When we arrive at the Grand Fantasy hotel and take the private elevator to the three-bedroom penthouse suite, Natalia stops in the doorway, stunned by the grandeur. “I do not understand.”
The C Crue bodyguard who’s with us stops in the hall to stand guard outside the apartment door, but my brother follows in our wake. He’s forced to pause a few feet behind Natalia, and his gaze flicks to my face to tell me I should usher her inside.
Taking her hand, I tug her in. That’s all the prompting it takes for her to walk across the room to the windows offering a panoramic view of the strip.
“The lawyer and the notary will be here in twenty minutes,” Sasha says. “If you’re gonna have a talk with her, now’s the time.”
I shake my head. “After I sign them.”
“You sure this is the way you want to play it?”
“Yes.” I walk across the room to Natalia and rest my hands on her shoulders.
“Who will pay for these magnificence rooms?” she asks.
“Magnificent.” Always concerned about money. Soon that’ll be a thing of the past for her “Sasha’s paying. It’s a wedding present.”
“Tell me the truth. Did you agree to work for him in his business?”
“Not exactly.”
“I do not believe you,” she whispers. “Suddenly he is too generous. Why?”
“We made a pact to be brothers.”
“Oh. Well, this is good.” She licks her lips. “Perhaps.”
I would smile at her skepticism if there weren’t so many big secrets still looming over us. My hand on her back guides her to the master bedroom.
Inside the gold and white room, the wardrobe’s open. There’s a wedding gown inside whose train spills out like a waterfall. A little blue box waits on the dresser. I open it and find the rings. A two-carat emerald cut diamond solitaire with a matching platinum band. And a men’s platinum band.
Natalia sits on the end of the bed, staring at the dress. “Alexei, this… so fast. Something is not right. Please tell me.”
I wanted to wait to show her all the documents at once, but I sense it’ll be too much and that I shouldn’t wait any longer.
“There are things I need to tell you,kiska.” My fingers stroke her cheek. Her skin is as soft as satin. A part of me wants to skip ahead to the wedding night.
Instead, I have to tell her a long story of her family’s death and destruction.
She looks up expectantly, waiting for me to say what I need to say.
“Egorov arranges for a lot of pretty Russian women to come to the United States to dance in his strip clubs and other things, but that’s not why he brought you here, Natalia. He finds his girls in places like Moscow and St. Petersburg. He doesn’t hunt through remote rural villages or deserted frozen tenements in Siberia.”
She waits, frowning. “I know this does not make sense. It is like the maps at Polasky’s house. They look for me in particular. Why, Alexei?”
“Egorov sent a man to find you, so that your family wouldn’t. Your grandfather was searching for you for over a year. He came close to finding you before he died.”
“Died,” she says, then presses her lips together. “My father?”
“Also gone. Killed years earlier.”
Her shoulders slump, and her head hangs. “Brothers and sisters?”
“I’m sorry,kiska. No.” I sit on the bed next to her and put my arm around her, pulling her against my body. “When I went to New York, it was to go through paperwork from Mikhail Kalashnik, the mentor and foster father I told you about. Through those papers, I learned he was your grandfather. I think Egorov had him killed because Mikhail changed his will to include us, and Egorov didn’t want you found in time to meet some of the conditions.”
As Natalia stares at me, her expression changes from confusion to anger. “Egorov kills him too, you believe?”
“Mikhail wants us to do something,” I say.
