Page 24

Mikhail

It was a little past one at noon, and somehow, lunch had turned into a quick, impulsive shopping for Arielle, which eventually ended with me in Hudson Yards, staring at the bold Cartier signboard at the entrance of the store.

It’s a very curious thing how I always thought I’d end up settling for a respectable girl from the Russian bratva who was raised to be the perfect mob wife, but here I was, about to put a ring on the most empathetic yet audacious female who has no clue what life in my world entails and would fight me at every point for the smallest blood spill.

Ah, yes. There’s also the part where I am completely and totally irrevocably in love with her. Love. The world still tasted foreign coming out of my mouth. After the first night, we said it to each other in the throes of passion, the word slowly slipped into our daily routine. It became a good morning, a goodbye, and how are you?

There were days I stared at her, waiting for her to disappear or maybe glitch, anything to prove this was a dream and she was only a product of my wildest fantasies, but it never happened. Instead, I found reasons to fall deeper, reasons to want to give her the world. I wasn’t a good man by any measure, but I must’ve done something incredibly right in a past life to be blessed with her. That was the only logical explanation.

When you’re born into the type of world I was born into and raised the way I was, you conclude that certain things are not meant for you. They’re things you’d never experience and things that’ll never happen to you. I had already accepted the reality of my life a long time ago, and quite frankly, I never felt like I was missing out on anything. I saw people divorce and betray their loved ones every day, and I wanted no part in that.

Then she came along in a body-con red dress, and suddenly, I wanted a part in all of it. The laughter, the beauty, the pain, the pleasure, the joy, the tears, I wanted all of it with her. She brought the sun to me. She showed me why artists wrote stanzas upon stanzas for a person, why painters immortalized their muse with the strokes of their paintbrush, and why wars have been fought, kingdoms conquered, and civilizations destroyed in the name of love. I would go to war in her name. Hell, I’d wreak carnage if I had to. There’s no limit to what I’d do for her. For the first time, I had something to lose.

So, while I might not know how shopping for shoes ended with me in front of Cartier, I knew without a flicker of doubt what I had to do there.

“Good afternoon, sir,” a sales rep greeted me as soon as I walked through the door. “How can we help you today?”

“I’d like to see your sales manager,” I replied, checking out the new collection on the showcase. They were quite stunning and catchy but a good number of them were mainstream, and I was looking for something unique.

“Mr Ivanov! To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” Jasmine, the bubbly sales manager, sashayed into the reception, looking pleasantly surprised.

Usually, I’d send Cynthia or place a direct call to her whenever I needed something from the store, but I needed to do this on my own, and Jasmine was just the best person for the job. She caters to a lot of high-profile clients and celebrities, so I can rely on both her expert opinion and discretion. I wouldn’t want the tabloids carrying pictures of me buying a ring before I got home.

“Would you love to see our vintage collection of watches? I’m sure there’s a piece that would suit you just fine,” She beamed, making for the VIP lounge. “And Laura!” she called out to the salesgirl at the reception, “Get our guest a glass of champagne.”

I waited till we were alone in the lounge. “I won’t be taking the watches today, Jasmine. I was thinking about something more intimate.”

Her eyes shut up in realization, and a small smile touched her lips. “Congratulations! Is there something you have in mind?”

“Yes. Something gold and pretty with a giant rock. Something I wouldn’t find on the fingers of half of Manhattan’s housewives.”

“I think I might have the perfect ring for you. Give me a moment,” she said, walking out of the lounge.

I took a large gulp of the champagne, suddenly wishing it was something stronger. I wondered how Arielle would react to my proposal. She loves me, of that much I was certain. But marriage was a completely different topic. While she has never mentioned anything about kids and the future, she wasn’t averse when I brought them up. She even offered a few contributions and paid attention to suggestions. That has to count for something, but it did nothing to calm my nerves. I, Mikhail Ivanov, was nervous. It was almost laughable.

Jasmine returned to the lounge with a few boxes, and she set them on the table in front of me. “These are some of our original works. They all have gold bands and a giant rock, as you requested, and you won’t be seeing them on anyone’s finger, not even the president’s wife.”

