While the artist was at work with the original, I visited his workshop every day. I oversaw the project in its finest detail. I knew once she was brought here, I wouldn’t see her again. And I didn’t for many years. Yet before I left for New York, something compelled me to visit. I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe in premonitions. However, that day, as I stood on the same spot I’m standing on now, I knew in my gut something was going to happen in New York City. And it did. Someone tried to kill me, but Igor took the bullet.
Maybe that gut feeling was my parents trying to warn me.
I stare at the names engraved in marble.
Viktor Volkov.
Anastasia Volkova.
A shrill chirp cuts through the air. The leaves above me rustle as a bird lifts into the sky with a loud flapping of wings.
I turn. Igor is searching the area, his gun pointed in front of him. When a black cat saunters from behind the tree and crosses the road, he lowers his arms and blows out a long breath.
Shaking the snow from my umbrella, I say, “Let’s go.”
Since it wasn’t my plan to come here, I didn’t bring flowers. Just like it wasn’t my plan to drag Katerina across the ocean and lock her up in my house. But it is what it is now.
I’ll come back with roses.
My kiska will adapt.
She has to, because I won’t let her refuse my advances for long. She’s mine. We both know it. The world knows it. I’m carrying the proof in my pocket in the form of her access card.
Movement near the gates makes me stop in my tracks. A bent figure trudges over the snow-covered lawn. Igor draws his gun again, but I stop him with a hand on his arm. I recognize the drab black garb and thin gray hair that’s plaited down the woman’s back, sticking out from underneath a wooly hat.
I saw her here on my last visit. She’s the grave keeper who lives in a small house inside the cemetery, not far from the gate. She asked my name and whose grave I was looking for, claiming to know every grave in the yard by name and date. The woman is as old as some of the graves themselves, practically part of the so-called furniture here. I didn’t need her directions. Even though I hadn’t been to the graveyard since my parents’ funeral twenty-one years ago, I remembered exactly where to find them. But to appease her, I played her game. I gave her the names, and she pointed out the high spot with the weeping angel.
“Why have you never visited?” she asked in her croaky voice.
Not wanting to spew some bullshit, I didn’t answer.
Now, she looks up at the sound of our footsteps, not seeming the least bit alarmed at our presence.
“Ah,” she says, looking me up and down. “It’s you.”
I take in her worn shoes, shabby coat, and the holes in her mittens. “What are you doing out in the snow?”
“Came to lock up,” she says, motioning at the gate. “We close at six. You should come back during the day.”
“I’ll do that.” Taking my wallet from my pocket, I empty it of the stash of cash I always have on me and place the bills on her palm. “Go inside before you catch your death in this cold.”
Looking from her hand to my face, she gives me a toothless grin. “May the dead protect you and God bless you, sir.”
“Go in,” I say. “We’ll lock the gate.”
Her grin stretches. “That’s my job. I’ve been doing it for fifty years. Never missed a day of locking up in my life.”
Igor holds the gate for me.
“God bless you,” she says again, waving the money in the air as I walk through the gates.
Yuri gets out from behind the wheel to open my door.
“You know she’s going to blow that money on booze,” Igor says on our way to the car. “She reeks of cheap spirits.”
“You’d rather I buy her a cup of soup at the soup kitchen?” I hand my umbrella to Yuri and shift into the back of the car. “She’s eighty years old. Cut her some slack.”
“Soup would’ve been better,” Igor says, a rare reprimand.
I let it slide, not only because I owe him my life, but also because he’s right. “Tomorrow, place a standing order for a meal delivery at the caterer we use for our office functions.”
His mouth tightens, but he doesn’t argue, seeing that he stupidly brought the task upon himself. I would laugh at the expression on his face if it weren’t for a foreboding—that pesky premonition I don’t believe in—that slithers down my spine.
The hair on my nape stands on end. My scalp prickles. Like the last time I visited my parents’ graves, I have a feeling that something is about to go down. Something ugly. Maybe it’s my imagination that my parents are trying to warn me, but I can’t ignore my gut feeling. That feeling saved my life. It left me with an uneasiness, a strange awareness of doom, and when that sniper took a shot at me, I was alert enough to sense it, able to escape in the split second when my sixth sense told me to move.