silence. I was simply trying to wrap my head around how parents could treat their child like that. Especially a child who was frightened and in trouble. But you found a way to take care of yourself, even when the people who were supposed to take care of you refused to do so.” He smiled and caressed my face. “Once again, I am amazed by your strength and resiliency.”