The first was quite beautiful, but it didn’t resonate with me. The second was a bit too much, and the third too simple. I was already certain I’d have to check out a different store when she opened another velvet red box, and I knew I had found the one.

It had a simple gold band molded to resemble a flower vine, with a huge oval-shaped diamond resting on the prongs. I tilted the ring to the side, watching as it reflected light from every corner of the room. This was it. This is perfect.

“I’ll take it,” I said, returning the ring to Jasmine and reaching for my vibrating phone with my other hand.

“Don’t you have the most perfect timing in the world.” I held the phone to my ear, and on cue, Jasmine exited the room with the boxes.

“Where are you?” Lorenzo asked, his tone urgent.

“Manhattan. Why?”

“There’s something you need to see, it’s urgent.”

“On a scale of 1-10?”

“1000,” he replied, and I felt my pulse slow down.

“Did something happen? Was there an attack? Is Arielle okay?” I fired question after question, but he wouldn’t say anything other than how I should get to his house soonest.

I deposited a check to Jasmine with an extra tip for her help and made my way to Enzo’s. A funny trend of something coming up whenever life was becoming too good was slowly happening in my life, and I did not appreciate it.

******

“Remember how all the attacks this year ended up being connected?” He queried, pacing his library.

“Didn’t we deal with that already?” I replied, growing increasingly antsy with his pacing and questioning.

“Something about the last guy didn’t make sense to me. I questioned him when you left him with Benjamin and me, but he still felt off, so I went digging.” He pulled out a remote from his drawer and turned on the large screen behind him.

My blood went cold as a face I had long forgotten filled the screen. Grey hair had replaced brown hair, wrinkles were carved deep into his face, and his perfectly straight nose was now bent at a very odd angle. Henry Kincaid, I’d recognize him if he came in a different skin.

“He’s supposed to be dead. My grandfather made sure of that.”

“Clearly, he must’ve survived somehow,” Enzo said, leaning on his table.

A lot of things were going on in my head, and the events were finally connecting. The attack on my club and the explosion at the port. He always wanted the port. “How did you find him?”

“I dug deep into Adam’s life, and he has no family,” Enzo said, handing me a file. I quickly took it from him and started perusing while he continued giving me the back story.

“He’s an orphanage kid who got into drugs a little too early and was sent to rehab. He got out of rehab and became worse, so he was sent to a juvenile prison. He was released when he turned eighteen. He couldn’t return to the orphanage and had no qualifications, so he took to life on the streets. The last guy had a similar story.”

“So, he’s using homeless people with no family to carry out his dirty work?” I asked, lifting my eyes from the file.

“I guess it’s less messy when they have no one looking for them. They can disappear without a trace.”

The bastard was crafty. I would give that to him. Pick up some desperate junkie, pump them up with supplies, promise them a better life, and send them off to their death.

“Anyways,” he continued. “Our last guy was quite the computer geek, and he looked to be very interested in his contractor. I was able to hack into his system and find some information on Henry. Apparently, he seems to have taken an interest in the orphanage.”

The slimy bastard. How better for a predator to hide itself than amongst its prey? He had always been involved with trafficking and offered my grandfather a price to let him conduct his business through our ports, but trafficking was one thing my family didn’t dabble in. Henry wasn’t happy with my grandfather’s refusal and proceeded to organize a takeover, which led to his supposed demise. And here he was, a decorated patron for an orphanage.

“What else did you find?” I queried, running the mental gymnastics of what it was going to take to bring Henry down. It would take a lot. He was easily one of my grandfather’s biggest adversaries.

“I’m still on it,” he replied, pulling up another screen on the monitor that showed a ninety-five percent downloaded file in progress. “I called as soon as his face came up, and I confirmed he was still alive. Hopefully, this gives us all we need or, at least, most of it.”

I got off the sofa and walked to the mini bar at the corner of the room, pulling out a bottle of vodka and chugging directly from the bottle. I had a feeling I’d be needing the familiar burn of alcohol to take in whatever was coming.

“Be sure to take the bottle with you on your way out. I don’t want your germs all over my house,” Enzo said with his back to me.

