Page 10

10

LUCIA

T he buzzing of my phone alarm jolts me out of siesta at four forty in the afternoon.

The contract stares at me from the table by my bed. I fell asleep reading it over again.

Twenty minutes to go before time is up.

I scramble off the bed and into the shower. I normally wake up long before the alarm goes off, setting it just as a precaution.

Maybe I just didn’t want to wake before the deadline was up.

Not that it matters , I tell myself as I hastily dress. I’m making the right decision. The only decision.

I push Roman’s face determinedly out of my mind. I can’t afford to think about him again.

If I do, all I see are the minutes ticking down to the moment when I say goodbye to him forever.

A muffled thump comes from next door, and I freeze. Then I hear a muted grunt and spring into action.

“Papa!” Heart racing, I tear open my door and then, key shaking in my hands, unlock Papa’s.

There’s no sign of the nurse. The first thing I see is Papa’s wheelchair, upended on the floor, one wheel spinning in the air. Then, to my utter relief, I see Papa.

He’s lying on the floor, pushing himself grimly upright with his one working arm, trying to drag himself back to the chair. He shakes his head angrily when he sees me. “Sleep,” he grunts, waving me away impatiently. He thumps his chest. “Stupid,” he says in Russian, his face twisted with frustration.

Then I see the shattered teacup and toppled electric kettle beside him on the floor, the boiling water from it still steaming where it’s spread across the tiles.

The cord from the kettle crosses the floor at ankle height.

Just the wrong height for Papa’s wheelchair.

For the sake of his beloved afternoon cup of tea, my father is sprawled on a hard tiled floor.

He narrowly missed being scalded by an entire kettle of boiling water.

What if I hadn’t been here? What if he’d knocked himself unconscious and lain here all night, possibly badly injured and burned?

My blood runs cold at what I might have come home to. It’s also unlike Papa to be so careless.

“How did this happen?” I gently help him upright, ignoring his muted protestations that he’s fine. Papa will be telling me he’s fine on his deathbed.

He gestures to the window, frowning, trying to form words. Through a combination of garbled speech and hand movements, I understand that he wasn’t watching what he was doing, because he thought he saw someone out of the window. My chest hitches with the familiar, dragging fear.

“Someone like who, Papa?”

His hands mimic a camera. I close my eyes briefly, willing my pounding heart to calm down.

It could be a coincidence. You don’t know for certain that it was someone looking for you.

But I see the same grim caution in Papa’s eyes that I feel, the ever-present edge of danger that haunts our every moment. “Are you sure they were trying to photograph you?”

He makes an impatient gesture, an inarticulate noise of frustration. I understand the thrust: does it matter?

I don’t need Papa to point out the obvious. First the robbery, and now this? When you’re running, you don’t wait for coincidences to be disproved. You assume that a coincidence means you’ve been found. It’s how we’ve survived this long.

That means I have to assume that someone has become suspicious about us. I don’t know who or why, but I do know that I have no choice but to work on the assumption that we are no longer safe.

Combined with the loss of our passports, our current poverty, and my father’s weak state, the thought that anyone might have noticed us is beyond terrifying. I’ve never felt more vulnerable, less able to find a way out. I’m swamped by an overwhelming wave of exhaustion and defeat.

Where the hell are we supposed to run to now?

And how will I take care of Papa?

The second question gives me an outlet for my fear.

“What about the nurse?” I ask angrily. “Where the hell was she when this was going on?”

Papa shakes his head, frowning, and pats my hand. Through his shortened words and gestures, I understand that the nurse had a family emergency. He insisted she go home early. “ Ne—nuzhno ,” he chokes out. Don’t need.

I purse my lips, but don’t bother trying to argue that he most certainly does need help. More than I have been able to give him. Much more.

My father does not deserve to live this way, and I’m riddled with guilt every time I confront the circumstances to which he has been reduced.

Never once in our chaotic journey has he ever complained, no matter how arduous the conditions. Not during our terrifying midnight escape from the Miami compound, when we raced through the dark waters of Biscayne Bay in a tiny tin fishing boat. Not in the weeks that followed when we lived in squalor, disguising ourselves among the other lost and downtrodden while the Orlovs combed the city for us. Not during the long sea journey that followed, as we reversed the path taken by so many South American migrants, traveling first to Cuba and then across to Cancún. Not for all the months it took us, by boat, bus, truck, and sometimes just on foot, to finally reach Argentina and the contact of my father’s who helped us with passports.

Papa didn’t complain years later, when we made another, far more dangerous crossing by sea from Morocco to Spain, in a hazardous inflated raft that we all believed would sink at any moment.

During all those journeys, Papa had cradled other peoples’ babies when they cried. Before the strokes got worse and claimed his voice, he’d sung songs in Russian. He’d gripped the arms of men who feared death, staring the fear right out of them.

Sergei Petrovsky had seen worse and survived it. And somehow those around him sensed that and took strength from him, even without knowing from where that strength came.

My father was always careful about what he told my brother and me about his past. As an adult, I realized the tales he did tell when we were young, and after he’d drunk a little too much vodka, were carefully crafted to amuse and entertain children rather than to give any real picture of the truth.

