“Oh my God,” Chloe breathes, looking horrified. “So Slava’s mother was—”
“Someone I wouldn’t have touched in a hazmat suit if I’d known who she was, yes. The relations between our families had been strained for decades, to say the least.”
“Decades? Why?”
“Remember the story I just told you, about my grandfather being sent away to the gulag?”
Chloe nods and cautiously picks up her coffee again.
“The man who accused him of disloyalty to the Party was Matvey Leonov, Ksenia’s grandfather.”
She freezes, the mug midway to her mouth. “Oh. Wow.”
“Yes. He was a poisonous snake, like all the Leonovs—but especially Ksenia.” Despite myself, my voice drips with bitter hatred. “To this day, I don’t know if she’d planned to fuck me over all along, or if it was an accident that she’d gotten pregnant. Either way, she didn’t tell me that I had a son. Was probably never going to tell me. If she hadn’t died, I might not have ever learned of Slava’s existence—at least not until he was old enough to appear in our circles. At that point, the resemblance would’ve clued everyone in to his Molotov heritage, if not necessarily his actual paternity.” My mouth twists. “You haven’t seen my brothers or my cousin, but we all look very much alike.”
Chloe puts the coffee back on the nightstand without so much as taking a sip. “Why do you think she approached you that night? She must’ve known who you were, right?”
“Of course she did.” Unlike her, I was well known among Moscow’s high society. “As to why, I still have no clue. Maybe she planned the whole thing, right down to the broken condom, or maybe she was just young and stupid and wanted to flirt with danger. I don’t even know why she was at the party or how she got in—certainly, none of the Leonovs had been invited. Either way, the end result is the same: I have a son I didn’t know about until eight months ago. A son who’s half Leonov.”
Chloe sucks in a breath. “Wait a sec. Is that why you’re—”
“Here?” At her nod, I smile humorlessly. “You guessed it, zaychik. His mother’s family didn’t exactly hand him over to me. I learned about Slava’s existence a week after Ksenia’s death, and by then, he was already living with Boris Leonov, Ksenia’s father—a man known for his cruel and violent proclivities. I never wanted children, never planned to have them, but I couldn’t leave my son in his clutches, couldn’t abandon him to grow up in that vipers’ nest.”
“So you what? Stole him from them?”
I nod. “It took my brothers and me almost two months to figure out a way to breach their security, but we got him out and I brought him here, where nobody knows who we are and can’t report to the Leonovs that I suddenly have a child.”
Her smooth forehead knits in confusion. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you just go through the legal channels? You’re Slava’s father. Couldn’t you have gotten custody with a simple paternity test?”
“I could’ve—and would’ve—if it had been anyone but the Leonovs. They hate our family as much as we hate theirs, and they’d do anything to thwart us… to thwart me. The moment I filed for custody—the moment they realized I knew of Slava’s existence—he would’ve been spirited away, hidden someplace we would’ve never found him. Maybe his death would’ve been faked for the sake of the courts—or maybe they would’ve actually killed him. Anything to deprive me of a chance to raise my son.”
Chloe gasps in horror. “You think they would’ve…?”
“I wouldn’t put anything past the elder Leonov.” Or Alexei and Ruslan, Ksenia’s equally ruthless brothers.
Chloe looks horrified. “That’s terrible.” Then her eyes widen, and she gasps again. “Grandpa Duck! Oh God… do you think Ksenia’s father hurt Slava while he was living with him?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” I try to keep a level tone, but dark rage seeps into my voice, making it hard and guttural. “Slava has never talked about his time with his grandfather, but the way he’d acted around me and Pavel at first… the way he still acts around me, to a certain extent…” I stop, my throat closing on a surge of fury.
The vague suspicions I’d harbored about Boris Leonov’s treatment of my son had crystallized into near certainty when Chloe told me about Slava’s odd reaction to Grandpa Duck in the children’s story. The only reason Ksenia’s father is still alive is that Konstantin’s team has uncovered the carefully concealed fact that he has late-stage pancreatic cancer and is not expected to last longer than a couple of agony-filled months.
Killing him would be a mercy I’m not willing to extend.
Chloe places her hand on my knee. “I’m so sorry, Nikolai.” Her soft brown eyes are filled with sympathy, and an echo of the same rage that burns inside me.