I didn’t bother dignifying his ultra-hygienic tantrums with an answer and returned to the screen with the bottle in hand. Two things were certain: Henry Kincaid was not dead, and he was planning a second takeover. Both of them spelled out war in every language known to man, and going by how tense Enzo looked, he understood what was at stake. He was already in my life at the time Henry struck and saw it all go down. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

My mind strayed to Arielle, worrying about how I was going to ease her into all of this without ultimately scaring her away. I’ll need to protect her. By now, Henry should already know about her. He might be the greediest son of bitch, but he was resourceful, an enemy you should never underestimate.

“Isn’t there a way to hasten this?” I asked, glaring at the screen as I took another gulp from the bottle, letting the acidic burn of the alcohol run through my veins.

“Bingo!” Enzo exclaimed, and I looked up to find the download complete. As expected, the file was protected, and it took an additional twenty minutes for him to crack the code and finally let us in.

It held a lot of records about Henry’s conduct over the years and the wealth he had amassed under the name Garry Winston, but it contained little to nothing about his personal life or what he had been up to.

“Hold on!” I stopped Enzo’s fingers on the remote, “Zoom in on that picture.”

I stared at a low-quality picture that looked like it was taken off a family portrait. “He has a family?” Enzo asked, trying to amplify the quality of the picture.

“None that I know of, but I hope he does.” There is nothing worse than an enemy that has nothing to lose.

A better quality of the picture was out in no time and I found what was left of my sanity completely knocked off its stand as I stared at the picture in horror.

I’ve been confronted by a lot of things in my life—carnage, bloodbaths, things that would break a full-grown man and send an old woman straight to the grave. I’d witnessed my fair share of betrayal and seen the brutalities of dishonesty, and not once had I found myself desperately praying I was wrong and that the perpetrator was innocent, but here I was, frozen in place and desperately praying to be wrong.

I had to be wrong. Scratch that. I need to be wrong. It’s the only way it has to be. No other way was acceptable, and no other way would make sense. Maybe the picture was wrong and increasing the quality somehow messed with the faces on the screen.

“You know, I’ve seen people share a striking resemblance without being related to each other in any way,” Enzo said in a voice that sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than he was trying to convince me.

“Run it,” I said, my voice cold and eerily calm, giving nothing about my internal state of turmoil.

My eyes burned and my heart picked a murderous race when Enzo pulled up the facial recognition software and I found myself desperately praying to be wrong. I would give an arm and leg to be wrong, I’ve never wanted anything more in my life, but I guess I already knew the truth deep down. I was just looking for something to plant a flicker of doubt in me, something to sway me ever so slightly and give me a reason to believe otherwise.

But since I was no saint, and God had no business granting my wishes, the result came out ninety-nine percent accurate: Cara Kincaid. The name was different, but the birthday, eye color, and everything else was the same.

“Jesus Christ,” Enzo muttered, eyes as wide as saucer pans while I just stood there numb and cold.

The pattern slowly formed before me. How the attacks started after she came into my life, how she seemed to be strategically placed for me to discover, how we had similar interests. Every fucking thing added up. How was I so blind? She was a fucking ghost on the internet, and I attributed it to introversion.

My body snapped into motion, snatching my tie and jacket from the couch, I stormed out of the house. My chest felt uncomfortably tight and my head was buzzing with questions Enzo had no answers to.

He caught up with me, placing himself between the door and me. “Mikhail, wait. Let’s be strategic about this. If she’s his daughter, we can use this to our advantage. I know you’re—”

“Get out of my way, Lorenzo,” I seethed, sending him a death glare. If the circumstances were different, maybe I would’ve considered logic, but there was absolutely nothing logical about this situation.

There was nothing logical about the anger growing in me, there was nothing logical about the way my fingers were digging into my skin, there was nothing logical about the ring sitting in my car, and there was certainly no logic to the discomfort in my chest. And he damn well knew it.

He put up his hands in defeat, stepping out of my way. “You need me to come with you?”

I ignored him and continued to my car, snatching the keys from Peter and speeding to the house.