All Papa would ever say about the two thousand miles he walked to escape Russia, across frozen tundra and multiple borders, all the way to Switzerland, was that the terrible journey through starvation and below-zero temperatures had been worth it, just so that one day he might give my brother and me life.

All of this I think of as I tidy Papa and help him to bed, ignoring the fierce look in his piercing blue eyes and his insistence that he is entirely capable of looking after himself.

Papa has faced death a thousand times and more. Never once has he lost his will and determination to survive, to transcend his circumstances.

And now, when we are facing possible exposure and the hideous prospect of being recaptured by the Orlovs, Papa is too weak to save himself or anyone else—and I am hesitating to do the one thing that could save us both.

Roman’s contract offers me the means to not only hide from anyone who might be searching for us, but also to set about regaining everything we have lost. I’m being offered a chance to ensure Papa is safe and well cared for until I’ve had time to organize what we both need.

I’m being offered all this not through hardship, but by sleeping with Roman Stevanovsky.

A man who, let’s face it, has literally owned my every sexual fantasy for the past five months. A man whose single glance makes my heart pound and my body liquid with desire.

A man who is undoubtedly a killer.

Which, given the life I lead, isn’t a bad thing.

I am Darya Petrovsky, daughter of bratva legend Sergei Petrovsky. Any man involved with me needs to be a killer. A damn good one.

And something tells me that Roman Stevanovsky is the most ruthless killer I’ve seen in a long time.

Does that mean you plan to be... involved, with Roman Stevanovsky?

I close the door to Papa’s room and glance at my phone.

4:57.

I pull the contract out of my bag. Holding it up against the motel wall, I scrawl my fake signature on it. Then I snap a photo of the signed paper.

4:59.

I take a deep breath and open up my messages.

I send Roman the photograph just as the numbers click over to five p.m.

A t one minute past, Roman answers my message with a simple command: My office, 6pm. Dress for dinner.

My heart lurches to a stop, then starts racing like a horse in the Grand National.

It’s the first time I will meet Roman wearing something other than my hated hot pants uniform. I tear the damn thing off without an ounce of regret and leave it lying in a discarded ball on the floor of my motel room.

What the hell does one wear to meet the man who wants me to be both a nanny and his sex slave?

It’s not like the two roles are exactly complementary. And I’ve hardly accumulated a wardrobe full of options, given that I’ve spent most of the past couple of years in a work uniform. Nor am I sure if I’m dressing to get laid out on Roman’s desk or to meet three children.

Laid out on his desk . . .

Oh, the filthy thoughts I’ve had about that smooth steel-gray surface.

I text Abby as I try on my limited wardrobe, explaining briefly that I’m resigning to take CEO Man’s offer of being au pair to his godchildren.

OMG!! she messages as I’m standing in front of the mirror in my best lingerie. Then, a moment later: SOOOO HOT.

A third message pops up as I stare at the contents of my suitcase, desperately wishing that something appropriate will magically appear. I hate you for abandoning me. But super stoked for you, too. Love you, Luce. Put in a good word for me with the hot bodyguard?

A series of eggplant, fire, and laughing face emojis follow, with one last message: I want to know EVERYTHING.

Since there’s absolutely no chance of that ever happening, I just reply with a laughing face and a love heart. My own is still thudding erratically.

After half an hour, and the entire contents of my suitcase being strewn haphazardly over every available surface, I finally settle on a strappy turquoise slip dress— sin dress?— that is both demure enough for children and... well... easily removed.

Oh, dear lord.

I bury my flaming face in my hands. Is this going to be my life now? Dressing with the expectation of sex at any given moment?

And why doesn’t that horrify me quite as much as it definitely should?

I apply light makeup, not wanting to overdo it, and pile my hair up in a loose top bun. Then I open the small box I’ve carried with me ever since the day we fled Miami. Inside it is a pair of earrings, the only jewelry I took when Papa and I ran. They once belonged to my mother, who told me they’re one of the rare treasures my father carried with him on his long journey from Russia to the West. They’re turquoise teardrops encased in filigree white gold and studded with tiny diamonds.

They would also fetch over a million dollars in an auction house.

Which would solve all our problems, except that putting them up for sale would be painting a House of Fabergé–sized target on our backs.

While nobody knows exactly what lies in our Miami vault, for as long as I can remember, whispers have swirled about my family’s rumored association with Peter Carl Fabergé, the legendary goldsmith who made jeweled eggs for the Russian imperial family before the 1917 revolution.

This much I know is true: Papa’s father, my grandfather, did indeed help Fabergé escape Russia. It’s the reason he and his entire family were locked up in the gulag, where my father was born.

I don’t even remember how I first learned that part of our family story was true. What I do know is that our history was a fact that hid in the shadows, a past I inhaled with my first breath, but that was never spoken of.

Ironically, since we left Miami, not even knowledgeable jewelers have given my earrings a second look. I guess that nobody imagines an illegal immigrant will be walking around wearing over a million dollars on their ears.

And I usually don’t wear them. My mother’s earrings have a value to me that goes far beyond money. But some old vestige of pride inside me wants to wear them tonight. Wants Roman Stevanovsky to catch a glimpse of Darya Petrovsky, the woman I’ve had to hide for so long.

It’s dangerous, I know. But given that I’m about to visit the office of a man who has just bought my body for the foreseeable future, I figure I’ve well and truly crossed the danger line.