"What does that mean?"
"Her real name wasn't Sarah Winters. It was Katerina Orlova." He watches my face carefully so he can manage my response when it comes. "She was the only daughter of a very powerful man. A man known as The Wolf."
I stare at him blankly. The name means nothing to me.
"Yuri Orlova," he continues. "He is the Pakhan of the Orlova Bratva."
"I don't understand. My mother was a schoolteacher. She grew up in Vermont."
"That's the identity she built when she fled your grandfather." Nikolai's eyes hold mine. "She changed her name.Changed everything. Married a boy she fell in love with and never looked back."
My father.
"She spent fifteen years hiding but living the life she wanted to," Nikolai says quietly. "Fifteen years pretending to be someone else. And she was good at it. So good that even a man with Yuri’s reach couldn't find her. Eventually, Yuri had her declared legally dead.”
"How do you know all of this?" I ask.
Nikolai is quiet for a long moment.
"Because I am in an alliance with him."
The confession hits me like a slap. “Youknowhim?”
"Very well.”
“You’d better tell me what the hell you’re talking about.” My voice trembles. “Because I am very fucking confused right now, Nikolai.”
“Yuri and I are in an alliance of six heads from six powerful families. We're not friends. We're not family. Half of us can’t stand the other half. But together, we're untouchable. There is no government or corporation or family or anything with as much power as we have.”
Alliance. Powerful families. Untouchable power.
I have to sit down on the couch after all.
Nikolai continues. "One day, Yuri asked me to find his daughter. He told me she ran away thirty years ago when she was seventeen." A muscle ticks in his jaw the way it always does when he’s annoyed. "I didn’t know anything about her, why she fled, or why she stayed missing all those years. But my instincts told me the old man was up to something. That there was more to the story. So I went looking for her like he asked me to. But I also looked into his past. I have vast resources. People who are experts in a diverse range of skillsets. So I had a forensic accountant look into Yuri’s finances and discovered that a weekbefore your mother fled Yuri’s home, she had inherited a fortune from her grandfather. Yuri, however, was overlooked by his father in his will and got nothing. Two days later your mom was in a terrible car accident. Fortunately, she walked away from it. But she knew it was an attempt on her life.”
My hand goes to my mouth with a gasp. “By her father?”
“Yes, Yuri tried to kill her. He wanted her dead so he could get his hands on her money. Afterall, he was her next of kin. But she was too quick for him and was able to flee before he could try again.” He falls silent for a beat, then continues. “But Yuri never stopped looking for her. Even after having her legally declared dead.”
“Why?”
“Because Yuri doesn’t like loose ends. He couldn’t risk her resurfacing one day, and he wasn’t about to hand back all that money.”
My hands begin to shake. Then my whole body. Not from cold but from something deeper. Something that feels like the foundation of my entire life cracking beneath my feet.
“It took me a few weeks, but I eventually found her. Then I discovered she was dead. Died in a car accident with her husband. That, of course, led me to finding out she had a daughter."
"Me," I whisper.
"You."
There’s a blanket beside me and I pull it around my shoulders, but it does nothing to stop the cold spreading through my chest. "So you came looking for me."
He pulls in a deep breath, then lets it out roughly. "Yes."
I look away. “And you found me the night at the gallery…”
“No, I found you before that.”
