“No. From what I understand, Anton was hired to kidnap me.” I watched Anastasia’s body crumple further into the couch, an exasperated sigh coming from her lips.
Fuck, I felt sorry for her.
In that moment, with her guard down, I could see the toll all of this had taken on her. Losing her father, then her aunt, only now to find out that they weren’t really hers. It’s like she’s lost them all over again. I didn’t know how much more she would be able to take. I had hoped after the freak accident with her aunt that everything would calm down, I didn’t anticipate anything else going wrong.
Boy, was I way off base.
If the letter were true, this was truly the most fucked up thing I’d ever heard of.
“That means…” That at the ripe age of twenty-one, Anastasia had been kidnapped three times.
“Yep,” she finished for me. It was no surprise that she knew what I was getting at, that was clearly where her mind had been at as well.
“I really don’t know what to say.”
I didn’t know if there was anything that could possibly be said. Instead of words, I wrapped my arm around Ana’s shoulders and pulled her into me. It wasn’t until she was close that I could see the shimmer of a lone tear as it rolled down her cheek.
She sought comfort, and I was glad to be the one to provide it. No words needed.
We sat in silence, unmoving until the credits started to roll.
“Can we stay here?”
“As long as you want.” Assuming she meant the theater room, I clicked ‘play’ on the next movie.
“Nikolai, can I ask you a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Will you find my parents for me?”
“Now, that’s something I can do.”
“It shouldn’t be hard.” She nuzzled in closer.
My eyebrows furrowed at her words, but as I turned to look at her I could see her eyelids fluttering. I kept my questions to myself and let her drift off. There would be plenty of time for questions and explanations in the morning.
For now, I enjoyed the opportunity to hold her close.
It hadn’t taken me long to find the address and contact information for Mr and Mrs Varela, Anastasia’s birth parents.
I wasn’t exactly impressed when she finally came out with it. I’d had to pull it from her, but if she had wanted me to find them she knew she ultimately had no choice.
The Varela family had always run in a different circle to the Kings. Their rules and customs were stricter than ours.
Being born from the runaways of two prestigious families would have been enough of an outcry but being that my mother was from an Italian family and my father from a Russian. They had no hope in hell to salvage their inheritances. It had been a real Romeo and Juliet situation. Or, so we’d been told as children.
Both parents had been disowned and made to survive on their own. After getting married, they decided to settle down in Boston - away from their families.
The ‘King’ family of Boston had been born. While my father still had very strong ties to powerful Russian families until the day he died, he and my mother had decided that our company would be Switzerland. They figured, if they couldn’t somehow fit into both, they wouldn’t recognize themselves as either.
And so, they built their own empire.
It took a few years for their families to see the light and reach out but their attempts were ignored.
The only other family member that I remember as a child was my paternal great-grandmother. She was the one who left us the house.
Of course, she wasn’t into politics and didn’t care about what the families thought. She’d lost her husband so long ago that she’d forgotten what it was like to have people around who loved her.
