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“What you didn’t know, dear, sweet Sky, is that my son was sending me many photos and daily texts about you. When you arrived at the Zimmerman household as a lost waif, he fell madly in love with you upon first meeting you.” Yerik sipped his tea, watching her face closely. He saw surprise flare in her unearthly blue eyes.
Sky went icy inwardly. Vlad professed his undying love to her, but she wasn’t going to let Yerik know that. “N-no… I had no idea. I mean…” and Sky shrugged and placed the teacup on the table.
“Why tears?” Yerik probed softly, cocking his head.
Yerik sounded genuinely as if he CARED. Sky knew he didn’t. It was all a game with Alexandrov, just as it had been with his evil, plotting, manipulating son. She never forgot that Yerik was Spetsnaz from age eighteen and spent ten years as an interrogation officer for his black ops group. There was a group of them that were psychological experts, able to bend and mold their prisoners to squeeze what they wanted out of them. Yerik was one of the best of them. Blinking, forcing the rest of her tears away, she whispered, “Vlad was always taking cell phone photos of all of us. I didn’t know he was sending them to you.”
“Quite right,” he agreed. “And text messages, sometimes long emails from my son as well.” He smiled a little. “The emails were always about you. How beautiful you were. How graceful. He loved your blond hair and went on and on about it in several emails.” Yerik sipped his tea. “And Vlad was right: your hair is an arresting, natural color. In fact,” and Yerik set his tea aside and snapped his fingers.
A man dressed like a butler arrived silently with a small silver tray balanced on his white gloved hand. The man was bald, older, and darkly tanned. He bowed to Yerik and extended the tray in front of him. She watched as he took a stack of documents off the tray. The butler made an about face, whispered by her, and left the den.
Yerik leaned forward, putting some of the papers on the table and choosing one. “Here, I want you to see these, Sky.” He stood and walked to the coffee table, leaned across it, and offered the photo to her.
Sky stood and took it, being careful not to touch his fingers. She sat down and turned the photo over. Frowning, she saw a very beautiful blond-haired woman with blue eyes smiling back at her. She looked up, frowning. Yerik had sat down, legs crossed, elbow on the chair, his chin resting against his fist, watching her. “Who is this?”
“My beloved wife, Darya. Vlad’s mother.”
Sky stared at the woman. She saw a bit of Vlad’s face in hers, but little else. What intrigued her the most was Darya’s long, shoulder-length blond hair had streaks of wheat, caramel, and gold in it. Just like hers. Sky had rarely seen this natural coloration in blond hair unless it was dyed in. “She’s beautiful,” Sky admitted, sitting the photo on the table between them. Her heart plunged because she saw tears glimmering in Yerik’s eyes. His face had softened, and she couldn’t believe it. Was that a performance for her, or genuine, emotional grief in his expression? She didn’t know.
Suddenly, Sky felt caught in something that was far beyond her. In SERE, they had tortured her with mind games. An enemy soldier would come in, her captor, and he would smile, offer her food, water, and be nice to her. If she didn’t give him the information he wanted, he left. Then, another man would come in, who was the exact opposite, cruel and harsh toward her. Could Alexandrov so easily create crocodile tears to manipulate her? Sky sat there, unsure, suddenly off balance by the man’s display of tears and grief in front of her.
“She died shortly after giving Vlad life,” Yerik murmured, pulling a linen handkerchief from his pocket, blotting his eyes. He gave her a watery smile. “I must apologize. Family is everything to me. I lost my best friend, my lover, my life, when Darya died in my arms after birthing my beloved son.”
Sky closed her eyes, trying to stop herself from feeling sorry for the man. She had expected him to rage at her. Perhaps slap her. Rape her. Call her names or even torture her. But not this.
She heard the rustling of paper and opened her eyes. Yerik stood and handed her another photo. She reluctantly took it.
“This is Vlad when he was three hours old. My wet nurse from Russia, bless her heart, cared for him the first seven years of his life when we lived in New York City.”
The photo showed a squalling, red-faced Vlad, angry at the world. The wet nurse looked very sad. Swallowing hard, Sky set the photo down. “Why are you telling me this?”
