His answer came quicker, nonchalant. “They weren’t religious. My mother was barely willing to nominally convert to marry my father, and they occasionally attended Christmas or Easter Mass, but not both, and not every year.”
“Wereyoubaptized?”
“Yes, and chrismated, as an infant. I remember Kostya’s baptism.”
“Are you worried about divine retribution if you just lie to the priests about us consummating it?”
His pained blink was a scoff. “Of course not.”
“Worried about getting smote? A lightning bolt out of the clear blue sky going to get you?” I pried.
More scoffing, but his shoulders hunched. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Devout family?”
His hands were tight fists on his knees, though he was still twisted around and was looking at me. “My family used religion to keep the peasants in line, but believing too much in priests or superstition gets us murdered.”
Woo. Okay, not that, then.“Religious friends who would be offended?”
Frustration raised his voice a note, and he shook his head like he was flinging off bees. “None. Ryan is also Orthodox in name only. Magnus is a Lutheran of some denomination, I think. John is culturally Roman Catholic. No one would care.”
“Maybe a core memory from when you were a kid?”
Deeper frown lines pressed between his eyes, and his head shaking accelerated. He was getting really wound up, and his voice sounded choked as he grated out,“No.”
“Thenwhy?”
He broke. “Because when I marry someone, ithasto beinthe Russian Orthodox church so my children will be legitimate according to Pauline Law becauseI’m the fucking Tsar of all the Russias.”
His crystalline blue eyes flared wide, and he whipped his head up to stare at me like he was checking to see if I’d heard. He slapped his hand over his own mouth.
Wow.
Nicolai stared straight into my eyes as his hand dropped. “I didn’t say that.”
I spun all the way around on the bed to face him and crossed my legs under the flowing silk dress. “Oh, honey. Those sleeper codes run deep, don’t they?”
His eyes creased. “I can’tfathomwhy I said that. I should never,everhave said that.”
“Shouldnever have said it, huh?”
His gaze held mine for an instant more, but then he looked away, sighing. The tension electrifying his body dissipated. “No.Never.”
“Itisimportant to you. You can’t admit it or you’re not allowed to, but it is.”
“It’s too dangerous to talk about, to eventhinkabout. Definitely too dangerous to act upon.”
“I still don’t get why anyone would want to kill you for it. All that Russia stuff was a long time ago.”
“I’m the ultimate nepo baby,” Nicolai sighed. “My name alone conjures nostalgia, even though the vast majority of Russians were terribly mistreated under every tsar. Dictators do not have the will of the people. They brainwash a small, deluded sub-fraction, many of whom love to hate other people more than they want to keep their freedom or even have a decent job. Their souls rot from within because the dictator gives them permission to steal from and murder those people and feel righteous about doing it, and then they tear downtheir own rights and wealth and give them to the dictator and his corrupted cronies as bribes.”
“But Russia doesn’t have tsars anymore.”
“Vladimir Putin has picked up the terrifying playbook of my tsar ancestors and used it as a palimpsest, writingMein Kampfover the words on the page. Russian citizens are destitute, their wealth stripped by that KGB psychopath. Now, he terrorizes world leaders to do his bidding, to gouge their own citizens and send him the profits through money laundering. It’s obscene, and it’s working very well.”
This conversation was way above my pay grade. High school civics hadn’t prepared me at all to sit on a hotel bed with the heir to an empire and debate politics. “He can’t terrorize the leaders of other countries. They have armies and the Secret Service and stuff.”
“He can,” Nicolai said, staring at his hands. “He does. My ancestors excelled at determining who to torture and murder to keep other leaders in line. The Communists refined their methods. Putin is their political descendant, and he has conquered the world. No world leader’s children are safe from him and his kidnappers and torturers.”
