“Really? Which one?”
“Oh, I doubt you’d know it. It was a tiny little vintage place in Chelsea.
“I’m curious as to why you picked that of all places to work in.”
“I liked how small and cozy it felt. I had the entire place memorized in a couple of days. I knew where every title sat. I didn’t even need to check the computer at the end of my first month there. I think I felt a sense of community, I guess you’d call it. And since I couldn’t get that out of life, I figured, Why not?”
“Why couldn’t you get that in your life?”
I gulp. “Well, I’m not sure how much you know about me—”
“I know you were in the Witness Protection Program before my son found you.”
Well, that answers that question.
“Right. Uh, yeah. Well, being in the program made me feel like I was a prisoner in my own life,” I admit, falling back into that terrifying, isolating feeling. “I couldn’t tell anyone my real name. I couldn’t tell them the real reason I was in London in the first place. I just felt like all of my social relationships were… hollow. I wasn’t myself. I was playing a version of myself. It was all pretend.”
She doesn’t take her eyes off me once as I babble. “You had a good reason for lying.”
I shrug. “That’s what I thought at the beginning. But as I got closer to people, I started to feel guilty. And eventually, I distanced myself from everyone. That felt easier.”
“And you turned to books instead of people. So you weren’t alone.”
“I wasn’t all alone. Well, physically, I was most of the time. But I had my sister.”
She nods. “That must have been a comfort to you.”
“It was. It still is.”
“I never had a sister,” Nikita tells me. “I think I would have liked one. Especially later on in my life, when I found myself surrounded by men.”
I snort. “Egotistical men, no doubt.”
“Is there any other kind?” she agrees. “That includes my son.”
I give her a side glance. “Son as in… singular?”
She gives me a guilty smile. “I did say that, didn’t I? To be honest, they’re both egotists. It’s just that Isaak is don.”
“Meaning what? He needs to be?”
“It takes a lot to be the kind of leader than a Bratva needs. You can’t show weakness, not ever. You can’t make a misstep because that could cost lives… the lives of the men who’ve sworn their allegiance to you. Sometimes, that robs you of your humanity.”
“He seems to love it, though,” I point out somewhat hesitantly.
“He does,” Nikita concedes. “Sometimes, it’s amazing how much he reminds me of Vitaly.”
“Isaak’s father?”
“Yes. He earned a reputation for being one of the most ruthless and unforgiving dons in the history of New York City. He reveled in that reputation. Wore it like a badge of honor.”
“Isaak told me that he was trained by his father.”
Her fa?ade of composure seems to crumble just a little. She flinches back as though I’ve intruded into her private thoughts. She glances in my direction, but she’s looking right past me. Right through me.
“Vitaly insisted. He was five years old when Vitaly spirited him away one afternoon for training without a word of warning.”
My mouth snaps open. “Five?”
That’s how old Jo is right now. She’s a child. A sweet, innocent little girl who still aches for her mother and gets scared of the dark when it rains.
I can’t image that Isaak would have been all that different at that age.
Nikita nods slowly, falling into her memories. “I tried to stop him. No, that’s not entirely true. I asked him why he needed to start training so young. He slapped me across the face and I shut up. He always knew how to get me to shut up.”
I can’t take my eyes off her. She looks so distant. So unreachable. The way I imagined I looked in the early days of my pregnancy.
I have no idea why she’s opening up to me. But I don’t want her to stop. Maybe understanding her will help me understand Isaak a little better.
“He was abusive?”
Nikita’s eyes snap to mine. “Abusive?” she repeats, as though the word is foreign to her. “He wasn’t abusive. He was Bratva.”
I sit up and angle my body towards her. What kind of Kool Aid has she been drinking? “Nikita, abuse is abuse. It doesn’t matter who or what the man is.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t understand. The Bratva is a different way of life. There’s a different set of rules.”
“No, there isn’t,” I say firmly. “Those rules are just an excuse to keep the women in their lives in check. They get off on control. Even Isaak—”
I break off the moment I say his name. Nikita isn’t a girlfriend who needs my help. She’s the mother of the man who has me captive in this manor.
I can’t believe I’ve allowed myself to forget that already.
“Go on.”
“I… I wasn’t thinking when I spoke,” I say quickly, keeping my eyes on my hands clasped in my lap.
“I understand why you feel that way,” Nikita says, even though I never finished my thought. “He plucked you out of your life and planted you here. Against your will.”
I suppress a sigh. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re about to defend him?”
“No, I’m not,” she says, surprising me. “He can defend himself if he feels the need. He certainly doesn’t need his mother to fight his battles for him.”
I risk a glance up at her. “How could you have let him do this?” I ask in a soft rasp. “How could a mother let her son…” My voice cracks and I trail off.
She raises her eyebrows, but as usual, she’s calm and unmoved. “I haven’t been able to make him do anything. Not since he was five years old and he was ripped from my arms. When he came back, he was beyond my reach.” She reaches out to touch the back of my hand. “He was raised to be a don, Camila. He wasn’t raised to listen or follow. He was always meant to lead.”
“A good leader listens to advice from the people closest to him,” I point out.
She nods and relinquishes her grasp on me to sink back into her seat. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been close to him for many decades now. Vitaly saw to that.”
I frown. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
“It wasn’t. But I found ways to endure. I found ways to survive.”
“How?”
She smiles and her features turn soft. “I had the love of a good man,” she replies. “And I loved him in return.”
There it is again—that cryptic doublespeak. That say-one-thing-but-mean-another. No wonder she’s lasted so long in this world of harsh men and violent rules: she knows how to play their game.
But from everything she’s told me, I’m having a hard time believing that Vitaly was the “good man” in question. Goodness knows I wouldn’t call what they had “love.”
Am I misunderstanding her? Or is there more to the story than I’ve heard just yet?
I’m drowning in questions when Nikita speaks again. “… Which is how I know how you are in love with my son.”