Page 175 of Ruthless Rustanovs

It was exactly like what happened with her father all over again. One moment, Ivan was there in her life, making calls, then issuing clipped orders to the small crew of men in generic maintenance clothes who answered the first of those calls.

The men worked quickly. Rolled a large carpet in and then rolled the same carpet with Scott’s body inside, out.

A doctor and nurse arrived on the heels of their departure.

A man and a woman respectively, both dressed in casual business attire.

The doctor looked Eddie over with a small penlight.

Meanwhile the nurse took care of reviving poor Vanessa with smelling salts, which Sola didn’t even know was a thing anymore.

“Poor Vanessa is having quite the week,” Eddie observed from his seat.

Yes, she was. Yet, somehow Ivan managed to smooth that over, too.

He and the nurse talked to the little home aide in low, quiet voices, and whatever they said must have done the trick.

Vanessa not only left with the nurse a few minutes later, but Ivan came over to assure them that she would be back after a few weeks of rest and observation.

Meanwhile, her cousin would be brought in to cover until she felt up to coming back.

Ivan informed both Sola and Eddie of this, but only one of them was able to answer by the time he came back with the news. Eddie was gone inside himself again, eyes clouded over, the sun of his “good day” gone.

And shortly after Eddie left, Ivan announced his own departure.

Sola walked him to the door. Trying to think of something to say. Desperate to find the right words to convince him to stay.

But he was already gone. She could feel the distance between them, wider than it had ever been, even when he pulled her to him and gave her a long, slow kiss.

Good-bye. It was a kiss good-bye, and it was all Sola could do not to cling to him when he inevitably drew back from her.

“You must stay here with Eddie until the new aide arrives,” he told her, cupping the side of her face in his large hand. “I have been assured it will be no more than an hour.”

“Thank you,” she whispered with tears in her eyes.

“Do not thank me,” he answered. One last time. And then he left.

And just like with her father, she couldn’t follow him.

Which was why she ran not walked when a pounding knock sounded on her door a few weeks later. It had to be her Russian, because no one else she knew would knock on a door like that—at least not without yelling “POLICE!” or “INS!” soon after.

But she was wrong. There was a Russian on her doorstep when she swung the door open…but not the one she was expecting. It was Alexei Rustanov and with him stood an older man in a dark suit and…

“Aunt Ximena!” Sola cried, before asking in Spanish, “What are you doing here?”

Her aunt answered in a stream of agitated Spanish about how she didn’t understand any of this!

Apparently, an INS officer had shown up at the motel where she worked and insisted she come with him.

He’d put her on a “very pretty” private plane—something she’d never flown in before—and brought her all the way down here where this large Russian man had been waiting for them outside the small house, where it turned out Sola lived.

Her aunt looked positively ashen as Alexei escorted her into Sola’s house along with the INS officer. And she kept asking both Alexei and the INS suit what was going on, over and over, in broken English.

Only to break down in happy tears ten minutes later when the INS officer instructed both of them to raise their hands to recite the oath of allegiance.

“I apologize for the dramatics, Sola and Ximena,” Alexei said somberly after they were both declared naturalized citizens of the United States. “But this had to be done as discreetly as possible. What happened here today is not exactly ‘by the book’ as Americans—you Americans—might say…”

“We understand,” Sola said grinning as she hugged her still sobbing aunt. Ximena was so overcome, she’d barely been able to repeat her parts of the oath. “Thank you, Mr. Rustanov! Thank you so much! You’ll never know how much this means to us!”

Alexei shook his head. “Thank Ivan. This was one of the things he insisted on before he left the country.”

That was when her happiness froze inside her chest. “What do you mean before he left the country?”