He nodded at me, a hint of a smile, and said that we were much alike. He took another deep drink of vodka,ahhingafterward.
According to Lev, in return for Maja’s freedom, Lev’s grandfather, the president of Russia, asked her for assistance. She had become a spy for him. She was so hypnotizing that once she began to dance, it seemed she was a magnet to men, learning their secrets.
She had met Matteo in Italy, while she had danced for a group of wealthy Italians. I had found out through Marzio that Matteo was my biological grandfather. They fell in love, and once he found out what she was about, he went after her, trying to stop her. This was when she had become more thanjusta ballerina.
“Here—” Lev made a cutting motion across his throat. He told me how to move my leg in his language and I did. I lifted smoothly, and then ever so slowly, came across his throat with the tip of the pointe shoe, right across his juggler.
This was what Maja Resnick had done to a man about to kill Matteo. The dangerous group had found out that he was not one of them and was there to take her away. She had a razor blade inserted in the tip of her shoe.
“Her grandmother was an assassin too,” Lev said, seriously. “For the man she loved.”
“I thought she danced for her freedom?” Uncle Tito put in, but he seemed to be fishing. Something niggled at my instincts then. Maybe Uncle Tito was in the know more than he claimed?
Lev turned to Russian to answer, and I had to translate. She had. Lev’s grandfather had told her one more dance, then she could have her freedom, but after some time, he found that she had been spying on him too. He tried to have her killed, but it was too late. She had been married and moved to America. Maja had become more famous than any of them ever anticipated.
“But we danced for him, right before he passed,” I said, remembering the time vividly. It made no sense.
“Yes,” Lev said. “His dying wish. I believe she respected him enough for setting her free to come back.”
We all became silent for a moment. I was thankful for it. I needed to digest the fact that my grandmother—true grace—had killed someone in honor of her lover. And was a spy, for more than one country! Though I knew that she had done what she had to do, her time was different than mine. I looked at Brando and at our surroundings.Was it really?
“Your wife makes me feel,” Lev said, and I found him and Brando in a stare down. “I do not do that often. This is what Nemours means when he is attempting to sell her gifts.” Lev looked at me. “I will not bring back news that you are anything but a woman who—” he glanced over at the mess I had made on the floor.
I shuddered, my cheeks going hot.
“—is flesh and blood, nothing more. I will speak the truth but leave out details. You have your grandmother’s blood in your veins. You are a female assassin. You are a killer of men’s hearts. You will forever be that little girl throwing ice at me.”
“And you that little boy laughing when I did.” I smiled a bit.
“Those eyes,” he whispered in Russian.
He came closer. Brando came closer. I put my hand up. I didn’t want trouble.
Lev put his mouth to my ear and a hand to my stomach. “Is your womb clean?” he whispered, the Russian sounding so foreign, yet I could easily understand it.
I almost took a step back. For the first time I felt what he was, what he was capable of, and some of his intent. Though he said one thing, he insinuated another. “No,” I said, lying through my teeth. It was important for me to make him believe that I was pregnant, or once was.
Lev backed up, reading me. “How many?” he said in Russian.
“None,” I said.
He looked over Brando once more, said something about his child being too big for me to carry, and then blinked. Finally, he nodded. “Perhaps I will see about this later. Perhaps not.”
He gently kissed my knuckles, and then melted into the darkness, as though by magic.
* * *
The night was quiet, the air full of purling gray mist, trees and houses nothing but sketch work against a moody, dark canvas.
Brando’s eyes glistened with heat. His mind was far beyond the glass windshield before him. Rocco and Donato sat in the back seat, both still pouting because I had refused to allow them in the room. Both of them put up a fight to ride with us so that they could be briefed.
As of yet, no one had spoken a word. Then, in an explosion of voices, all three of them went off like bombs—
“A Russian assassin, Scarlett.” (At least this distracted him from the nasty scene on the floor.)
“You no longer trust me,bella!”
“I should have been there,Signora Fausti!”