Yerik drank more of his tea. “Because Vlad loved you.”
Shock struck her. “You can’t be serious!” The words came out harshly. Sky cringed, watched Yerik’s eyes narrow upon her for a moment. And then, that furious look disappeared, replaced with a mild, reproachful look instead.
“You did not know?”
Sky hesitated. Vlad, when he’d cornered her at seventeen in his bedroom, professed his love of her, wanting to marry her, to have her carry his children. He’d been telling her that for a year and Sky blew him off. His cruelty and actions always spoke louder, and not of love. “Not at all,” Sky lied, her hands damp and sweaty in her lap. The urge to run roared through her. She wanted to scream. This was mental and emotional torture of the worst kind. She’d never expected Alexandrov to be nice. Not to her.
“I see,” he murmured, rustling through the papers. Yerik pulled one paper out of the stack and handed it to her. “You will see the date on Vlad’s email to me. This was about two weeks after you arrived at the Zimmerman home. Please, read it?”
Sky unwillingly looked down at the paper.
“Read it out loud?”
She gritted her teeth, trying to control her emotions. “Papa, I have met the woman who floods my heart with such joy—” and Sky looked away, compressing her lips. She couldn’t go on, terrible, raw emotions ripping through her.
Yerik stood, walked around the coffee table, gently took the paper from her hand, and read the rest of it. “…with such joy that the sun truly rises and sets upon her glorious hair that she wears like a crown of gold. I go to sleep each night, wishing she would give me just one smile, one look of yearning, the next day. I dream of her at night. Smiling at me. Laughing with me. Running in the park next door to where I live. Papa, is it possible to feel so much in love that I can barely breathe when I see her? When Jack or Marielle call her by name, I feel like my heart is going to break open, there is just so much love for her within me that goes untouched, unknown to her.”
Sky gripped the arms of the chair, choking back the shock. She felt more than heard Yerik leave her side. He sat down, a pensive look in his eyes as he watched her struggling with her emotions. This time, she wasn’t lying. “I-I didn’t know…”
“I believe you,” Yerik said softly, carefully folding up the precious email. “Vlad once said he saw exactly how you felt because you could not hide your feelings from your face.”
Grimacing, Sky raised her chin and stared at Yerik. “I’ve heard that from everyone.” She saw him give her a kind smile and nodded as he slowly set the email on the table next to his chair, treating it as if it were the most sacred item he had in his life. “Vlad was right. But then, my son was a great observer of the human condition, just like me. He had his mother’s face. She worked for the KGB and had been an undercover agent for Mother Russia. I met her by luck in St. Petersburg at an Army conference. When I saw her hair, I was smitten. But then,” Yerik added wryly, fondly recalling those times, “so was every other able-bodied male officer in that room, too. Darya was a stunning, very powerful young woman. And I knew,” he murmured, picking up her photo once more and fondly studying it, “that I was hopelessly, suddenly in love with her. I knew I wanted her. And I would move heaven, hell, and anything else in between to catch her attention, woo her, and make her mine.”
Sky saw the parallels. Vlad had tried to get her to like him. At first, he’d bent over backwards to please her and smile at her. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her, whether she asked him to do it or not. Vlad had his father’s genes for hunting down the victim he sought. “How long did it take until you caught her?”
Laughing pleasantly, Yerik murmured, “Two years. Two years of seeing her every chance I could, bringing her flowers, singing her old Russian love ballads, because I could play the balalaika with the best of them. I took her on long walks, asked her about herself, what she liked, what she loved. What made her cry? What made her laugh? What were her favorite colors? What was important to her? What touched her heart?” Yerik waved his hand and gave a slight shrug. “She was a crafty one, highly intelligent, not given to fools, always blunt and to the point. Darya, bless her, never let me get away with a thing. She was a strong woman, but she also had an equally soft, tender side to her as well. I fell in love with all aspects of Darya. She was interesting. She provoked me into thinking in broader terms and and exploring deeper realms. She was relentless and never gave me an inch of breathing space when I would try and become arrogant with her because I was a man.” Yerik grinned and looked up at the high ceiling of mahogany timbers that trussed across it. “Darya was a woman who knew her own mind and she knew mine, as well.”
