Page 45 of Nine Months to Love

Taras’s mouth snaps shut. He stares. Laughter hovers on his lips before his expression flatlines. “You’re serious.”

“Why not cut to the chase?”

Taras nearly chokes on his cigarette. “Talk to him? Just walk up and have a friendly little chat?”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s a fucking snake! Also, you think Natalia would just let that happen? This is your mother we’re trying to find—the woman who betrayed your father, who you thought was dead for fifteen years. And now, she’s got her hooks in your pregnant girlfriend?—”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night.” He stands, pacing to the window. “Point is, Iakov’s not gonna just tell you where she is. He’s got the FBI on his side!”

“I want first-hand information,” I tell him. “Not secondhand, sometimes third-hand accounts filtered through our network. I want to look him in the eye. That’s the only way I’ll know if he’s lying.”

Taras turns to study me. “You know what your problem is? You think you know everyone because you know yourself. But people change, Stef. Look at you—you’re barely recognizable from the man I met in Moscow.”

“Is that supposed to be an insult?”

“It’s an observation. I know you, remember? I’ve seen you at your worst.”

“And you’re still here.”

“Because someone needs to keep your ass alive.” He returns to his chair, pulling out another cigarette. “You and Iakov used to hang out, didn’t you? Back in the day?”

The memory surfaces unbidden. Summer afternoons by the pool, teaching an eager eleven-year-old how to play chess. Iakov was smart, focused, desperate to prove himself. Game after game, he’d lose, but he never gave up. Never whined or made excuses.

“Something like that,” I say softly.

“What’d you do? Steal porn from gas stations?”

“I taught him to play chess.” I rub my chin, lost in nostalgia. “He was good at it. Beat me once, actually. I was impressed.”

“Well, now, he’s using those skills against you. He’s pulled out his queen and he’s about to destroy us with her.”

The chess metaphor isn’t lost on me. Natalia as Iakov’s queen, the most powerful piece on the board. But queens can be trapped, sacrificed, traded. Queens can be killed.

“Why did you stop hanging out?” Taras asks.

“Politics. My father didn’t want us playing anymore. Said it wasn’t appropriate, given our positions. Iakov told me his dad had said the same thing.”

“And you just accepted that?”

“I was fifteen. What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. Fight for your friend?”

“He wasn’t my friend. He was a kid I played chess with.”

“Right.” Taras’s tone says he doesn’t believe me. “And when his dad died?”

I remember Mikhail’s funeral. The church was thick with incense and hypocrisy. Iakov, barely eighteen, his face carved from stone until he saw me. Then the grief cracked—and rage shone through.

“This is because ofyou,”he’d hissed.

“He had a choice,”I’d replied. “He chose wrong.”

Not my finest moment, but I’d been young and drunk on my own power, fresh from orchestrating my uncle Vasily’s downfall. Mikhail was merely collateral damage.